becomes separation; was permitted, as a last resort, to put in force his entire policy. In that way, the divorce became the mainspring of the revolu- the divorce tion that grew out of the revived contest with Rome, which the mainreligious reaction and civil war had suspended for more than a spring of century, a revolution which, in the absence of the motive involved in the divorce, Henry would no doubt have opposed with the full force of the royal authority. The record of the proceedings of the great parliament, through whose enactments the legal and political separation of the Church of England from the papacy was finally brought about, puts beyond all question the fact that so long as the hope of a successful issue at Rome remained, Henry's efforts were confined to a series of tentative measures in restraint of papal and clerical privileges, designed rather as methods of coercion than as the means of separation.1 Not until Henry's policy of menace Henry's and coercion had failed were Cromwell's decisive measures policy of permitted to begin. The fact that the parliament was now coercion; seized upon by the crown as its tool in the final struggle with the parliaRome indicates a radical departure from the system which the tool of had prevailed since the accession of Edward IV. If Edward, the crown. Henry VII., and Wolsey had looked upon the assembly of estates as a menace to the conciliar system, Henry VIII. now felt sure enough of its subserviency 2 to submit to it during the remainder of his reign every measure, ecclesiastical, judicial, or political, which could draw moral weight from its sanction or legal force from its authority. menace and ment made Although, with the exception of a single session, the government had been carried on for fourteen years without a parliament, that summoned for 1529 was continued by prorogation from year to year until April, 1536.3 Through the acts of Outline of this parliament it was that the papal overlordship was finally the Refor overthrown, the royal supremacy fully established, and the mation Parclergy reduced to a state of abject submission at the feet 1529: of the monarchy. Only by a consecutive examination, in 1 The whole story can be traced with more or less distinctness by the aid of the preambles of the statutes, which during this reign "are prolix, diffuse, and redundant, beyond all former example, as if, apparently, to guard the enacting clauses from misrepresentation of motives rather than misinterpreta tion of texts." - Reformation Parlia- 2 See the able summary upon this 3 The parliament met on the 3d of November, 1529, and was dissolved on April 14, 1536. the work of liament of in Novem an attack upon the clergy; the light of the contemporary history, of the legislative work which took place during the seven sessions of this memorable parliament, is it possible to mark the undulations of a policy which advanced or retreated as the conduct of the great controversy involved in the divorce required that the king should bear towards the papacy an attitude of menace or conciliation. From the letters of the French ambassador1 we learn of the eager spirit of expectancy which pervaded all London as the members gathered there for their momentous work early in its first ses- November. In view of the fact that the unpopularity of the sion began divorce was so great that Anne Boleyn hardly dared to stir ber with an abroad, it is not strange that an effort should have been made to attract popular sympathy to the king's cause by an assault upon the clergy with which the session opened, and which detailed ac- consisted of a detailed accusation against them, in the form of a petition from the commons to the king, in which were summarized all grievances and abuses that could then be charged upon the administrators of the Anglican Church. The petition after stating that "the discord, variance, and debate" which had lately arisen was attributable no more to the "new fantastical and erroneous opinions grown by occasion of frantic and seditious books compiled, imprinted, published, and made, in the English tongue, than to the extreme and uncharitable behavior and dealings of divers ordinaries"-proceeds to enumerate the legislation of the clergy in convocation without the assent of king or people, the oppressive and expensive procedure of the spiritual courts, the excessive number of holy days, and the abuses of ecclesiastical patronage, as the subjects which called most urgently for remedial legislation. After cusation against them; referring back to the parliament such subjects as in his judg ment required immediate attention, the king submitted the the bishops petition itself to the bishops, with the requirement that they called upon should make a prompt answer to the charges preferred against to answer; them. After some delay they responded in a lengthy document, answering the accusations seriatim, which the king, with a slighting remark, referred to the commons. A few 1 Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne, A full statement of the petition, with the reply of the bishops thereto, taken from the MS. in the Rolls House, is printed in Froude's Hist. Eng., vol. i. pp. 208-241. 46 The king's conduct and observa dual alle their disci pline, and duction of days later he said to a delegation from the houses that "we thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects clergy's wholly, but now, we have well perceived that they be but half giance; our subjects; yea, and scarce our subjects, for all the prelates, at their consecration, take an oath to the pope clean contrary to the oath they make to us, so they seem to be his subjects and not ours."1 From this deliverance it is plain that the king had hearkened to the suggestion of Cromwell as to the danger involved in the clergy's dual allegiance. Putting aside the larger questions touching the legislative independence of the clergy in convocation and the jurisdiction of the church courts, the parliament confined itself during the six weeks of the session to enactments for the discipline of the clergy, and acts for for the reduction within fixed limits of certain clerical fees and exactions. As far back as the reign of Edward III. the extor- for the retion of discretionary fees upon the granting of probates and probate and administrations had become such an abuse that an effort was tion fees; then made to provide a remedy by a statute,2 which was supplemented by another of a temporary character in the reign of Henry V. As that too had proved ineffectual, a third and more positive act was now passed to remedy the evil. At the mortuary same time the mortuary fees, or corse presents" of the parochial clergy, were reduced and regulated by an act which presents;" forbade their collection when the effects were small, and which limited their amount within reasonable bounds when the estate was large. This was followed by a statute passed for the dis- act as to cipline of the clergy which forbade them to cultivate more trading, land than was necessary for the support of their own house- residence, and pluholds, to buy or sell merchandise for gain, or to keep tanneries ralities; or breweries. This act also made residence imperative, and tions with regard to it showed that he favored, and, perhaps, had originated, the bold and novel inquiry." — Amos, p. 232. 