CHAPTER IV

CHURCH AND STATE

The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had received

from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a respite of two

years, during which they might reconsider the complaints of the people, and

consult among themselves upon the conduct which they would pursue with

respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of their interval of

repose in a manner little calculated to recover the esteem which they had

forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead

of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their

yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of

their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood

at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their

spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's

administration, the Protestants, though threatened and imprisoned, had

escaped the most cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a

warm-hearted and genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as

his brother bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive

alike to the institutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his

memory can be reproached with nothing worse than assiduous but humane

efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his

dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the

reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism,

and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful

activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed

treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter,

and proceed for the present with the progress of the secular changes.

Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately

contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget the

alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall; and as

they had shown in the unfortunate document which they had submitted to the

king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature of that alteration,

it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it upon them. Until that

moment they had virtually held the supreme power in the state. The

nobility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into the second

place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a definite policy;

and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a matter of course to

the only persons who for the moment were competent to hold them. The

jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so

bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of

Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey

had but symbolised the position of his order. But Wolsey was now gone, and

the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness while they envied it, were

compelled to participate also in his change of fortune.

This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to fasten

upon him a charge of high treason,--a charge which, vindictively pressed

through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by the Commons,--had been

prosecuted with greater justice for a breach of the law, in having

exercised the authority of papal legate within the realm of England. His

policy had broken down: he had united against him in a common exasperation

all orders in the state, secular and spiritual; and the possible

consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen upon him. The

parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a

series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any

office or dignity in the Anglican church, under penalty of a premunire; the

provisions of these acts extending not only to the persons themselves who

accepted office under such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever

acknowledged their authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors,

maintainers, and receivers."[287] The importance attached to these laws was

to be seen readily in the frequent re-enactment of them, with language of

increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralise the

supposed right of the pope to present to English benefices, and although

the office of papal legate is not especially named in any one of the

prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been

ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th

of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its

language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the

exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal

authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own

responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had

fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied

that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the crown,

he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full

penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but

it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to

urge it.[288] The contingency of a possible violation of the law by the

king himself had been expressly foreseen and provided against in the act

under which he was prosecuted,[289] and being himself the king's legal

adviser, it was his duty to have kept his sovereign[290] informed of the

true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his immediate

obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when Henry's

eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to interfere to

shield his minister from the penalties which he had incurred, nor is it

likely that in the face of the irritation of the country he could have done

so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed, that the long services of

Wolsey, and his generally admirable administration, might fairly save him

(especially under the circumstances of the case) from extremity of

punishment; and if he had been allowed to remain unmolested in the affluent

retirement which was at first conceded to him, his treatment would not have

caused the stain which we have now to lament on the conduct of the

administration which succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that

the final attack upon him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but

to the hatred of Anne Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This,

however, is a matter which does not concern us here, and I need not pursue

it. It is enough that he had violated the law of England, openly and

knowingly, and on the revival of the national policy by which that law had

been enacted, he reaped the consequences in his own person.

It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged

application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of Wolsey

did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised him in his

capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two Houses of

Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons, and indirectly

to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of things was not

contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and where in point of law

all persons were equally guilty, in equity they were equally innocent; the

circumstances of the case, therefore, rendered necessary a general pardon,

which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting

absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their

lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to

conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had

been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of

despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The

overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach

them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the

lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they

had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be

punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender

some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the

helplessness of their flocks.

In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in

December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the

crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of

January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order

to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their

deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years

contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their

privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily

challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity:

and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons,

Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of

persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.[291] The

session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been

prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's

Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of

disrespectfully.[292] His consent had been obtained with great difficulty,

on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and

on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected

version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have

gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard

with an auto da fé, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside;

when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover,

were solemnly burned.

From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by

the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect,

it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the

province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a

hundred thousand pounds--a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a

million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously

from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments

spread over a period of five years.[293] The demand was serious, but the

clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law;

and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them,

they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they

consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the

Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It

was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with

anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine

faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had

remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a

searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could

have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if

tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile

ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.

The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the

premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy

that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which

most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill,

under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the

council to designate the king by the famous title which gave occasion for

such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the

Church and Clergy of England."[294] It is not very easy to see what Henry

proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in

the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was

prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate

a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to

the papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces,

which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;[295] or

perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to

make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to

be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this

title was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it

was conferred by act Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed

by it from the Roman communion.

But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in requiring

that the title should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging Henry as

Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer

they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The

clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they

could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham,

just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the

miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of

the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.

There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not

consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges appeared

in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to inform them

finally that the king had determined to allow no qualifications. The clergy

begged for one more day, and the following morning the bishops held a

private meeting among themselves, to discuss some plan to turn aside the

blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn, perhaps, if there was a

chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and after an interview with the

minister which could not have been encouraging, they sent two of their

number, the Bishops of Exeter and Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task.

It was in vain; the miserable old men were obliged to return with the

answer that the king would not see them--they had seen only the judges, who

had assured them, in simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled

until the supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House,

and again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy

clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and

naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They attempted

another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should hold a

conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might, some

possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would have a

clear answer, "_yes_, or _no_." They might say "yes," and their pardon was

ready. They might say "no"--and accept the premunire and its penalties. And

now, what should the clergy have done? No very great courage was required

to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is against God's will, and therefore it

must not be, whether premunire come or do not come." They might have said

it, and if they could have dared this little act of courage, victory was in

their hands. With the cause against them so doubtful, their very attitude

would have commanded back the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's

threats would have exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons

with whom he had to deal--forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of

dignity--who only by some such rough method could be brought to a knowledge

of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"--I find in a state paper of the

time--"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay their faults roundly

and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and will lightly be reformed,

for their consciences will not suffer them to resist."[296]

They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop

submitted the clause containing the title to the Upper House, with a saving

paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of things

did require to be supposed.[297] "Ecclesiæ et cleri Anglicani," so it ran,

"singularem protectorem, et unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum per

legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem agnoscimus--We

recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign lord, the singular

protector of the church and clergy of England, and as far as is allowed by

the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The words were read aloud by

the archbishop, and were received in silence. "Do you assent?" he asked.

