"THE PREVAILING OF THE GATES OF HELL."
That victorious issue of the Tudor struggle with the power, against
which Popes proclaimed that the gates of hell should not prevail, was
distant enough in 1533. Then the Tudor monarch seemed rushing headlong
to irretrievable ruin. Sure of himself and his people, and feeling no
longer the need of Clement's favour, Henry threw off the mask of
friendship, and, on the 9th of July, confirmed, by letters patent, the
Act of Annates.[845] Cranmer's proceedings at Dunstable, Henry's
marriage, and Anne's coronation, constituted a still more flagrant
defiance of Catholic Europe. The Pope's authority was challenged with
every parade of contempt. He could do no less than gather round him
the relics of his dignity and prepare to launch against Henry the
final ban of the Church.[846] So, on the 11th of July, the sentence of
the greater excommunication was drawn up. Clement did not yet, (p. 303)
nor did he ever, venture to assert his claims to temporal supremacy in
Christendom, by depriving the English King of his kingdom; he thought
it prudent to rely on his own undisputed prerogative. His spiritual
powers seemed ample; and he applied to himself the words addressed to
the Prophet Jeremiah, "Behold, I have set thee above nations and
kingdoms that thou mayest root up and destroy, build and plant, a lord
over all kings of the whole earth and over all peoples bearing
rule".[847] In virtue of this prerogative Henry was cut off from the
Church while he lived, removed from the pale of Christian society, and
deprived of the solace of the rites of religion; when he died, he must
lie without burial, and in hell suffer torment for ever.[848]
[Footnote 845: _L. and P._, vi., 793.]
[Footnote 846: _Ibid._, vi., 807, App. 3; vii.,
185. The declaration of it was at the same time
suspended until September, and the delicate
question of entrusting the _executoriales_ to
princes who repudiated the honour caused further
delays. The bull of excommunication was eventually
dated 30th August, 1535 (ix., 207); and a bull
depriving Henry of his kingdom was sanctioned,
printed and prepared for publication (x., Introd.,
p. xv., Nos. 82, 107), but first Francis and then
Charles put difficulties in the way. In December,
1538, Paul III., now that he, Charles and Francis
were united in the bond of friendship, published
with additions the bull of August, 1535 (XIII.,
ii., 1087, Introd., p. xli.). Even then no bull of
deprivation was published. Apparently that was an
honour reserved for Henry's daughter.]
[Footnote 847: Jeremiah i. 10. The Vulgate text
adopted in Papal bulls differs materially from that
in the English Authorised Version.]
[Footnote 848: See the text in Burnet, ed. Pocock,
iv., 318-31.]
What would be the effect of this terrific anathema? The omens looked
ill for the English King. If he had flouted the Holy See, he had also
offended the temporal head of Christendom. The Emperor's aunt had been
divorced, his cousin's legitimacy had been impugned, and the
despatches of his envoy, Chapuys, were filled with indignant
lamentations over the treatment meted out to Catherine and to her
daughter. Both proud and stubborn women, they resolutely refused to
admit in any way the validity of Henry's acts and recent legislation.
Catherine would rather starve as Queen, than be sumptuously clothed
and fed as Princess Dowager. Henry would give her anything she asked,
if she would acknowledge that she was not the Queen, nor her daughter
the Princess; but her bold resistance to his commands and wishes (p. 304)
brought out all the worst features of his character.[849] His anger
was not the worst the Queen and her daughter had to fear; he still
preserved a feeling of respect for Catherine and of affection for
Mary. "The King himself," writes Chapuys, "is not ill-natured; it is
this Anne who has put him in this perverse and wicked temper, and
alienates him from his former humanity."[850] The new Queen's jealous
malignity passed all bounds. She caused her aunt to be made governess
to Mary, and urged her to box her charge's ears; and she used every
effort to force the Princess to serve as a maid upon her little
half-sister, Elizabeth.[851]
[Footnote 849: _L. and P._, vi., 805, 1186.]
[Footnote 850: _Ibid._, vi., 351; vii., 171, 871;
_cf._ v., 216, where Chapuys says Anne hated the
Princess Mary more than she did Queen Catherine
because she saw that Henry had some affection for
Mary, and praised her in Anne's presence. At the
worst Henry's manners were generally polite; on one
occasion, writes Chapuys, "when the King was going
to mount his horse, the Princess went on to a
terrace at the top of the house to see him. The
King, either being told of it or by chance, turned
round, and seeing her on her knees with her hands
joined, bowed to her and put his hand to his hat.
Then all those present who had not dared to raise
their heads to look at her [surely they may not
have seen her] rejoiced at what the King had done,
and saluted her reverently with signs of good-will
and compassion" (_ibid._, vii., 83).]
[Footnote 851: _Ibid._, vii., 171.]
