The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill
and divine service should continue to be administered, and the interdict should not by any prelate or minister be executed or divulged. If any one named by the King to a bishopric were restrained by Bulls from Rome from accepting office he should be consecrated by the Archbishop, or any one named to an Archbishopric. And the Annates, a mainstay of the Papal finances, were limited to 5 per cent of their former amount.
This was the most difficult Bill which Henry ever had to steer through Parliament. He was obliged to go down to the House of Lords himself at least three times, and even then seemed likely to fail, until he thought of an entirely new expedient—the first public division of the House. “He thought of a plan that those among the Members who wished for the King’s welfare and the prosperity of the kingdom (as they call it) should stand on one side of the House and those who opposed the measure on the other. For fear of the King’s indignation a number of them went over,” and with considerable amendment the Bill was passed.
The next step was to make the clergy submit to the royal supremacy. Henry got the Commons to prepare a document called the Supplication against the Ordinaries, directed against the authority of Church courts. “Ordinaries” was the legal term for bishops and their deputies who enjoyed rights of jurisdiction. Although Convocation was truculent at first, making submission only in vague and ambiguous terms, Henry refused to compromise, and at the third attempt they agreed to articles of his own, making him effective master of the Church in England. On the very afternoon these articles were submitted for the royal consent, May 16, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned the Lord Chancellorship as a protest against royal supremacy in spiritual affairs. He had tried to serve his sovereign faithfully in everything; now he saw that Henry’s courses must inevitably conflict with his own conscientious beliefs.
Thus the English Reformation was a slow process. An opportunist King measured his steps as he went, until England was wholly independent of administration from Rome. Wolsey had done much to prepare the way. He had supported the Papacy during some of its most critical years, and in return had been allowed to exercise wide and sweeping powers which were usually reserved to the Pope himself or to one of his visiting legates. England therefore was more accustomed than any other province of Christendom to Papal jurisdiction being vested in one of its own priests, and this made it easier to transfer it to the Crown. Wolsey had also brought Papal authority in his own person nearer to men’s lives than it had ever been, and this unsought familiarity bred dislike. The death in August of old Archbishop Warham, principal opponent of the King’s divorce, opened further possibilities and problems. Henry did not hasten to appoint a successor. He had to consider how far he could go. If there were a struggle could any of his bishops be trusted to forget the oath which they had sworn to the Pope at their consecration? Would there be a rebellion? Would the Emperor, Queen Catherine’s nephew, invade England from the Low Countries? Could the King rely on French neutrality?
In order to weigh these factors at first hand the King went over to Boulogne with only a few friends, including Anne Boleyn, for personal discussion with Francis I. He returned reassured. Confident that he could carry through even the most startling appointment to Canterbury,he recalled Cranmer from his embassy. Cranmer had been married twice, the second time in Germany after ordination, in the new German fashion for priests, to the niece of a well known Lutheran. Since the marriage of priests was still illegal in England, Cranmer’s wife went ahead in disguise. Cranmer himself took leave of the Emperor at Mantua on November 1st, 1532, and left the following day, arriving in London in the middle of December. A week later he was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He accepted. Henceforward, until Henry died, Cranmer’s wife was always hidden, and if she accompanied him was obliged, according to popular repute, to travel with the luggage in a vast chest specially constructed to conceal her.
A month later Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn. Historians have never discovered for certain who performed the ceremony, or where. Cranmer himself was not the priest. Both he and the Imperial Ambassador reported subsequently that the marriage had taken place in January 1533. Undoubtedly, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic world, Henry VIII committed bigamy, for he had been married nearly twenty-five years to Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage had not yet been annulled in Rome, or even in England, by any court or any public act. He simply assumed he had never been legally married at all, and left the lawyers and clergy to put the matter right afterwards.
Cranmer became Archbishop in the traditional manner. At the King’s request Bulls had been obtained from Rome by threatening the Papacy with a rigorous application of the Act of Annates. Cranmer swore to obey the Pope with the usual oath, though reservations were made before and afterwards, and he was consecrated with the full ceremonial. This was important: the man who was to carry through the ecclesiastical revolution had thus been accepted by the Pope and endowed with full authority. Two days afterwards, however, a Bill was introduced into Parliament vesting in the Archbishop of Canterbury the power, formerly possessed by the Pope, to hear and determine all appeals from the ecclesiastical courts in England. Future attempts to use any foreign process would involve the drastic penalties of Præmunire. The judgments of the English courts were not to be affected by any Papal verdict or by excommunication, and any priest who refused to celebrate divine service or administer the sacraments was made liable to imprisonment. This momentous Bill, the work of Thomas Cromwell, which abolished what still remained of Papal authority in England, passed through Parliament in due course, and became known as the Act of Appeals. The following month Henry himself wrote a letter describing his position as “King and Sovereign, recognising no superior in earth but only God, and not subject to the laws of any earthly creature.” The breach between England and Rome was complete.
Having established his supremacy, Henry proceeded to exploit it. In March 1533 Convocation was asked two questions: Was it against the Law of God, and not open to dispensation by the Pope, for a man to marry his brother’s wife, he being dead without issue, but having consummated the marriage? Answer by the prelates and clergy present: Yes. By Bishop Fisher of Rochester: No. Was Prince Arthur’s marriage with Queen Catherine consummated? Answer by the clergy: Yes. By the Bishop: No. Thereupon the Bishop was arrested and committed to the Tower. About ten days later the Duke of Norfolk with royal commissioners waited on Queen Catherine at Ampthill. Every sort of reason was advanced why she should renounce her title voluntarily. She was blocking the succession. Her daughter would not be accepted by the country as Queen, and England might be plunged in chaos if she continued her unreasonable obstruction. If she resigned a great position would still be open to her. She refused to resign. Then she was informed of the decisions of Convocation. Steps would be taken to deprive her of the rank of Queen, to which she was no longer entitled. She declared her determination to resist. But the Commissioners had still another announcement to make. Catherine was in any case Queen no longer, for the King was already married to Anne Boleyn.
Thus Henry’s secret marriage became known. A fortnight later Cranmer opened a court at Dunstable, and sent a proctor to Ampthill citing Catherine to appear. She refused. In her absence the Archbishop pronounced judgment. Catherine’s marriage with Henry had existedin fact but not in law; it was void from the beginning; and five days afterwards the marriage with Anne was declared valid. Queen Anne Boleyn was crowned on June 1 in Westminster Abbey.
The following month it became clear that the new Queen was expecting a child. As the confinement approached Henry remained with her at Greenwich, and took the greatest care she should not be disturbed. Much bad news came in from across the seas and frontiers, but on such occasions Henry rode out into the country and met the Council in the open, to prevent the Queen from conjecturing the gravity of the situation, or perhaps to avoid the plague. A magnificent and valuable bed, which had lain in the Treasury since it had formed part of a French nobleman’s ransom, was brought forth, and in it on September 7, 1533, the future Queen Elizabeth was born.
Although bonfires were lighted there was no rejoicing in Henry’s heart. A male heir had been his desire. After he had defied the whole world, perhaps committed bigamy, and risked deposition by the Pope and invasion, here was only a second daughter. “Do you wish to see your little daughter?” the old nurse asked, according to one account. “My daughter, my daughter!” replied the King in a passion. “You old devil, you witch, don’t dare to speak to me!” He galloped at once away from Greenwich, away from Anne, and in three days had reached Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire, the residence of a worthy