Church and State under the Tudors/Chapter 4

by Gilbert William Child

CHAPTER IV

REIGN OF HENRY VIII (continued)

Henry VII.'s reign had been one of great quiet and apparent prosperity to the Church. The King had been on good terms with the Papacy, and had, especially in the later years of his reign, been a munificent builder and decorator of churches. His greatest ministers had been great ecclesiastics. Morton and Fox had risen to fame and eminence in his reign, and Wolsey had begun to display those great powers which were soon to make him the most important man in Europe, in the last few years of it.

At the same time we must not suppose that the reverence felt for the Pope by Henry VII. and other contemporary sovereigns was very genuine or deep, or was of a kind which promised any great permanence to his influence in Europe. Thus there is a despatch from Ferdinand and Isabella (the Catholics par excellence) to Henry's ambassador, in which they recommend the King to send his contributions to the crusade, either at once in a fleet to be built in England, or else to send the money direct to Rhodes by some person of great trust, ' for if they should send it to the Pope it is certain that he would expend it for some other purpose, and not on account of the said expedition.'^[1]

This state of things continued unchanged in its main features through the first half of his son's reign also. Though, as we have seen, there were signs for those who were wise enough to read them, which might suggest that all was not as sound in the Church as it appeared to be, yet it was not until the divorce question came into agitation that they became visible to ordinary men. Not only was the divorce question the main cause of the fall of Wolsey, but it also led directly to that quarrel with the Pope which brought on the whole antipapal legislation of Henry VIII. and the destruction of the monasteries, and had no little connection with the especial and peculiar form taken by the English Reformation.

One previous occurrence, arising out of the trial of Dr. Horsey, the Bishop of London's chancellor, for the murder of a citizen named Hun, which took place in the years 1513 and 1514, seems to show something both of the strained tone of feeling which subsisted between the clergy and laity, at any rate in London, and also of the extreme sensitiveness of the King in regard to anything which appeared to touch his own prerogative.^[2] The case involved the whole question of the liability of clerical felons to the jurisdiction of the ordinary criminal law; it seems to have been taken up warmly by the clergy on one side and the lawyers on the other, and argued with no little acerbity on both sides before the King in person. A certain minority of the clergy, represented on the present occasion by Dr. Standish, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and Dr. Veysey, dean of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards Bishop of Exeter, maintained the view that the clergy might be, and in England had been, amenable to the ordinary criminal courts; but it seems to have been a very small one. The King's remark at the conclusion of the arguments is given by Burnet as follows: 'By the permission and ordinance of God, we are king of England, and the kings of England in times past had never any superior but God only. Therefore know you well that we will maintain the right of our crown and of our temporal jurisdiction, as well in this as in all other points, in as ample manner as any of our progenitors have done before our time. And, as for your decrees, we are well assured that you of the spirituality go expressly against the words of divers of them, as hath been showed you by some of our council; and you interpret your decrees at your pleasure; but we will not agree to them more than our progenitors have done in former times.' In this particular instance Henry seems to have thought that he had sufficiently vindicated his authority by having the clerical delinquent brought to the bar, and the case was in the end withdrawn from the jury; but it required the utmost efforts of the Cardinal and the Archbishop of Canterbury to bring about this result, and the state of feeling which existed is plainly shown in a letter of the Bishop of London to Wolsey, in which he says: 'Assured I am that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favor em hæreticæ pravitatis, that they will cast and condemn any clerk though he were as innocent as Abel.'

It is quite conceivable that had the question of Henry's divorce not arisen, the Reformation in England might have been postponed for some years, for Henry VIII. was essentially an absolutist, and his first bias was, as is well known, in favour not only of Roman doctrine but also of Papal power, and he hated Luther and all his works. But it is not conceivable that if there had been no question of the divorce there would have been no Reformation in England at all. It was impossible but that the great movement which began in Germany and Switzerland and spread with greater or less force, completeness, and permanence over every country in Europe, succeeding best in those which were most akin to England, should have spread to England sooner or later; and, as we have seen, it would find, as it did find, all the elements there which it needed for its success. It required a motive applied to the King himself which should call up all his strongest personal feelings and range them actively against the Pope and the clergy, instead of more or less languidly in their favour as they had previously been, in order to make him the champion and leader of the anti-Church movement instead of its moderator or even suppressor, as in other circumstances he might have been; and just this required motive was supplied by the question of the divorce and the particular treatment which it received at the hands of Clement VII.

Into the history of the divorce it is unnecessary to go here at length. It has afforded, and will afford, matter for dispute so long as the history of their forefathers continues to be a subject of interest to mankind, and each man's ultimate decision upon it will be governed, as it ever has been, very much by his sympathies and antipathies. But so much has the subject been obscured by heated discussion that it seems advisable in this place to state the main points of the case as plainly as possible. It will, I think, appear that the old belief so much in fashion a generation ago that many persons even now can hardly hear it questioned without a shock, that the divorce was taken in hand merely to gratify Henry's caprice, and the scruples only put forward as a decent veil wherewith to cover it, must be abandoned by every one who makes the slightest pretence to impartial judgment or to any capacity for weighing evidence.