This humiliation was deeply resented by the people, who, says Chapuys,
though forbidden, on pain of their lives, to call Catherine Queen,
shouted it at the top of their voices.[852] "You cannot imagine," he
writes a few weeks later to Charles, "the great desire of all this
people that your Majesty should send men. Every day I have been
applied to about it by Englishmen of rank, wit and learning, (p. 305)
who give me to understand that the last King Richard was never so much
hated by his people as this King."[853] The Emperor, he went on, had a
better chance of success than Henry VII., and Ortiz at Rome was
cherishing the belief that England would rise against the King for his
contumacy and schismatic disobedience.[854] Fisher was urgent that
Charles should prepare an invasion of England; the young Marquis of
Exeter, a possible claimant to the throne, was giving the same
advice.[855] Abergavenny, Darcy and other peers brooded in sullen
discontent. They were all listening to the hysterical ravings of
Elizabeth Barton,[856] the Nun of Kent, who prophesied that Henry had
not a year to live. Charles's emissaries were busy in Ireland, where
Kildare was about to revolt. James V. of Scotland was hinting at his
claims to the English crown, should Henry be deprived by the
Pope;[857] and Chapuys was divided in mind whether it would be better
to make James the executor of the papal sentence, or marry Mary to
some great English noble, and raise an internal rebellion.[858] At
Catherine's suggestion he recommended to the Emperor Reginald Pole, a
grandson of George, Duke of Clarence, as a suitor for Mary's hand; and
he urged, on his own account, Pole's claims to the English
throne.[859] Catherine's scruples, not about deposing her husband, or
passing over the claims of Henry's sisters, but on the score of Edward
IV.'s grandson, the Marquis of Exeter, might, thought Chapuys, (p. 306)
be removed by appealing to the notorious sentence of Bishop Stillington,
who, on the demand of Richard III., had pronounced Edward IV.'s
marriage void and his children illegitimate.[860] Those who had been
the King's firm supporters when the divorce first came up were some of
them wavering, and others turning back.[861] Archbishop Lee, Bishops
Tunstall and Gardiner, and Bennet,[862] were now all in secret or open
opposition, and even Longland was expressing to Chapuys regrets that
he had ever been Henry's confessor;[863] like other half-hearted
revolutionists, they would never have started at all, had they known
how far they would have to go, and now they were setting their sails
for an adverse breeze. It was the King, and the King alone, who kept
England on the course which he had mapped out. Pope and Emperor were
defied; Europe was shocked; Francis himself disapproved of the breach
with the Church; Ireland was in revolt; Scotland, as ever, was
hostile; legislation had been thrust down the throats of a
recalcitrant Church, and, we are asked to believe, of a no less
unwilling House of Commons, while the people at large were seething
with indignation at the insults heaped upon the injured Queen and her
daughter. By all the laws of nature, of morals, and of politics, it
would seem, Henry was doomed to the fate of the monarch in the Book of
Daniel the Prophet,[864] who did according to his will and exalted and
magnified himself above every god; who divided the land for gain, and
had power over the treasures of gold and silver; who was troubled by
tidings from the east and from the north; who went forth with (p. 307)
great fury to destroy and utterly make away many, and yet came to
his end, and none helped him.
[Footnote 852: _Ibid._, vi., 918.]
[Footnote 853: _L. and P._, vi., 508; vii., 121.]
[Footnote 854: _Ibid._, v., 1324.]
[Footnote 855: _Ibid._, v., 416.]
[Footnote 856: See _Transactions of the Royal Hist.
Soc._, N.S., xviii.; _L. and P._, vi., 1419, 1445,
1464, 1467, 1468.]
[Footnote 857: _L. and P._, v., 609, 807; vi., 815,
821.]
[Footnote 858: _Ibid._, vi., 446, 541; vii., 114.]
[Footnote 859: _Ibid._, vi., 1164.]
[Footnote 860: _L. and P._, vii., 1368.]
[Footnote 861: Even Norfolk, and Suffolk and his
wife wanted to dissuade Henry in 1531 from
persisting in the divorce (_ibid._, v., 287).]
[Footnote 862: _Ibid._, v., 696.]
[Footnote 863: _Ibid._, vii., 14.]
[Footnote 864: Daniel xi., 36-45.]
All these circumstances, real and alleged, would be quite convincing
as reasons for Henry's failure; but they are singularly inconclusive
as explanations of his success, of the facts that his people did not
rise and depose him, that no Spanish Armada disgorged its host on
English shores, and that, for all the papal thunderbolts, Henry died
quietly in his bed fourteen years later, and was buried with a pomp
and respect to which Popes themselves were little accustomed. He may
have stood alone in his confidence of success, and in his penetration
through these appearances into the real truth of the situation behind.
That, from a purely political or non-moral point of view, is his chief
title to greatness. He knew from the beginning what he could do; he
had counted the cost and calculated the risks; and, writes Russell in
August, 1533, "I never saw the King merrier than he is now".[865] As
early as March, 1531, he told Chapuys that if the Pope issued 10,000
excommunications he would not care a straw for them.[866] When the
papal nuncio first hinted at excommunication and a papal appeal to the
secular arm, Henry declared that he cared nothing for either.[867] He
would open the eyes of princes, he said, and show them how small was
really the power of the Pope;[868] and "when the Pope had done what he
liked on his side, Henry would do what he liked here".[869] That
threat, at least, he fulfilled with a vengeance. He did not fear the
Spaniards; they might come, he said (as they did in 1588), but (p. 308)
perhaps they might not return.[870] England, he told his subjects,
was not conquerable, so long as she remained united;[871] and the
patriotic outburst with which Shakespeare closes "King John" is but an
echo and an expansion of the words of Henry VIII.
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself....
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
[Footnote 865: _L. and P._, vi., 948.]
[Footnote 866: _Ibid._, v., 148.]
[Footnote 867: _Ibid._, v., 738.]
[Footnote 868: _Ibid._, v., 1292.]
[Footnote 869: _Ibid._, v., 287.]
[Footnote 870: _L. and P._, vi., 1479.]
[Footnote 871: _Ibid._, vi., 324.]
The great fear of Englishmen was lest Charles should ruin them by
prohibiting the trade with Flanders. "Their only comfort," wrote
Chapuys, "is that the King persuades the people that it is not in your
Majesty's power to do so."[872] Henry had put the matter to a
practical test, in the autumn of 1533, by closing the Staple at
Calais.[873] It is possible that the dispute between him and the
merchants, alleged as the cause for this step, was real; but the King
could have provided his subjects with no more forcible object-lesson.
Distress was felt at once in Flanders; complaints grew so clamorous
that the Regent sent an embassy post-haste to Henry to remonstrate,
and to represent the closing of the Staple as an infraction of
commercial treaties. Henry coldly replied that he had broken no
treaties at all; it was merely a private dispute between his merchants
and himself, in which foreign powers had no ground for intervention.
The envoys had to return, convinced against their will. The Staple at
Calais was soon reopened, but the English King was able to (p. 309)
demonstrate to his people that the Flemings "could not do without
England's trade, considering the outcry they made when the Staple of
Calais was closed for only three months".
[Footnote 872: _Ibid._, vi., 1460.]
[Footnote 873: _Ibid._, vi., 1510, 1523, 1571.]