The House remained speechless. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," the

archbishop said. A voice answered out of the crowd, "Then are we all

silent." They separated for a few hours to collect themselves. In the

afternoon sitting they discussed the sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at

length agreeing that it saved their consciences, the clause was finally

passed, the Bishop of Rochester, among the rest, giving his unwilling

acquiescence.

So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately

submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;[298] and this

act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return

to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.

The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves

meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with

regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the

premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy,

they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the

following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age,

must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have

added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he

was in no need of any addition to his burdens.

Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel

respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he

was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of

evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above

the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench

sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to

compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and

which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.

He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in

Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner

hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I

have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty

were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the

household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of

these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on

inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been

poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and

inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the

motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by

Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by

some one of her party, to remove out of the way the most influential of the

English opponents of the divorce.[299] The story was possibly without

foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it.

The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of

reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was

easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of

less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom

horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this

kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or

lance--incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered

times--an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the

open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not

till recent years been heard of.[300] Even revenge and passion recognised

their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which

would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale

to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of

criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the

stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a

frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of

wickedness, not to be received or passed by as a common incident, and not

to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the

investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of

a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording.

The English were a stern people--a people knowing little of compassion

where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful

and solemn horror of evil things,--a feeling which, in proportion as it

exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man

is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still

contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only by

doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.

"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII.,

"calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and

wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders

thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been

preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the

same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be

favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred;

and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm

hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed or

practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to say,

on the eighteenth day of February, in the twenty-second year of his most

victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester, in the county of

Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most wicked and damnable

disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into a vessel replenished

with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the reverend father in God,

John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth Marsh; with which yeast

or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or gruel was forthwith made

for his family there being; whereby not only the number of seventeen

persons of his said family, which did eat of that porridge, were mortally

infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan,

gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor people which resorted

to the said bishop's place, and were there charitably fed with the remains

of the said porridge and other victuals; were in like wise infected; and

one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also

thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed

disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that

in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that

means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and

enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be

adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the

said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand and be

attainted of high treason.

"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed,

requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by

authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be

therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and

that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter

to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed,

deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every

person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order

of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or

their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or

condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."

The sentence was carried into effect[301] in Smithfield, "on the tenebra

Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle

of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred

years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old

cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not

easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the

stake,[302] for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,--the two

most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which

the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the

usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the

judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called

attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to

all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed;

a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which,

rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably

hurried out the penalties of it.

Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the

banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people

called Egyptians;"[303] and attached to it another of analogous import,

"for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was

alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and

other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may

regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and

reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all

forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But

they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a

disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other

symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us

the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which

it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation

for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially,

illustrates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was

impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending

changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies

and fantastic fore-shadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving

and half itself deceived, was grasping the lever of the popular excitement

to work out its own ends.[304] The power which had ruled the hearts of

mankind for ten centuries was shaking suddenly to its foundation. The

Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or

pronounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found

themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think

or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men

smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction,

the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the

frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble

into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they

saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that

the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be

directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment

of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion

of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim

but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing,

foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of

them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure

moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems,

indeed, to be in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however

limited their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the

true bearings of outward things,--an insight which puts to shame the

sagacity of statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them,

the wisdom even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who

have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel

that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a

spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent

cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.

Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these

instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and

chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power

of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to

estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with

any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England, at the time of

which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope

of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical

calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their

convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same

catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one

it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the

millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by their

understandings at the moment when their understandings were the most deeply

needed: and they saw the realities which were round them transfigured into

phantoms through the mists of their hopes and fears. The present was

significant only as it seemed in labour with some gigantic issue, and the

events of the outer world flew from lip to lip, taking as they passed every

shape most wild and fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided,

there was no censorship upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the

great subjects of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or

with the perils of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk

was of St. Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of

the points in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled

over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women

mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or

coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch

stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and

to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the

general imagination.[305]

These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English

mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement,

the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant,

who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and

down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and

the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious

language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing

God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste

to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those

wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them

the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide

a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate

policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor

or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to

Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of

the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the

intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established

between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became

necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from

banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held

sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.[307] The tendencies to

treason were still incipient--they were tendencies only, which had as yet

shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action

of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement

of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the

means by which it was fed.

Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in

the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin

Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of

abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after

having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his

mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under

leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and

loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which

Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared

at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his

divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He

was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed,

fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of

the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland,

without further punishment.[309]

Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her

reputation--the celebrated Nun of Kent--whose cell at Canterbury, for some

three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the

orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular

woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes

of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired.

Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen

Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to

him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world,

when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological

curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we

cannot observe it too accurately.

In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a

certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury,

who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a

country girl called Elizabeth Barton--a decent person, so far as we can

learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown

nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some

internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into

that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena

known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance.

The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they

are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all

countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of

bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods

certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction

for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the

devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has

been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a

considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an

insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of

ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to

what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when

defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when

demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary

insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to

recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and

that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise

must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the

subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under

the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their

natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make

too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak

girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to

understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so,

we continue the story.

This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and

many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and

said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had

heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism

and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel

was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.

