Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

abbots, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks, canons,

friars, pardoners, and summoners. And who is able to number this idle,

ruinous sort, which (setting all labor aside) have begged so

importunately that they have gotten into their hands more than a third

part of all your Realm? The goodliest lordships, manors, lands, and

territories are theirs. Besides this, they had the tenth part of all

corn, meadow, pasture, grass, wool, colts, calves, lambs, pigs, geese,

and chickens.... Yea, and they look so narrowly upon their profits

that the poor wives must be countable to them of every tenth egg, or

else she getteth not her rights at Easter.... Who is she that will set

her hand to work to get 3d. a day, and may have at least 20d. a day to

sleep an hour with a friar, a monk, or a priest? `06243

-

The nobles and merchants might have admitted some exaggeration in

the indictment, but they thought it led to a charming conclusion-

the secularization of Church property. "These lords," wrote the French

ambassador Jean du Bellay, "intend... to impeach... the Church and

take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in

cipher, for they proclaim it openly.... I expect the priests will

never have the Great Seal"- i.e., never head the government- "again,

and that in this Parliament they will have terrible alarms." `06244

Wolsey had held off this attack on Church property, but his fall

left the clergy powerless except through the (declining) faith of

the people; and the papal authority that might have protected them

by its prestige, its interdicts, or its allies, was now the main

object of royal wrath, and the football of Imperial politics. Custom

required that legislation affecting the Church in England should be

passed, or require confirmation, by the Convocation of the clergy

under the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Could this assembly

assuage the anger of the King and check the anticlericalism of

Parliament?

The battle was opened by the Commons. It drew up an address to the

King, professing doctrinal orthodoxy, but strongly criticizing the

clergy. This famous "Act of Accusation" charged that Convocation

made laws without the consent of King or Parliament, seriously

limiting the liberty of laymen, and subjecting them to heavy

censures or fines; that the clergy exacted payment for the

administration of the sacraments; that the bishops gave benefices to

"certain young folks, calling them their nephews," and despite the

youth or ignorance of such appointees; that the episcopal courts

greedily exploited their right to levy fees and fines; that these

courts arrested persons, and imprisoned them, without stating the

charges against them; that they indicted and severely punished

laymen upon suspicion of the slightest heresy; and the document

concluded by begging the King for the "reformation" of these

ills. `06245 Henry, who may have been privy to the composition of this

address, submitted its main points to the Convocation, and asked for

an answer. The bishops admitted some abuses, which they attributed

to occasional individuals; they affirmed the justice of their

courts; and they looked to the pious King, who had so nobly rebuked

Luther, to aid them in suppressing heresy. Then, grievously

mistaking the royal temper, they added warlike words:

-

Forasmuch as we repute and take our authority of making the laws

to be grounded upon the Scriptures of God and the determination of

Holy Church... we may not submit the execution of our charges and

duty, certainly prescribed to us by God, to your Highness'

assent.... With all humility we therefore beseech your Grace... to

maintain and defend such laws and ordinances as we... by the authority

of God, shall for His honor make to the edification of virtue and

the maintaining of Christ's faith. `06246

-

The issue was joined. Henry did not meet it at once. His first

interest was to get Parliament's approval for a strange request-

that he be excused from repaying the loans that had been made to him

by his subjects. *06053 The Commons protested and consented. Three

other bills were introduced, which aimed to check the authority of the

clergy over the probate of wills, their exaction of death taxes, and

their holding of plural benefices. These bills were passed by the

Commons; they were passionately opposed by the bishops and abbots

sitting in the Upper House; they were amended, but in essence they

were made law. Parliament adjourned on December 17.

During the summer of 1530 the King received some costly

encouragement. Thomas Cranmer, a doctor of divinity at Cambridge,

suggested to Henry that the major universities of Europe should be

polled on the question whether a pope could permit a man to marry

his brother's widow. A merry game of rival bribery ensued: Henry's

agents scattered money to induce negative judgments; Charles's

agents used money or threats to secure affirmative replies. `06247 The

Italian answers were divided; the Lutheran universities refused any

comfort to the Defender of the Faith; but the University of Paris,

under pressure by Francis, `06248 gave the answer so doubly dear to

the King. Oxford and Cambridge, after receiving stern letters from the

government, approved Henry's right to have his marriage annulled.