It is, then, obvious that, primâ facie, the King had right on his side. In every Christian Land it was and is the law that a man may not marry his brother's wife, and the dictum of the Lutheran doctors, 'fieri non debet, factum valet,' is but a very lame and unsatisfactory way of getting over the difficulty. To take a case in some respects parallel, and which, if I mistake not, has actually happened in one of the English noble families within the last century. A and B live together unmarried, and after the birth of a son, C, they see the error of their ways and marry, and another son, D, is afterwards born. D, and not C, is the heir to his father's title and estates, and no subsequent act of the parents can alter their respective positions. So, too, the marriage of Henry and Katherine being unlawful from the beginning, mere lapse of time or other subsequent occurrence could never make it valid. Then comes the question of the papal dispensation on which alone its claim to validity could rest, and on this there were three possible views, some of which admit of subdivision, and all of which were actually adopted by different parties to the dispute. The extreme antipapal view would be that the dispensation made no difference—that that which was unlawful before was unlawful after it. The moderate view would raise the further question whether such a marriage was void by the law of God, or only by human enactment, and declare the dispensation valid or not according to the answer. The extreme papal view, on the other hand, maintained that whether the invalidity depended on the law of man or of God, the Pope's dispensation was an adequate remedy. Finally, the subject was still further complicated by the question raised as to whether Katherine had ever really been the wife of Prince Arthur or not, and which made the validity or invalidity of the dispensation turn on the an.swer to it. On this point it is hardly possible to avoid two remarks. First, that there was ample evidence of the fact to have convinced an ordinary court in an ordinary case; and, secondly, that, in an age when a mere contract of marriage with one person was held "to invalidate any subsequent marriage with another, to raise such a question at all seems rather like a proposition to swallow a camel after straining vehemently over a previous gnat.^[3] The whole subject is manifestly one upon which an irreconcilable difference of opinion might, and may, legitimately exist; though I confess that to my own mind it appears perfectly clear that great as maybe the sympathy which is naturally called up in our own minds by the hard measure dealt out to Queen Katherine, yet that in fact and in law she never was the lawful wife of Henry, and the Princess Mary was ab initio illegitimate. Again, the notion—if any one still entertains it—that Clement VII. ever felt any real scruple on the subject, or that he would have hesitated for a single moment to grant the divorce had not Charles V. stood in the way, is absolutely destitute of foundation. Of the many odious characters which meet us in the history of the sixteenth century, that of Clement VII. is the most despicable by far. As one reads in the State papers the letters and despatches from men representing every side of the question, it is impossible not to see plainly that Clement is troubled by no scruple whatever, I will not say regarding the prostitution of his high office as the vicar of Christ but even regarding the most elementary considerations of right and wrong. His primary object is to save his own skin; his next, to improve his position as a petty Italian prince. Beyond these ideas lie never once soars, and for either of these he is prepared to commit any iniquity and to inflict any wrong, and this under the highest and holiest sanctions.

But though the divorce cannot be rationally looked upon as itself the cause of so mighty a change as that involved in the success of the Reformation in England, it is difficult to over-estimate the effect which it exercised indirectly over the especial measures by which it was brought about, and which gave it a character so different from that which it assumed in other countries.

It is a familiar commonplace to say that the peculiarly conservative character of the English Reformation arose from the fact that the impulsive force which originated it came from above, not from below; that instead of being a popular movement acquiesced in by the rulers of the State, as in Germany, for instance, it was initiated by the rulers of the State, and, for many years at least, only partially accepted by the people; but when we remember that the rulers of the State in this case meant Henry VIII. and his ministers, and that of all personal rulers Henry VIII. was the most individual, then we see that it was from his individual character that this conservative bias proceeded, and there is no difficulty in convincing ourselves that no motive less immediately personal than that supplied by the divorce question would ever have placed the defender of the Seven Sacraments, and the antagonist of Luther, in the anomalous position of an opponent of the Catholic Church.

Thus, though the divorce question was certainly opened as early as 1527, the first attack upon the privileges of the Church appears to have been the introduction of the Mortmain Bill in the parliamentary session of 1529; and although this may be represented as only a measure of necessary reform of what was felt to be a gross and irritating abuse of the power of the clergy—and there are ample indications in contemporary literature of the actual irritation felt by the lay people in consequence of such abuses—yet, coming as it does after the minds of Henry and his ministers were fully possessed by the divorce question, it admits also of being represented as the commencement of a system of reprisals on their part to meet the delays and hesitation of the Pope in granting the relief which Henry required.

The Parliament of 1529 met on November 5, almost immediately after the disgrace of Wolsey (October 18), and it opened with a speech from Sir Thomas More, announcing that the King intended to carry out an ecclesiastical reform. This was followed immediately by the petition of the Commons against the abuses of ecclesiastical administration, which led to prompt legislation—the session lasting only six weeks. The three most important acts passed, viz. 21 Henry VIII. 5, 6, and 13, dealing with probate, mortuaries, and the trading, the pluralities, and the residence of the clergy, embodied the chief points of the petition, and were passed in the teeth of the bishops in the Lords, and not submitted to Convocation at all.

With the exception of the proclamation issued by the King in September of the following year forbidding the introduction of bulls from Rome, and which was founded upon the old Plantagenet legislation, no important step was taken till 1531. This proclamation is, however, worthy of notice, as depriving of any little rag of value which might be supposed to cling to it, an assertion which has become fashionable of late with certain writers, viz. that the first suggestion of an assumption of independence of the Pope was made by the clergy in their petition against annates in the year 1532.

The year 1531 is one of considerable moment in our history. The only important Acts of Parliament are the 22 Henry VIII. c. 15 and 16, which relieved the clergy and laity from the penalties of Præmunire"; but the preliminary step which constituted the condition on which alone this relief was granted, was one of the most momentous in the whole history of the Reformation, being nothing less than the famous submission of the clergy, wherein they acknowledged the King as Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ … supremum caput, albeit with the qualification appended quantum per legem Christi licet—of which we shall hear more by-and-by.

