Part 55

Thus deprived of well-nigh everything but life, the Cardinal was permitted to go into retirement in the north; less than a twelve-month later he was arrested on a charge of high treason. Through the irony of fate, the warrant was served by a former lover of Anne Boleyn's, whom Wolsey, it is said, had separated from her in order that she might consummate her unhappy marriage with royalty. On the way to London Wolsey fell mortally ill, and turned aside at Leicester to die in the abbey there, with the words:

"...O, Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye: Give him a little earth for charity!"

Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act IV, scene ii.

347. Appeal to the Universities.

Before Wolsey's death, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, of Cambridge, suggested that the King lay the divorce question before the universities of Europe. Henry caught eagerly at this proposition, and exclaimed, "Cranmer has the right pig by the ear." The scheme was at once adopted. Several universities returned favorable answers. In a few instances, as at Oxford and Cambridge, where the authorities hesitated, a judicious use of bribes or threats soon brought them to see the matter in a proper light.

348. The Clergy declare Henry Head of the Church, 1531.

Armed with these decisions in his favor, Henry now charged the whole body of the English Church with being guilty of the same crime of which Wolsey had been accused (S346). The clergy, in their terror, made haste to buy a pardon at a cost reckoned at nearly $5,000,000 at the present value of money.

They furthermore declared Henry to be the supreme head on earth of the Church of England, adroitly adding, "in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ." Thus the Reformation came into England "by a side door, as it were." Nevertheless, it came.

349. Henry marries Anne Boleyn; Act of Supremacy, 1534.

Events now moved rapidly toward a crisis. In 1533, after having waited over five years, Henry privately married Anne Boleyn (S343), and she was soon after crowned in Westminster Abbey. When the Pope was informed of this, he ordered the King, under pain of excommunication (S194), to put her away, and to take back Queen Catharine (S345).

Parliament met that demand by passing the Act of Supremacy, 1534, which declared Henry to be without reservation the sole head of the Church, making denial thereof high treason. As he signed the act, the King with one stroke of his pen overturned the traditions of a thousand years, and England stood boldly forth with a National Church independent of the Pope.

Henry's full title was now "Henry VIII, by the Grace of God, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, on earth the Supreme Head." Attention is called to the fact that a controversy, more or less serious in its character, had been going on, at intervals for nearly five hundred years, between the English sovereigns (or the barons) and the popes. It began with William the Conqueror in 1076 (S118). It was continued by Henry I (S136), by Henry II (SS163-170), by John (S194), by the barons under Henry III (S211), by the Parliament of Merton (S211), by Edward I (S226), and it may be said to have practically culminated under Henry VIII in the Act of Supremacy of 1534 (S349). But after the formal establishment of Protestantism by Edward VI in 1549 (S362) we find the Act of Supremacy reaffirmed, in slightly different form, by Queen Elizabeth in 1559 (S382). Finally, the Revolution of 1688 settled the question (S497).

350. Subserviency of Parliament.

But as Luther said, Henry had a pope within him. The King now proceeded to prove the truth of Luther's declaration. We have already seen (S328) that since the Wars of the Roses had destroyed the power of the barons, there was no effectual check on the despotic will of the sovereign. The new nobility were the creatures of the Crown, hence bound to support it; the clergy were timid, the Commons anything but bold, so that Parliament gradually became the servile echo and ready instrument of the throne.

That body twice released the King from the discharge of his just debts. It even exempted him from paying certain forced loans which he had extorted from his people. Parliament also repeatedly changed the laws of succession to the Crown to please him. Moreover it promptly attainted and destroyed such victims as he desired to put out of the way (S351). Later (1539) it declared that proclamations, concerning religious doctrines, when made by the King and Council, should have the force of acts of Parliament. This new power enabled Henry to pronounce heretical many opinions which he disliked and to punish them with death.

351. Execution of More and Fisher (1535).

Thomas Cromwell had been Cardinal Wolsey's private secretary; but he had now become chief counselor to the King, and in his crooked and cruel policy reduced bloodshed to a science. He first introduced the practice of condemning an accused prisoner without any form of trial (by Act of Attainder), and sending him to the block without allowing him to speak in his own defense (S356). No one was now safe who did not openly side with the King.

Act of Attainder. See Constitutional Documents in Appendix, p. xxxii.

Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor (S339), and the aged Bishop Fisher were executed because they could not affirm that they conscientiously believed that Henry was morally and spiritually entitled to be the head of the English Church (S349).

Both died with Christian fortitude. More said to the governor of the Tower with a flash of his old humor, as the steps leading to the scaffold shook while he was mounting them, "Do you see me safe up, and I will make shift to get down by myself."

352. Destruction of the Monasteries; Seizure of their Property, 1536-1539.

When the intelligence of the judicial murder of the venerable ex-chancellor reached Rome, the Pope issued a bull of excommunication and deposition against Henry (S194). It delivered his soul to Satan, and his kingdom to the first invader.

The King retaliated by the suppression of the monasteries. In doing so, he simply hastened a process which had already begun. Years before, Cardinal Wolsey had not scrupled to shut up several, and take their revenues to found Christ Church College at Oxford. The truth was, that, in most cases, monasticism "was dead long before the Reformation came to bury it" (S339, note 1). It was dead because it had done its work,--in many respects a great and good work, which the world could ill have spared (SS43, 45, 46, 60). The monasteries simply shared the fate of all human institutions, however excellent they may be.

"Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."

Tennyson's "In Memoriam."

Henry, however, had no such worthy object as Wolsey had. His pretext was that these institutions had sunk into a state of ingnorance, drunkenness, and profligacy. This may have been true of some of the smaller monasteries, though not of the large ones. But the vices of the monasteries the King had already made his own. It was their wealth which he now coveted. The smaller religious houses were speedily swept out of existence (1536). This caused a furious insurrection in the North, called the "Pilgrimage of Grace" (1537); but the revolt was soon put down.

Though Parliament had readily given its sanction to the extinction of the smaller monasteries, it hesitated about abolishing the greater ones. Henry, it is reported, sent for a leading member of the House o Commons, and, laying his hand on the head of the kneeling representative, said, "Get my bill passed by to-morrow, little man, or else to-morrow this head of yours will come off." The next day the bill passed, and the work of destruction began anew (1539). Property worth millions of pounds was confiscated, and abbots like those of Glastonbury and Charter House, who dared to resist, were speedily hanged.

The total number of religious houses destroyed was 645 monasteries, 2374 chapels, 90 collegiate churches, and 110 charitable institutions. Among the most famous of these ruins are Glastonbury, Kirkstal, Furness, Netley, Tintern, and Fountains abbeys.