So strengthened, he issued through his attorney general (December

1530) a notice that the government intended to prosecute, as violators

of the Praemunire Statute, all clergymen who had recognized Wolsey's

legatine power. When Parliament and Convocation reassembled (January

16, 1531), the King's agents happily announced to the clergy that

the prosecution would be withdrawn if they would confess their guilt

and pay a fine of L118,000 ($11,800,000?). `06249 They protested

that they had never wanted Wolsey to have such power, and had

recognized him as legate only because the King had done so in the

trial of his suit before Wolsey and Campeggio. They were quite

right, of course, but Henry sorely needed money. They mournfully

agreed to raise the sum from their congregations. Feeling his oats,

the King now demanded that the clergy should acknowledge him as "the

protector and only supreme head of the Church and clergy of

England"- i.e., that they should end their allegiance to the Pope.

They offered a dozen compromises, tried a dozen ambiguous phrases;

Henry was merciless, and insisted on Yes or No. Finally (February

10, 1531) Archbishop Warham, now eighty-one, reluctantly proposed

the King's formula, with a saving clause- "so far as the law of Christ

permits." The Convocation remained silent; the silence was taken as

consent; the formula became law. Mollified, the King now allowed the

bishops to prosecute heretics.

Parliament and Convocation adjourned again (March 30, 1531). In July

Henry left Catherine at Windsor, never to see her again. Soon

thereafter she was removed to Ampthill, while Princess Mary was lodged

at Richmond. The jewels that Catherine had worn as Queen were required

of her by Henry, who gave them to Anne Boleyn. `062410 Charles V

protested to Clement, who addressed a brief to the King (January 25,

1532) rebuking him for adultery, and exhorting him to dismiss Anne and

keep Catherine as his lawful queen until decision should be given on

his application for annulment. Henry ignored the rebuke, and pursued

his romance. About this time he wrote one of his tender missives to

Anne:

-

Myne awne Sweetheart, this shall be to advertise you of the great

ellingness [loneliness] that I find here since your departing; for,

I ensure you, me thinketh the Tyme longer since your departing now

last than I was wont to do a whole Fortnight; I think your Kindness

and my Fervence of love causeth it.... But now that I am coming toward

you, me thinketh my Pains by half released... in wishing my self

(especially an evening) in my Sweethearts Armes whose pretty Duckys

[breasts] I trust shortly to kysse. Writne with the Hand of him that

was, is, and shall be yours by his will, H.R. `062411

-

When Parliament and Convocation reconvened (January 15, 1532)

Henry secured from all four houses further anticlerical legislation:

that clerics under the degree of subdeacon, when charged with

felony, should be tried by civil courts; that fees and fines in

ecclesiastical courts should be reduced; that ecclesiastical death

dues and probate fees should be lowered or abolished; that the annates

(the first year's revenues of a newly appointed prelate) should no

longer be paid to the Pope; and that the transfer of English funds

to Rome for dispensations, indulgences, and other papal services

should cease. A sly hint was sent to the Curia that the annates

would be restored to the Pope if the marriage with Catherine should be

annulled.

By this time a majority of the bishops had been won over to the view

that they would not lose in authority or revenue if the English Church

were independent of Rome. In March 1532, the Convocation announced its

readiness to separate from the papacy: "May it please your Grace to

cause the said unjust exactions to cease.... And in case the Pope will

make process against this realm for the attaining these annates... may

it please your Highness to ordain in the present Parliament that the

obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See

of Rome." `062412 And on May 15 the Convocation presented to the

King a pledge to submit all its subsequent legislation to a committee-

half laymen, half clergymen- empowered to veto any ordinances which it

should judge injurious to the realm. So, in this epochal

"Reformation Parliament" and Convocation the Church of England was

born, and became an arm and subject of the state.