The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of

so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard

Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The

girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been

brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to

it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and

vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain

things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312]

This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was

clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there

was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers

were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence

of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her

clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.

An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of

Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news

to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its

marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage,

instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person

to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard

that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep

him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in

his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of God."

Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep

any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur

upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her

illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his

mistress and the parson.[314] The story spread rapidly through the country;

inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions;

and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and

as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it

might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself

to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling

words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her

mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion

and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and

essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."[315]

Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either

the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her

oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.

In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor.

The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as

heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an

occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his

comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions

that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and

Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.[316] At first, not

knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle

with the matter.[317] They submitted, however, "from the obedience which

they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the

correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from

previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and

not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of

it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton

too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he

partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the

belief of others, and he therefore set himself to assist her inspiration

towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of

quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any

stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her

prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically

available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic

legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St.

Catherine of Sienna.[318] In these women she found an enlarged reflection

of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being

provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into

fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.

As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the

Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of

justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready

damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of

possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom

of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were

forwarded[319] regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie

mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries.

It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood.

Conscious wilful deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind;

and supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood

deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are

strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the

person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.

The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many stories of

miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the apostles,

and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox form of

credential than clairvoyance or second sight. Being now cured of her real

disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no

difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind,

and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a

chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added

something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of

the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims

could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the

miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means

were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.[320]

Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would

never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image

of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she

said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that

on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her

disorder.[321] The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no

danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of

people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a

procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the

clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing

the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."

"And when she was brought thither[322] and laid before the image of our

Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her

eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly

deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had

been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing

by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it

told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly,

that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise,

when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it

put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the

confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession,

and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she

came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was

finished and solemnly sung; and a book was written of all the whole story

thereof, and put into print; which ever since that time was commonly sold,

and went abroad among the people."

The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was no

longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin informed

her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her exclusive

service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial favourite; and

Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory of St.

Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her profession; and as

soon as she was established in her cell, she became a recognised priestess

or prophetess, alternately communicating revelations, or indulging the

curiosity of foolish persons, and for both services consenting to be paid.

The church had by this time spread her reputation through England. The book

of her oracles, which extended soon to a considerable volume, was shown by

Archbishop Warham to the king, who sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him

to look at it. More's good sense had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it

"a right poor production, such as any simple woman might speak of her own

wit;"[323] and Henry himself "esteemed the matter as light as it afterwards

proved lewd." But the world were less critical censors: the saintly halo

was round her head, and her most trivial words caught the reflection of the

glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm

as mean men, and many learned men, but specially many religious men, had

great confidence in her, and often resorted to her."[324] They "consulted

her much as to the will of God touching the heresies and schisms in the

realm;" and when the dispute arose between the bishops and the House of

Commons, they asked her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking

away the liberties of the church;" to which questions her answers, being

dictated by her confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could

desire. Her position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric

periods of her earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight

she was taken up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with

heavenly lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of

ascent was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore,

that she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence,

to pass the dormitory door when she pleased--a privilege of which the

Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less respectable

purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward behaviour was in

full keeping with her language and profession. She related many startling

stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the

devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the angels were in fact

alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on one occasion, burnt a

mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks

were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in

the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of these infernal visits,

"great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from her chamber, "savouring

grievously through all the dorture;" with which, however, it was suspected

subsequently that a paper of brimstone and assafoetida, found among her

property after her arrest, had been in some way connected. We smile at

these stories, looking back at them with eyes enlightened by scientific

scepticism; but they furnished matter for something else than smiles when

the accounts of them could be exhibited by the clergy as a living proof of

the credibility of the Aurea Legenda,--when the subject of them could be

held up as a witness, accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old

faith, a living evidence to shame the incredulity of the Protestant

sectaries. She became a figure of great and singular significance; a "wise

woman," to whom persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to have

recourse to inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her

intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate

commensurate with their credulity.[325]

This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for

herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the

Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and

the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the

stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence

that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she

now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far

from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops, she issued

boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn prohibition

against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not

"reign a month, but should die a villain's death."[326] Burdened with this

message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;[327] and

when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she

turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits.

The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request

introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.[328] He, too,

in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made

herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon

herself to threaten Clement,[329] assuming, in virtue of her divine

commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were

likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might

be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career

on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of

the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.

It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to

be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the

reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true

heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her

part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant

girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the

achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might

be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound

to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest

adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really

and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled

her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest

statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on

the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into

which we are soon to see her launched.

Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and

the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof

against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited

fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a

frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to discuss the marriage

question further, he interfered with no one, and therefore not with her. If

her own word was to be taken, he even showed her much personal kindness,

having offered to make her an abbess, which is difficult to believe,

especially as she said that she had refused his offer. She stated also that

at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to the emperor, the Countess of

Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to accept a place at the court, as a

companion to Anne; which again is unsupported by other evidence, and sounds

improbable.[330] But it is plain, that until she was found to be meditating

treason, she experienced no treatment from the government of which she had

cause to complain; and thus for the present we may leave her pursuing her

machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the parliament.

The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on the

16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March, which

was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of Commons,

and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various

universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on

the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was much

disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had heard in

their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might perceive

that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or pleasure, as some

strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety

of the succession of his realm."[331] This appears to have been the first

time that the subject was mentioned before parliament, and the occasion was

reasonably and sensibly chosen. The clergy having possession of the

pulpits, had used their opportunity to spread a false impression where the

ignorance of the people would allow them to venture the experiment; the

king having resolved to fall back upon the support of his subjects,

naturally desired the assistance of the country gentlemen and the nobles to

counteract the efforts of disaffection, and provided them with accurate

information in the simplest manner which he could have chosen.

