Reforms of Henry VIII

Reforms of Henry VIII

Cardinal Wolsey — Internal Reform of Church — Endowment of Christ Church, Oxford — Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. — Marriage with Catherine of Aragon — Dispensation of Julius II. for Henry VIII. to marry his deceased brother's widow — Birth of Mary — Birth of Duke of Richmond — Application to Clement VII. for declaration of nullity of marriage — Clement VII. taken prisoner by Emperor Charles V. — Catherine appeals to Rome — Fall of Wolsey — Recognition of Supremacy by Convocations — First Act against Annates — Submission of the Clergy — Cranmer — Opinion of the Universities — Restraint of Appeals Act — Divorce of Catherine — Validity of marriage with Anne Boleyn — Birth of Elizabeth — Submission of Clergy Act — Second Annates Act — Dispensations Act — Supreme Head Act — Extirpation of authority of Bishop of Rome Act — Cromwell — Suppression of Lesser Monasteries — Execution of Anne Boleyn — Marriage of Jane Seymour — Pilgrimage of Grace — Birth of Edward VI. — Suppression of Greater Monasteries — New Bishoprics of Westminster, Chester, Oxford, Peterborough, Gloucester, and Bristol — Act of Six Articles — Orthodoxy of Convocation and of Henry VIII. — English Bible — Tyndale — Coverdale — Great Bible — Ten Articles — Bishops' Book — King's Book — Destruction of Images — New Sarum Breviary — Lessons to be read in English — Litany in English — Primer of Henry VIII. — Council of the Realm during minority of Edward VI. — Somerset Lord Protector — Desire for introduction of Continental Reformers — Cranmer's attitude.

As the second son of Henry VII., it must be emphasized that Henry VIII. in his early days was educated for the Church. When he came to the throne in 1509, with the aid of Bishop Fox and Cardinal Wolsey, the last of England's great Ecclesiastical Chancellors, he essayed to reform the English ecclesiastical courts, which had degenerated, like those at Rome, into a means of extracting revenues rather than for the establishment of right and justice. Moreover, he was in general a supporter of the new learning, and whilst orthodox in his religious beliefs (he was made Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo X. in 1521 for his treatise against the new doctrines of Luther), he did not hesitate, by the suppression of some of the minor monasteries, transferring these monks to the larger institutions, to apply their endowments, especially to the new Cardinals' College, now Christ Church, Oxford, for the advancement of learning. In this he was but following the example of Archbishop Chichele in the reign of Henry VI., who had founded All Souls' College, Oxford, with the endowment of those priories in England which were dependent upon foreign religious houses such as Cluny.

Arthur, Henry VII.'s eldest sickly son, had, four months before his death in 1501, married Catherine of Aragon, but a bull was obtained from Pope Julius II., confirmed by a papal brief, granting Henry a dispensation to marry his deceased brother's widow, which he did in 1509. Had the marriage not been consummated, it was only a betrothal in the eyes of the law, but the papal bull expressly contemplated the possibility that it was a legal marriage, and that the second marriage being but contrary to the laws of the Church, it was considered within the powers of the Pope to remove the objection by dispensation. Of the numerous children which Henry VIII. had by Catherine, none survived except Mary, who was born in 1515. In 1519 he had a son by Elizabeth Blount, whom he made Duke of Richmond, and in 1524 he definitely decided to get rid of Catherine in the hopes of obtaining a son, besides having become infatuated with Anne Boleyn. Henry would have been content to have had his marriage set aside on the ground of nullity in the English courts and then remarry, being sure that neither Catherine's nephew, the Emperor Charles V., nor the Pope would allow the matter for long to stand in the way of England's alliance. But Wolsey wished Henry to make a political marriage, and that the future succession to the Crown should rest on a question of conflict between a decision of the national courts and that of the papal bull and brief obtained from Julius II. was not a matter which, as his Chancellor, and a Cardinal, and Papal Legate, he could possibly support. An application was therefore made to Pope Clement VII. to declare the marriage null. Alexander VI. had a few years before granted Louis XII. of France a divorce on the ground of sterility, but the chief ground for this application was that the marriage with Prince Arthur had been invalid.