On May 16 Thomas More, having failed to stem the anticlerical

tide, resigned as chancellor, and retired to his home. In August

Archbishop Warham died, after dictating a deathbed repudiation of

the Convocation's submission to the King. Henry replaced More with

Thomas Audley, and Warham with Thomas Cranmer. The revolution

proceeded. In February 1533, Parliament enacted a "Statute of

Appeals," by which all litigation that had formerly been sent for

judgment to Rome was henceforth to be decided "in the spiritual and

temporal courts within the Realm, without regard to any...

foreign... inhibition, excommunication, or interdict." `062413

On January 15, 1533, Henry married Anne, who was already four months

pregnant. `062414 The King had now urgent reasons for the annulment of

his union with Catherine. Having made, without result, another

appeal to the Pope, he secured from Convocation an approval of his

"divorce" (April 1533); on May 23 Cranmer, as Archbishop of

Canterbury, declared the marriage with Catherine unlawful and void;

and on May 28 he pronounced Anne to be Henry's lawful wife. Three days

later Anne, in brocade and jewels, rode to her coronation as Queen

of England in a stately pageant designed by tradition and Hans Holbein

the Younger. Amid the exaltation she noticed the disapproving

silence of the crowd, and she may have wondered how long her uneasy

head would wear the crown. Pope Clement pronounced the new marriage

null, and its future offspring illegitimate, and excommunicated the

King (July 11, 1533). On September 7 Elizabeth was born. Charles's

ambassador reported to him that the King's mistress had given birth to

a bastard. `062415

Parliament, which had adjourned on May 4, resumed its sittings on

January 15, 1534. Annates and other papal revenues were now definitely

appropriated to the Crown, and the appointment of bishops became in

law, as already in practice, a prerogative of the King. Indictments

for heresy were removed from clerical to civil jurisdiction.

In 1533 Elizabeth Barton, a nun of Kent, announced that she had

received orders from God to condemn the King's remarriage, and had

been allowed to see the place that was being prepared for Henry in

hell. The royal court put her through a severe examination, and drew

from her a confession that her divine revelations were impostures, and

that she had permitted others to use them in a conspiracy to overthrow

the King. `062416 She and six "accomplices" were tried by the House of

Lords, were judged guilty, and were executed (May 5, 1534). Bishop

Fisher was accused of having known of the conspiracy and of having

failed to warn the government; it was also charged that he and

Catherine had been privy to a plan, conceived by Chapuys and

discouraged by Charles, for an invasion of England to coincide with an

insurrection of Catherine's supporters. `062417 Fisher denied the

charges, but remained under suspicion of treason.

Henry's most aggressive agent in these affairs was Thomas

Cromwell. Born in 1485, the son of a Putney blacksmith, he grew up

in poverty and hardship, and wandered for years, as practically a

vagabond, through France and Italy. Back in England, he entered the

textile business, became a moneylender, and made a fortune. He

served Wolsey faithfully for five years, defended him in adversity,

and earned Henry's respect for his industry and loyalty. He was made

successively chancellor of the exchequer, master of the rolls, and

(May 1534), secretary to the King. From 1531 to 1540 he was the

chief administrator of the government as an obedient executor of the

royal will. His aristocratic enemies, who despised him as a parvenu

symbol of their rising rivals, the businessmen, accused him of

practicing the principles of Machiavelli's Prince, of accepting

bribes, of selling offices, of inordinately loving wealth and power.

His aim, which he hardly sought to disguise, was to make the King

supreme over every phase of English life, and to finance an absolute

monarchy with the confiscated wealth of the Church. In pursuing his

purposes he showed consummate and unscrupulous ability, multiplied his

fortune, and won every battle except the last.