Henry, indeed, might almost be credited with second-sight into the
Emperor's mind. On 31st May, 1533, Charles's council discussed the
situation.[874] After considering Henry's enormities, the councillors
proceeded to deliberate on the possible remedies. There were three:
justice, force and a combination of both. The objections to relying on
methods of justice, that is, on the papal sentence, were, firstly,
that Henry would not obey, and secondly, that the Pope was not to be
trusted. The objections to the employment of force were, that war
would imperil the whole of Europe, and especially the Emperor's
dominions, and that Henry had neither used violence towards Catherine
nor given Charles any excuse for breaking the Treaty of Cambrai.
Eventually, it was decided to leave the matter to Clement. He was to
be urged to give sentence against Henry, but on no account to lay
England under an interdict, as that "would disturb her intercourse
with Spain and Flanders. If, therefore, an interdict be resorted to,
it should be limited to one diocese, or to the place where Henry
dwells."[875] Such an interdict might put a premium on assassination,
but otherwise neither Henry nor his people were likely to care much
about it. The Pope should, however, be exhorted to depose the English
King; that might pave the way for Mary's accession and for the
predominance in England of the Emperor's influence; but the execution
of the sentence must not be entrusted to Charles.[876] It would (p. 310)
be excellent if James V. or the Irish would undertake to beard the
lion in his den, but the Emperor did not see his way clear to
accepting the risk himself.
[Footnote 874: _L. and P._, vi., 568.]
[Footnote 875: _Ibid._, vi., 570.]
[Footnote 876: In January, 1534, Charles's
ambassador at Rome repudiated the Pope's statement
that the Emperor had ever offered to assist in the
execution of the Pope's sentence (_L. and P._,
vii., 96).]
Charles was, indeed, afraid, not merely of Henry, but of Francis, who
was meditating fresh Italian schemes; and various expedients were
suggested to divert his attention in other directions. He might be
assisted in an attack upon Calais. "Calais," was Charles's cautious
comment, "is better as it is, for the security of Flanders."[877] The
Pope hinted that the grant of Milan would win over Francis. It
probably would; but Charles would have abandoned half a dozen aunts
rather than see Milan in French possession. His real concern in the
matter was not the injustice to Catherine, but the destruction of the
prospect of Mary's succession. That was a tangible political interest,
and Charles was much less anxious to have Henry censured than to have
Mary's legitimate claim to the throne established.[878] He was a great
politician, absolutely impervious to personal wrong when its remedy
conflicted with political interests. "Though the Emperor," he said,
"is bound to the Queen, this is a private matter, and public
considerations must be taken into account." And public considerations,
as he admitted a year later, "compelled him to conciliate (p. 311)
Henry".[879] So he refused Chapuys' request to be recalled lest his
presence in England should lead people to believe that Charles had
condoned Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn,[880] and dissuaded
Catherine from leaving England.[881] The least hint to Francis of any
hostile intent towards Henry would, thought Charles, be at once
revealed to the English King, and the two would join in making war on
himself. War he was determined to avoid, for, apart from the ruin of
Flanders, which it would involve, Henry and Francis had long been
intriguing with the Lutherans in Germany. A breach might easily
precipitate civil strife in the Empire; and, indeed, in June, 1534,
Wuertemberg was wrested from the Habsburgs by Philip of Hesse with the
connivance of France. Francis, too, was always believed to have a
working agreement with the Turk; Barbarossa was giving no little cause
for alarm in the Mediterranean; while Henry on his part had established
close relations with Luebeck and Hamburg, and was fomenting dissensions
in Denmark, the crown of which he was offered but cautiously (p. 312)
declined.[882]
[Footnote 877: _Ibid._, vi., 774. The sense of this
passage is spoilt in _L. and P._ by the comma being
placed after "better" instead of after "is".]
[Footnote 878: Control over England was the great
objective of Habsburg policy. In 1513 Margaret of
Savoy was pressing Henry to have the succession
settled on his sister Mary, then betrothed to
Charles himself (_ibid._, i., 4833).]
[Footnote 879: _L. and P._, vii., 229. All that
Charles thought practicable was to "embarrass Henry
in his own kingdom, and to execute what the Emperor
wrote to the Irish chiefs" (_cf._ vii., 342, 353).]
[Footnote 880: _Ibid._, vi., 351. Charles's conduct
is a striking vindication of Wolsey's foresight in
1528, when he told Campeggio that the Emperor would
not wage war over the divorce of Catherine, and
said there would be a thousand ways of keeping on
good terms with him (Ehses, _Roemische Dokumente_,
p. 69; _L. and P._, iv., 4881). Dr. Gairdner thinks
Wolsey was insincere in this remark (_English Hist.
Rev._, xii., 242), but he seems to have gauged
Charles V.'s character and embarrassments
accurately.]
[Footnote 881: _L. and P._, vi., 863. Her departure
would have prejudiced Mary's claim to the throne,
but Charles's advice was particularly callous in
view of the reports which Chapuys was sending
Charles of her treatment.]
[Footnote 882: _L. and P._, vii., 737, 871, 957-58,
and vol. viii., _passim_; _cf._ C.F. Wurm, _Die
politischen Beziehungen Heinrichs VIII. zu Mercus
Meyer und Juergen Wullenwever_, Hamburg, 1852.]
