share. They did not express the views of any one man--unless it were
the king--or any one party. They were three in number: first, the “Ten
Articles” for “establishing Christian quietness”; then the “Institution
of a Christian Man,” commonly called the _Bishop’s Book_; and some
years later the “Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man,”
known as the _King’s Book_. Between the first and the last there is no
definite change of doctrinal attitude. None of the three breaks away
from received opinion; they differ mainly in the precision with which
certain points are insisted upon. Thus, in the first, the doctrine
of the Real Presence is affirmed, but not explicitly in the form of
Transubstantiation. The movement is rather towards rigidity. Cranmer
and some of his colleagues made tentative suggestions in favour of
admitting more advanced views, which were not approved, and in the case
of the King’s Book, it is clear that the opposing party hoped to get
something of a much more decisively reactionary character.
Cranmer was a long way from being an Anselm, a Becket, or a Langton.
But on the whole, taking together the history of those three
formularies, and adding that of the Six Articles Act, which intervened,
the surprising thing about him is not his subserviency, but the
persistency with which he defended his own views. The “Whip with Six
Strings” was a tightening of the bonds which came upon the advanced
party with a startling shock. Cranmer fought the Bill in Parliament,
and he fought some of its positions in convocation after the king’s
mind was very well known. By the king’s desire, he put his argument
down in black-and-white for the royal perusal after the Act had become
law--a manifestly dangerous step. When the “King’s Book” was in hand,
he again fought, though unsuccessfully, for the admission of views
which the Act condemned; and he told Henry with perfect candour that,
although he obeyed the law as in duty bound, his opinion remained
unaltered. Throughout all the discussions he criticised the royal
suggestions and comments with an admirable frankness which none of his
colleagues ventured to display.
The curious thing is that Cranmer was the one man who could say what he
would to the king without arousing his anger, as Cromwell remarked to
him with not unkindly envy: but he could not deflect the monarch from
the path he chose by a single hair’s breadth. Twice after Cromwell’s
fall the reactionaries fancied that they had the Archbishop fairly
in the toils; both times they were brought up with a round turn by
their master and his. The combination of ruthless force with great
intellectual power in both Cromwell and Henry found by contrast a
strange attraction in the Primate’s guilelessness. “Oh, Lord God,”
exclaimed Henry on one occasion, “what fond simplicity have you, so
to permit yourself to be imprisoned that every enemy of yours may
take vantage against you.” They both chose to protect him against
the enemies who certainly were not guileless; and bestowed on him
an affection which was half-admiring and half-pitying; an affection
returned by that which is often felt by a tender and pliant nature for
a rugged and imperious one. When Cranmer felt impelled to remonstrate
with their proceedings, he did so with trepidation; they ignored the
remonstrances, but liked him none the worse. It might be said that he
was the only man or woman of whom, being brought in frequent contact,
Henry never fell foul. There was always warm respect in Henry’s
fondness for him; and Henry was by no means the man to feel respect for
a time-server.
V
CRANMER AND SOMERSET
The death of Henry was the beginning of a new era. Hitherto his
personality had completely dominated the situation; effectively, he had
become the most uncontrolled autocrat in Europe, in spite of a very
careful preservation of traditional forms. But his successor on the
throne was a nine-year-old boy, and there was no dominating personality
to take the dead king’s place. If Henry’s scheme for the continuation
of the government had been framed with a view to the maintenance of the
_status quo_, it was a very complete failure.
Superficially, that would seem to have been the idea. The Council
of Executors in whom power was vested by Henry’s will was a body in
which the progressive and stationary or reactionary parties were both
represented. The strength of the latter, however, suffered serious
detriment in the closing weeks of Henry’s reign by the downfall of the
Howards: while their ecclesiastical leader, Gardiner, was excluded from
the Council, on which their principal representative among Churchmen
was Tunstal of Durham, a man as mild as Cranmer himself. Within a
week, the Earl of Hertford, now become Duke of Somerset, had secured
the Protectorate in his own hands, and it became immediately and
abundantly clear that the whole effective power was in the hands of the
progressive party.