But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary form, for

as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the divorce as

the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use all means by

which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the Lords, shortly

after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in

London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the

pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the

Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the

clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the parliament

thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English _men_,

for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things

peace and order and a secured succession.

The language of this remarkable document[332] was as follows:--

"To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine

Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our

Lord Jesus Christ.

"Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the most

invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of France,

Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great and

weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it may be

brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great and

earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented hitherto to

expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness's hands; we have been

unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing that this

kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril through the

unseasonable delay of sentence. His Majesty, who is our head, and by

consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject members by a

just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness entreated your

Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain: we are by the

greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and distinctly by these

our letters most humbly to demand a speedy determination. There ought,

indeed, to have been no need of this request on our part. The justice of

the cause itself, approved to be just by the sentence of so many learned

men, by the suffrage of the most famous universities in England, France,

and Italy, should have sufficed alone to have induced your Holiness to

confirm the sentence given by others; especially when the interests of a

king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of

the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with

you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our

entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety,

and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither

the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have

received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have

availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what

it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as

it is beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities

which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our

commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our complaints.

"For what a misfortune is this,--that a sentence which our own two

universities, which the University of Paris, and many other universities in

France, which men of the highest learning and probity everywhere, at home

and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen, that such sentence, we

say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by a prince to whom that see

owes its present existence. Amidst the attacks of so many and so powerful

enemies, the King of England ever has stood by that see with sword and pen,

with voice and with authority. Yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his

labours. He has saved the papacy from ruin, that others might enjoy the

fruits of the life which he has preserved for it. We see not what answer

can be made to this; and meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries

impending over the commonwealth, threatening to bring back upon us the

ancient controversy on the succession, which had been extinguished only

with so much blood and slaughter. We have now a king most eminent for his

virtues, and reigning by unchallenged title, who will secure assured

tranquillity to the realm if he leave a son born of his body to succeed

him. The sole hope that such a son may be born to him lies in the being

found for him some lawful marriage into which he may enter; and to such

marriage the only obstacle lies with your Holiness. It cannot be until you

shall confirm the sentence of so many learned men on the character of his

former connection. This if you will not do, if you who ought to be our

father have determined to leave us as orphans, and to treat us as

castaways, we shall interpret such conduct to mean only that we are left to

care for ourselves, and to seek our remedy elsewhere. We do not desire to

be driven to this extremity, and therefore we beseech your Holiness without

further delay to assist his Majesty's just and reasonable desires. We

entreat you to confirm the judgment of these learned men; and for the sake

of that love and fatherly affection which your office requires you to show

towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion against us, your most

dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The cause of his Majesty is

the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot suffer, but the members

must bear a part. We have all our common share in the pain and in the

injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of your Holiness, so does

the duty of your fatherly office require you to administer it. If, however,

your Holiness will not do this, or if you choose longer to delay to do it,

our condition hitherto will have been so much the more wretched, that we

have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly

irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that

is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the

exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain

a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable us to endure it.

"These things we beseech your Holiness, in the name of our Lord Jesus

Christ, to consider with yourself. You profess that on earth you are His

vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself so to be, by pronouncing your

sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that

truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation

confirmed by the most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray

the all-good God, whom we know by most sure testimony to be truth itself,

that He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness,

that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be

spared from seeking it by other more painful methods."

Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this

petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification of the

demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the

nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal

imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was acted out

with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense

of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication,

interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country's

interests, as well as his own, required.

It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as

unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained

under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which

was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in

the same household with the state of a princess,[333] and needlessly

wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which his

duty permitted. The circumstances of the case, if they were known to us,

though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially

palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own

determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided with an

establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the

scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily

concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to

these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne

Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a

position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of

her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour?

But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change.

In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a deputation

of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and

laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir Thomas More to the

two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and

for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to

Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom. It was, probably, but an

official request, proposed without expectation that she would yield. After

rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she was not likely,

inflexible as she had ever been, to yield when the pope had admitted her

appeal, and the emperor, victorious through Europe, had promised her

support. She refused, of course, like herself, proudly, resolutely,

gallantly, and not without the scorn which she was entitled to feel. The

nation had no claims upon her, and "for the king's conscience," she

answered, "I pray God send his Grace good quiet therein, and tell him I say

I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married; and in that point I will

abide till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, hath made

thereof a determination and a final ending."[334] The learned councillors

retired with their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more

dignified; but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in

defence of her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers

would she abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to

it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request

was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency,

and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the

court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king

to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her

again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had

been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had

belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.[335]

Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better

result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a

large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she

was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her

as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those

whom sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a

partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and as

the measures against the church became more stringent, and a separation

from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful

political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a

right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her

allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of

the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not

slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old

faith, and to whom the measures of the government appeared a sacrilege.

Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a

correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of the continent into

connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of

Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all

the remaining faction of the White Rose. And so first the great party of

sedition began to shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the

shortlived interlude of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the

nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and

steadily organising itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings,

till at length it overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland,

exploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in

check by the tact and firmness of the government, and by the inherent

loyalty of the English to the land of their birth. There was a proverb then

current that "the treasons of England should never cease."[336] It was

perhaps fortunate that the papal cause was the cause of a foreign power,

and could only be defended by a betrayal of the independence of the

country. In Scotland and Ireland the insurrectionists were more successful,

being supported in either instance by the national feeling. But the

strength of Scotland had been broken at Flodden; and Ireland, though hating

"the Saxons" with her whole heart, was far off and divided. The true danger

was at home; and when the extent and nature of it is fairly known and

weighed, we shall understand better what is called the "tyranny" of Henry

VIII. and of Elizabeth; and rather admire the judgment than condemn the

resolution which steered the country safe among those dangerous shoals.