1 Hall, quoted by Amos, Reformation Parliament, p. 233. 2 31 Edw. III. st. I c. 4. 8 3 Hen. V. c. 8. See Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii. p. 230. The first statute attributes the abuses complained of to the "ministers or bishops and other ordinaries;" in the second "the ordinaries" are said to have promised a reformation. "The term Ordinary is generally synonymous with Bishop; administra fees or " corse clerical forbade all pluralities in respect to benefices above the yearly value of eight pounds. Through the proviso annexed to these clauses which gave to the crown, under certain limitations, the right to sell dispensations as to pluralities and non-residence,1 -declared to be illegal when issued by papal or episcopal authority, the king had his first foretaste of the new ecclesiastical power that was soon to come. By such legislation as the foregoing for the redress of ecclesiastical exactions and abuses, which were certainly flagrant, Henry was able not only to win popular favor, but also "to let the pope see what he could do if he went on to offend him, and how willingly his parliament would concur with him, if it went to extremes."2 A very striking illustration of this perfect oneness existing between the king and the parliament occurred before the end of the session, when by its action he was released from all his debts, and from all suits that might arise therein. When leased from the session ended in December, the effort to bend the pope to his will, which Henry had been attempting to advance by legislation hostile to the clergy, he transferred once more to the field of diplomacy. king re his debts. Wiltshire's mission to the emperor ; In January, 1530, the earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne Boleyn, attended by a council of divines, was sent on a mission to the emperor, who was at that time sojourning with the pope at Bologna, where the delegation arrived in March.1 This mission was the outcome of the new policy of Norfolk, who hoped to win the emperor to the king's cause by an abandonment of Wolsey's French policy, which it was claimed had driven him into a hostile attitude.5 But the effort failed; the emperor, putting aside all of the blandishments held out to him, remained faithful to the cause of his aunt, and the pope would do nothing without him. And so ended the first and last communication between Henry and Charles V. upon the 1 Upon the subject of pluralities and non-residence, see Reeves, vol. iii. pp. 234-237; Amos, pp. 237-243. 2 Burnet's Hist. Reform., vol. i. p. 62. 8 This act, not printed with the other statutes, is contained in Burnet, vol. ii. (Collectanea) p. xxxviii. For a full exposition of the scope and purpose of this iniquitous act, see Amos, pp. 66 4 For the instructions to the ambas sadors, see the transcripts for the N. Rymer, p. 168. 5 See Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. ii. p. 149. For details, see letters written 27th and 28th March from Bologna by the bishop of Tarbes. Legrand, vol. iii. pp. 401, 454. Cranmer, suggested the question divorce to the upon the 65 subject of the divorce. One of the divines who attended the attended by earl on his unfruitful mission was Thomas Cranmer, then a who had' lecturer on theology at Cambridge,1 who, it is said, had sug- suggabisgested to the king two years before 2 the submission of the sion of the questions involved in the divorce to the learned canonists and of the universities throughout Christendom. It was claimed that, if a decided preponderance of opinion could thus be drawn out learned; in the king's favor, it would certainly influence the pope; and if not, that such an expression could be made the basis of an appeal to a general council. So favorably was the suggestion received that Cranmer was at once instructed to devote himself exclusively to the study of the subject, upon which he wrote a treatise3 that he was called upon to defend at Oxford he writes a and Cambridge. Immediately thereafter he was sent to Bo- treatise logna, where "the matter of the divorce was to be disputed subject; and ventilated." That effort having failed, Cranmer's scheme his scheme was put into practical operation by the submission of the all- put into practical important question to home and foreign universities, and by operation; the dispatch of English agents to Germany, Italy, and France, armed with all the grosser means of persuasion which power and money could command. When all the details of this scandalous transaction 5 have been carefully examined, it is hard to doubt, despite the fact that half, or nearly half, of the expressions obtained were adverse to the papal position, that the real preponderance of unbiassed opinion was decidedly the other way. Only by a stern exercise of the royal authority was it possible to extort favorable responses from Oxford and Cambridge; without like pressure from Francis, even Henry's bribery would have failed at Paris; while in Protestant Germany, where little was to be hoped for the bitter enemy of Luther, every institution was pronounced against him. So 1 Cranmer, born in 1489, was now about forty years of age. 2 The account which says that the suggestion was made by Cranmer in 1529 rests upon the authority of Morice's narrative, printed in Nichol's Narratives of the Reformation, p. 240. It is almost certain, however, that the suggestion was first made in 1527 by the letter of Wakefield (Knight's Life of Erasmus, App. p. xxviii), or by the assembly of bishops convened in that year by Wolsey, in which "the mat ter of the king's case (was) debated, rea- 3 The book was written in the house 4 Nichol's Narratives of the Reformation, p. 242. 5 The whole story has been told by Burnet, vol. i. pp. 64-69; by Lingard, vol. iv. pp. 548-552; and by Froude, vol. i. pp. 263-285. |