Now at this stage there were not many points of doctrine on which
the leaders of the progressive party were committed to opinions
fundamentally opposed to those received. Cranmer’s chief allies had not
openly rejected even the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and certainly
did not dispute the Real Presence: but they definitely favoured the
administration of the cup to the laity; they held that it was lawful
for priests to marry; and that auricular confession was not enjoined by
Scripture. Cranmer had defended each of these views at the time of the
Six Articles and of the King’s Book. They had been unsatisfied by the
removal of “abused images” in the last reign, and desired an extension
thereof. Cranmer’s own exposition of what he considered orthodox
doctrine was contained in the Book of Homilies which he had prepared
but had failed to persuade Henry to authorise: while the idea of a new
uniform Book of Services had long been familiar and vaguely in favour.
The men of the “Old Learning” did not fear the specific innovations
as particularly dangerous _per se_; what they did fear was that the
innovators would go a great deal further.
We remark, then, first, that under the _régime_ of Somerset, the
changes in religion were almost precisely what the Archbishop had
advocated under Henry VIII. The Homilies were authorised; the
destruction of “abused images” was renewed; the administration of
the cup to the laity in the sacrament was enjoined, and the marriage
of priests permitted--both on the petition of convocation; and the
promulgation of a new Order of Service was almost of necessity
attended by an “Act of Uniformity” compelling the clergy to adopt it.
Equally as a matter of course, the Six Articles Act, against which
Cranmer had fought at the outset, was repealed. The present writer has
in the past been severely rebuked for attributing the form the Reformed
Church in England took to Cranmer more than to any other single man.
“He ought to know,” said the critics, “that Somerset was the man.”
Yet repentance lags. Somerset was the politician who, up to a certain
point, carried the Reformation through: at that point his influence
on it ceased abruptly, and the business passed into Warwick’s hands.
The point where this change took place coincided accurately with the
completion of the series of reforms of which the Archbishop had for
some years past avowedly been in favour. The inference that Somerset
was guided by Cranmer is sufficiently obvious, though no doubt the hand
was the Protector’s hand. The further advance after Somerset’s fall was
mainly, or largely, the work of men of extreme views, whose zeal the
Archbishop succeeded, to some extent, in restraining; his influence was
still at work--no longer, however, as that of the artificer, but as
that of the moderator.
Apparently, Cranmer and the Protector worked in complete harmony,
save in the one matter of the chantries; but there is no sign at all
that he took his cue from the Protector. The principles of Somerset’s
reformation were his. Those principles, moreover, do not appear to have
gone beyond what the most anti-Protestant of modern Anglicans accept.
The statutory changes, however, were accompanied by proceedings of a
regrettable character. In the attack on images, individuals were guilty
of violence and irreverence, not to say sacrilege. Extravagant and
inflammatory language was used in the pulpits. The treatment of the
leaders of the Opposition was not altogether free from vindictiveness.
For the first group, Cranmer was in no way responsible; Somerset was,
because in some respects he set a bad example himself. For the second,
the two were jointly responsible, since preaching was restricted to
licensed persons, and the licences were issued only by the Protector
and the Archbishop. For the third, Somerset was guiltless. The attacks
on Gardiner and Bonner were made in his absence and supported by his
colleague. But the mildest of men do not often view opportunities of
retaliation with entire indifference. Gardiner had certainly done
his best to ruin Cranmer under Henry; and by comparison at least the
measures taken against him were mild enough.