After all the care which had been taken to make the papal bull and brief of Julius II. absolutely indefeasible, it would have been rather difficult for Clement VII. to set it aside, though no doubt some technical flaw could have been found as a reason for doing so. But, at this juncture, in the course of political combinations, which had resulted in open warfare, Clement VII. in 1527 found himself prisoner in the hands of Charles V. However ready then he may have been to grant Henry's request, it became absolutely impossible to cast this stigma upon Catherine, for she was the aunt of Charles, in whose hands he was prisoner, and to whom he was bound on his release. Endeavour was made to prevent Catherine from appealing to Rome, but she succeeded through the Spanish ambassador, and Clement advoked the cause to Rome to be tried in his own Court.

Wolsey's policy had failed and Henry determined to get rid of him. Having become a Papal Legate in England, though at Henry's request, he had broken the Statute of Praemunire, which had never been repealed; so in 1529 he was deprived of all his property, but allowed to keep the Archbishopric of York; he died the next year on his way to London to answer a charge of treason.

Henry, unable to obtain a divorce from the Pope, now proceeded to develop a regular policy for the elimination of Papal authority throughout England. As Wolsey had been guilty under the Statute of Praemunire by acting as Papal Legate, so had the clergy been guilty in accepting him as such. Henry, as a term of their release from this technical offence, besides extracting fines of £100,000 from the Convocation of Canterbury and £18,000 from the Convocation of York, insisted on their recognition of his Supremacy by accepting the formula: “We acknowledge His Grace to be the singular protector only and supreme lord and so far as the law of Christ will allow supreme head of the English Church and Clergy”. This was in 1531. By this Henry hoped to secure the acquiescence of the spiritual estate of the realm to his forthcoming legislation.

In 1529 Parliament, in spite of opposition by the clergy, had passed Acts limiting clerical fees and preventing clerical trade, and in 1532 (23 Hen. VIII. c. 9) a reform of the Courts of the Archbishops was enacted without the consent of the Convocations having been obtained, but the clergy were appeased by the Act against the Papal claim to Annates (23 Hen. VIII. c. 20). This was the first piece of anti-papal legislation, for not only was the payment stopped, but the Act provided for the celebration of the sacraments and the consecration of Archbishops and Bishops, even if the Pope should place the kingdom under an interdict, or refuse to grant the usual bulls for consecrations. But the clergy were still too strong in Henry's opinion, so he instigated the Commons to bring in “The Supplication of the Ordinaries”, which, under the cover of hatred by the laity of the clergy, engendered by their power of making canons and abusing their ecclesiastical jurisdiction, sought to limit their freedom from the jurisdiction of the Crown. After some negotiation Convocation consented that in future they would not enact any new canons without the King's licence, and that the existing Canon law should be revised. This is known as the Submission of the Clergy, 1533 (22 Hen. VIII. c. 15).1

Thus, by the recognition of Supremacy, Henry could represent any opposition as an act of disloyalty to the Crown and unfaithfulness to the Church, and by the Submission of the Clergy he could prevent any ecclesiastical legislation being enacted contrary to his wishes. In this year Wareham, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and Henry at once appointed Cranmer, who had been his chief emissary at Rome in his divorce proceedings, to fill the vacancy.

It was Cranmer's suggestion, that in order to strengthen public opinion application should be made to the universities throughout Europe as to the legality of his marriage with Catherine. Few opinions in Henry's favour could be obtained in Germany, but in Italy a lavish purse seems to have been the predominant factor, whilst in France Francis I. obliged the Sorbonne to support Henry. With this support, which, in fact, was rather against the power of Pope Julius to have granted any such dispensation, Cranmer pushed on the divorce proceedings. In 1533 both the Convocations of Canterbury and York found that the marriage of Catherine with Prince Arthur was valid, and that the Pope could not dispense, an act which they held to be contrary to divine law.

