These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement, the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant, who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.[307] The tendencies to treason were still incipient—they were tendencies only, which had as yet shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the means by which it was fed.

Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed, fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland, without further punishment.[309]

Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her reputation—the celebrated Nun of Kent—whose cell at Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired. Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world, when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we cannot observe it too accurately.

In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a country girl called Elizabeth Barton—a decent person, so far as we can learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance. The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so, we continue the story.

This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312] This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.

An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage, instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of God." Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his mistress and the parson.[314] The story spread rapidly through the country; inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions; and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."[315] Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.

In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor. The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.[316] At first, not knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle with the matter.[317] They submitted, however, "from the obedience which they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the belief of others, and he therefore set himself to assist her inspiration towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St. Catherine of Sienna.[318] In these women she found an enlarged reflection of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.

As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were forwarded[319] regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries. It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood. Conscious wilful deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind; and supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.

The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many stories of miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the apostles, and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox form of credential than clairvoyance or second sight. Being now cured of her real disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind, and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.[320] Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her disorder.[321] The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."

"And when she was brought thither[322] and laid before the image of our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly, that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession, and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was finished and solemnly sung; and a book was written of all the whole story thereof, and put into print; which ever since that time was commonly sold, and went abroad among the people."

The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was no longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin informed her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her exclusive service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial favourite; and Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory of St. Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her profession; and as soon as she was established in her cell, she became a recognised priestess or prophetess, alternately communicating revelations, or indulging the curiosity of foolish persons, and for both services consenting to be paid. The church had by this time spread her reputation through England. The book of her oracles, which extended soon to a considerable volume, was shown by Archbishop Warham to the king, who sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him to look at it. More's good sense had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it "a right poor production, such as any simple woman might speak of her own wit;"[323] and Henry himself "esteemed the matter as light as it afterwards proved lewd." But the world were less critical censors: the saintly halo was round her head, and her most trivial words caught the reflection of the glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm as mean men, and many learned men, but specially many religious men, had great confidence in her, and often resorted to her."[324] They "consulted her much as to the will of God touching the heresies and schisms in the realm;" and when the dispute arose between the bishops and the House of Commons, they asked her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking away the liberties of the church;" to which questions her answers, being dictated by her confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could desire. Her position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric periods of her earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight she was taken up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with heavenly lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of ascent was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore, that she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence, to pass the dormitory door when she pleased—a privilege of which the Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less respectable purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward behaviour was in full keeping with her language and profession. She related many startling stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the angels were in fact alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on one occasion, burnt a mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of these infernal visits, "great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from her chamber, "savouring grievously through all the dorture;" with which, however, it was suspected subsequently that a paper of brimstone and assafoetida, found among her property after her arrest, had been in some way connected. We smile at these stories, looking back at them with eyes enlightened by scientific scepticism; but they furnished matter for something else than smiles when the accounts of them could be exhibited by the clergy as a living proof of the credibility of the Aurea Legenda,—when the subject of them could be held up as a witness, accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old faith, a living evidence to shame the incredulity of the Protestant sectaries. She became a figure of great and singular significance; a "wise woman," to whom persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to have recourse to inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate commensurate with their credulity.[325]

This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops, she issued boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn prohibition against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not "reign a month, but should die a villain's death."[326] Burdened with this message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;[327] and when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits. The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.[328] He, too, in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon herself to threaten Clement,[329] assuming, in virtue of her divine commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.

It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into which we are soon to see her launched.

Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to discuss the marriage question further, he interfered with no one, and therefore not with her. If her own word was to be taken, he even showed her much personal kindness, having offered to make her an abbess, which is difficult to believe, especially as she said that she had refused his offer. She stated also that at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to the emperor, the Countess of Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to accept a place at the court, as a companion to Anne; which again is unsupported by other evidence, and sounds improbable.[330] But it is plain, that until she was found to be meditating treason, she experienced no treatment from the government of which she had cause to complain; and thus for the present we may leave her pursuing her machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the parliament.

The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on the 16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March, which was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of Commons, and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was much disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had heard in their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might perceive that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or pleasure, as some strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his realm."[331] This appears to have been the first time that the subject was mentioned before parliament, and the occasion was reasonably and sensibly chosen. The clergy having possession of the pulpits, had used their opportunity to spread a false impression where the ignorance of the people would allow them to venture the experiment; the king having resolved to fall back upon the support of his subjects, naturally desired the assistance of the country gentlemen and the nobles to counteract the efforts of disaffection, and provided them with accurate information in the simplest manner which he could have chosen.

But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary form, for as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the divorce as the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use all means by which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the Lords, shortly after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the parliament thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English men, for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things peace and order and a secured succession.

The language of this remarkable document[332] was as follows:—

"To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the most invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of France, Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great and weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it may be brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great and earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented hitherto to expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness's hands; we have been unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing that this kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril through the unseasonable delay of sentence. His Majesty, who is our head, and by consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject members by a just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness entreated your Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain: we are by the greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and distinctly by these our letters most humbly to demand a speedy determination. There ought, indeed, to have been no need of this request on our part. The justice of the cause itself, approved to be just by the sentence of so many learned men, by the suffrage of the most famous universities in England, France, and Italy, should have sufficed alone to have induced your Holiness to confirm the sentence given by others; especially when the interests of a king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as it is beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our complaints.

