Third session of 1531-32: iting jurisdiction of church courts to diocese of defendant's forbidding acts which specially distinguish the proceedings of the third session of 1531-32. The first of these acts, passed to prohibit the citation of persons out of the diocese in which they reside, recites in its statute lim- preamble that much vexation and oppression had been occasioned by requiring persons to go far away from their homes in order to appear in the court of archives, and in other high archiepiscopal courts, in order to answer in causes of defamaresidence; tion, tithes, and the like, which were more often begun through malice than from any just cause; and in which, if the party did not appear, the spiritual sentence which was pronounced could only be absolved by the payment of court fees together with the charges of the summoner or apparitor by whom the process had been served. It was therefore enacted that, with certain exceptions, no person should be cited outside of the diocese of his residence, while the fee for the summons was reduced from two shillings to three pence.2 The limitation conditional thus imposed upon the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts was statute soon followed by an act forbidding the payment to the pope payment of of the annates, or firstfruits of benefices, which the bishops firstfruits, had been for a long time compelled to pay before they could receive the papal bulls necessary for the confirmation of their elections. It was now enacted that if any bishop should pay such tribute, it should cause a forfeiture of his lands and goods; that if any bishop presented by the king to the pope should be hindered by the withholding of the bulls, he should be and author- consecrated without them by the archbishop; and that if any izing the archbishop should be so hindered, he should be consecrated tion of bish by two bishops to be named by the king. In accordance with the prevailing policy of menace and supplication this act was qualified by a proviso, which empowered Henry at his discretion to declare by letters patent, before the beginning of the next session, whether the act should take effect "as an act or statute of this present parliament or not." This assault upon the papal exchequer Cromwell quickly followed up by a fresh assertion of his theory of the ecclesiastical supremacy annates or consecra ops without papal authority; 246. 1 Another act, the first of the ses- 2 23 Hen. VIII. c. 9; Amos, pp. 245, sion (23 Hen. VIII. c. 1), taking away the benefit of clergy from the perpetrators of certain crimes, is also worthy of mention. 8 23 Hen. VIII. c. 20. forbidden Hen. VIII. at the end of the crown. That theory, already admitted by convocation a year before, "so far as the law of Christ will allow," now found expression in an address1 procured from the commons, in which they were made to complain that the clerical legislatures, without consultation with the other estates, often enacted laws touching temporal matters which, in spite of contrary statutes, were enforced by spiritual penalties. After a long and painful negotiation Henry demanded, and convo- convocation cation was forced to make, an act of " Submission," wherein to legislate the clergy were made to promise "that we will never from without royal henceforth enact, put in use, promulgate, or execute any license ("Act of new canons, or constitutions provincial, or any new ordinance, Submisprovincial or synodal, in our convocation, or synod, in time sion," 25 coming (which convocation is, always hath been, and must be c. 19, passed assembled only by your high commandment of writ), only your of 1533); Highness, by your royal assent shall license us to assemble our convocation, and to make, promulgate, and execute such constitutions and ordinaments as shall be made in the same; and thereto give your royal assent and authority."2 The "Submission" was subscribed May 15, 1532, and at the end of 1533 it was embodied in the "Act of Submission," 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, passed at that time, in which it was provided that all canons ecclesiastical then in force, not in conflict with the laws of the realm or the royal prerogative, should continue to bind until abolished by further legislation. Thus by this new concordat between church and state it was settled 3 (1) that the old canons of the church, not in conflict with the laws of the realm or the royal supremacy, should remain in force; (2) that convocation should not discuss the enactment of new canons without a license from the crown; (3) that no new canons should have force unless they were ratified by the crown,—an arrangement which has continued until the present time. The counterblast from Rome to these fresh assaults upon the clergy was a brief issued in November, in which Clement declared both Henry and Anne excommunicate unless Mr. Gladstone on the Royal Supremacy, p. 31. 1 This address was presented to the king in March, 1532. Herbert's Henry VIII., p. 357. 2 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iii. p. 754. 8 As to the status of convocation as a legislative body after the Reformation Statutes, see vol. i. p. 344, citing 4 As to the canons enacted since the passage of the "Act of Submission," see Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 368–373. excommu conditional they should cease to cohabit within a month; and in the event nication of they should attempt to marry, such a marriage was declared Henry and beforehand to be illegal.1 But the time had now come when Anne. Fourth session, February, 1532-33: statute cases; neither papal bulls nor acts of parliament could stay the march of physical conditions which made it imperative that the marriage of Henry and Anne should be hastened. Although the date of the marriage was at the time intentionally involved in confusion, there can hardly be a doubt that it was secretly celebrated late in January, 1533.2 Such was the condition of things on the 4th of February, when the fourth session of the parliament began,3 in which was passed the act of forbidding appeals to Rome in all forbidding causes testamentary, of marriage and divorce, oblations, tithes, appeals to Rome in and obventions, whether already commenced or hereafter to certain be commenced. It was provided that in all such causes, whether affecting the king or his subjects, the hearing should be had in the king's courts, temporal or spiritual, and not the course elsewhere; and furthermore that the course of appeal should of appeal; be from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop of his province; and in any cause touching the king or his successors, the appeal should be to the upper house of convocation. Such an act 1 Burnet, i.; Records, ii. 111-119; Legrand, i. 228-230. 