Part 10 (2/2)
Henry VIII too regarded himself as a successor of Constantine the Great, who had given laws to the Church. True, said he, kings are sons of the Church, but not the less are they supreme over Christian men.
Of the doctrines which came from Germany none found greater acceptance with him than this--that every man must be obedient to the higher powers. We possess Tyndale's book in which these principles are set forth; by Anne Boleyn's means it came into Henry's hands. That Pope Clement summoned him formally before his judgment-seat, he declared to be an offence to the Kingly Majesty. Was a Prince, he exclaims, to submit himself to a creature whom G.o.d had made subject to him; to humble himself before a man who, in opposition to G.o.d and Right, wished to oppress him? It would be a reversal of the ordinance of G.o.d.[116]
Whilst we follow the questions which here come into discussion--on the relations of Church and State, the rights of nations and kings--questions of infinite importance for this as for all other states, we almost lose sight of the affair of the Divorce, which had been the original cause of quarrel, and which had meanwhile moved on in the direction given it once for all. Pope Clement restrained himself as much as possible, he still more than once made advances to the King and offered him conciliatory terms; but the King had already gone too far in his separation from Rome to be able to accept them. At the beginning of 1533 he celebrated his marriage with Anne Boleyn privately. He had once, when he was still waiting for the Pope's decision, tried to influence it by favourable opinions of learned theologians.[117] With this view he had applied to the most distinguished universities in Italy and Germany, in France and in England itself; and managed to obtain a large number of decisions, by which the Pope's right of dispensation was denied; and this in spite of the constant efforts in various ways of the Imperial agents; even the two mother-universities, Bologna and Paris, had declared in his favour. He protested that he had been thereby enabled in his conscience to free himself from the yoke of an unlawful union, bordering on incest, and to proceed to another marriage. But all the more urgent was it that the legality of this marriage should be recognised according to the forms at that time lawfully valid. He no longer wished for a recognition from the Pope; he laid the question before the two Convocations of the English Church-provinces. For the general course of Church history we must admit it to be an event of the highest significance, that they dared to p.r.o.nounce the dispensation of Pope Julius II invalid according to G.o.d's law. The authority hitherto regarded as the expression of G.o.d's will on earth was found guilty, by the representatives of the Church of one particular country, of transgressing that will. It now followed that the King's marriage, concluded on the strength of that dispensation, was declared by the Archbishop's court at Canterbury null and void, and invalid from the beginning. Catharine was henceforth to be treated no longer as Queen but only as still Princess-dowager.
She was unable to realise the things that were happening around her.
That she was expected to renounce her rank as Queen awoke in her quite as much astonishment as anger. 'For she had not come to England,' she said, 'on mercantile business at a venture, but according to the will of the two venerated kings now dead: she had married King Henry according to the decision of the Holy Father at Rome: she was the anointed and crowned Queen of England; were she to give up her t.i.tle, she would have been a concubine these twenty-four years, and her daughter a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; she would be false to her conscience, to her own soul, her confessor would not be able to absolve her.' She became more and more absorbed in strict Catholic religious observances. She rose soon after midnight, to be present at the ma.s.s; under her dress she wore the habit of the third order of S. Francis; she confessed twice and fasted twice a week; her reading consisted of the legends of the saints. So she lived on for two years more, undisturbed by the ecclesiastico-political statutes which pa.s.sed in the English Parliament. Till the very end she regarded herself as the true Queen of England.
Immediately after the sentence on Catharine followed Anne's coronation, which was performed with all the ancient ceremonial, all the more carefully attended to because she was not born a princess. On the Thursday before Whitsuntide she was escorted from Greenwich by the Mayor and the Trades of London, in splendidly adorned barges, with musical instruments playing, till she was greeted by the cannon of the Tower. The Sat.u.r.day after she went in procession through the City to Westminster. The King had created eighteen knights of the Order of the Bath. These in their new decorations, and a great part of the n.o.bility, which felt itself honoured in Anne's elevation, accompanied her:[118] she sat on a splendid seat, supported by and slung between horses: the canopy over her was borne by the barons of the Cinque Ports; her hair was uncovered, she was charming as always, and (it appears) not without a sense of high good fortune. On Sunday she was escorted to Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops, the Abbot of Westminster and twelve other abbots in full canonicals: she was in purple, her ladies in scarlet, for so old custom required; the Duke of Suffolk bore the crown before her, which was placed on her head by the hands of the archbishop. n.o.bles and commons greeted her with emulous devotion, the ecclesiastics joined in; they expected from her an heir to England.--Not a son, but a daughter, Elizabeth, did she then bear beneath her heart.
Anne's coronation was at the same time the complete expression of the revolt of the nation collectively from the Roman See: it is noteworthy that Pope Clement VII, in his all-calculating and temporising policy, even then reserved to himself the last word. As he had once yielded to the Emperor, to conclude his peace with him, so now again--for he did not wish to be entirely dependent on him--he had entered into close relations with King Francis, who on his side saw in the continuance of his union with England one of the conditions of his position in Europe. The political weight of England reacted indirectly on the Pope: he indeed annulled Archbishop Cranmer's decision, but he could not yet bring himself to take a further step, often as he had promised the Emperor and pledged himself in his agreements to do so.[119]
Charles V supplied his amba.s.sador at Rome with yet another means to advance (as he expressed himself) the decision of the proceedings with the Pope and with the Holy See--for he made a distinction between them. The Pope inquired of him what, after this had ensued, would then be done to carry it out. The Emperor answered, his Holiness should do what justice pledged him to do, what he could not omit if he would fulfil his duty to G.o.d and the world, and maintain his own importance; this must come first, the Church must use all its own means before it called in the temporal arm: but if the matter came to that point, he would not fail to do his part; to declare himself explicitly beforehand might excite religious scruples.[120] And however much the policy of the Pope might waver, there could be no doubt about the decision of the Rota. On the 23 March 1534 one of the auditors, Simonetta, bishop of Pesaro, made a statement on the subject in the consistory of the cardinals: there were only three among them who demanded a further delay: all the rest joined without any more consideration in the decision that Henry's marriage with Catharine was perfectly lawful, and their children legitimate and possessed of full rights. The Imperialists held this to be a great victory, they made the city ring with their cries of 'the Empire and Spain':[121] yet even then the French did not give up the hope of bringing the Pope to another mind. But meanwhile in England the last steps were already taken.