It was probably at his suggestion and through his manipulation

that Henry, disturbed by increasing hostility among the people,

persuaded Parliament to pass an Act of Succession (March 30, 1534)

which declared the marriage with Catherine invalid, transformed Mary

into a bastard, named Elizabeth heiress to the throne unless Anne

should have a son, and made it a capital crime for any person to

question the validity of Anne's marriage to Henry, or the legitimacy

of their offspring. All Englishmen and women were by the Act

required to take an oath of loyalty to the King. Royal

commissioners, supported by soldiery, rode through the country,

entered homes, castles, monasteries, and convents, and exacted the

oath. Only a few refused it; among these were Bishop Fisher and Thomas

More. They offered to swear to the succession, but not to the other

contents of the Act. They were committed to the Tower. Finally the

Parliament voted the decisive Statute of Supremacy (November 11,

1534); this reaffirmed the King's sovereignty over Church and state in

England, christened the new national Church Ecclesia Anglicana,

and gave the King all those powers over morals, organization,

heresy, creed, and ecclesiastical reform which had heretofore belonged

to the Church. The Act made it treason to speak or write of the King

as a usurper, tyrant, schismatic, heretic, or infidel. A new oath

was required of all bishops, that they would accept the civil and

ecclesiastical supremacy of the King without the reservation "So far

as the law of Christ allows," and would never in the future consent to

any resumption of papal authority in England.

All the forces of the government were deployed to paralyze the

opposition to these unprecedented decrees. The secular clergy

generally pretended to submit. Many monks and friars, owning a

direct allegiance to the Pope, shied away from the oaths, and their

resistance shared in the King's later decision to close the

monastries. Henry and Cromwell were especially incensed by the

obstinacy of the friars in the Charterhouse, a Carthusian monastery in

London. Three Carthusian priors came to Cromwell to explain their

reluctance to acknowledge any layman as head of the Church in England;

Cromwell sent them to the Tower. On April 26, 1535, they, with another

friar and a secular priest, were tried by the King's judges, who

were for pardoning them; but Cromwell, fearing that lenience would

encourage wider resistance, demanded a verdict of guilty, and the

judges yielded. On May 3 all five men, still refusing to accept the

Act of Supremacy, were dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, and one after

another was hanged, cut down alive, disemboweled, and

dismembered. `062418 One severed arm was hung over the entrance arch

of the Charterhouse to instruct the remaining friars, but none

withdrew his refusal. Three were put in the Tower; they were

fastened to uprights by irons around their necks and feet, and were

forced to stand in that position for seventeen days, fed, but never

loosed for any natural need. The remaining Carthusians, still

obdurate, were dispersed among other monasteries, with the exception

of ten who were imprisoned in Newgate; nine of these died of "prison

fever and filth." `062419

Henry was now the sole judge of what, in religion and politics,

the English people were to believe. Since his theology was still

Catholic in every respect except the papal power, he made it a

principle to persecute impartially Protestant critics of Catholic

dogma, and Catholic critics of his ecclesiastical supremacy. Indeed,

the prosecution of heresy had continued, and would continue, all

through his reign. In 1531, by order of Chancellor More, Thomas Bilney

was burned for speaking against religious images, pilgrimages, and

prayers for the dead. James Bainham was arrested for holding that

Christ was only spiritually present in the Eucharist; he was

tortured to draw from him the names of other heretics; he held fast,

and was burned at Smithfield in April 1532. Two others were burned

in that year, and the Bishop of Lincoln offered an indulgence of forty

days to good Christians who would carry a faggot to feed the

fire. `062420

This reign of terror reached its apex in the prosecution of Fisher

and More. Erasmus had described the Bishop of Rochester as "a person

loaded with every virtue." `062421 But Fisher had himself been

guilty of persecution, and he had joined the Spanish ambassador in

urging Charles to invade England and depose Henry. `062422 In law he

had committed treason to the state, which could not excuse him on

the plea that he had been loyal to the Church. The new pontiff, Paul

III, made the mistake of naming the imprisoned Bishop a cardinal.