Elizabeth's position is more familiar to us, and is more reasonably

appreciated because the danger was more palpable. Henry has been hardly

judged because he trampled down the smouldering fire, and never allowed it

to assume the form which would have justified him with the foolish and the

unthinking. Once and once only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on

the instant, and therefore it has been slighted and forgotten. But with

despatches before his eyes, in which Charles V. was offering James of

Scotland the hand of the Princess Mary, with the title for himself of

Prince of England and Duke of York[337]--with Ireland, as we shall speedily

see it, in flame from end to end, and Dublin castle the one spot left

within the island on which the banner of St. George still floated--with a

corps of friars in hair shirts and chains, who are also soon to be

introduced to us, and an inspired prophetess at their head preaching

rebellion in the name of God--with his daughter, and his daughter's mother

in league against him, some forty thousand clergy to be coerced into honest

dealing, and the succession to the crown floating in uncertainty--finally,

with excommunication hanging over himself, and at length falling, and his

deposition pronounced, Henry, we may be sure, had no easy time of it, and

no common work to accomplish; and all these things ought to be present

before our minds, as they were present before his mind, if we would see him

as he was, and judge him as we would be judged ourselves.

Leaving disaffection to mature itself, we return to the struggle between

the House of Commons and the bishops, which recommenced in the following

winter; first pausing to notice a clerical interlude of some illustrative

importance which took place in the close of the summer. The clergy, as we

saw, were relieved of their premunire on engaging to pay 118,000 pounds

within five years. They were punished for their general offences; the

formal offence for which they were condemned being one which could not

fairly be considered an offence at all. When they came to discuss therefore

the manner in which the money was to be levied, they naturally quarrelled

among themselves as to where the burden of the fine should fairly rest, and

a little scene has been preserved to us by Hall, through which, with

momentary distinctness, we can look in upon those poor men in their

perplexity. The bishops had settled among themselves that each diocese

should make its own arrangements; and some of these great persons intended

to spare their own shoulders to the utmost decent extremity. With this

object, Stokesley, Bishop of London, who was just then very busy burning

heretics, and therefore in bad odour with the people, resolved to call a

meeting of five or six of his clergy, on whom he could depend; and passing

quietly with their assistance such resolutions as seemed convenient, to

avoid in this way the more doubtful expedient of a large assembly.

The necessary intimations were given, and the meeting was to be held on the

1st of September, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's. The bishop arrived at

the time appointed, but unhappily for his hopes, not only the chosen six,

but with them six hundred of the clergy of Middlesex, accompanied by a mob

of the London citizens, all gathered in a crowd at the Chapter-house door,

and clamouring to be admitted.

The bishop, trusting in the strength of the chains and bolts, and still

hoping to manage the affair officially, sent out a list of persons who

might be allowed to take part in the proceedings, and these with difficulty

made their way to the entrance. A rush was made by the others as they were

going in, and there was a scuffle, which ended for the moment in the

victory of the officials: but the triumph was of brief duration; the

excluded clergy were now encouraged by the people; they returned vigorously

to the attack, broke down the doors, "struck the bishop's officers over the

face," and the whole crowd, priests and laity, rushed together, storming

and shouting, into the Chapter-house. The scene may be easily imagined;

dust flying, gowns torn, heads broken, well-fed faces in the hot September

weather steaming with anger and exertion, and every voice in loudest

outcry. At length the clamour was partially subdued, and the bishop,

beautifully equal to the emergency, arose bland and persuasive.

"My brethren," he said, "I marvel not a little why ye be so heady. Ye know

not what shall be said to you, therefore I pray you keep silence, and hear

me patiently. My friends, ye all know that we be men, frail of condition

and no angels; and by frailty and lack of wisdom we have misdemeaned

ourselves towards the king our sovereign lord and his laws; so that all we

of the clergy were in premunire, by reason whereof all our promotions,

lands, goods, and chattels were to him forfeit, and our bodies ready to be

imprisoned. Yet his Grace, moved with pity and compassion, demanded of us

what we could say why he should not extend his laws upon us.

"Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy, to

whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy. Then for all our great

offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of his

laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one hundred

thousand pounds, to be paid in five years. And though this sum may be more

than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we should have

borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably exhort you to

bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards payment of this sum

granted."[338]

The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of the

form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the reasoning. It

confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the true

provocation which had led to the penalty--the unjust extortion of the high

church officials--was ignored. The crowd laughed and hooted. The clergy

fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with

hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was shortly answered by one of

them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest. Victual and

all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay. Besides that,

my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops

and abbots which have offended pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of

applause. The bishop's officers gave the priests high words. The priests

threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in

the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition. From words they passed

to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted

and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion.

For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent

to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed,

and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have

defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the

bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They

had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with

that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to

extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found

themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.

This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have

softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more

respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their privileges. The convocation

and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the

conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced. The

initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit

still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical

manner to the last. A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately died, by name

Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the

mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and

leaving no money to be expended in masses.[340] Such notorious heresy could

not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled

clergy[341] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn it. Their

audacity displayed at once the power which they possessed, and the temper

in which they were disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems

to have been responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was

carried into execution before Henry had time to interfere.[342] It was the

last act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and

the legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so

incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy,

convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the

living Latimer,[343] when they were recalled to their senses by a summons

to prepare some more reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made

for them on their privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were

to be lived by Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own

delinquencies were for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of

Commons at the same time proceeded to frame necessary bills on the other

points of their complaint.