The next step was the passing of the second great piece of anti-Papal legislation, viz. the Restraint of Appeals Act, 1533 (24 Hen. VIII. c. 12), which took away the right of the Pope to try causes on Appeal relating to Wills, Matrimony, and Tithes. Appeals were to go from the Archdeacon to the Bishop and from the Bishop to the Archbishop, and in matters touching the King from the Archbishop to the Upper House of Convocation: nothing was said as to the Papal authority as chief Bishop in the West to decide questions of faith or morals or worship. Thereupon Archbishop Cranmer, sitting in his own Court, set aside the marriage with Catherine as legally null and declared the marriage with Anne Boleyn legally valid.

At the same time the Pope declared the marriage with Anne Boleyn legally void, and the next year affirmed the validity of the marriage with Catherine and called on Henry to take her back. Elizabeth, their daughter, was born in 1533. In 1534 the Submission of the Clergy was embodied in the Act, 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, which gave a further appeal from the Archbishop's Court to a Court of Delegates, composed of Commissioners appointed by the Crown for the special purposes of trying the particular case under consideration; and also enacted that the ecclesiastical canons, not contrary to English Civil Law or the King's prerogative, should remain in force until revised by a special Commission; this revision has never been completed, with the result that a large part of the mediaeval canon law still remains in force.

In the same year, 1534, the second Annates Act (25 Hen. VIII. c. 20) was passed, which, in addition to the restraint on payment of Annates, clearly laid down that, as before, a Bishop was to be nominated by the Crown and elected by the Chapter under letters of congé d'élire from the Crown, to be consecrated by the Metropolitan and then to sue out his temporalities from the Crown and take the oath of homage. Thus, the Pope was deprived of a right which he had exercised since the time of King John of granting his consent to the consecration by a bull for which fees had to be paid, and of exacting an oath from the Bishop before granting the bull.

Since the time of St. Augustine the Popes had always given the pall to Metropolitans; this was a mark of favour for which oaths of fealty and payment of fees were required. Though, as we shall see in Book II. Ch. II., this had no sound doctrinal foundation, yet from the fact that the pall was dedicated by being left for a night on the tomb of St. Peter, its reception came to be regarded as typical of the reception of the authority conferred upon St. Peter after the manner of the mantle of Elijah.

At the same time the Dispensations Act 1534 (25 Hen. VIII. c. 21) provided that no fee or payment should be made to the Pope for any dispensation or licence, but that accustomed licences should be granted by the Archbishop.

These dispensations, as we have seen, were partly necessary relaxations of wise laws and partly necessitated by unnecessarily strict laws.

The Supreme Head Act 1534 (26 Hen. VIII. c. 1) added to the Submission of the Clergy of 1532 by declaring that “the King should be accepted as the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England, and as such should have power to visit and amend all abuses and heresies, which by any manner spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought to be redressed and amended, notwithstanding any custom foreign laws or foreign authority to the contrary.” This was confirmed by 28 Hen. VIII. c. 7.

The final anti-Papal Act came in 1536, entitled “An Act for extirpating the authority of the Bishop of Rome” (28 Hen. VIII. c. 10), which provided that every layman or ecclesiastic holding office should take an oath renouncing the Bishop of Rome and his authority under penalty of high treason.

After the fall of Wolsey in 1529, Henry had employed Thomas Cromwell, who had been Wolsey's agent. He was a valuable tool; whilst the policy throughout was that of Henry, the brain of Cromwell put it into practice. Following the Supreme Head Act of 1534, Henry appointed Cromwell as his Vicar-General, in order to exercise the power of visitation expressly referred to in the Act.

Whatever supporters in England of the Papacy that were left could only be found in the ‘regulars’, both monks and friars, whom, as we have seen, always allied themselves closely to the Papacy and sought by bringing themselves directly under the Pope to increase their own particular privileges, and in particular to escape the Visitation of the Bishops. Cromwell, under his new powers, proceeded to visit by means of commissioners all the universities and religious houses.

