Part 24 (1/2)
All these phenomena, the Reformation in Germany, heresy at home, and the anti-sacerdotal prejudices of his subjects, were regarded by Henry merely as circ.u.mstances which might be made subservient to his own particular purpose; and the skill with which he used them is a (p. 276) monument of farsighted statecraft.[766] He did not act on the impulse of rash caprice. His pa.s.sions were strong, but his self-control was stronger; and the breach with Rome was effected with a cold and calculated cunning, which the most adept disciple of Machiavelli could not have excelled. He did not create the factors he used; hostility to the Church had a real objective existence. Henry was a great man; but the burdens his people felt were not the product of Henry's hypnotic suggestion. He could only divert those grievances to his own use. He had no personal dislike to probate dues or annates; he did not pay them, but the threat of their abolition might compel the Pope to grant his divorce. Heresy in itself was abominable, but if heretics would maintain the royal against the papal supremacy, might not their sins be forgiven? The strength of Henry's position lay in the fact that he stood between two evenly balanced parties. It is obvious that by favouring the anti-clericals he could destroy the power of the Church.
It is not so certain, but it is probable that, by supporting the Church, he could have staved off its ruin so long as he lived.
Parliament might have been urgent, but there was no necessity to call it together. The Reformation Parliament, which sat for seven years, would probably have been dissolved after a few weeks had Clement granted the divorce. It met session after session, to pa.s.s one measure after another, each of which was designed to put fresh pressure on the Pope. It began with the outworks of the papal fortress; as soon (p. 277) as one was dismantled, Henry cried ”Halt,” to see if the citadel would surrender. When it refused, the attack recommenced. First one, then another of the Church's privileges and the Pope's prerogatives disappeared, till there remained not one stone upon another of the imposing edifice of ecclesiastical liberty and papal authority in England.
[Footnote 766: _Cf._ A. Zimmermann, ”Zur kirchlichen Politik Heinrichs VIII., nach den Trennung vom Rom,” in _Romische Quartalschrift_, xiii., 263-283.]
CHAPTER XI. (p. 278)
”DOWN WITH THE CHURCH.”
The Reformation Parliament met for its first session on the 3rd of November, 1529, at the Black Friars' Hall in London.[767] No careful observer was in any doubt as to what its temper would be with regard to the Church. It was opened by the King in person, and the new Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, delivered an address in which he denounced his predecessor, Wolsey, in scathing terms.[768] Parliament had been summoned, he said, to reform such things as had been used or permitted in England by inadvertence. On the following day both Houses adjourned to Westminster on account of the plague, and the Commons chose, as their Speaker, Sir Thomas Audley, the future Lord Chancellor.
One of their first duties was to consider a bill of attainder against Wolsey,[769] and the fate of that measure seems to be destructive of one or the other of two favourite theories respecting Henry VIII.'s Parliaments. The bill was opposed in the Commons by Cromwell and thrown out; either it was not a mere expression of the royal will, or Parliament was something more than the tool of the Court. For it is hardly credible that Henry first caused the bill to be introduced, and then ordered its rejection. The next business was Henry's (p. 279) request for release from the obligation to repay the loan which Wolsey had raised; that, too, the Commons refused, except on conditions.[770]
But no such opposition greeted the measures for reforming the clergy.[771] Bills were pa.s.sed in the Commons putting a limit on the fees exacted by bishops for probate, and for the performance of other duties then regarded as spiritual functions. The clergy were prohibited from holding pluralities, except in certain cases, but the act was drawn with astonis.h.i.+ng moderation; it did not apply to benefices acquired before 1530, unless they exceeded the number of four. Penalties against non-residents were enacted, and an attempt was made to check the addiction of spiritual persons to commercial pursuits.
[Footnote 767: _L. and P._, iv., 6043-44.]
[Footnote 768: Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 764.]
[Footnote 769: _L. and P._, iv., 6075.]
[Footnote 770: That it pa.s.sed at all is often considered proof of parliamentary servility; it is rather an ill.u.s.tration of the typical Tudor policy of burdening the wealthy few in order to spare the general public. If repayment of the loan were exacted, fresh taxation would be necessary, which would fall on many more than had lent the King money. It was very irregular, but the burden was thus placed on the shoulders of those individuals who benefited most by Henry's ecclesiastical and general policy and were rapidly acc.u.mulating wealth. Taxation on the whole was remarkably light during Tudor times; the tenths, fifteenths and subsidies had become fixed sums which did not increase with the national wealth, and indeed brought in less and less to the royal exchequer (see _L. and P._, vii., 344, ”considerations why subsidies in diverse s.h.i.+res were not so good in Henry's seventh year as in his fifth”; _cf._ vii., 1490, and xix., ii., 689, where Paget says that benevolences did not ”grieve the common people”).]