This incurable jealousy between Francis and Charles made the French
King loth to weaken his friendship with Henry. The English King was
careful to impress upon the French ambassador that he could, in the
last resort, make his peace with Charles by taking back Catherine and
by restoring Mary to her place in the line of succession.[883] Francis
had too poignant a recollection of the results of the union between
Henry and Charles from 1521 to 1525 ever to risk its renewal. The age
of the crusades and chivalry was gone; commercial and national rivalries
were as potent in the sixteenth century as they are to-day. Then, as
in subsequent times, mutual suspicions made impossible an effective
concert of Europe against the Turk. The fall of Rhodes and the death
of one of Charles's brothers-in-law at Mohacz and the expulsion of
another from the throne of Denmark had never been avenged, and, in
1534, the Emperor was compelled to evacuate Coron.[884] If Europe
could not combine against the common enemy of the Faith, was it likely
to combine against one who, in spite of all his enormities, was still
an orthodox Christian? And, without a combination of princes to
execute them, papal censures, excommunications, interdicts, and all
the spiritual paraphernalia, served only to probe the hollowness of
papal pretensions, and to demonstrate the deafness of Europe to the
calls of religious enthusiasm. In Spain, at least, it might have been
thought that every sword would leap from its scabbard at a summons (p. 313)
from Charles on behalf of the Spanish Queen. "Henry," wrote Chapuys,
"has always fortified himself by the consent of Parliament."[885] It
would be well, he thought, if Charles would follow suit, and induce
the Cortes of Aragon and Castile, "or at least the grandees," to offer
their persons and goods in Catherine's cause. Such an offer, if
published in England, "will be of inestimable service". But here comes
the proof of Charles's pitiful impotence; in order to obtain this
public offer, the Emperor was "to give them privately an exemption
from such offer and promise of persons and goods". It was to be one
more pretence like the others, and unfortunately for the Pope and for
the Emperor, Henry had an inconvenient habit of piercing disguises.
[Footnote 883: _L. and P._, vi., 1572.]
[Footnote 884: _Ibid._, vii., 670.]
[Footnote 885: _L. and P._, vi., 720.]
The strength of Henry's position at home was due to a similar lack of
unity among his domestic enemies. If the English people had wished to
depose him, they could have effected their object without much
difficulty. In estimating the chances of a possible invasion, it was
pointed out how entirely dependent Henry was upon his people: he had
only one castle in London, and only a hundred yeomen of the guard to
defend him.[886] He would, in fact, have been powerless against a
united people or even against a partial revolt, if well organised and
really popular. There was chronic discontent throughout the Tudor
period, but it was sectional. The remnants of the old nobility always
hated Tudor methods of government, and the poorer commons were sullen
at their ill-treatment by the lords of the land; but there was no
concerted basis of action between the two. The dominant class (p. 314)
was commercial, and it had no grievance against Henry, while it feared
alike the lords and the lower orders. In the spoliation of the Church
temporal lords and commercial men, both of whom could profit thereby,
were agreed; and nowhere was there much sympathy with the Church as an
institution apart from its doctrine. Chapuys himself admits that the
act, depriving the clergy of their profits from leases, was passed "to
please the people";[887] and another conservative declared that, if
the Church were deprived of all its temporal goods, many would be glad
and few would bemoan.[888] Sympathy with Catherine and hatred of Anne
were general, but people thought, like Charles, that these were
private griefs, and that public considerations must be taken into
account. Englishmen are at all times reluctant to turn out one
Government until they see at least the possibility of another to take
its place, and the only alternative to Henry VIII. was anarchy. The
opposition could not agree on a policy, and they could not agree on a
leader. There were various grandchildren of Edward IV. and of
Clarence, who might put forward distant claims to the throne; and
there were other candidates in whose multitude lay Henry's safety. It
was quite certain that the pushing of any one of these claimants would
throw the rest on Henry's side. James V., whom at one time Chapuys
favoured, knew that a Scots invasion would unite the whole of England
against him; and Charles was probably wise in rebuking his
ambassador's zeal, and in thinking that any attempt on his own part
would be more disastrous to himself than to Henry.[889] For all (p. 315)
this, the English King was, as Chapuys remarks, keeping a very
watchful eye on the countenance of his people,[890] seeing how far he
could go and where he must stop, and neglecting no precaution for the
peace and security of himself and his kingdom. Acts were passed to
strengthen the navy, improvements in arms and armament were being
continually tested, and the fortifications at Calais, on the Scots
Borders and elsewhere were strengthened. Wales was reduced to law and
order, and, through the intermediation of Francis, a satisfactory
peace was made with Scotland.[891]
[Footnote 886: _Ibid._, vi., App. 7.]
[Footnote 887: _L. and P._, vii., 114.]
[Footnote 888: _Ibid._, vii., 24.]
[Footnote 889: Chapuys is quite plaintive when he
hints at the advantages which might follow if only
"your Majesty were ever so little angry" with Henry
VIII. (_L. and P._, vii., 114). A few days later he
"apologises for his previous letters advocating
severity" (_ibid._, vii., 171).]
[Footnote 890: _Ibid._, vi., 351.]
[Footnote 891: _Ibid._, vi., 729, 1161. One of
Henry's baits to James V. was a suggestion that he
would get Parliament to entail the succession on
James if his issue by Anne Boleyn failed (_ibid._,
vii., 114).]
* * * * *
Convinced of his security from attack at home and abroad, Henry
proceeded to accomplish what remained for the subjugation of the
Church in England and the final breach with Rome. Clement had no
sooner excommunicated Henry than he began to repent; he was much more
alarmed than the English King at the probable effects of his sentence.
Henry at once recalled his ambassadors from Rome, and drew up an
appeal to a General Council.[892] The Pope feared he would lose
England for ever. Even the Imperialists proved but Job's comforters,
and told him that, after all, it was only "an unprofitable (p. 316)
island,"[893] the loss of which was not to be compared with the
renewed devotion of Spain and the Emperor's other dominions; possibly
they assured him that there would never again be a sack of Rome.
Clement delayed for a time the publication of the sentence against
Henry, and in November he went to his interview with Francis I. at
Marseilles.[894] While he was there, Bonner intimated to him Henry's
appeal to a General Council. Clement angrily rejected the appeal as
frivolous, and Francis regarded this defiance of the Pope as an
affront to himself in the person of his guest, and as the ruin of his
attempts to reconcile the two parties. "Ye have clearly marred all,"
he said to Gardiner; "as fast as I study to win the Pope, you study to
lose him,"[895] and he declared that, had he known of the intimation
beforehand, it should never have been made. Henry, however, had no
desire that the Pope should be won.[896] He was, he told the French
ambassador, determined to separate from Rome; "he will not, in
consequence of this, be less Christian, but more so, for in everything
and in every place he desires to cause Jesus Christ to be recognised,
who alone is the patron of Christians; and he will cause the Word to
be preached, and not the canons and decrees of the Pope."[897]
[Footnote 892: _Ibid._, vi., 721, 979, 980, 998.]