The legislation of the next year, 1532, was in itself very important. Acts were passed—23 Hen. VIII. c. 1, 9, 11, and 20—all of which altered materially the relations of the Church to the lay people and the State, by (1) limiting the range of 'benefit of clergy' by means of which hitherto clerical or quasi-clerical criminals had been able to evade punishment; (2) limiting the power by which persons could be cited to ecclesiastical courts to the diocese in which the cited person dwelt; (3) bringing within the law convict clergy who escaped from prison; and (4) restraining the payments of annates to the See of Rome.^[4]

Over and above these legislative Acts there were in this year also three petitions more or less closely connected with them, and of a highly important character. There was the petition of the Convocation against the payment of annates, which some writers^[5] will have, as already noted, to have been at once the first suggestion for separation from Rome, and a spontaneous act of the clergy themselves; though others^[6] and amongst them the late Mr. J. E. Green, not certainly a strong partisan of the Protestants, treat it, as it plainly was, as merely an attempt on their part to leave a position with some show of dignity, from which it was evident that they would otherwise have been ignominiously driven. There was also the famous complaint of the Commons^[7] against the clergy, consisting of twelve articles, which formed the groundwork for most of the legislation of the session, and of which the first article was that 'canons were made in Convocation without royal assent, or lay assent, and in derogation of the royal authority.' And there was a petition of the clergy of the province of Canterbury to the King, containing four articles, of which the third ran thus: 'That as the clergy are much impoverished by recent Acts annulling the liberty of the Church, et sanctiones canonicas, to the peril of the souls of those who made the Acts, in the framing of which they were not consulted, and as these Acts are so capricious that it is difficult not to violate them, that the same fathers whose business it is to declare the truth of the canons may provide a remedy.'^[8] The words of this petition might in themselves surely furnish a sufficient answer to the pretence that the clergy were in any sense free agents in the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII. That legislation became, notwithstanding, the law of the land, and remains in a very great measure the law of the land still; and by it, as we shall see more and more clearly as we advance, the Church surrendered or was driven from every rag of independence of the State.

The final achievement of this important session was the formal resignation by Convocation itself of whatever independent power of legislation it ever had, by agreeing to the articles which enact that it should neither pass nor execute any ordinance whatever without the King's approval and assent.^[9] These articles were brought down to the House on May 10 by Edward Fox, the King's almoner, with a message 'that the King willed that all should subscribe.' Subscribed they were, accordingly, on May 13; the Convocation was prorogued forty-eight hours later, and the members were at liberty to depart to their several homes, having fairly, to use a modern phrase, 'contracted themselves out' of any quasi-independence which they ever fancied they possessed.^[10] The despatches of Chapuys and other documents to be found among the State papers supply an ample refutation of the theory of Dr. Hook that the royal supremacy existed in England almost as completely before the time of Henry VIII. as it has done since. Thus, in his despatch of February 14, 1531, he says, speaking of the submission, 'The thing that has been treated to the Pope's disadvantage is that the clergy have been compelled under pain of the said law of Præmunire to accept the King as head of the Church, which implies in effect as much as if they had declared him Pope of England.'

Again, a week afterwards he writes, while blaming the Pope's proceedings, ' If the Pope had ordered the lady to be separated from the King, the King would never have pretended to claim sovereignty over the Church. … 'There is none who do not blame this usurpation except those who have promoted it.' … Again: 'The Nuncio has been with the King to-day.' … 'The Nuncio then entered upon the subject of this new papacy made here,' &c. And again on March 8 he writes: 'The clergy are more conscious every day of the great error they committed in acknowledging the King as sovereign over the Church,' Once more, on June 6 of the same year, he gives his master an account of a visit of some of Henry's counsellors to Queen Katherine, and he quotes her as saying that 'the King is sovereign in his realm as far as regards temporal jurisdiction, but as to the spiritual it was not pleasing to God either that the King should so intend, or that she should consent, for the Pope was the only true sovereign and vicar of God, who had power to judge of spiritual matters, of which marriage was one.'

Such extracts, if they do not prove that Henry's ecclesiastical legislation was in truth a new departure, are at least conclusive of the fact that those nearest his throne and most immediately affected by it believed it to be so.

Bishop Stubbs^[11] gives quite a different account of the relations of Church and State in England during the middle ages, and it is one which, while far more consonant than that of Dr. Hook with the actual facts, is also totally irreconcilable with it. He says that the clergy 'recognise the King as supreme in matters temporal, and the Pope in matters spiritual. But then,' he adds, 'there are questions as to the exact limits between the spiritual and the temporal, and more important questions touching the precise relations between the Crown and the Papacy. On mediæval theory the King is a spiritual son of the Pope, and the Pope may be the King's superior in things spiritual only, or in things temporal and spiritual alike.'

The mediæval popes had grasped after, and to a great extent obtained, power over matters which, if they belonged to the borderland of spiritual and temporal at all, belonged almost more to the latter than to the former; and the constant effort of the kings had been to limit this borderland as narrowly as possible; and this, and nothing more than this, is, and was always at the time, supposed to be the scope of the antipapal legislation of the Plantagenet and Lancastrian Kings. Henry VIII. took a bolder and a different course, and, ignoring to a great extent the distinction between spiritual and temporal, made himself, with the connivance of Parliament and the forced acquiescence of Convocation, the supreme arbiter of both, and thus, as Chapuys called him, 'Pope of England.'