King Henry reckons it as honourable to himself that he had not yielded to the offer of the Roman Court, made to him indirectly, to decide in his favour, but had set himself against its usurped jurisdiction, without being influenced by the proposal,[122] not for himself alone but in the interest of all kings. Yet once more had he laid the question before learned ecclesiastics, whether the Pope of Rome had any authority in England by divine right; as the University of Oxford declares, their theologians had searched for this through the books of Holy Scripture and its most approved interpreters; they had compared the places, conferred with each other on them and come at last to the conclusion, to answer the King's question unreservedly in the negative. The Cambridge scholars and both Convocations declared themselves in the same sense. On this the Parliament had no scruple in abrogating piece by piece the hierarchic-Romish order of things; it was nothing but a revocable right which they had hitherto borne with.
The Annates were transferred to the crown; never more was an English bishop to receive his pallium from Rome. It was made penal to apply for dispensing faculties; with their abolition the fees usually paid for them also ceased. The oldest token of the devotion of the Anglo-Saxon race to the Roman See, the Peter's penny, was definitely abolished. Care was taken that for the appeal in the last resort, hitherto made to the Roman courts, there should be a similar court at home. On the other hand the King granted a greater freedom in the election of bishops, at least in its outward forms. The existing laws against heretics were confirmed, though those independent proceedings of the bishops which had been usual in the times of the Lancasters received some limitation. For the episcopal const.i.tution and the old doctrine were to be retained: the wish was to establish an Anglo-Catholic Church under the supremacy of the crown. The King added to his t.i.tles the designation of 'Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England immediately under G.o.d.' The Parliament awarded him the right of Visitation over the Church in reference to abuses and even to errors, as well as the right of reforming them. For the exercise moreover of the Papal authority, which so far pa.s.sed over to him, he had an example before him which he had only to follow. Wolsey for a series of years, as Legate of the Pope and then as his Vicar General, had administered the English Church by means of English courts: the unity of the English common-weal had been represented in his twofold power as legate and first minister; practically it was no violent change when the King himself now appointed a Vicar General who, empowered by him, exercised this authority without any reference to the Pope. It was an a.s.sistant of Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, who was at the same time Keeper of the Great Seal, who regulated the management of these affairs in a way not altogether new to him. From this point of view Wolsey represents exactly the man of the transition, who occupied the intermediate position in nationalising the English Church.
Though Henry VIII did not always follow in his father's footsteps, he was yet his genuine successor in the work he began. What the first Tudor achieved in the temporal domain, viz. the exclusion of foreign influence, that the second extended to spiritual affairs. The great question now was, whether the conflicting elements, in themselves independent but ceaselessly agitated by their connexion with the rest of Europe, would continue loyal to the idea of the common-weal; then even their opposition might become a new impulse and help to perfect the power of the State and the Const.i.tution.
NOTES:
[103] 'Quasi che quello, che minacciano, non fosse prima a danno loro.' So it is said in a letter of Sanga, April 1529, Lettere di diversi autori p. 69.
[104] 'Pour ce qu'il n'est encoires temps qu'il meure que premierement l'on n'ayt entendu et veriffie plusieurs choses.' Chapuis to Charles V, 25 Oct. 1529, in Bradford, Correspondence of the Emperor Charles V, p. 291.
[105] A letter printed in Fiddes (Life of Wolsey, Records II. p. 115, no 58), adds to the laconic parliamentary notices the desirable explanation: 'the knights being of the King's council, the King's servants and gentlemen ... were long time spoken with and made to see (a misprint for ”say”) yea, it may fortune, contrary to their heart.'
[106] Giustiniani: Four Years, I. 162. 'They see that their treasure is spent in vain, and consequently loud murmurs and discontent prevail through the kingdom.'
[107] 'The only head sovereign lord and protector of both the said parties, your subjects spiritual and temporal.' Pet.i.tion of the Commons 1529, in Froude, History of England i. 200.
[108] Indictment in Fiddes, Life of Wolsey p. 504.
[109] 'Pro domino rege, de recuperatione.' Ibid. Collections no. 103.
[110] Falier: 'cominci a machinar contra la corona con S. Sta.'
[111] Pallavicino, Concilio di Trento III, XIV, V, from a Roman diary.
[112] Original accounts in Burnet iii. 52, 53.
[113] Proceedings in Burnet, History of the Reformation i. 117. Strype had already remarked its difference from the original demands.
[114] Matters to be proposed in Convocation (in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials i. 215.) 'That the King's Majesty hath as well the care of the souls of his subjects as their bodies, and may by the law of G.o.d by his Parliament make laws touching and concerning as well the one as the other.'
[115] Facsimile in Ellis's Original Letters, Ser. ii. vol i. But this alteration cannot have taken place at the beginning of his government.
This would presuppose all the results won by so much effort. The handwriting too is not that of a boy, but of a grown man.
[116] Instruction for Rochefort, State Papers vii. 427.
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