[Footnote 893: _L. and P._, vi., 997.]
[Footnote 894: He is said, while there, to have
privately admitted to Francis that the dispensation
of Julius II. was invalid (_ibid._, vii., 1348,
App. 8).]
[Footnote 895: _Ibid._, vi., 1425, 1426, 1427.]
[Footnote 896: On his side he was angry with
Francis for telling the Pope that Henry would side
against the Lutherans; he was afraid it might spoil
his practices with them (_ibid._, vi., 614, 707);
the Luebeckers had already suggested to Henry VIII.
that he should seize the disputed throne of Denmark
(_ibid._, vi., 428; _cf._ the present writer in
_Cambridge Modern History_, ii., 229).]
[Footnote 897: _L. and P._, vi., 1435, 1479.]
Parliament was to meet to effect this purpose in January, 1534, (p. 317)
and during the previous autumn there are the first indications,
traceable to Cromwell's hand, of an attempt to pack it. He drew up a
memorandum of such seats as were vacant from death or from other
causes; most of the new members appear to have been freely elected,
but four vacancies were filled by "the King's pleasure."[898] More
extensive and less doubtful was the royal interference in the election
of abbots. Many abbeys fell vacant in 1533, and in every case
commissioners were sent down to secure the election of the King's
nominee; in many others, abbots were induced to resign, and fresh (p. 318)
ones put in their place.[899] It is not clear that the main object was
to pack the clerical representation in the House of Lords, because
only a few of these abbots had seats there, the abbots gave much less
trouble than the bishops in Parliament, and Convocation, where they
largely outnumbered the bishops, was much more amenable than the House
of Peers, where the bishops' votes preponderated. It is more probable
that the end in view was already the dissolution of the monasteries by
means of surrender. Cromwell, who was now said to "rule everything,"[900]
was boasting that he would make his King the richest monarch in
Christendom, and his methods may be guessed from his praise of the
Sultan as a model to other princes for the authority he wielded over
his subjects.[901] Henry, however, was fortunate in 1533, even in the
matter of episcopal representation. He had, since the fall of Wolsey,
had occasion to fill up the Sees of York, Winchester, London, Durham
and Canterbury; and in this year five more became vacant: Bangor, Ely,
Coventry and Lichfield by death, and Salisbury and Worcester through
the deprivation by Act of Parliament of their foreign and absentee
pastors, Campeggio and Ghinucci.[902] Of the other bishops, Clerk of
Bath and Wells, and Longland of Lincoln, had been active in the
divorce, which, indeed, Longland, the King's confessor, was said to
have originally suggested about the year 1523; the Bishops of Norwich
and of Chichester were both over ninety years of age.[903] (p. 319)
Llandaff was Catherine's confessor, a Spaniard who could not speak a
word of English. On the whole bench there was no one but Fisher of
Rochester who had the will or the courage to make any effective stand
on behalf of the Church's liberty.
[Footnote 898: _L. and P._, vi., 1382; vii., 56. A
whole essay might be written on this latter brief
document; it is not, what it purports to be, a list
of knights of the shires who had died since the
beginning of Parliament, for the names are those of
living men. Against most of the constituencies two
or three names are placed; Dr. Gairdner suggests
that these are the possible candidates suggested by
Cromwell and to be nominated by the King. But why
is "the King's pleasure" placed opposite only three
vacancies, if the whole twenty-eight were to be
filled on his nomination? The names are probably
those of influential magnates in the neighbourhood
who would naturally have the chief voice in the
election; and thus they would correspond with the
vacancies, _e.g._, Hastings, opposite which is
placed "Not for the Warden of the Cinque Ports,"
and Southwark, for which there is a similar note
for the Duke of Suffolk. It is obvious that the
King could not fill up all the vacancies by
nomination; for opposite Worcester town, where
_both_ members, Dee and Brenning, had died, is
noted, "the King to name _one_". It is curious to
find "the King's pleasure" after Winchester city,
as that was one of the constituencies for which
Gardiner as bishop afterwards said he was wont to
nominate burgesses (Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 54).
It must also be remembered that these were
bye-elections and possibly a novelty. In 1536 the
rebels demand that "if a knight or burgess died
during Parliament his room should continue void to
the end of the same" (_L. and P._, xi., 1182
[17]). In the seventeenth century
supplementary members were chosen for the Long
Parliament to fill possible vacancies; there were
no bye-elections.]
[Footnote 899: _L. and P._, vi., 716, 816, 847,
1007, 1056, 1057, 1109 (where by the Bishopric of
"Chester" is meant Coventry and Lichfield, and not
Chichester, as suggested by the editor; the See of
Coventry and Lichfield was often called Chester
before the creation of the latter see), 1239, 1304,
1376, 1408, 1513; vii., 108, 257, 297, 344, 376.]
[Footnote 900: _Ibid._, vi., 1445.]
[Footnote 901: _Ibid._, vii., 1554.]
[Footnote 902: _Ibid._, vii., 48, 54, 634.]
[Footnote 903: _L. and P._, vii., 171.]
Before Parliament met Francis sent Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, to
London to make one last effort to keep the peace between England and
Rome. Du Bellay could get no concessions of any value from Henry. All
the King would promise was that, if Clement would before Easter
declare his marriage with Catherine null and that with Anne valid, he
would not complete the extirpation of the papal authority.[904] Little
enough of that remained, and Henry himself had probably no expectation
and no wish that his terms should be accepted. Long before Du Bellay
had reached Rome, Parliament was discussing measures designed to
effect the final severance. Opposition was of the feeblest character
alike in Convocation and in both Houses of Parliament. Chapuys himself
gloomily prophesied that there would be no difficulty in getting the
principal measures, abolishing the Pope's authority and arranging for
the election of bishops, through the House of Lords.[905] The second
Act of Appeals embodied the concessions made by Convocation in 1532
and rejected that year in the House of Lords. Convocation was neither
to meet nor to legislate without the King's assent; Henry might
appoint a royal commission to reform the canon law;[906] appeals were
to be permitted to Chancery from the Archbishop's Court;[907] (p. 320)
abbeys and other religious houses, which had been exempt from
episcopal authority, were placed immediately under the jurisdiction of
Chancery. A fresh Act of Annates defined more precisely the new method
of electing bishops, and provided that, if the Chapter did not elect
the royal nominee within twelve days, the King might appoint him by
letters patent. A third act forbade the payment of Peter-pence and
other impositions to the Court of Rome, and handed over the business
of dispensations and licences to the Archbishop of Canterbury; at the
same time it declared that neither King nor realm meant to vary from
the articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom.