To this year belong also one or two other matters which, though not directly affecting the relations of Church and State, serve to throw some light upon them. On February 24, just six months before his death, Archbishop Warham drew up his famous protest against all enactments made against the Pope's authority or the ecclesiastical privileges of the Church of Canterbury. The same archbishop, who but a few months before had, in his capacity of president of the Upper House of Convocation, put to the vote the submission of the clergy, and as a peer of Parliament had been involved in the whole of the antipapal legislation, now, in his own palace at Lambeth, with the full consciousness that death is at hand, and feeling that the hopes and fears of the present world are gradually fading and growing dim, looking back upon the stormy times which the last years of his primacy have proved to be, at last summons courage to do what can no longer avail him or his Church, and records his solemn disavowal of the legislation of the last two years.

Another matter deserving of notice is that the Commons in this session decisively rejected a bill on what was called primer seisin, sent down to them by the King, and which affected at once his revenue and their own disposal of their property; thus showing that there was a limit to the 'servility' of which we hear so much, when the subject of legislation was one which touched private property and nearly concerned its owners.

The following year was full of important events, affecting both directly and indirectly the relations of Church and State. The great legislative measure of the year was 24 Henry VIII. c. 12, the Statute of Appeals, by which all appeals to Rome, of whatsoever kind, were from henceforth prohibited, and the court of the Archbishop made the final court of ecclesiastical appeal, except in cases 'touching the King,' in which an appeal lay to the Upper House of Convocation. This, so far as appears, was purely and simply an act of the Parliament; and though the records of the contemporary Convocation are full, there is no indication that the subject of the statute was brought before it. That assembly was, however, far from idle during the year. It was now completely subservient to the King, and under his influence it now put forward the first great practical defiance of Rome (April 5)^[12] by pronouncing that his marriage with Queen Katherine was null and void, and that he was therefore at liberty to marry another wife. This was promptly followed by Cranmer's formal sentence (May 23) as to the nullity of the former marriage, and the coronation of Anne Boleyn (June 1).

Much discussion has arisen about the date at which Anne Boleyn's marriage took place. From the expression 'about St. Paul's Day' (January 25), used in a letter of Cranmer's to Hawkins, his successor as ambassador to Charles V., together with the date of Elizabeth's birth, viz. September 7, it has been too hastily assumed that Anne Boleyn had become Henry's mistress before she was married to him.^[13] Mr. Pococke, however—certainly no partisan of Anne Boleyn or of the Protestant party—has shown good reason to believe that this inference is not warranted, and certainly the general probabilities of the case appear to support his view. Henry's character and conduct generally would not lead us to suppose that he would be likely to make his mistress his queen; nor is it probable, on the other hand, that Anne, who had kept him at a safe distance for several years, should have endangered the great object of her ambition, viz. the chance of becoming queen, when almost within her grasp, by yielding to him at last prematurely.

The subsequent history of Anne Boleyn, and especially the vexed question of her guilt or innocence of the charges on which she was divorced and beheaded, infinitely as it affects the characters of the various persons concerned in her condemnation, does not properly belong to my subject. It is well that it does not, for no more insoluble problem is to be found in history. The materials do not appear to exist—certainly have not been brought to light—which might alone enable us to solve it.

The next year, 1534, was even more momentous than its predecessor. More and heavier blows were dealt against the papal authority in this year than in any previous one, and two or three important Acts, which had been already passed, but which by an unusual provision had been left in suspension during the King's pleasure—that is to say, had for all intents and purposes been weapons placed in his hands, to be used by him if milder measures failed and the Pope proved recalcitrant,—were now definitely put in force; so that from this year we may date the complete cessation of the papal power in England.

The most important of the Acts passed were:—

25 Henry VIII. c. 14, an Act imposing some limitation on the power of printing heresy;

25 Henry VIII. c. 19, the Act for the submission of the clergy;

25 Henry VIII. c. 20, restraining payment of annates;

25 Henry VIII. c. 21, restraining payment of Peter'spence, and other exactions of the Pope; and

26 Henry VIII. c. 1, the Supremacy Act, the latter being passed in a second session which commenced in November.

The Act for the submission of the clergy sums up and turns into law at once a great deal of what had formed the subject of the petitions and proceedings of previous sessions of both Parliament and Convocation. Thus, while it stereotyped into law the surrender by the Convocation two years before of its legislative powers, in the act of so doing it also adopted the language of the petition of the Commons against the clergy. It farther re-enacted the Statute of Appeals of the previous year, with the important addition of a right of further appeal from the Archbishop to the King in Chancery, which was to work by means of a commission under the Great Seal.^[14] The Annates Act,^[15] again, was a repetition in a much more thoroughgoing form of the Act of two years before, and is further remarkable as containing also the provision for the appointment of bishops on the royal nomination, and with a merely colourable election by the Chapter, which was again restored under Elizabeth, and which has given rise to so much discussion and animadversion in our own days.

The previous Annates Act had been a measure evidently intended partly as a reform of an acknowledged abuse, and partly as a warning to the Pope of what might be in store for him in the future.^[16] This is plainly seen in the fact that bulls were, under it, still to be obtained from Rome for the appointment of bishops, though the sums to be paid for them were diminished, and that the King was empowered to suspend the Act, and in the meantime to negotiate with the Pope for a settlement on moderate terms. This Act, on the other hand, forbids not only all payments but all bulls also, and, together with the following Act forbidding payments to Rome of other kinds and on other occasions, constituted an entire practical repudiation of the Pope's authority.