The first act upon the roll recalls the Constitutions of Clarendon and the

famous quarrel between Becket and the Crown. When Catholicism was a living

belief, when ordained priests were held really and truly to possess those

awful powers which the mystery of transubstantiation assigns to them, they

were acknowledged by common consent to be an order apart from the rest of

mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable only to spiritual

jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they committed crimes, they

should escape the retributive consequences of those crimes: offenders

against the law might (originally at least) be degraded, if the bishops

thought good, and stripped of their commission be delivered thus to the

secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment for such persons was of a

more awful kind, proportioned to the magnitude of the fault; and was

conveyed or held to be conveyed in the infliction of the spiritual death of

excommunication. Excommunication was, in real earnest, the death of the

soul, at a time when communion with the church was the only means by which

the soul could be made partaker of the divine life; and it was a noble

thing to believe that there was something worse for a man than legal

penalties on his person or on his mortal body; it was beautiful to

recognise in an active living form, that the heaviest ill which could

befall a man was to be cut off from God. But it is only for periods that

humanity can endure the atmosphere of these high altitudes of morality. The

early Christians attempted a community of goods, but they were unequal to

it for more than a generation. The discipline of Catholicism was assisted

by superstition,--it remained vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it

languished at last; and although there was so great virtue in a living

idea, that its forms preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when

in their effect and working they had become as evil as they once were

noble; yet reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these

forms were to submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of

the persons whom they affected.

I have already alluded to the abuse of "benefit of clergy;"[344] we have

arrived at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally

put away,--a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of the

evil, but touched only its extreme outworks. The clergy had monopolised the

learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to their body being

able to read or write, their privileges became co-extensive, as I above

stated, with these acquirements. The exemption from secular jurisdiction,

which they obtained in virtue of their sacred character, had been used as a

protection in villainy for every scoundrel who could write his name. Under

this plea, felons of the worst kind might claim, till this time, to be

taken out of the hands of the law judges, and to be tried at the bishops'

tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a monstrous solecism had

Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever welcomed as the ready

expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester's

cook, who was a "clerk," parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced

him without trial, by attainder. They now passed a general act, remarkable

alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to

provide.[345] The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be

remedied, and the historical position of it. It dwelt upon the assurances

which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their

privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as

often as they had been made; so that "continually manifest thieves and

murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and

substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of

the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and

hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries

for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such

offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges

in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by

such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and

make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders

by the king's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such

offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy

remedy thereto."

To provide such necessary remedy, it was enacted that thenceforward no

person under the degree of subdeacon, if guilty of felony, should be

allowed to plead "his clergy" any more, but should be proceeded against by

the ordinary law. So far it was possible to go--an enormous step if we

think of what the evil had been; and in such matters to make a beginning

was the true difficulty--it was the logical premise from which the

conclusion could not choose but follow. Yet such was the mystical

sacredness which clung about the ordained clergy, that their patent

profligacy had not yet destroyed it--a priest might still commit a murder,

and the profane hand of the law might not reach to him.

The measure, however, if imperfect, was excellent in its degree; and when

this had been accomplished, the House proceeded next to deal with the

Arches Court--the one enormous grievance of the time. The petition of the

Commons has already exhibited the condition of this institution; but the

act by which the power of it was limited added more than one particular to

what had been previously stated, and the first twenty lines of the statute

which was now passed[346] may be recommended to the consideration of the

modern censors of the Reformation. The framer of the resolution was no bad

friend to the bishops, if they had possessed the faculty of knowing who

their true friends were, for the statement of complaint was limited, mild,

and moderate. Again, as with the "benefit of clergy," the real ground for

surprise is that any fraction of a system so indefensible should have been

permitted to continue. The courts were nothing else but the vicious sources

of unjust revenue; and with the opportunity so fairly offered, it is

strange indeed that they were not swept utterly away. But sweeping measures

have never found favour in England. There has ever been in English

legislation, even when most reforming, that temperate spirit of equity

which has refused to visit the sins of centuries upon a single generation.

The statute limited its accusations to the points which it was designed to

correct, and touched these with a hand firmly gentle.

"Whereas great numbers of the king's subjects," says the preamble, "as well

men, wives, servants, or others dwelling in divers dioceses of the realm of

England and Wales, heretofore have been at many times called by citations

and other processes compulsory to appear in the Arches, Audience, and other

high Courts of the archbishops of this realm, far from and out of the

dioceses where such persons are inhabitant and dwelling; and many times to

answer to surmised and feigned causes and matters, which have been sued

more for vexation and malice than from any just cause of suit; and when

certificate hath been made by the sumners, apparitors, or any such light

litterate persons, that the party against whom such citations have been

awarded hath been cited or summoned; and thereupon the same party so

certified to be cited or summoned hath not appeared according to the

certificate, the same party therefore hath been excommunicated, or, at the

least, suspended from all divine service; and thereupon, before that he or

she could be absolved, hath been compelled, not only to pay the fees of the

court whereunto he or she was so called, amounting to the sum of two

shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but also to pay to the sumner, for

every mile distant from the place where he or she then dwelled unto the

same court whereunto he or she was summoned to appear, twopence; to the

great charge and impoverishment of the king's subjects, and to the great

occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and servants, and to the great

impairment and diminution of their good names and honesties--be it

enacted----" We ask what?--looking with impatience for some large measure

to follow these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting

itself with forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man

out of his own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of

them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of

the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was

any bitter spirit against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance

and complacent endurance of all tolerable evil.

Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper. The

Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further absorbing

the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the clergy using

their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to leave estates to

provide a priest for ever "to sing for their souls." The arrangement was

convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both, certainly for

one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was not to the

advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a man a perpetual

power over the disposition of property to atone for the iniquities of his

life. But the privilege was not abolished altogether; it was submitted only

to reasonable limitation. Men might still burden their lands to find a

priest for twenty years. After twenty years the lands were to relapse for

the service of the living, and sinners were expected in equity to bear the

consequence in their own persons of such offences as remained after that

time unexpiated.[348]

Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first complained of

were in a fair way of being remedied. The exorbitant charges for

mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal exactions for the

sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical courts, the

non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular occupations and

extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either terminated or brought

within bounds. There remained yet to be disposed of the legislative power

of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions for heresy. The last of

these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former was under reconsideration

by the convocation itself, which at length was arriving at a truer

conception of its position; and this question was not therefore to be dealt

with by the legislature.