[Footnote 904: _Ibid._, vii., App. 13.]
[Footnote 905: _Ibid._, vii., 171; _cf._ XII., ii.,
952.]
[Footnote 906: This commission was not appointed
till 1551: see the present writer's _Cranmer_, pp.
280-4.]
[Footnote 907: 25 Henry VIII., c. 19. The first
suggestion appears to have been "to give the
Archbishop of Canterbury the seal of Chancery, and
pass bulls, dispensations and other provisions
under it" (_L. and P._, vii., 14; _cf._ vii., 57);
his title was changed from _Apostolicae Sedis
legatus_ to _Metropolitanus_ (_ibid._, vii.,
1555).]
Another act provided that charges of heresy must be supported by two
lay witnesses, and that indictments for that offence could only be made
by lay authorities. This, like the rest of Henry's anti-ecclesiastical
legislation, was based on popular clamour. On the 5th of March the
whole House of Commons, with the Speaker at their head, had waited on
the King at York Place and expatiated for three hours on the
oppressiveness of clerical jurisdiction. At length it was agreed that
eight temporal peers, eight representatives of the Lower House and
sixteen bishops "should discuss the matter and the King be umpire"[908]--a
repetition of the plan of 1529 and a very exact reflection of Henry's
methods and of the Church-and-State situation during the Reformation
Parliament.
[Footnote 908: _L. and P._, vii., 304, 393, 399;
the provision about two witnesses was in 1547
extended to treason.]
The final act of the session, which ended on 30th March, was a (p. 321)
constitutional innovation of the utmost importance. From the earliest
ages the succession to the crown had in theory been determined, first
by election, and then by hereditary right. In practice it had often
been decided by the barbarous arbitrament of war. For right is vague,
it may be disputed, and there was endless variety of opinion as to the
proper claimant to the throne if Henry should die. So vague right was
to be replaced by definite law, which could not be disputed, but
which, unlike right, could easily be changed. The succession was no
longer to be regulated by an unalterable principle, but by the popular
(or royal) will expressed in Acts of Parliament.[909] The first of a
long series of Acts of Succession was now passed to vest the succession
to the crown in the heirs of the King by Anne Boleyn; clauses were
added declaring that persons who impugned that marriage by writing,
printing, or other deed were guilty of treason, and those who impugned
it by words, of misprision. The Government proposal that both classes
of offenders should be held guilty of treason was modified by the
House of Commons.[910]
[Footnote 909: The succession to the crown was one
of the last matters affected by the process of
substituting written law for unwritten right which
began with the laws of Ethelbert of Kent. There had
of course been _ex post facto_ acts recognising
that the crown was vested in the successful
competitor.]
[Footnote 910: _L. and P._, vii., 51.]
On 23rd March, a week before the prorogation of Parliament, and seven
years after the divorce case had first begun, Clement gave sentence at
Rome pronouncing valid the marriage between Catherine and Henry.[911]
The decision produced not a ripple on the surface of English affairs;
Henry, writes Chapuys, took no account of it and was making as (p. 322)
good cheer as ever.[912] There was no reason why he should not.
While the imperialist mob at Rome after its kind paraded the streets
in crowds, shouting "Imperio et Espagne," and firing _feux-de-joie_
over the news, the imperialist agent was writing to Charles that the
judgment would not be of much profit, except for the Emperor's honour
and the Queen's justification, and was congratulating his master that
he was not bound to execute the sentence.[913] Flemings were tearing
down the papal censures from the doors of their churches,[914] and
Charles was as convinced as ever of the necessity of Henry's
friendship. He proposed to the Pope that some one should be sent from
Rome to join Chapuys in "trying to move the King from his error"; and
Clement could only reply that "he thought the embassy would have no
effect on the King, but that nothing would be lost by it, and it would
be a good compliment!"[915] Henry, however was less likely to be
influenced by compliments, good or bad, than by the circumstance that
neither Pope nor Emperor was in a position to employ any ruder
persuasive. There was none so poor as to reverence a Pope, and, when
Clement died six months later, the Roman populace broke into the
chamber where he lay and stabbed his corpse; they were with difficulty
prevented from dragging it in degradation through the streets.[916]
Such was the respect paid to the Supreme Pontiff in the Holy City, and
deference to his sentence was not to be expected in more distant
parts.
[Footnote 911: _Ibid._, vii., 362.]
[Footnote 912: _L. and P._, vii., 469.]
[Footnote 913: _Ibid._, vii., 368.]
[Footnote 914: _Ibid._, vii., 184.]
[Footnote 915: _Ibid._, vii., 804.]
[Footnote 916: _Ibid._, vii., 1262.]