While it was yet the springtime of 1534, the sessions of both Parliament and Convocation came to an end, but the Acts of this important year were far from being completed. Both bodies assembled again in November, for a short session of some six weeks.^[17] Convocation was employed in a more or less unsuccessful crusade against heretical books, and in requesting the Archbishop to urge the King to put them down, and forbid religious controversy, and at the same time to have a correct translation of Holy Scripture made and 'delivered to the people for their instruction.'

The Archbishop, too, ordered that in formal documents the word 'metropolitanus' should be substituted in his title for the ancient style 'apostolicæ sedis legatus.'

All these are important matters; important less perhaps in themselves, or even in their consequences, great as some of these have been, than as indications of the ferment of opinion which was characteristic of the times, and as showing how, at one and the same time, while the ecclesiastical authorities were prepared to treat liberty of conscience at once as a chimera and a crime, they were themselves carried away by the irresistible current of antipapal reformation into taking the very measures—such as spreading a knowledge of Scripture amongst the people—which could not but lead directly to it. Meanwhile Parliament was wielding weapons more immediately trenchant and formidable. There were some nine Acts dealing roughly enough with ecclesiastical matters, and among them 26 Henry VIII. c. 2, the Act which compelled all the King's subjects to take an oath to submit to the arrangements made in the previous session for the succession to the Crown—an Act which is made famous, or infamous, by its having given the immediate occasion for two other Acts about the infamy of which posterity has had little doubt, viz. the Acts of attainder of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More. But even these are dwarfed by the great Act which stands at the head of the labours of the session, 26 Henry VIII. c. 1, the Supremacy Act.

This Act is of such momentous import to the whole subsequent history of the Church of England, that I think it well to print it at length—it is very short—as it stands upon the statute-book, that my readers may see in its own words how tremendous a revolution it involved, and in what uncompromising and comprehensive terms it announced it:—

'Albeit the King's Majesty justly and rightly is, and ought to be, the supreme head of the Church of England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in their Convocations, yet nevertheless, for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for 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; be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament that the King our Sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm as well the title and stile thereof as all honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, priviledges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities, to the said dignity of supreme head of the same Church belonging and appertaining; and that our said Sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner, spiritual authority, or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended, most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue in Christ's religion, and for the conservation of the peace, unity, and tranquillity of this realm, any usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding.'

Not only, as has been so often observed, was the quasi-saving clause 'quantum per Christi legem licet,' with which the members of Convocation had attempted to gild the bitter pill which they were enforced to swallow, omitted in the Act which became the law of the land equally to layman and to clerk, but so comprehensive are the terms used, so entire is the absorption of the powers of all 'manner of spiritual authority' into the prerogative of the Crown, that we feel that it justified to the full, and if possible even more than justified, the language already quoted from the Spanish ambassador when the subject was in debate in Convocation three and a half years before, that it was 'in effect as much as if they had declared him (the King) Pope of England.' This is in fact, though not in name, what both the Convocation and the Parliament had done; it is what Henry VIII. fully intended that they should do. Pope of England he was, and Pope of England he remained, and so did his successors after him; and though Edward, from the necessity of his age, and Elizabeth from a certain sense of personal dignity and the fitness of things, placed their papal authority, if I may say so, 'in commission,' neither of them dreamed of abdicating it. It continued on, less vigorously exercised, but not always less offensively asserted, through the reigns of the feebler Stuarts, and it appears prominently in the curious clause of the Act of Uniformity,^[18] which gives to that 'most religious and gracious sovereign' Charles II. a power of dispensing in the case of certain foreigners with episcopal orders, as a qualification for the cure of souls, and has only disappeared in practice with the recent gradual absorption of the royal prerogative in the powers of the Houses of Parliament.

The great Acts of the following year, 1535, were less legislative than external and executive Acts. They did not so much alter the legal relations between Church and State as show how much those relations had been already altered; they were like the heavy and dangerous swell that agitates the sea after the gale which produced it has for the time abated. Cromwell received his commission as vicegerent; the King issued a proclamation by which the Pope's name was ordered to be erased from the service-books. Fisher and More were beheaded. Pope Paul III. replied to the abrogation of his power in England by excommunicating Henry and his abettors, and a new departure was made by the King in his ecclesiastical policy by the first visitation of the monasteries; but neither Parliament nor Convocation sat.

With the year 1536 we commence another period of legislative activity. The famous Parliament of 1529 held its last session at the beginning of the year, and was dissolved on March 31, having sat through seven such years as England never saw before or since. Convocation, as usual, followed the same course. The latter assembly does not seem to have signalised its last session by any very important discussions. In Parliament no less than nine Acts more or less affecting the Church were passed, of which 27 Henry VIII. c. 15, which re-enacted the permission to the King to nominate a commission for making ecclesiastical laws (which, however, never took effect), and 27 Henry VIII. c. 28, which dissolved the smaller religious houses, and gave their possessions to the King, were the most important.

A new Parliament and a new Convocation assembled in June. The primary business of both was to deal with the miserable affair of the dissolution of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn, and the subsequent execution of that unhappy person. Into the right or wrong of this matter it is quite beyond my province to inquire; it is enough to know that priests and lawyers. Parliament and Convocation, all and equally concurred in condemning her; and though it has been made, with most of us in modern times, almost an article of faith to believe her innocent, it is somewhat difficult to believe that all these dignified and highly reputed and responsible authorities concurred in the perpetration of a deliberate and atrocious crime.