[Footnote 771: _L. and P._, iv., 6083.]
These reforms seem reasonable enough, but the idea of placing a bound to the spiritual exaction of probate seemed sacrilege to Bishop Fisher. ”My lords,” he cried, ”you see daily what bills come hither from the Common House, and all is to the destruction of the (p. 280) Church. For G.o.d's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was; and when the Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but 'Down with the Church!' And all this, meseemeth, is for lack of faith only.”[772] The Commons thought a limitation of fees an insufficient ground for a charge of heresy, and complained of Fisher to the King through the mouth of their Speaker.
The Bishop explained away the offensive phrase, but the spiritual peers succeeded in rejecting the Commons' bills. The way out of the deadlock was suggested by the King; he proposed a conference between eight members of either House. The Lords' delegates were half spiritual, half temporal, peers.[773] Henry knew well enough that the Commons would vote solidly for the measures, and that the temporal peers would support them. They did so; the bills were pa.s.sed; and, on 17th December, Parliament was prorogued. We may call it a trick or skilful parliamentary strategy; the same trick, played by the _Tiers etat_ in 1789, ensured the success of the French Revolution, and it was equally effective in England in 1529.
[Footnote 772: Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 766.]
[Footnote 773: _Cf._ Stubbs, _Lectures_, 1887, p.
317.]
These mutterings of the storm fell on deaf ears at Rome. Clement was deaf, not because he had not ears to hear, but because the clash of imperial arms drowned more distant sounds. ”If any one,” wrote the Bishop of Auxerre in 1531, ”was ever in prison or in the power of his enemies, the Pope is now.”[774] He was as anxious as ever to escape responsibility. ”He has told me,” writes the Bishop of Tarbes to Francis I. on the 27th of March, 1530, ”more than three times in (p. 281) secret that he would be glad if the marriage (with Anne Boleyn) was already made, either by a dispensation of the English legate or otherwise, provided it was not by his authority, or in diminution of his power as to dispensation and limitation of Divine law.”[775] Later in the year he made his suggestion that Henry should have two wives without prejudice to the legitimacy of the children of either. Henry, however, would listen to neither suggestion.[776] He would be satisfied with nothing less than the sanction of the highest authority recognised in England. When it became imperative that his marriage with Anne should be legally sanctioned, and evident that no such sanction would be forthcoming from Rome, he arranged that the highest ecclesiastical authority recognised by law in England should be that of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
[Footnote 774: _L. and P._, v., 562.]
[Footnote 775: _L. and P._, iv., 6290.]
[Footnote 776: See above p. 207.]
Meanwhile, the exigencies of the struggle drove Clement into a.s.sertions of papal prerogative which would at any time have provoked an outburst of national anger. On 7th March, 1530, he promulgated a bull to be affixed to the church doors at Bruges, Tournay and Dunkirk, inhibiting Henry, under pain of the greater excommunication, from proceeding to that second marriage, which he was telling the Bishop of Tarbes he wished Henry would complete.[777] A fortnight later he issued a second bull forbidding all ecclesiastical judges, doctors, advocates and others to speak or write against the validity of Henry's marriage with Catherine.[778] If he had merely desired to prohibit discussion of a matter under judicial consideration, he should have imposed silence also on the advocates of the marriage, and not (p. 282) left Fisher free to write books against the King and secretly send them to Spain to be printed.[779] On the 23rd of December following it was decreed in Consistory at Rome that briefs should be granted prohibiting the Archbishop of Canterbury from taking cognisance of the suit, and forbidding Henry to cohabit with any other woman than Catherine, and ”all women in general to contract marriage with the King of England”.[780] On the 5th of January, 1531, the Pope inhibited laity as well as clergy, universities, parliaments and courts of law from coming to any decision in the case.[781]
[Footnote 777: _L. and P._, iv., 6256.]
[Footnote 778: _Ibid._, iv., 6279.]
[Footnote 779: _L. and P._, iv., 6199, 6596, 6738; v., 460.]
[Footnote 780: _Ibid._, iv., 6772.]