Henry's political education was now complete; the events of the last
five years had proved to him the truth of the assertion, with (p. 323)
which he had started, that the Pope might do what he liked at Rome,
but that he also could do what he liked in England, so long as he
avoided the active hostility of the majority of his lay subjects. The
Church had, by its actions, shown him that it was powerless; the Pope
had proved the impotence of his spiritual weapons; and the Emperor had
admitted that he was both unable and unwilling to interfere. Henry had
realised the extent of his power, and the opening of his eyes had an
evil effect upon his character. Nothing makes men or Governments so
careless or so arbitrary as the knowledge that there will be no
effective opposition to their desires. Henry, at least, never grew
careless; his watchful eye was always wide open. His ear was always
strained to catch the faintest rumbling of a coming storm, and his
subtle intellect was ever on the alert to take advantage of every turn
in the diplomatic game. He was always efficient, and he took good care
that his ministers should be so as well. But he grew very arbitrary;
the knowledge that he could do so much became with him an irresistible
reason for doing it. Despotic power is twice cursed; it debases the
ruler and degrades the subject; and Henry's progress to despotism may
be connected with the rise of Thomas Cromwell, who looked to the Great
Turk as a model for Christian princes.[917] Cromwell became secretary
in May, 1534; in that month Henry's security was enhanced by the (p. 324)
definitive peace with Scotland,[918] and he set to work to enforce
his authority with the weapons which Parliament had placed in his
hands. Elizabeth Barton, and her accomplices, two Friars Observants,
two monks, and one secular priest, all attainted of treason by Act of
Parliament, were sent to the block.[919] Commissioners were sent
round, as Parliament had ordained, to enforce the oath of succession
throughout the land.[920] A general refusal would have stopped Henry's
career, but the general consent left Henry free to deal as he liked
with the exceptions. Fisher and More were sent to the Tower. They were
willing to swear to the succession, regarding that as a matter within
the competence of Parliament, but they refused to take the oath
required by the commissioners;[921] it contained, they alleged, a
repudiation of the Pope not justified by the terms of the statute. Two
cartloads of friars followed them to the Tower in June, and the Order
of Observants, in whose church at Greenwich Henry had been baptised
and married, and of whom in his earlier years he had written in terms
of warm admiration, was suppressed altogether.[922]
[Footnote 917: "The Lord Cromwell," says Bishop
Gardiner, "had once put in the King our late
sovereign lord's head, to take upon him to have his
will and pleasure regarded for a law; for that, he
said, was to be a very King," and he quoted the
_quod principi placuit_ of Roman civil law.
Gardiner replied to the King that "to make the laws
his will was more sure and quiet" and "agreeable
with the nature of your people". Henry preferred
Gardiner's advice (Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 46).]
[Footnote 918: _L. and P._, vii., 483, 647.]
[Footnote 919: _Ibid._, vii., 522.]
[Footnote 920: _Ibid._, vii., 665.]
[Footnote 921: _Ibid._, vii., 499.]
[Footnote 922: _Ibid._, vii., 841, 856. The order
had been particularly active in opposition to the
divorce (_ibid._, iv., 6156; v., 266.)]
In November Parliament[923] reinforced the Act of Succession by laying
down the precise terms of the oath, and providing that a certificate
of refusal signed by two commissioners was as effective as the
indictment of twelve jurors. Other acts empowered the King to repeal
by royal proclamation certain statutes regulating imports and exports.
The first-fruits and tenths, of which the Pope had been already (p. 325)
deprived, were now conferred on the King as a fitting ecclesiastical
endowment for the Supreme Head of the Church. That title, granted him
four years before by both Convocations, was confirmed by Act of
Parliament; its object was to enable the King as Supreme Head to
effect the "increase of virtue in Christ's Religion within this Realm
of England, and to repress and extirp all Errors, Heresies and other
Enormities, and Abuses heretofore used in the same". The Defender of
the Faith was to be armed with more than a delegate power; he was to
be supreme in himself, the champion not of the Faith of any one else,
but of his own; and the qualifying clause, "as far as the law of
Christ allows," was omitted. His orthodoxy must be above suspicion, or
at least beyond the reach of open cavil in England. So new treasons
were enacted, and any one who called the King a heretic, schismatic,
tyrant, infidel, or usurper, was rendered liable to the heaviest
penalty which the law could inflict. As an earnest of the royal and
parliamentary desire for an increase of virtue in religion, an act was
concurrently passed providing for the creation of a number of
suffragan bishops.[924]
[Footnote 923: _Ibid._, vii., 1377.]
[Footnote 924: These were not actually created till
1540; the way in which Henry VIII. sought statutory
authority for every conceivable thing is very
extraordinary. There seems no reason why he could
not have created these bishoprics without
parliamentary authority.]
Henry was now Pope in England with powers no Pope had possessed.[925]
The Reformation is variously regarded as the liberation of the (p. 326)
English Church from the Roman yoke it had long impatiently borne,
as its subjection to an Erastian yoke which it was henceforth, with
more or less patience, long to bear, or as a comparatively unimportant
assertion of a supremacy which Kings of England had always enjoyed.
The Church is the same Church, we are told, before and after the
change; if anything, it was Protestant before the Reformation, and
Catholic after. It is, of course, the same Church. A man may be
described as the same man before and after death, and the business of
a coroner's jury is to establish the identity; but it does not ignore
the vital difference. Even Saul and Paul were the same man. And the
identity of the Church before and after the legislation of Henry VIII.
covers a considerable number of not unimportant changes. It does not,
however, seem strictly accurate to say that Henry either liberated or
enslaved the Church. Rather, he substituted one form of despotism for
another, a sole for a dual control; the change, complained a reformer,
was merely a _translatio imperii_.[926] The democratic movement within
the Church had died away, like the democratic movements in national
and municipal politics, before the end of the fifteenth century. It
was never merry with the Church,[927] complained a Catholic in 1533,
since the time when bishops were wont to be chosen by the Holy Ghost
and by their Chapters.
[Footnote 925: With limitations, of course. Henry's
was only a _potestas jurisdictionis_ not a
_potestas ordinis_ (see Makower, _Const. Hist. of
the Church of England_, and the present writer's
_Cranmer_, pp. 83, 84, 95, 232, 233). Cranmer
acknowledged in the King also a _potestatem
ordinis_, just as Cromwell would have made him the
sole legislator in temporal affairs; Henry's
unrivalled capacity for judging what he could and
could not do saved him from adopting either
suggestion.]
[Footnote 926: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., p. 141.]
[Footnote 927: _Ibid._, vi., 797 [2];
a Venetian declared that Huguenotism was
"due to the abolition of the election of the
clergy" (Armstrong, _Wars of Religion_, p. 11).]