The ecclesiastical legislation of this short Parliament, for it lasted but a single session, being dissolved on July 18, is a matter which more immediately concerns us, and it was not altogether of an unimportant character. Amongst its Acts were two which tended to extinguish completely any lingering rights or quasi-rights of the See of Rome in England, and others which dealt with the discipline of the clergy. The proceedings of Convocation in this session are of greater interest. Now, for the first time, the lay vicar-general appeared and took his seat next the Archbishop, and signed documents, so far as appears, even before him. Now also the Supreme Head began to exercise his functions in a very practical way, by sending down to the Convocation the first set of articles of faith and ceremonies, drawn up in his own handwriting.^[19] These were not introduced till July 11, and seem to have been agreed to the same day;^[20] at any rate they can have been but little debated, since the Convocation was dissolved nine days afterwards, and a good deal of other business of importance was got through in the interval, viz. some ordinances on the observation of festivals, and a bill showing the causes why the King should not appear in the General Council recently summoned by the Pope.^[21] The two facts of the articles being in Henry's handwriting, and of the speed with which they were enacted, afford sufficient answer to the hypothesis that they were the spontaneous and willing work of the English clergy.

These Acts finished the work of the Parliament and Convocation elected and dissolved in 1536, and no Parliament or Convocation met again till the end of April 1539. But though legislation was thus suspended, this period of almost three years was far from wanting in occurrences affecting the relations of Church and State. On the contrary, soon after the rising of Parliament appeared a set of injunctions about religion and the conduct of the clergy, issued by the vicegerent on the King's authority. These, according to Burnet, gave much offence to the clergy as being the first act of supremacy on the part of the King, and done withal without the consent of Convocation.

The year 1539 is again a year of primary importance in the history of the relations of Church and State. The same policy is continued, and for the present under the same influences. The Acts gravely affecting the above relations are:—

31 Hen. VIII. c. 8, i.e. the Act of Proclamations, which had the effect of giving to the King's proclamations the force of law.

31 Hen. VIII. c. 9; enabling the King to make bishops by letters patent.

31 Hen. VIII. c. 13; decreeing the dissolution of abbeys and giving them to the King.

31 Hen. VIII. c. 14; an Act for abolishing diversity of opinions. This was the famous Act of Six Articles, or Whip with Six Strings.

It is of importance that we should know not only the fact of the passing of this last Act, but as much as can be learned as to the mode in which it passed, the source from which it sprang, the influences by which it was affected, and the feeling with which it was regarded by contemporary persons. Its origin may surely be attributed to the mind of Henry himself, acted upon by Cromwell. It was but one step, though an advanced step, and, as it turned out, almost the last which Cromwell was to take in his general policy of rendering the Crown of England supreme both in Church and State, and using Parliament as the means of establishing its supremacy. Yet it was a step taken, not because it formed a natural part of that policy, but because it was necessary in order to accommodate it to the circumstances of the moment, and the predilections of the King. Like other able artificers, Cromwell found it necessary to modify his work in accordance with the tools wherewith he had to perform it, and the material which he had to use.

Henry loved power, and he hated restraint, and hence he had been well pleased with the earlier steps of Cromwell's policy, which had made him, as we have just seen, il re papa, as it were—at once Pope and Emperor as far as his dominions extended: but he never forgot that he had been himself the champion of the Faith against Luther, he never loved Protestants or Protestantism, he could not endure the name of heretic; and he seems at this time to have been seized with some misgiving, as to whether his previous articles had not gone a little too far, and to have been anxious to show that his repudiation of Roman authority did not mean that the supreme head of the English Church would himself appear as a patron or condoner of heretical opinions. This reaction in Henry's mind was itself due no doubt mainly to the recent rebellion in the north, the famous Pilgrimage of Grace. The movement had been an alarming one, and the fact that it was occasioned in a great degree by discontent with the King's recent religious measures, may have given him reason to reflect on his course. His council always contained a reactionary element, to which such an event was certain to give strength and prominence; and Cromwell's influence was even then beginning to wane. Thus it came to pass that the Six Articles, which were in all probability Henry's own composition, represented exactly his own opinions, and were regarded, and rightly regarded, by the Protestants as reactionary—as, with their penal enactment attached to them, they soon were proved to be. Such being the character of this famous document, the history of its enactment is strictly accordant with it. Its introduction is preluded by a statement to Parliament by the Chancellor^[22] that 'it is the King's especial desire that all differences of religious opinion should be eradicated,' and that 'it is his will that some persons should be chosen to examine such opinions and report on them in the present Parliament.' On this a Commission was appointed consisting of Cromwell, as representing the supreme head, the two archbishops, and six bishops, of very different opinions.^[23] These were appointed on May 5, and upon their having made no progress in their somewhat hopeless task by the 16th of the same month, the Duke of Norfolk introduced the Bill of Six Articles, with a penal clause attached, at once, into the House of Lords on that day. Nothing more appears to have been done until after a short prorogation from May 23 to 30, on which latter day^[24] the Chancellor announced it to be the 'Kings will that a penal statute should be made on the Six Articles.' It was agreed that two forms of statute should be framed—one by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Ely and St. Davids, with the assistance of Dr. Petre; and the other by the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Durham and Winchester, with that of Dr. Tregonwell. Meanwhile Cromwell lays the Six Articles before Convocation, in the form of questions, on June 2, and gets their affirmative answers apparently on the 5th. On the 7th the bill is read a first time in the Lords; and notwithstanding the subsequent introduction of a proviso in the Commons, which necessitated its reappearance in the Lords, it is through both Houses^[25] on the 16th, and Parliament is prorogued before the end of the month.