At the universities he founded a lecture in Greek, and, six months later, secured from Parliament the suppression of all religious houses having an income of less than £200 a year, the proceeds being voted to the King's use, without any stipulation of the purpose to which this fund should be put. But Parliament at that time drew a strong distinction between these obscure houses and the larger ones “where religion is right well kept”. That was in February 1536; in May, Anne was arrested for treason, divorced, and beheaded, and her daughter Elizabeth declared illegitimate, and Parliament transferred the whole legislation in her favour to that of her Lady-in-Waiting, Jane Seymour, whom Henry married the next day. Edward VI. was born in 1537.

In the autumn of the same year, 1536, the North rose in revolt, for the suppression of the smaller monasteries made them think that their religion was in danger. Thirty thousand gathered at Doncaster, but lacked a leader, and through temporizing they lost what opportunity they had, and by the end of the year all their leaders were executed and they were disbanded; thus ended the Pilgrimage of Grace. The direct result, owing to the Abbots of some of the most famous abbeys in the north being involved, was the total suppression of all monasteries throughout the realm, which was completed and confirmed in 1539 by the Act of 31 Hen. VIII. c. 13. The economic effect is not material to our purpose, but the dissolution undoubtedly removed the last organized support of the Papacy. Out of the proceeds the bishoprics of Westminster, Chester, Oxford, Peterborough, Gloucester, and Bristol were founded. At the same time the removal of the mitred Abbots from the House of Lords greatly diminished the power of the clergy in Parliament.

Though the breach with Rome was complete, as yet there was no suggestion of any change of religion, such as would constitute a separation of communion of the Church of England from the Church of Rome. To emphasize this, Henry, in 1539, secured the passing of the Act of the Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII. c. 14) affirming:

1. The doctrine of Transubstantiation.
2. The sufficiency of Communion in one kind.
3. The necessity of clerical celibacy.
4. Sanctity of vows of celibacy and chastity.
5. Desirability of private Masses.
6. Necessity of Auricular Confession.

Henry's quarrel with the Pope over his divorce gave him the opportunity of carrying into effect the object which, we have seen, had been aimed at from the earliest times in English history, of freeing the realm from foreign interference. The Peter's Pence, the Annates, the nomination of foreign non-resident bishops, the fees for appeals and for dispensations, and for a period the tribute exacted from King John, had all been attacked from the time of Edward I. By the Submission of the Clergy and the Annates Acts and the Acts of Supremacy, Henry put an end to these avaricious claims of the Papacy. During the Captivity the Papacy had degenerated into supporters of the French Government, and under the Great Schism it had lost its moral influence; from this period the Papacy had become entirely Italian and the Pope one of several Italian monarchs, vying with the others and with the Empire for the control of Papal Estates in Italy. The outcome of this was the intensification of nationalism throughout Europe, as the hope for support in cases of internal oppression dwindled, owing to the policy of the Papacy being completely dominated with its own territorial affairs. Thus, in England, apart from the ‘regular’ monks and friars, who were swept aside by the dissolution of the monasteries, there were very few who would take any risks to defend the Papal prerogative from attack. So we find Convocation itself in 1534 passing a resolution that “the bishop of Rome hath not by Scripture any greater authority in England than any other foreign bishop”. But this did not deny such primacy which the Papacy might have acquired by the consent or custom of the Church. At the same time, whilst Henry was a strong supporter of the doctrines of the Church, and throughout his reign exterminated all those whom he regarded as heretics, yet he was so far affected with the new learning as to put into force many reforms of abuses which had in the course of ages crept into the Church. Applying the extension of knowledge brought about by the Renaissance, one of the definite principles of his policy of reform was that the authority of the undivided Church was to be the test of faith, and that the abuse and not the use of an observance was to be the test of reform.