Though Fisher declared that he had not sought the honor, Henry

interpreted the appointment as a challenge. On June 17, 1535, the

Bishop, now in his eightieth year, was given a final trial, and

again refused to sign the oath acknowledging Henry as head of the

English Church. On June 22 he was led to a block on Tower Hill; "a

long, lean body," an eyewitness described him, "nothing in a manner

but skin and bones, so that the most part that there saw him

marveled to see any man, bearing life, to be so far consumed." `062423

On the scaffold he received an offer of pardon if he would take the

oath; he refused. His severed head was hung upon London Bridge; it

might now, if it could, said Henry, go to Rome and get its

cardinal's hat. `062424

But a more troublesome recusant remained.

II. THE UTOPIAN

-

The father of Thomas More was a successful lawyer and prominent

judge. Thomas received his education at St. Anthony's School in

London; was farmed out as a page to Archbishop Morton, and was by

him confirmed in orthodoxy, integrity, and a cheerful piety. Morton

predicted, we are told, that "this child here waiting at table... will

prove a marvelous man." `062425 At fifteen the youth went to Oxford,

and was soon so fascinated with classical literature that his

father, to save the youth from becoming an impecunious scholar, pulled

him out of the university and sent him to study law in London.

Oxford and Cambridge still aimed at preparing students for an

ecclesiastical career; New Inn and Lincoln's Inn trained the men who

were now taking over from the clergy the government of England. Only

eight members of the House of Commons in the Reform Parliament of

1529-37 had received a university education, while a rising proportion

were lawyers and businessmen.

In 1499, aged twenty-one, More met Erasmus, and was charmed into

humanism. Their friendship is one of the fragrant essences of the

time. They were both given to a measured merriment, and salted their

studies with laughing satire. They shared a distaste for Scholastic

philosophy, whose subtleties, said More, were as profitable as milking

a he-goat into a sieve. `062426 They both hoped for a reform of the

Church from within, avoiding a violent disruption of religious unity

and historical continuity. More was not the peer of Erasmus in

learning or tolerance; indeed, his customary gentleness and generosity

were sometimes interrupted by strong passions, even by bigotry; in

controversy he stooped now and then, like nearly all his

contemporaries, to fierce invective and bitter vituperation. `062427

But he was the superior of Erasmus in courage, sense of honor, and

devotion to a cause. The letters that they exchanged are a precious

testimony to the graces of an ungracious age. "Farewell," ends one

of More's, "sweetest Erasmus, dearer to me than my eyes!" `062428

He was one of the most religious men of the century, shaming with

his laic piety the wordliness of ecclesiastics like Wolsey. At

twenty-three, when he was already advanced in the study of law, he

thought of becoming a priest. He gave public lectures (1501) on

Augustine's City of God, and such older pundits as Grocyn sat in his

audience. Though he criticized the monks for shirking their rule, he

fervently admired the sincere monastic state, and sometimes

regretted that he had not chosen it. For a long time he wore a

horsehair shirt next to his skin; now and then it drew enough blood to

visibly stain his clothing. He believed in miracles and saintly

legends, therapeutic relics, religious images, and

pilgrimages, `062429 and wrote devotional works to the medieval tune

that life is a prison, and that the aim of religion and philosophy

should be to prepare us for death. He married twice, and brought up

several children in a Christian discipline at once sober and cheerful,

with frequent prayer, mutual love, and complete trust in Providence.

The "Manor House" in Chelsea, to which he moved in 1523, was famous

for its library and gallery, and its gardens extending for a hundred

yards down to the Thames.

At twenty-six (1504) he was chosen a burgess delegate to Parliament.

There he argued so successfully against a measure proposed by Henry

VII that the King briefly imprisoned and heavily fined the senior More

as a devious means of teaching the young orator the comforts of

conformity. At the close of that Parliament More returned to private

life, and prospered in the practice of law. In 1509 he was persuaded

to take the office of undersheriff in the City- i.e., ancient London

north of the Thames. His functions, suiting his temperament, were

judicial rather than adventurous. His judgments earned him wide renown

for wisdom and impartiality, and his polite refusal of presents from

litigants violated time-dishonored precedents that were still vigorous

in Francis Bacon's day. Soon he was back in Parliament; and by 1515 he

was Speaker of the House of Commons.

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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