Some consideration, however, must be given to the argument that the
Protector’s government forced Protestantism hastily and prematurely
on a reluctant nation. Whether the religion formulated in the first
Prayer Book of Edward VI. can be legitimately called Protestantism
at all may be left to the controversialists; but there is no manner
of doubt that the methods attending the introduction of the Service
Book were ill-judged and vexatious. On the other hand, the evidence
that there was any strong opposition to the change itself lies mainly
in the fact that the Western rising which immediately followed was
professedly directed against it. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there
was an almost simultaneous rising in the Eastern counties, which beyond
all question was exclusively agrarian in character, suggests forcibly
that the real moving force of the Western revolt also was agrarian.
Ket’s supporters, significantly enough, held daily services, using the
new Service Book: while one of the demands of the Cornishmen was for
the restoration of the monastic lands--that is, of the monasteries as
landlords in place of their rapacious supplanters. Clerical agitators
would have found little difficulty in making the Westland rustics
believe that half their troubles were due to the attacks on the Church
in the past reign; and the identification of greedy landlords with the
cause of ecclesiastical reform was at the worst colourable. Cranmer
might condemn and Latimer might lash the landlords from the pulpit,
Somerset might set up his Court of Requests; these things did not reach
the remote districts. But there, men did see the spoilers of the Church
enclosing commons, changing tillage into sheep-runs, and evicting small
tenants. And they drew their conclusions. The Reformation would have
had to wait half a century if it had been delayed till that argument
was deprived of all force. But it may certainly be granted that the
changes which preceded Somerset’s fall went quite as far as the country
at large was prepared for.
It is rather curious to observe that Cranmer fairly lost his temper
over the Cornish rebellion, and scolded the insurgents somewhat after
the model set by Henry VIII. when he rated the Lincolnshire men a
dozen years earlier.
VI
THE FLOWING TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM
Cranmer had no hand at all in the intrigue which overthrew the
Protector. For a brief interval there was even some uncertainty whether
the group who had captured the Government might not make terms with the
Opposition, release Gardiner, and possibly take him into partnership.
If Warwick ever had such an idea in his mind, he was far too acute to
entertain it for long. Gardiner as a colleague would have been a very
dangerous rival. The alternative was to assume the lead of the advanced
wing of the progressive party. Warwick, who died professing himself a
devout Catholic, had no difficulty in assimilating the jargon of the
zealots, and convincing their honest enthusiasm that they might look
upon him as a Joshua, while he doubled the part with that of Achan.
To him, religion was not among the things that mattered; but religion
might be made to serve its turn in forwarding his own ambitions.
Hitherto the Reformation in England had moved a good deal more
closely along the lines laid down a hundred and fifty years before
by Wiclif than on those of Luther or of Calvin; approximating more
nearly to the Zurich school, though by no means identical with them.
Zurich had proved more attractive to English refugees also. But now
the abolition of the penal laws in England, and the dissatisfaction
caused by the Augsburg Interim in Germany, brought into the country
a number of foreigners, Lutheran and Calvinist as well as Zwinglian,
including on the one hand Bucer and on the other John Knox--besides
returning English refugees. Not a few of these foreign visitors were
inspired with a lively missionary zeal, and the freedom of discussion
permitted naturally caused debate and controversy to wax fast and
furious. If the country in general found the concessions already made
to the new learning somewhat larger than was quite to its taste,
the followers of the new learning were very far from satisfied with
them. And they were vocal exceedingly, if not precisely harmonious.
It was very soon evident that the comprehensive ambiguity of the new
Book of Common Prayer was in the eyes of the Reformers too liberal
to the old Catholics and not sufficiently advanced for the new
Protestants--controversy raging chiefly over two subjects, the first
being the Eucharist, and the second Forms and Ceremonies.
Without attempting to examine the actual views on the former subject
held at this time by Cranmer--as to which critics appear able to form
very positive but very contradictory conclusions--it may be quite
safely asserted that he had quite definitely given up all belief in
Transubstantiation, but had not accepted the view most remote from
it, that the service was purely commemorative. The varied range of
intermediate views might be associated with either of these in a
common Form of Service, but these extremes were evidently incompatible.