2 Lingard (vol. v. pp. 2, 3, and notes) fixes the day as the 25th of January, not only on the authority of Sanders, but upon that of a manuscript history of the divorce published thirty years before it. Legrand, ii. p. 110. Froude (vol. i. p. 410, note 2), after setting the date of the 25th of January in the margin, says, upon the authority of Cranmer, "and 'somewhere about St. Paul's day,' Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven long years," etc. Burnet (vol. i. p. 95) says that the marriage took place on the 14th of the previous November. He states at the same time, however, that Stowe fixes it on the 25th of January. Elizabeth was born on the 7th of the following September. It closed April 7, 1533. 4 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12. 5 As to the modification of this act providing that in all manner of appeals the appeal should be made "from the had now become a pressing archbishop's court to the king in his chancery, where a commission shall be accorded for the determination of the appeal, and from thence no further," see Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii. p. 241, note (b), Finlason ed. The modifying provision is contained in the "Act of Submission," 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19. The right of appeal to Rome was revived in the reign of Mary, but during that of Elizabeth (1 Eliz. c. 1) the jurisdiction of the crown as settled by the Act of Appeals was restored, "and though the court has been changed, the privy council being substituted for the delegates, the principle of the law has remained untouched to the present day." Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. i. p. 261. The Delegates of Appeal, as the commissioners were called, were superseded by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council by virtue of 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 92. By the "Supreme Court of Judicature Act, 1873" (36 & 37 Vict. c. 66, sec. 21) the queen is empowered, by order in coun involved in convoca necessity. A new heir to the throne was on the way, whose legitimacy could not possibly be upheld without a dissolution of the union between Catherine and Henry, and such dissolution could not be accomplished as a finality through the decree of an English ecclesiastical court, until all chance of an appeal to the pope was made impossible.1 That end having been accomplished by the act in question, the next step was the selection of a judge upon whom the king could surely rely. Such a one was easily found in Cranmer, the king's tried advocate, who Cranmer upon the death of Warham had been tendered the archbish- appointed primate; opric of Canterbury, to which he was consecrated in March.2 The king's marriage, which, pending the papal confirmation of Cranmer's appointment, had been kept strictly secret, was made public soon thereafter, when the questions involved in questions the divorce were submitted in a special and peculiar form to divorce subconvocation, where, after considerable debate, answers favor- mitted to able to the king were carried by large majorities.3 The new tion; archbishop, thus supported by the voice of the clergy, soon exhorted his master to permit him to take cognizance of the divorce, and, for the good of the realm, to hear and determine it. In May Cranmer rendered his decree, in which it was held Cranmer's that the marriage with Catherine was void from the beginning by reason of the fact that the original dispensation of Julius II. was beyond the papal power; 5 and at a little later day another hearing was had, at which the marriage with Anne was confirmed as valid and lawful.6 Two months later the which the pope annulled the sentence pronounced by Cranmer upon the clared null; cil, to refer all ecclesiastical appeals and petitions, now cognizable by the judicial committee, to the new court of appeal constituted by that act. When so acting, such court of appeal shall consist of "such and so many of the judges thereof, and shall be assisted by such assessors, being Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England," as p. 8. shall be directed by any general rules to be made by order in council. 1 The "dates appear to supply a cogent reason why the king should have availed himself of the aid of parliament, in the present session, to corroborate his marriage, and, prospectively, the archbishop's sentence, by a new law of ecclesiastical appeals that might gag the mouth of an appellant queen." - Amos, Reformation Parlia- 2 The necessary bulls were expedited 8 See the account in Burnet, vol. i. p. 98, as corrected by Lingard, vol. v. 4 For Cranmer's abject memorial letter (April 11) to the king, see State Papers, vol. i. p. 390. The decree contained in an Inspeximus, Rot. Parl., 25 Reg. 2d part, is printed in Burnet, vol. ii. (Collectanea), liv. 6 On May 29 the second decree was given at Lambeth, and is in the same Inspeximus. decree, pope de born, Elizabeth ground that the case was then pending before himself;1 and so matters stood at the birth of the princess Elizabeth,2 on the 7, 1533. 7th of September, 1533. September Fifth session, 1533-34; When the fifth session began, on the 15th of January,3 January 15, everything was still involved in a state of painful uncertainty. The long protracted negotiations with Rome were still pending, and no one knew when or how the end would be reached. And yet, in evident anticipation of the final catastrophe, all judicial and financial connection with Rome was now comstatutes pletely broken by two memorable statutes in the first the submission surrender which had been made by the clergy a year before of of clergy, their legislative independence was confirmed, and the partial restriction which had been put upon appeals to Rome in the fourth session was extended to all cases whatsoever; in the forbidding second 5 was contained a prohibition against the payment of all appeals to Rome, Peter's pence, and every other kind of payment made to the payment of pope for dispensations, licenses, faculties, grants, relaxations, confirming and the Peter's pence; and the like usually obtained from that source. This last named statute at the same time provided that certain dispensations, licenses, faculties, and other writings which had been formerly obtained from Rome should thereafter be sought of the archbishop of Canterbury, who might be compelled by the king's writ to grant licenses, faculties, or dispensations.6 statute as Turning then to the Annates Act, which had finally been confirmed by letters patent, after the refusal of the pope to with provi- notice the communication made to him under it, parliament izing nomi- reenacted it with additional clauses, providing that bishops bishops by should no longer be presented to the pope for confirmation, but that, on the vacancy of any cathedral church, the king should grant to the dean and chapter, or to the prior and to annates reenacted sion author nation of congé d'élire, |