Since then the Church had been governed by a partnership between King
and Pope, without much regard for the votes of the shareholders. It
was not Henry who first deprived them of influence; neither did (p. 327)
he restore it. What he did was to eject his foreign partner,
appropriate his share of the profits, and put his part of the business
into the hands of a manager. First-fruits and tenths were described as
an intolerable burden; but they were not abolished; they were merely
transferred from the Pope to the King. Bishops became royal nominees,
pure and simple, instead of the joint nominees of King and Pope. The
supreme appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes was taken away
from Rome, but it was not granted the English Church to which in truth
it had never belonged.[928] Chancery, and not the Archbishop's Court,
was made the final resort for ecclesiastical appeals. The authority,
divided erstwhile between two, was concentrated in the hands of one;
and that one was thus placed in a far different position from that
which either had held before.
[Footnote 928: For one year, indeed, Cranmer
remained _legatus natus_, and by a strange anomaly
exercised a jurisdiction the source of which had
been cut off. Stokesley objected to Cranmer's use
of that style in order to escape a visitation of
his see, and Gardiner thought it an infringement of
the royal prerogative. It was abolished in the
following year.]
The change was analogous to that in Republican Rome from two consuls
to one dictator. In both cases the dictatorship was due to exceptional
circumstances. There had long been a demand for reform in the Church
in England as well as elsewhere, but the Church was powerless to
reform itself. The dual control was in effect, as dual controls often
are, a practical anarchy. The condition of the Church before the
Reformation may be compared with that of France before the Revolution.
In purely spiritual matters the Pope was supreme: the conciliar
movement of the fifteenth century had failed. The Pope had (p. 328)
gathered all powers to himself, in much the same way as the French
monarch in the eighteenth century had done; and the result was the
same, a formal despotism and a real anarchy. Pope and Monarch were
crushed by the weight of their own authority; they could not reform,
even when they wanted to. From 1500 to 1530 almost every scheme,
peaceful or bellicose, started in Europe was based on the plea that
its ultimate aim was the reform of the Church; and so it would have
continued, _vox et praeterea nihil_, had not the Church been galvanised
into action by the loss of half its inheritance.
In England the change from a dual to a sole control at once made that
control effective, and reform became possible. But it was a reform
imposed on the Church from without and by means of the exceptional
powers bestowed on the Supreme Head. Hence the burden of modern
clerical criticism of the Reformation. Objection is raised not so much
to the things that were done, as to the means by which they were
brought to pass, to the fact that the Church was forcibly reformed by
the State, and not freed from the trammels of Rome, and then left to
work out its own salvation. But such a solution occurred to few at
that time; the best and the worst of Henry's opponents opposed him on
the ground that he was divorcing the Church in England from the Church
universal. Their objection was to what was done more than to the way
in which it was done; and Sir Thomas More would have fought the
Reformation quite as strenuously had it been effected by the
Convocations of Canterbury and York. On the other side there was
equally little thought of a Reformation by clerical hands. Henry (p. 329)
and Cromwell carried on and developed the tradition of the Emperor
Frederick II. and Peter de Vinea,[929] of Philippe le Bel and
Pierre Dubois, of Lewis the Bavarian and Marsiglio of Padua[930] who
maintained the supremacy of the temporal over the spiritual power and
asserted that the clergy wielded no jurisdiction and only bore the
keys of heaven in the capacity of turnkeys.[931] It was a question of
the national State against the universal Church. The idea of a
National Church was a later development, the result and not the cause
of the Reformation.
[Footnote 929: The comparison has been drawn by
Huillard-Breholles in his _Vie et Correspondence de
Pierre de la Vigne_, Paris, 1865.]
[Footnote 930: Marsiglio's _Defensor Pacis_ was a
favourite book with Cromwell who lent a printer L20
to bring out an English edition of it in 1535 (see
the present writer in _D.N.B., s.v._ Marshall,
William). Marshall distributed twenty-four copies
among the monks of Charterhouse to show them how
the Christian commonwealth had been "unjustly
molested, vexed and troubled by the spiritual and
ecclesiastical tyrant". See also Maitland, _English
Law and the Renaissance_, pp. 14, 60, 61.]
[Footnote 931: _Defensor Pacis_, ii., 6.]
Henry's dictatorship was also temporary in character. His supremacy
over the Church was royal, and not parliamentary. It was he, and not
Parliament, who had been invested with a semi-ecclesiastical nature.
In one capacity he was head of the State, in another, head of the
Church. Parliament and Convocation were co-ordinate one with another,
and subordinate both to the King. The Tudors, and especially Elizabeth,
vehemently denied to their Parliaments any share in their ecclesiastical
powers. Their supremacy over the Church was their own, and, as a
really effective control, it died with them. As the authority of the
Crown declined, its secular powers were seized by Parliament; (p. 330)
its ecclesiastical powers fell into abeyance between Parliament and
Convocation. Neither has been able to vindicate an exclusive claim to
the inheritance; and the result of this dual claim to control has been
a state of helplessness, similar in some respects to that from which
the Church was rescued by the violent methods of Henry VIII.[932]
[Footnote 932: A much neglected but very important
constitutional question is whether the King _qua_
Supreme Head of the Church was limited by the same
statute and common law restrictions as he was _qua_
temporal sovereign. Gardiner raised the question in
a most interesting letter to Protector Somerset in
1547 (Foxe, vi., 42). It had been provided, as Lord
Chancellor Audley told Gardiner, that no spiritual
law and no exercise of the royal supremacy should
abate the common law or Acts of Parliament; but
within the ecclesiastical sphere there were no
limits on the King's authority. The Popes had not
been fettered, _habent omnia jura in suo scrinio_;
and their jurisdiction in England had been
transferred whole and entire to the King. Henry was
in fact an absolute monarch in the Church, a
constitutional monarch in the State; he could
reform the Church by injunction when he could not
reform the State by proclamation. There was
naturally a tendency to confuse the two capacities
not merely in the King's mind but in his
opponents'; and some of the objections to the
Stuarts' dispensing practice, which was exercised
chiefly in the ecclesiastical sphere, seem due to
this confusion. Parliament in fact, as soon as the
Tudors were gone, began to apply common law and
statute law limitations to the Crown's
ecclesiastical prerogative.]