Nothing surely can prove much more distinctly than does the history of this Act, how completely Henry VIII. and Cromwell had, to adopt a favourite modern phrase, made the supreme headship a 'reality.' Here is a direct and emphatic and authoritative statement of doctrine which is introduced into Parliament as 'the King's will,' is hurried by Parliament into a bill, to which is appended—also because it is 'the King's will'—a penal clause, and the whole is passed by Parliament into an Act, and, as such, becomes the law of England, binding upon clergy no less than laity. And what is the share of Convocation in this important Act? It is simply asked whether it approves of the doctrines—i.e., it is consulted in the same way as, at the present day, the College of Physicians sometimes has been consulted—simply as a professional body of experts—on the advisability of some intended legislation about leprosy or cholera. Even the ordinary forms of legislation in use in Convocation are omitted. The vicegerent comes and asks what the members think of the doctrine, and that is all; and even that is done with as little respect as may be, and with no regard even to the appearance of permitting liberty of discussion. The questions are asked and the answers given between Monday and Thursday of the same week;^[26] and the deliberation, if there was any deliberation, took place under the immediate superintendence of the lay Vicar-General.

To this year also (Nov. 12) appertains another very remarkable document, printed by Burnet, vol. iv. p. 410 (185), which shows how truly Chapuys spoke of the supremacy as 'a new papacy,' viz., the commission taken out by Bonner from the King for the exercise of his episcopal functions. It is probable that other bishops also, and it is rumoured that Cranmer himself, received similar commissions from King Henry VIII., as it is certain that he did at the beginning of the next reign.

The following year also is full of ecclesiastical legislation and ecclesiastical government; but the clergy, individually and collectively, are bound hand and foot, and by this time they have become aware of the fact, and their part in what goes on is either none at all, or that of mere catspaws. In this, perhaps, they have little to regret, for it was a year with the doings of which they, or the honester part of them, would have been glad, no doubt, to avoid even an enforced complicity. At the end of seven Acts more or less concerning the discipline and the pecuniary position of the clergy, and of which one only—viz., the subsidy— seems to have been submitted to Convocation, are three of more permanent importance—viz., 32 Hen. VIII. c. 24, giving the possessions of the great order of the Hospitallers of St. John to the Crown; 32 Hen. VIII. c. 25, the Act for the dissolution of the pretended marriage of the Lady Anne of Cleves; and 32 Hen. VIII. c. 26, an Act concerning Christ's religion.^[27] Of these last two Acts, while the latter was the consequence of the appointment by the King of two Commissions which were respectively to settle the moot points in the doctrine and ceremonies of the Church—and was meant to give their decisions, when made, the force of law, and, so far as appears, neither sought nor received authority from the clergy in any form—to the former, the most scandalously unrighteous of all Henry's divorces, was duly appended the instrument by which Convocation had declared, in accordance with his wishes, that the marriage was invalid. July 28 of this year saw the dissolution of Parliament and Convocation, and, at the same time, the execution of Cromwell and the marriage of his hardened master to Katherine Howard.

In the year which followed there was held neither Parliament nor Convocation.^[28] Cromwell, indeed, was gone, but his policy was not altogether gone with him. The Duke of Norfolk was once more in power, who would willingly have reversed it, who, with longer life, and under the influence of the constant irritation of Cromwell's action, had now become thoroughly reactionary, and had been known to say, 'It was merry in England afore the new learning came up; yea, I would all things were as hath been in times past.' That speech represented a frame of mind almost as much out of harmony with the middle of the sixteenth century as it would be with the end of the nineteenth; and so unable was the Duke to resist the current of the times that we find in this year a proclamation issued—having, be it remembered, the force of law—requiring that a Bible should be placed in every church: certainly of all measures the least likely to bring all things back to the state in which 'times past' had left them, albeit the Duke himself declared, 'I never read the Scripture, nor never will.'^[29]

In this year, too, some of the service books were printed^[30] omitting the name of the Pope as impugning by its presence there ' the statute of our most Christian King.'

In January of 1542 both assemblies resumed their activity. Parliament, besides the dismal work of passing bills of attainder against the Queen and Lady Rocheford, was employed with a number of enactments on ecclesiastical matters such as the rearrangement of bishops' sees and the civil status of the unfrocked monks, &c.—matters which would scarcely have come before Parliament at all in previous reigns, and could not assuredly have been settled by it without the intervention of Convocation, and probably also of the Court of Rome; but which seem small and insignificant when compared with the doings of the previous Parliaments of Henry VIII. Meanwhile Convocation, which does not seem to have been consulted on these Acts, was busy upon other and not unimportant matters. The Houses were informed,^[31] at the commencement of the session, that it was the 'King's intention that they should deliberate on the bad state of religion, and on the remedies; and should correct and reform where it was necessary.' They accordingly discussed the revision of the translation of the Bible, the abolition of the lights burned before images, the erasure of the names of the Pope and Thomas à Becket from the service books, decreed the uniform employment of 'the use of Sarum' throughout the province of Canterbury, and introduced propositions concerning the reform of various practical disorders among clergy and laity, upon which it was determined to 'consult the King.'

One remarkable occurrence took place which, when taken in connection with other events before and after, illustrates in a curious manner the relations subsisting at the time between Parliament and Convocation.

A bill was introduced into Parliament to enable bishops-chancellors to marry, and yet to retain their offices, with the powers thereto belonging for pronouncing suspensions, excommunications, and other ecclesiastical censures,^[32] 'as priests do'; also that they who held these offices should have sufficient fees of the ordinaries to find them and their families. To this bill the bishops objected, 'for the great slander which might thereupon ensue,' and it was withdrawn in consequence.