One more important measure, however, was passed by parliament before it

separated, and it is noticeable as the first step which was taken in the

momentous direction of a breach with the See of Rome. A practice had

existed for some hundreds of years in all the churches of Europe, that

bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to

the pope, on receiving their bulls of investment, one year's income from

their new preferments. It was called the payment of annates, or

firstfruits, and had originated in the time of the crusades, as a means of

providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it had settled into

custom,[349] and was one of the chief resources of the papal revenue. From

England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been paid out of the country

in fifty years;[350] and the impost was alike oppressive to individuals and

injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks frequently at an

advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two or three years of

their nomination, their elevation had sometimes involved their families and

friends in debt and embarrassment;[351] while the annual export of so much

bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious metals formed the

only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before a quarrel with the

court of Rome had been thought of as a possible contingency, the king had

laboured with the pope to terminate the system by some equitable

composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had been mentioned more

than once in connection with the threats of a separation. The pope had made

light of these threats, believing them to be no more than words; there was

an opportunity, therefore, of proving that the English government was

really in earnest, in a manner which would touch him in a point where he

was naturally sensitive, and would show him at the same time that he could

not wholly count on the attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in

fact, the church itself was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of

the bishops and the secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a

stronger faith in their own privileges than in the union of Christendom;

and if they could purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a

quarrel with the pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the

alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and

Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope,

regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates

there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the

bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee

to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had

been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner,

followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew more

intractable, the famous notion that the English church could and should

subsist as a separate communion, independent of foreign control, self

governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without variation

to Catholic doctrine. This principle (if we may so abuse the word) shot

rapidly into popularity: a party formed about it strong in parliament,

strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country gentlemen and

the higher clergy--a respectable, wealthy, powerful body, trading upon a

solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to its maintenance, and in

their artificial horror of being identified with heresy, the most

relentless persecutors of the Protestants. This party, unreal as they were,

and influential perhaps in virtue of their unreality, became for the moment

the arbiters of the Church of England; and the bishops belonging to it, and

each rising ecclesiastic who hoped to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance

of the annates as an opportunity for a demonstration of their strength. On

this question, with a fair show of justice, they could at once relieve

themselves of a burden which pressed upon their purses, and as they

supposed, gratify the king. The conservatives were still numerically the

strongest, and for a time remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,[352]

but their convictions were too feeble to resist the influence brought to

bear upon them, and when Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess,

the two Houses of Convocation presented an address to the crown for the

abolition of the impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and

indirect,--the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the thousand

similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the Church of

England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome, and weighty

injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.[353]

That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence of

the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their

address: "May it please your Grace," they concluded, after detailing their

occasions for complaint,--"may it please your Grace to cause the said

unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of your high

Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process against this

realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain bishops' bulls

till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the said annates is

against the law of God and the pope's own laws, forbidding the buying or

selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and forasmuch as all good

Christian men be more bound to obey God than any man; and forasmuch as St.

Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as walk inordinately; may it

please your Highness to ordain in this present parliament that the

obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See of

Rome."[354]

It was perhaps cruel to compel the clergy to be the first to mention

separation--or the language may have been furnished by the Erastian party

in the Church, who hoped to gratify the King by it, and save the annates

for themselves; but there was no intention, if the battle was really to be

fought, of decorating the clergy with the spoils. The bill was passed, but

passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown if the pope would consent

to a compromise of settling the question by a composition. There was a

Papal party in the House of Commons whose opposition had perhaps to be

considered,[355] and the annates were left suspended before Clement at once

as a menace and a bribe.

"Forasmuch," concluded the statute, "as the King's Highness and this his

high Court of Parliament neither have nor do intend in this or any other

like cause any manner of extremity or violence, before gentle courtesy and

friendly ways and means be first approved and attempted, and without a very

great urgent cause and occasion given to the contrary; but principally

coveting to disburden this Realm of the said great exactions and

intolerable charges of annates and firstfruits: [the said Court of

Parliament] have therefore thought convenient to commit the final order and

determination of the premises unto the King's Highness, so that if it may

seem to his high wisdom and most prudent discretion meet to move the Pope's

Holiness and the Court of Rome, amicably, charitably, and reasonably, to

compound either to extinct the said annates, or by some friendly, loving,

and tolerable composition to moderate the same in such way as may be by

this his Realm easily borne and sustained, then those ways of composition

once taken shall stand in the strength, force, and effect of a law."[356]

The business of the session was closing. It remained to receive the reply

of convocation on the limitation of its powers. The convocation, presuming,

perhaps, upon its concessions on the annates question, and untamed by the

premunire, had framed their answer in the same spirit which had been

previously exhibited by the bishops. They had re-asserted their claims as

resting on divine authority, and had declined to acknowledge the right of

any secular power to restrain or meddle with them.[357] The second answer,

as may be supposed, fared no better than the first. It was returned with a

peremptory demand for submission; and taught by experience the uselessness

of further opposition, the clergy with a bad grace complied. The form was

again drawn by the bishops, and it is amusing to trace the workings of

their humbled spirit in their reluctant descent from their high estate.

They still laboured to protect their dignity in the terms of their

concession:--

"As concerning such constitutions and ordinances provincial," they wrote,

"as shall be made hereafter by your most humble subjects, we having our

special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely

goodness, and fervent zeal for the promotion of God's honour and Christian

religion, and specially in your incomparable learning far exceeding in our

judgment the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of;

and not doubting but that the same should still continue and daily increase

in your Majesty; do offer and promise here unto the same, that from

henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put in 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 such constitutions, and the same so made be approved

by your Highness's authority.

