strengthened papal influence. The bishops were largely engaged
in secular business; there was much plurality, and cathedral
and collegiate churches were frequently left to inferior officers
whose lives were unclerical. The clergy were numerous and
drawn from all classes, and humble birth did not debar a man
from attaining the highest positions in the church. Candidates
for holy orders were still examined, but clerical education seems
to have declined. Preaching was rare, partly from neglectfulness
and partly because, in 1401, in order to prevent the spread
of heresy, priests were forbidden to preach without a licence.
While the marriage of the clergy was checked, irregular and
temporary connexions were lightly condoned. Discipline generally
was lax, and exhortations against field-sports, tavern haunting
and other unclerical habits seem to have had little effect.
Monasticism had declined. Papal indulgences and relics were
hawked about chiefly by friars, though these practices were
discountenanced by the bishops. On the other hand, all education
was carried on by the clergy, and religion entered largely into
the daily life of the people, into their gild-meetings, church-ales,
mystery-plays and holidays, as well as into the great events of
family life—baptisms, marriages and deaths. Many stately
churches were built in the prevailing Perpendicular style, often
by efforts in which all classes shared, and many hamlet chapels
supplemented the mother church in scattered parishes. The
revival of classical learning scarcely affected the church at large.
Greek learning was regarded with suspicion by many churchmen,
but the English humanists were orthodox. The movement had
little to do with the coming religious conflicts, which indeed
killed it, save that it awoke in some learned men like Sir Thomas
More a desire for ecclesiastical, though not doctrinal, reform, and
led many to study the New Testament of which Erasmus published
a Greek text and Latin paraphrases.
During the earlier years of the 16th century Lollardism still
existed among the lower classes in towns, and was rife here and
there in country districts. Persecution went on and
martyrdoms are recorded. The old grievances concerning
ecclesiastical exactions remained unabated and
The
Reforma-tion era.
were further strengthened by an ill-founded rumour
that Richard Hunne, a Londoner who had refused to pay a
mortuary, was imprisoned for heresy in the Lollards’ tower, and
was found hanged in his cell in 1514, had been murdered.
Lutheranism affected England chiefly through the surreptitious
importation of Tyndale’s New Testament and heretical books.
In 1521 Henry VIII. wrote a book against Luther in which he
maintained the papal authority, and was rewarded by Leo X.
with the title of Defender of the Faith. Henry, however, whose
will was to himself as the oracles of God, finding that the pope
opposed his intended divorce from Catherine of Aragon, determined
to allow no supremacy in his realm save his own. He
carried out his ecclesiastical policy by parliamentary help.
Parliament was packed, and was skilfully managed; and he had
on his side the popular impatience of ecclesiastical abuses, a new
feeling of national pride which would brook no foreign interference,
the old desire of the laity to lighten their own burdens
by the wealth of the church, and a growing inclination to question
or reject sacerdotal authority. He used these advantages to
forward his policy, and when he met with opposition, enforced his
will as a despot. The parliament of 1529 lasted until 1536; it
broke the bonds of Rome, established royal supremacy over the
English Church, and effected a redistribution of national wealth
at the expense of the spirituality. It began by acts abolishing
ecclesiastical exactions, such as excessive mortuaries and fees for
probate, and by prohibiting pluralities except in stated cases,
application to Rome for licence to evade the act being made
penal. Henry having crushed his minister Cardinal Wolsey,
archbishop of York, declared the whole body of the clergy
involved in a praemunire by their submission to Wolsey’s legatine
authority, and ordered the convocation to purchase pardon by a
large payment, and by acknowledging him as “Protector and
Supreme Head of the English Church and Clergy.” After much
debate, the acknowledgment was made in 1531, with the qualification
“so far as the law of Christ allows.” A “supplication”
against clerical jurisdiction and legislation by convocation was
obtained from the Commons in 1532, and Henry received from
convocation the “submission of the clergy,” surrendering its
legislative power except on royal licence, and consenting to a
revision of the canon law by commissioners to be appointed by the
king. A bill for conditionally withholding the payment of
annates, or first-fruits, to Rome was passed, and Henry took
advantage of the fear of the Roman court lest it should lose these
payments, to obtain without the usual fees bulls promoting
Cranmer to the see of Canterbury in 1533, and thus was enabled
to gain his divorce. Cranmer pronounced his marriage to
Catherine null, and declared him lawfully married to Anne
Boleyn. Clement VII. retorted by excommunicating the king,
but for that Henry cared not. Appeals to Rome were forbidden
by statute, and the council ordained that the pope should
thenceforth only be spoken of as bishop of Rome, as not having
authority in England. In 1534 the restraint of annates was
confirmed by law, all payments to Rome were forbidden, and it
was enacted that, on receiving royal licence to elect, cathedral
chapters must elect bishops nominated by the king. The papal
power was extirpated by statute, parliament at the same time
declaring that neither the king nor kingdom would vary from the
“Catholic faith of Christendom.” The submission of the clergy
was made law. Appeals from the archbishops’ courts were to be
to the king in chancery, and were to be heard by commissioners,
whence arose the Court of Delegates as the court of final appeal
in ecclesiastical cases. The first-fruits and tenths of benefices
were given to the king, and his title as “Supreme Head in earth
of the Church of England” was declared by parliament without
the qualification added by convocation. Fisher, bishop of
Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, lately chancellor, the two most
eminent Englishmen, were beheaded in 1535 on an accusation of
attempting to deprive the king of this title, and some Carthusian
monks suffered a more cruel martyrdom in the same cause.
Meanwhile New Testaments were burnt, and heretics, or reformers,
forced to abjure or, remaining steadfast, were sent to the
stake, for though the heresy law of Henry IV. was repealed,
heresy was still punishable by death, and persecution was not
abated. By breaking the bonds of Rome Henry did not give the
church freedom; he substituted a single despotism for the dual
authority which pope and king had previously exercised over it.
In 1535 Cromwell, the king’s vicar-general, began a visitation of
the monasteries. The reports (comperta) of his commissioners
having been delivered to the king and communicated to parliament
in 1536, parliament declared the smaller monasteries
corrupt, and granted the king all of less value than £200 a year.
A rebellion in Lincolnshire and another in the north, the formidable
Pilgrimage of Grace, followed. The suppression of the greater
houses was effected gradually, surrenders were obtained by
pressure, and three abbots who were reluctant to give up the
possessions of their convents for confiscation were hanged.
Monastic shrines and treasuries were sacked and the spoil sent to
the king, to whom parliament granted all the houses, their lands
and possessions. Of the enormous wealth thus gained Henry
spent a part on national defence, a little on the foundation of the
bishoprics of Westminster, dissolved in 1550, Bristol, Chester,
Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough, and gave the lands to men
either useful to or favoured by himself, or sold them to rich
purchasers. In 1536 he dictated the belief and ceremonial of the
church by issuing Ten Articles which were subscribed by convocation.
This first formulary of the English Church as separate
from Rome did not contravene Catholic doctrine, though it
showed the influence of Lutheran models. Another exposition of
Anglican doctrine was made in the Institution of a Christian Man
or “Bishops’ book,” in some respects more likely to satisfy those
attached to the tenets of Rome, in others, as in the distinct
repudiation of purgatory and the declaration that salvation
depended solely on the merits of Christ, showing an advance.
It was published in 1537 with Henry’s sanction but not by
authority. In that year licence was granted for the sale of a
translation of the Bible, and in 1538 another version called
Matthew’s Bible, was ordered to be kept in all churches (see