With the increase of learning and the introduction of printing, the number of those who could read and write and yet had no knowledge of Latin became increasingly large. Though for centuries Latin had ceased to be used as common speech, formerly of those who were educated enough to be able to read, there were but few who could not speak the language. Accordingly, we find Henry in 1534 providing for an English translation of the Bible, and in the meantime permission was given for the circulation of the translation by Miles Coverdale. Tyndale in 1526 had produced a translation, but apart from being affected with a Zwinglian bias, each part as it was produced was given a preface attacking the Church, and for this reason had been prohibited. By 1538 ‘The Great Bible’ or ‘Bishops' Bible’, based on the translations of Tyndale and Coverdale, was completed and remained in authority until the reign of James I., though technically it was issued solely on the authority of the King without the authorization of Convocation. In 1536 the Ten Articles, five on doctrine and faith and five on Ceremonies, were drawn up by Convocation and issued by the King. In 1537 the King appointed a committee of bishops and divines to draw up a book on faith and morals for the further expounding of the Ten Articles. This was brought out the same year and called The Institution of a Christian Man. The ‘Institution’ or ‘Bishops' Book’ had, however, been hurriedly composed; it contained an exposition of the Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, justification and purgatory. Henry himself carefully annotated his copy, and in 1540 appointed a further Commission, which in 1543 issued two books, that on doctrine, called The Necessary Erudition of any Christian Man, in language more precise and theological than the ‘Institution’, and that on ceremonies, called A Rationale of Rites and Ceremonies. The ‘Necessary Erudition’ or ‘King's Book’ was approved by Convocation and issued by the King.

In 1538 the Reform was continued by the Injunctions which ordered the destruction of all images, which were superstitiously used, and restricted the lights in the Church apart from those for lighting the services to those on the rood loft in front of the Reserved Sacrament, and at the Holy Week Sepulchre. In 1542 a new edition of the Sarum Breviary, omitting all reference to the Pope and amending the Lives of the Saints contained in the ‘Legend’, was issued and directed to be used in the Province of Canterbury to the exclusion of all others — and the lessons to be read in English.

In 1544, following the King's Book, Cranmer, at Henry's request, drew up the Litany in English, and without being submitted to Convocation its use was enforced by Royal Decree.

Finally, in 1545 the Primer of Henry VIII. was issued by the King's Injunction; it contained some devotions on the Passion, and numerous occasional prayers, but omitted the Hours of the Virgin and the Seven Deadly Sins contained in previous Primers.

This superseded the Primers of Marshall and Hilsey and was known as the King's Primer (see Book II. Ch. III.).

Whilst Henry VIII., throughout his work of abolishing Papal interference in England and of reforming the Church in England, had ever adhered to the faith and doctrines of the Catholic Church, and Convocation, even when denying the Scriptural authority of the Bishop of Rome, had been careful to enunciate that they were still “obedient, devout, humble children of the Holy Church as any people be within any realm christened”, and to repudiate any intention of varying “from the congregation of Christ's Church in anything concerning the very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom”, the proceedings in the next reign of Edward VI. were on a different footing.

The Council of the Realm, during the minority of the new King, under the King's uncle, the Duke of Somerset, who was styled the Lord Protector, was composed for the most part of those greedy courtiers who had surrounded Henry's throne in his latter days and who had fattened on the spoils of the dissolved monasteries. For them the most important thing was to keep their gains and add to them by further annexation of ecclesiastical wealth.

Rich, Audley, Paget, Warwick, Russell, and Wentworth had all been conspicuous for their power of absorbing monastic and chantry lands. In fulfilment of their object they definitely desired the introduction of such Continental Reformers into the Church as would secure them from any attack or attempt to make them disgorge. Archbishop Cranmer alone was the honest man in the Council; he, indeed, had come under the influence of Melanchthon, a moderate Lutheran, and of Ridley, his own chaplain, a follower of Peter Martyr, who was a moderate Calvinist. From 1548 he may be said to have become a Calvinist on the doctrine of the Eucharist and a Lutheran on the doctrine of the Ministry, but in other respects in agreement with the theology of the Church.

Before proceeding further, however, we must turn our attention to the Reform movements which had been taking place on the Continent during the reign of Henry VIII.