Part 10 (1/2)
His absorbing aim was to magnify England and the King of England in the eyes of Europe: nor was personal ambition lacking, but it was subordinate.
That he desired the popedom is clear, and that Henry desired it for him; but he was above the temptation of allowing that desire to dominate his national aims, and had he achieved it, he would have regarded the alliance of the Ecclesiastical Power with England as the real prize secured. His personal weight in the Counsels of Europe would hardly have been increased; and he cared more for Power than for the appearance of it, though he had a possibly exaggerated perception of the practical value of magnificence in securing both national and personal prestige. In part at least this was the cause of that habitual display which, while impressing, also roused the anger of the n.o.bles, who regarded him as an upstart, and of the satirists of ecclesiastical ostentation and luxury. Secure in the confidence of the King, he never attempted to conciliate either popular sentiment or the rivals whom he deposed.
But at all times, if he magnified his own office, it was as the King's right hand. If the King's will, even in opposition to his own, necessitated unpopular measures, he carried those measures out, and took the odium for them on his own head, preserving his master's popularity at the price of his own. He ruled the country on autocratic principles, and the increase of his power was the increase also of the King's. And the King rewarded him after his kind.
But for the all-absorbing interest of diplomacy, his vast abilities as an administrator and organiser might have achieved great things. He would at least have pruned ecclesiastical abuses; and would have forced upon the clergy as an ecclesiastic those reforms which they were always on the verge of introducing when they found themselves antic.i.p.ated by the drastic action of the temporal Power. Reform was the inevitable corollary of Education, and the development of Education was of all schemes the nearest to Wolsey's heart. Yet whether, if the Divorce question had never arisen, he would have played an effective part in the Reformation is open to doubt, for at bottom the Puritan movement in these islands, the Lutheran movement, and the Counter-reformation, were all the outcome or expression of Moral ideals, not of state-craft; and for Wolsey morals were subordinate to state-craft.
It is probable that in any case the a.s.sertion in England by the State of its supremacy over the Church would only have been deferred; but Wolsey might have deferred it. As it was, Henry willed otherwise. The great statesman, failing to carry out his master's demands, was hurled from power. The battle of the Reformation was to be fought under other captains.
NOTE.
The term ”Divorce” has been employed above, because, although a misnomer, it is universally applied. Properly a divorce is the cancellation of a legally contracted marriage. What Henry sought was a _declaration of nullity_--that no valid marriage had ever taken place.
CHAPTER VIII
HENRY VIII (iv) 1529-33--THE BREACH WITH ROME
[Sidenote: 1529 No revolt as yet]
It will have been observed that when Wolsey found that the divorce was inevitable, his energies were concentrated on the single purpose of securing it under papal authority. For this he had two reasons--one, that without that authority the King's act would appear in all its arbitrariness, causing grave scandal: the other that if that authority were refused, he foresaw the cleavage between England and Rome which did eventually take place. Apart however from the divorce, there had not been up to the time of Wolsey's fall any hint of an opinion in high places that such a cleavage was _per se_ desirable or desired--although both Wolsey himself and Gardiner had given Clement fair warning that Henry was likely to reconsider the papal claims altogether unless the Pope complied with his wishes. The revocation of the cause to Rome immediately brought the execution of this threat into the sphere of practical politics.
In the second place there had been no tendency to encourage or allow deviations from recognised orthodox doctrine. The new criticism had been so far admitted as to produce a rigid section and a liberal section among the orthodox, such leading prelates as Wolsey himself, Warham, Fox, Fisher, and Tunstal, all favouring the new learning in various degrees, and being supported therein by such learned laymen as Sir Thomas More. Their toleration however had not extended to anything censurable as heresy, and their att.i.tude had been somewhat stiffened by the course of the Lutheran revolt on the Continent. The increased licence within the Empire, following the edict of Spires in 1528, led to an increased activity in the suppression of heretics and heretical publications in England, first under Wolsey and then under his successor in the Chancellors.h.i.+p.
[Sidenote: Growth of anti-clericalism]
In a third direction however, though not much had been done in the way of measures, an _anti-clerical_ party had been growing up: a party which sought to diminish clerical jurisdiction, clerical privileges, and clerical emoluments. Among the ecclesiastics themselves there were not a few who desired to improve clerical administration from within, but without diminution of ecclesiastical authority; the anti-clericals were laymen who wished the reforms to be forced on the Church from outside, reducing ecclesiastical authority in the process. These two policies were in direct opposition, seeing that antagonism to Wolsey--emphatically a reformer of the prior cla.s.s--was the leading motive with the n.o.bility who headed the second cla.s.s; while the Commons in general desired primarily to be freed from the exactions by which the clergy benefited, and from which they did not believe the clergy would of their own initiative cut themselves off. Wolsey had begun the internal amendment, by his visitation and suppression of the smallest monasteries and the appropriation of ecclesiastical property to educational purposes, and by some subst.i.tution of the superior organisation of the legatine court for that of the Ordinaries; but the latter step had been cancelled by his fall and by the ominous appeal to the statute of Praemunire against legatine jurisdiction. On the other hand, the anti-clerical action had been practically confined so far to the modifications as to Benefit of Clergy; unless we include the publication of pamphlets and rhymes attacking the ecclesiastical body in general, or Wolsey in particular as the incarnation of their shortcomings.
Some years were still to elapse before any material changes from orthodox theological doctrine were to be entertained. But in 1529, the suspension of the Trial was forthwith followed by the adoption of a policy--as yet only provisional--setting aside the Pope's authority; and the a.s.sembly of Parliament in November was marked by an immediate attack on ecclesiastical abuses.