One or other must be excluded. Cranmer, his right-hand man Ridley, and
their associates, were all travelling towards the Zwinglian position,
whether they ultimately reached it or not. If there was to be any more
defining, it was the followers of the old learning who would be shut
out thereby.
It was much the same with forms and ceremonies. The extreme men,
whether they looked to Zurich or Geneva for guidance, regarded nearly
everything in the way of vestments and ceremonial as the trappings
of the Scarlet Woman. The Archbishop did not. Where these things
did not directly imply the truth of specific doctrines definitely
discarded--the sacrifice of the Mass, the worship of images, and the
like--their preservation, in his view, tended to decency and reverence.
Here, again, it was evident that any changes must tend to the exclusion
of the rigid Catholics. They and the Calvinists could not travel in the
same boat.
The result is to be seen in the second Prayer Book of Edward VI.,
in the new Ordinal, and in the Forty-two Articles which, with
slight modification, became the Thirty-nine of Queen Elizabeth.
Warwick--otherwise Northumberland--was with the extremists, who were
vigorous and loud-voiced, and altogether exercised an amount of
forcing-power quite disproportionate to the number of their adherents
among the general public. If they had had their way, the re-modelling
would have been on lines satisfactory to John Knox. Northumberland’s
government would not have stood in the way. The Lutheranism of Germany
and the Augsburg Confession was uncongenial. It was Cranmer, Ridley,
and their adherents who succeeded in retaining for the Church of
England a form to which she could mould herself, after the Marian
_régime_, without returning to the Roman obedience or adopting the
Scottish model. If that was a praiseworthy achievement, it is to
Cranmer primarily that the praise is rightfully due.
That is what Cranmer did. From Somerset’s record, it may reasonably be
inferred that it is very much what he would have endeavoured to do if
he had remained in power. But he did not have the opportunity, because
he was not in power, and Warwick cut his head off.
What Cranmer would have liked to do, beyond what he did, is another
matter, and may be gathered from his proposed _Reformatio Legum
Ecclesiasticarum_--a document which shows that, Erastian though he
was, he desired the clergy to have much ampler powers of jurisdiction
than there was the faintest chance of the State delegating to them.
It was an essay in constitution-making of a decidedly academic order:
the machinery would never have worked. It does not reveal unsuspected
qualities of constructive statesmanship; but it does not detract from
the credit due to the manner in which the Archbishop managed to steer
the ship through very stormy waters with a mutinous crew on board.
The performance was not, perhaps, masterly; but it is not extravagant
praise to call it meritorious.
VII
DE PROFUNDIS
Northumberland’s methods did not make him popular; but they made
him powerful, and it was his primary object to place on the throne
in succession to Edward some one who should be his own puppet. To
this end he devoted himself in the last months of the young king’s
life. By Henry VIII.’s will, the succession was fixed first on Mary,
then on Elizabeth, then on the Greys--not Suffolk himself, but his
wife Frances Brandon and their children. The accession of Mary could
only mean destruction for Northumberland. He could not be sure of
Elizabeth, who was now in her twentieth year. But he thought he
could make quite sure of Lady Jane Grey, who was hardly more than a
child and had been brought up under pronounced Protestant tutelage.
His plan was to marry her to one of his own sons, induce Edward to
assume the authority formally granted to his father and name her his
heir--ostensibly, of course, on the ground that both his sisters
had been declared illegitimate and those judgments had not been
revoked--and trust to intrigue and force to secure her on the throne.
Having won the king over, he succeeded in entangling several of the
Council in the conspiracy; the rest were then worked upon individually
to give their adherence. One after another did so, reluctantly, till
all were drawn in save Hales--Cranmer being the last, and assenting
only on the positive assurance that the Crown lawyers had guaranteed
the constitutional validity of the instrument he was called upon to
sign, and under direct personal pressure from the king. Northumberland,
however, had completely miscalculated the forces at work. He knew that
the very signatories of the document could not be relied on when out
of his reach; but having them under his grip, he thought himself safe.