"And whereas your Highness's most honourable Commons do pretend that divers

of the constitutions provincial, which have been heretofore enacted, be not

only much prejudicial to your Highness's prerogative royal, but be also

overmuch onerous to your said Commons, we, your most humble servants for

the consideration before said, be contented to refer all the said

constitutions to the judgment of your Grace only. And whatsoever of the

same shall finally be found prejudicial and overmuch onerous as is

pretended, we offer and promise your Highness to moderate or utterly to

abrogate and annul the same, according to the judgment of your Grace.

Saving to us always such liberties and immunities of this Church of England

as hath been granted unto the same by the goodness and benignity of your

Highness and of others your most noble progenitors; with such constitutions

provincial as do stand with the laws of Almighty God and of your Realm

heretofore made, which we most humbly beseech your Grace to ratify and

approve by your most Royal assent for the better execution of the same in

times to come."[358]

The acknowledgment appeared to be complete, and might perhaps have been

accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent acuteness of

the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their hands, they

discovered--what had no doubt been intended as a loophole for future

evasion--that the grounds which were alleged to excuse the submission were

the virtues of the reigning king: and therefore, as they sagaciously

argued, the submission must only remain in force for his life. They

introduced a limitation to that effect. Some further paltry dabbling was

also attempted with the phraseology: and at length, impatient with such

dishonest trifling, and weary of a discussion in which they had resolved to

allow but one conclusion, the king and the legislature thought it well to

interfere with a high hand, and cut short such unprofitable folly. The

language of the bishops was converted into an act of parliament; a mixed

commission was appointed to revise the canon law, and the clergy with a few

brief strokes were reduced for ever into their fit position of

subjects.[359] Thus with a moderate hand this great revolution was

effected, and, to outward appearance, with offence to none except the

sufferers, whose misuse of power when they possessed it deprived them of

all sympathy in their fall.

But no change of so vast a kind can be other than a stone of stumbling to

those many persons for whom the beaten ways of life alone are tolerable,

and who, when these ways are broken, are bewildered and lost. Religion,

when men are under its influence at all, so absorbs their senses, and so

pervades all their associations, that no faults in the ministers of it can

divest their persons of reverence; and just and necessary as all these

alterations were, many a pious and noble heart was wounded, many a man was

asking himself in his perplexity where things would end, and still more

sadly, where, if these quarrels deepened, would lie his own duty. Now the

Nun of Kent grew louder in her Cassandra wailings. Now the mendicant friars

mounted the pulpits exclaiming sacrilege; bold men, who feared nothing that

men could do to them, and who dared in the king's own presence, and in his

own chapel, to denounce him by name.[360] The sacred associations of twelve

centuries were tumbling into ruin; and hot and angry as men had been before

the work began, the hearts of numbers sank in them when they "saw what was

done;" and they fell away slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at

last treason.

The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction, was the

resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.[361] More had not been an

illiberal man; when he wrote the _Utopia_, he seemed even to be in advance

of his time. None could see the rogue's face under the cowl clearer than

he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured

to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of

confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures

which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his

convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless

bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and

genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the delusions of Anglicanism;

and as he saw the inevitable tendency of the Reformation to lead ultimately

to a change of doctrine, he attached himself with increasing determination

to the cause of the pope and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive

prescience of what would follow from it, he had from the first been opposed

to the divorce; and he had not concealed his feeling from the king at the

time when the latter had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In

consenting to become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties;

he had held his office for two years and a half--and it would have been

well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal--for in his

ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise

the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the

close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he

felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near

to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; it

was time for him to retire from a world not moving to his mind; and in the

fair tranquillity of his family prepare himself for the evil days which he

foresaw. In May, 1532, he petitioned for permission to resign, resting his

request unobtrusively on failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose

his services.

Parallel to More's retirement, and though less important, yet still

noticeable, is a proceeding of old Archbishop Warham under the same trying

circumstances. In the days of his prosperity, Warham had never reached to

greatness as a man. He had been a great ecclesiastic, successful,

dignified, important, but without those highest qualities which command

respect or interest. The iniquities of Warham's spiritual courts were

greater than those of any other in England. He had not made them what they

were. They grew by their own proper corruption; and he was no more

responsible for them than every man is responsible for the continuance of

an evil by which he profits, and which he has power to remedy. We must look

upon him as the leader of the bishops in their opposition to the reform;

and he was the probable author of the famous answer to the Commons'

petition, which led to such momentous consequences.[362] These consequences

he had lived partially to see. Powerless to struggle against the stream, he

had seen swept away one by one those gigantic privileges to which he had

asserted for his order a claim divinely sanctioned; and he withdrew himself

heartbroken, into his palace at Lambeth, and there entered his solemn

protest against all which had been done. Too ill to write, and trembling on

the edge of the grave, he dictated to his notaries from his bed these not

unaffecting words:--

"In the name of God, Amen. We, William, by Divine Providence Archbishop of

Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, hereby

publicly and expressly do protest for ourselves and for our Holy

Metropolitan Church of Canterbury, that to any statute passed or hereafter

to be passed in this present Parliament, began the third of November, 1529,

and continued until this present time; in so far as such statute or

statutes be in derogation of the Pope of Rome or the Apostolic See, or be

to the hurt, prejudice, or limitation of the powers of the Church, or shall

tend to the subverting, enervating, derogating from, or diminishing the

laws, customs, privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminence of liberties of our

Metropolitan Church of Canterbury; we neither will, nor intend, nor with

clear conscience are able to consent to the same, but by these writings we

do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them."[363]

Thus formally having delivered his soul, he laid himself down and died.