[Sidenote: Thomas Cranmer]
In the last six months of this year the King discovered two instruments consummately adapted for executing his will. It appears that the idea of obtaining the opinions of the Doctors at the English Universities had already been mooted, and that one of those selected [Footnote: Strype, _Memorials of Cranmer_. Hook, _Life of Cranmer_.] at Cambridge was Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholars.h.i.+p subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent line; a man intended to be a student and forced by an unkind fate to a.s.sume the role of a man of action.
Such a character, brought under the direct influence of a powerful will and a magnetic personality, is readily led to see everything as it is desired that he should see it, and at the worst to differ from the master-mind only with submission.
[Sidenote: Appeal to the universities]
When Campeggio suspended the sittings of the Commission the, King withdrew to Waltham Cross. Steven Gardiner and Foxe the King's almoner, who were in his suite, met Cranmer who had left Cambridge on account of an outbreak of the sweating sickness. They had, as was natural, a conversation on ”the King's affair”; when Cranmer propounded the theory that if the Universities of Europe--that is, the qualified divines--gave it as their opinion that the union with Katharine had been contrary to the Divine Law, the King might follow the dictates of his conscience and p.r.o.nounce the marriage null without recognising Papal jurisdiction. This was clearly quite a different thing from producing the judgment of the Doctors merely as an expert opinion which must carry weight with the Judge at Rome. It was practically an a.s.sertion that the Pope's judgment was not of higher authority than the King's; an answer to a question as to jurisdiction; a suggestion of replying to the Pope's revocation of the case by a counter-revocation. Foxe reported the conversation to Henry, who caught at the new method of giving a const.i.tutional colour to an arbitrary proceeding. Cranmer was summoned to court, attached to the Boleyn household, set down to write a thesis on the point of conscience, and sent off early in 1530 in the train of the Earl of Wilts.h.i.+re (to which dignity Sir Thomas Boleyn--had been raised) on an emba.s.sy to the Emperor at Bologna. Moreover his plan for consulting the Universities was actively taken in hand.
[Sidenote: The new Parliament]
In the meantime, in November, Henry's most famous Parliament had opened session. The last, called six years before under Wolsey's regime to obtain supplies, had shown a qualified submissiveness. The new one, whether packed or not, displayed prompt signs of activity. Known to fame as the ”Seven Years'” or ”Reformation” Parliament, it consistently displayed three characteristics: it was anti-papal and anti-clerical; it endorsed the Royal will; but it refused dictation where its pocket was concerned. Its first session lasted only a few weeks, but was marked by an attack on clerical abuses, and by the sudden prominence achieved by Thomas Cromwell.
[Sidenote: Thomas Cromwell]
Concerning Cromwell's early years, much is reported and little is known.
The common rumour declared that he was the son of a blacksmith--as it declared Wolsey to be the son of a butcher. He is said to have tried various trades, among others those of man-at-arms in the mercenary troop of an Italian n.o.bleman, wool-merchant and usurer at Antwerp, usurer and petty attorney in England. On all these points the evidence is scanty and inconclusive. About 1520, he found his way into Wolsey's entourage, and was a member of the 1523 parliament. Wolsey found him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of which it is at least probable that he applied the twin practices of bribery and blackmail, which not without reason were attributed at a later date to his servants. Yet, however unscrupulous he may have been in his dealings with others, to the master whose service he had followed he was always loyal. Wolsey made him his secretary; and when the Cardinal fell, the secretary's position seemed exceedingly precarious. Whether from an admirable fidelity or through amazingly astute hypocrisy, he boldly and openly took up the cudgels in parliament on behalf of the stricken minister, apparently challenging imminent ruin for himself. Action so courageous won him applause and good-will instead of present hostility. More than that, it immediately marked him in the eyes of the King--an exceedingly shrewd judge of men--as an invaluable prospective servant for himself. A combination of audacity and fidelity with shrewdness, resourcefulness, and unscrupulosity, was precisely what he wanted and precisely what he had found. The Cardinal's secretary became the King's secretary, and forthwith identified himself with the policy of establis.h.i.+ng the Royal autocracy in a stronger form than it had ever before a.s.sumed in England. Whether or no Thomas Cromwell learnt his political principles as an adventurer in Italy, he became himself the living embodiment of those doctrines of state-craft which were systematised by Macchiavelli in his treatise ”The Prince”.
[Sidenote: Pope, Clergy and King]
In the reconstruction of the relations between Church and State which covers more than nine-tenths of the Reformation under Henry VIII. there were three parties concerned; the Pope, the Sovereign, and the Clerical Organisation in England. From time immemorial, Popes and Kings had striven periodically with each other in a.s.serting antagonistic control over the ecclesiastical body; and the ecclesiastical body had made common cause, now with the Pope and now with the King, in resisting encroachments by the rival authority. If the clergy submitted to one or the other, it was always with a reservation that submission to physical force could not impair the inherent rights of the successors of the Apostles. Similarly, if the Pope gave way to the King or the King to the Pope, their respective successors regarded the claims surrendered as rights not cancelled but in abeyance.
The prevailing conditions at any given time were always looked upon as a _modus vivendi_ liable to readjustment when any of the three parties felt impelled to claim a larger freedom of action or a larger power of control. In the past however the Spiritual Powers had drawn effectively upon their armoury of excommunications and interdicts in the conflict; it was now to be seen whether these ancient weapons had become obsolete. If they could be defied with comparative impunity, there could be but one end to a struggle between the Spiritual and the Temporal forces.
[Sidenote: Double campaign opens]