But the country rallied to Mary; the troops deserted to her standard;
the plot failed, ignominiously and utterly. Mary was hailed Queen; the
arch-traitor was sent to the block; for the rest, only a few of those
most conspicuously compromised were sent to the Tower.
It was, of course, obvious at the outset that Mary’s rule must mean
the return to power of the party which had been in opposition under
Somerset and more actively repressed under his successor. The daughter
of Katharine of Aragon was a convinced adherent of the entire Roman
position. That she would go so far as to restore the Roman obedience
might have been a matter of doubt; but, short of that, she was not
likely to allow limits to reaction. Gardiner and Bonner, Tunstal and
Day and Heath, had all been imprisoned and deprived of their sees
during the last four years; it was not likely that the advanced bishops
would be allowed to retain their functions. And, beyond theological
differences, some of them had been driven by the religious motive into
open and vigorous support of Lady Jane Grey’s succession. Of Cranmer
himself the most that could be said was that he was an assenting party;
but Ridley, Bishop of London, had committed himself to the cause in
somewhat inflammatory language.
Nevertheless, Mary was in no haste to strike. Every one who feared
for his own skin was given time and opportunity to retire from the
country--whereof not a few made haste to take advantage. Ridley was
arrested; but Cranmer, Latimer, and others who stood their ground
manfully, might have gone if they would. After all, no Catholics
during the last reign had suffered anything worse than imprisonment,
and Mary’s leniency towards the participators in the rebellion may
well have given an impression that retaliation would not go beyond the
infliction of corresponding penalties.
Cranmer, then, remained at large for a time. But a report was
circulated that he was about to make submission, and had himself set
up the Mass again. Had it not been for this, he might have hoped to
be allowed to retire into obscurity; but the rumour stirred him to an
indignant and uncompromising denial, which was promptly followed by
his arrest for complicity in Northumberland’s plot. The Archbishop
was by nature a sanguine man, but he can hardly have imagined that
this protest of his would be allowed to pass; for it was practically
a challenge to all and sundry who desired the Mass to be restored. No
government of the time would have dreamed of ignoring the action of its
author.
Even when he was safely in the Tower along with Ridley, the hopefulness
of Cranmer’s temperament displayed itself. He had an incurable
conviction that any one who listened to him was bound to recognise the
entire reasonableness of his views; and from prison he petitioned Mary
for leave to “open his mind” to her. That accomplished, he felt that
he would have discharged his conscience and could retire from further
controversy without reproach, even though he might fail to persuade
his sovereign. The duty of conformity, in conduct at least, to the
sovereign’s decrees, was, as already remarked, a cardinal belief with
him.
The petition was not granted. Moreover, the reign of clemency was
destined to very brief duration. Wyatt’s rebellion hardened the Queen,
whose determination to marry Philip of Spain strengthened _pari passu_
with her determination to be reconciled with Rome and to discharge her
duty as a daughter of the Church by bringing her subjects back to the
fold. Throughout 1554 signs accumulated, ominous of the coming storm.
Whatever Mary’s original intent may have been, mercy to Cranmer must
have ceased to be a part of it at an early stage; though, if she had
definitely resolved on his destruction, it is difficult to find an
adequate explanation of the extreme prolongation of his imprisonment.
In April 1554, the three who were most obnoxious to Mary and the
reactionaries, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were removed to Oxford,
to play their part in a great disputation. All three held their
ground stoutly. It was pronounced, of course, that all three had been
completely refuted, and were manifest heretics; but being thereupon
invited to recant, they all refused. Cranmer had been treated with
considerable rudeness in the course of the debates; but the mildness
and dignity of his bearing throughout were such that one of his chief
antagonists, the Prolocutor, Dean Weston, thanked him openly for his
admirable behaviour.