Part 28 (1/2)
[Footnote 904: _Ibid._, vii., App. 13.]
[Footnote 905: _Ibid._, vii., 171; _cf._ XII., ii., 952.]
[Footnote 906: This commission was not appointed till 1551: see the present writer's _Cranmer_, pp.
280-4.]
[Footnote 907: 25 Henry VIII., c. 19. The first suggestion appears to have been ”to give the Archbishop of Canterbury the seal of Chancery, and pa.s.s bulls, dispensations and other provisions under it” (_L. and P._, vii., 14; _cf._ vii., 57); his t.i.tle was changed from _Apostolicae Sedis legatus_ to _Metropolita.n.u.s_ (_ibid._, vii., 1555).]
Another act provided that charges of heresy must be supported by two lay witnesses, and that indictments for that offence could only be made by lay authorities. This, like the rest of Henry's anti-ecclesiastical legislation, was based on popular clamour. On the 5th of March the whole House of Commons, with the Speaker at their head, had waited on the King at York Place and expatiated for three hours on the oppressiveness of clerical jurisdiction. At length it was agreed that eight temporal peers, eight representatives of the Lower House and sixteen bishops ”should discuss the matter and the King be umpire”[908]--a repet.i.tion of the plan of 1529 and a very exact reflection of Henry's methods and of the Church-and-State situation during the Reformation Parliament.
[Footnote 908: _L. and P._, vii., 304, 393, 399; the provision about two witnesses was in 1547 extended to treason.]
The final act of the session, which ended on 30th March, was a (p. 321) const.i.tutional innovation of the utmost importance. From the earliest ages the succession to the crown had in theory been determined, first by election, and then by hereditary right. In practice it had often been decided by the barbarous arbitrament of war. For right is vague, it may be disputed, and there was endless variety of opinion as to the proper claimant to the throne if Henry should die. So vague right was to be replaced by definite law, which could not be disputed, but which, unlike right, could easily be changed. The succession was no longer to be regulated by an unalterable principle, but by the popular (or royal) will expressed in Acts of Parliament.[909] The first of a long series of Acts of Succession was now pa.s.sed to vest the succession to the crown in the heirs of the King by Anne Boleyn; clauses were added declaring that persons who impugned that marriage by writing, printing, or other deed were guilty of treason, and those who impugned it by words, of misprision. The Government proposal that both cla.s.ses of offenders should be held guilty of treason was modified by the House of Commons.[910]
[Footnote 909: The succession to the crown was one of the last matters affected by the process of subst.i.tuting written law for unwritten right which began with the laws of Ethelbert of Kent. There had of course been _ex post facto_ acts recognising that the crown was vested in the successful compet.i.tor.]
[Footnote 910: _L. and P._, vii., 51.]
On 23rd March, a week before the prorogation of Parliament, and seven years after the divorce case had first begun, Clement gave sentence at Rome p.r.o.nouncing valid the marriage between Catherine and Henry.[911]
The decision produced not a ripple on the surface of English affairs; Henry, writes Chapuys, took no account of it and was making as (p. 322) good cheer as ever.[912] There was no reason why he should not.
While the imperialist mob at Rome after its kind paraded the streets in crowds, shouting ”Imperio et Espagne,” and firing _feux-de-joie_ over the news, the imperialist agent was writing to Charles that the judgment would not be of much profit, except for the Emperor's honour and the Queen's justification, and was congratulating his master that he was not bound to execute the sentence.[913] Flemings were tearing down the papal censures from the doors of their churches,[914] and Charles was as convinced as ever of the necessity of Henry's friends.h.i.+p. He proposed to the Pope that some one should be sent from Rome to join Chapuys in ”trying to move the King from his error”; and Clement could only reply that ”he thought the emba.s.sy would have no effect on the King, but that nothing would be lost by it, and it would be a good compliment!”[915] Henry, however was less likely to be influenced by compliments, good or bad, than by the circ.u.mstance that neither Pope nor Emperor was in a position to employ any ruder persuasive. There was none so poor as to reverence a Pope, and, when Clement died six months later, the Roman populace broke into the chamber where he lay and stabbed his corpse; they were with difficulty prevented from dragging it in degradation through the streets.[916]
Such was the respect paid to the Supreme Pontiff in the Holy City, and deference to his sentence was not to be expected in more distant parts.
[Footnote 911: _Ibid._, vii., 362.]
[Footnote 912: _L. and P._, vii., 469.]
[Footnote 913: _Ibid._, vii., 368.]
[Footnote 914: _Ibid._, vii., 184.]
[Footnote 915: _Ibid._, vii., 804.]
[Footnote 916: _Ibid._, vii., 1262.]
Henry's political education was now complete; the events of the last five years had proved to him the truth of the a.s.sertion, with (p. 323) which he had started, that the Pope might do what he liked at Rome, but that he also could do what he liked in England, so long as he avoided the active hostility of the majority of his lay subjects. The Church had, by its actions, shown him that it was powerless; the Pope had proved the impotence of his spiritual weapons; and the Emperor had admitted that he was both unable and unwilling to interfere. Henry had realised the extent of his power, and the opening of his eyes had an evil effect upon his character. Nothing makes men or Governments so careless or so arbitrary as the knowledge that there will be no effective opposition to their desires. Henry, at least, never grew careless; his watchful eye was always wide open. His ear was always strained to catch the faintest rumbling of a coming storm, and his subtle intellect was ever on the alert to take advantage of every turn in the diplomatic game. He was always efficient, and he took good care that his ministers should be so as well. But he grew very arbitrary; the knowledge that he could do so much became with him an irresistible reason for doing it. Despotic power is twice cursed; it debases the ruler and degrades the subject; and Henry's progress to despotism may be connected with the rise of Thomas Cromwell, who looked to the Great Turk as a model for Christian princes.[917] Cromwell became secretary in May, 1534; in that month Henry's security was enhanced by the (p. 324) definitive peace with Scotland,[918] and he set to work to enforce his authority with the weapons which Parliament had placed in his hands. Elizabeth Barton, and her accomplices, two Friars Observants, two monks, and one secular priest, all attainted of treason by Act of Parliament, were sent to the block.[919] Commissioners were sent round, as Parliament had ordained, to enforce the oath of succession throughout the land.[920] A general refusal would have stopped Henry's career, but the general consent left Henry free to deal as he liked with the exceptions. Fisher and More were sent to the Tower. They were willing to swear to the succession, regarding that as a matter within the competence of Parliament, but they refused to take the oath required by the commissioners;[921] it contained, they alleged, a repudiation of the Pope not justified by the terms of the statute. Two cartloads of friars followed them to the Tower in June, and the Order of Observants, in whose church at Greenwich Henry had been baptised and married, and of whom in his earlier years he had written in terms of warm admiration, was suppressed altogether.[922]
[Footnote 917: ”The Lord Cromwell,” says Bishop Gardiner, ”had once put in the King our late sovereign lord's head, to take upon him to have his will and pleasure regarded for a law; for that, he said, was to be a very King,” and he quoted the _quod principi placuit_ of Roman civil law.
Gardiner replied to the King that ”to make the laws his will was more sure and quiet” and ”agreeable with the nature of your people”. Henry preferred Gardiner's advice (Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 46).]
[Footnote 918: _L. and P._, vii., 483, 647.]
[Footnote 919: _Ibid._, vii., 522.]
[Footnote 920: _Ibid._, vii., 665.]
[Footnote 921: _Ibid._, vii., 499.]
[Footnote 922: _Ibid._, vii., 841, 856. The order had been particularly active in opposition to the divorce (_ibid._, iv., 6156; v., 266.)]