Much stress has been laid by certain writers upon this transaction as showing the greatness of the power which Convocation still retained, when it thought fit to use it. When it is considered how small a matter this was in comparison with the innumerable larger ones mentioned in the course of this chapter, and which were passed, either without the concurrence of the clergy, or in the teeth of their opposition, it will be seen at once how weak a case those writers must have when they make so great a matter out of it. Such as it is it avails them nothing, since another bill with the same object was passed only three years later—to all appearance unimpeded by Convocation. The probable explanation is simply that the King, who had just insisted in the Six Articles on the continued celibacy of the clergy, had not quite made up his mind as to whether these chancellors, amphibious beings as they were, half clergy and half lawyers, were or were not to be included in the ranks of the former, as hitherto they always had been; and thus it was not yet determinedly 'the King's will,' which was at this time the measure of the action of Convocation even more certainly than of that of Parliament.

The year 1543 was distinguished by the publication of the famous 'King's book, a necessary doctrine and erudition for any Christian man.'^[33]

There was a long and busy session of both Parliament and Convocation. The Acts passed by the former, however, having reference to our subject are but few. The most important of them was the 34 and 35 Hen. VIII. c. 1, called 'an Act for the advancement of true religion, and for the abolishment of the contrary,' or, as it is named in the Lords' Journals, 'the bill for abolishing erroneous books.' Convocation, in response to an announcement from the Archbishop that it was the King's will that 'the service books should be reformed, by omitting all mention of the Pope and legendary and superstitious matter, and the abolition of the commemoration of saints not mentioned in Scripture or by authentical doctors,' appointed a committee for that purpose, consisting of the Bishops of Sarum and Ely, together with six members of the Lower House.^[34]

It also ordered that every Sunday and holiday a chapter of the Bible should be read in English by the curate in every church, without exposition; and it sent up several petitions to the King, among them one for the ecclesiastical laws of the realm to be made according to the statute.

It likewise compiled expositions of the Sacraments, the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer, and Twelve Articles of the Faith, and treatises on justification, works, and prayer for the dead (which, in point of fact, constituted the work entitled, as above, the King's book).

The principal Acts of the following year (1544) were:

35 Hen. VIII. c. 1, a succession Act.

35 Hen. VIII. c. 3, a bill for the King's style.

35 Hen. VIII. c. 5, a bill concerning (modifying) the Six Articles.

35 Hen. VIII. c. 16, a bill for the examination of the Canon laws by a commission of thirty-two persons.

The last being another renewal of the former legislation on this subject,

Convocation appears to have been busy mainly with questions of money, tithes, and subsidies.

At the end of the session, which terminated at the end of March, both assemblies were dissolved.

Towards the end of November 1545^[35] opened the first session of what was to be the last Parliament of Henry's reign. The King had in the previous May published his Primer in Latin and English. Several Acts were passed more or less affecting the Church and clergy, of which the two most important were:—

37 Hen. VIII. c. 4, which delivered up all colleges, chantries, and hospitals to the tender mercy of the King; and

37 Hen. VIII. c. 17, an Act enabling the married doctors of civil law to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The record of the proceedings of Convocation in this year is not preserved.

The above are, in fact, the last Acts of the reign. In the following years neither Parliament nor Convocation met, and the session of 1547 was brought to an abrupt termination, by the sudden death of the King about a fortnight after its opening, and when its only act had been to pass the bill of attainder against the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Surrey, with his assent to which, on the day before his death, Henry characteristically concluded his reign.

1. Bernard André, Memorials of Henry VII., by Gairdner, p. 414.
2. The story is told at length by Burnet, vol. i. pp. 38-49.
3. See Appendix, Note I.
4. This refers to the first Annates Act.
5. Blunt's Hist. of the Ref. in Eng. Ch. vol. ii. p. 584.
6. Short History, p. 329; Convocation was made to propose the withdrawal of payment, &c.
7. Stubbs, Appendix iv. pp. 88-90.
8. Ib. p. 92.
9. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 92.
10. See Appendix, Note II.
11. Const. Hist. vol. iii. ch. xix. p. 299, and the chapter generally.
12. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 96.
13. See Appendix, Note III.
14. See the Act in extenso in the Eccl. Courts Com. Report, p. 216.
15. P. 218
16. Eccl. Courts Com. Report, vol. i. p. 211.
17. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 110.
18. 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4, s. sv.
19. Froude, vol. iii. p. 67.
20. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 114
21. Ib. p. 116.
22. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 116.
23. These were, Canterbury (Cranmer), York (Lee), Bath (Clerk), Ely (Goodrich), Bangor (Bird), Worcester (Latimer), Durham (Tonstall), Carlisle (Aldrich).
24. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 118.
25. Ib. p. 120.
26. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 118.
27. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 124.
28. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 126.
29. Green, Hist. vol. ii. p. 204.
30. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 127.
31. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 126.
32. Ib. p. 128.
33. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 135.
34. Stubbs, Appendix iv. pp. 131-2.
35. It is a fact, noted by Mr. Green (Hist. vol. ii. p. 219) as not unimportant, that in this session a bill for the abolition of heresies and of certain books infected with false opinions, which was introduced in the Lords, disappeared when it reached the Commons. In fact, the history of the bill is remarkable, for it seems to have been read no less than five times in the Lords, and at last agreed to 'nemine repugnante' in a House which must have been a full one for that time, no less than thirty-six members voting; but, after all, it never became law. Stubbs, Appendix iv. p. 138.