"For what a misfortune is this,—that a sentence which our own two universities, which the University of Paris, and many other universities in France, which men of the highest learning and probity everywhere, at home and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen, that such sentence, we say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by a prince to whom that see owes its present existence. Amidst the attacks of so many and so powerful enemies, the King of England ever has stood by that see with sword and pen, with voice and with authority. Yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his labours. He has saved the papacy from ruin, that others might enjoy the fruits of the life which he has preserved for it. We see not what answer can be made to this; and meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries impending over the commonwealth, threatening to bring back upon us the ancient controversy on the succession, which had been extinguished only with so much blood and slaughter. We have now a king most eminent for his virtues, and reigning by unchallenged title, who will secure assured tranquillity to the realm if he leave a son born of his body to succeed him. The sole hope that such a son may be born to him lies in the being found for him some lawful marriage into which he may enter; and to such marriage the only obstacle lies with your Holiness. It cannot be until you shall confirm the sentence of so many learned men on the character of his former connection. This if you will not do, if you who ought to be our father have determined to leave us as orphans, and to treat us as castaways, we shall interpret such conduct to mean only that we are left to care for ourselves, and to seek our remedy elsewhere. We do not desire to be driven to this extremity, and therefore we beseech your Holiness without further delay to assist his Majesty's just and reasonable desires. We entreat you to confirm the judgment of these learned men; and for the sake of that love and fatherly affection which your office requires you to show towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion against us, your most dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The cause of his Majesty is the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot suffer, but the members must bear a part. We have all our common share in the pain and in the injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of your Holiness, so does the duty of your fatherly office require you to administer it. If, however, your Holiness will not do this, or if you choose longer to delay to do it, our condition hitherto will have been so much the more wretched, that we have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable us to endure it.

"These things we beseech your Holiness, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to consider with yourself. You profess that on earth you are His vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself so to be, by pronouncing your sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation confirmed by the most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray the all-good God, whom we know by most sure testimony to be truth itself, that He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness, that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be spared from seeking it by other more painful methods."

Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification of the demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was acted out with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication, interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country's interests, as well as his own, required.

It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in the same household with the state of a princess,[333] and needlessly wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which his duty permitted. The circumstances of the case, if they were known to us, though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided with an establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour?

But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change. In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a deputation of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir Thomas More to the two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom. It was, probably, but an official request, proposed without expectation that she would yield. After rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she was not likely, inflexible as she had ever been, to yield when the pope had admitted her appeal, and the emperor, victorious through Europe, had promised her support. She refused, of course, like herself, proudly, resolutely, gallantly, and not without the scorn which she was entitled to feel. The nation had no claims upon her, and "for the king's conscience," she answered, "I pray God send his Grace good quiet therein, and tell him I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married; and in that point I will abide till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, hath made thereof a determination and a final ending."[334] The learned councillors retired with their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more dignified; but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in defence of her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers would she abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency, and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.[335] Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those whom sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and as the measures against the church became more stringent, and a separation from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old faith, and to whom the measures of the government appeared a sacrilege. Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of the continent into connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all the remaining faction of the White Rose. And so first the great party of sedition began to shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the shortlived interlude of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and steadily organising itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings, till at length it overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland, exploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in check by the tact and firmness of the government, and by the inherent loyalty of the English to the land of their birth. There was a proverb then current that "the treasons of England should never cease."[336] It was perhaps fortunate that the papal cause was the cause of a foreign power, and could only be defended by a betrayal of the independence of the country. In Scotland and Ireland the insurrectionists were more successful, being supported in either instance by the national feeling. But the strength of Scotland had been broken at Flodden; and Ireland, though hating "the Saxons" with her whole heart, was far off and divided. The true danger was at home; and when the extent and nature of it is fairly known and weighed, we shall understand better what is called the "tyranny" of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth; and rather admire the judgment than condemn the resolution which steered the country safe among those dangerous shoals. Elizabeth's position is more familiar to us, and is more reasonably appreciated because the danger was more palpable. Henry has been hardly judged because he trampled down the smouldering fire, and never allowed it to assume the form which would have justified him with the foolish and the unthinking. Once and once only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on the instant, and therefore it has been slighted and forgotten. But with despatches before his eyes, in which Charles V. was offering James of Scotland the hand of the Princess Mary, with the title for himself of Prince of England and Duke of York[337]—with Ireland, as we shall speedily see it, in flame from end to end, and Dublin castle the one spot left within the island on which the banner of St. George still floated—with a corps of friars in hair shirts and chains, who are also soon to be introduced to us, and an inspired prophetess at their head preaching rebellion in the name of God—with his daughter, and his daughter's mother in league against him, some forty thousand clergy to be coerced into honest dealing, and the succession to the crown floating in uncertainty—finally, with excommunication hanging over himself, and at length falling, and his deposition pronounced, Henry, we may be sure, had no easy time of it, and no common work to accomplish; and all these things ought to be present before our minds, as they were present before his mind, if we would see him as he was, and judge him as we would be judged ourselves.

Leaving disaffection to mature itself, we return to the struggle between the House of Commons and the bishops, which recommenced in the following winter; first pausing to notice a clerical interlude of some illustrative importance which took place in the close of the summer. The clergy, as we saw, were relieved of their premunire on engaging to pay 118,000 pounds within five years. They were punished for their general offences; the formal offence for which they were condemned being one which could not fairly be considered an offence at all. When they came to discuss therefore the manner in which the money was to be levied, they naturally quarrelled among themselves as to where the burden of the fine should fairly rest, and a little scene has been preserved to us by Hall, through which, with momentary distinctness, we can look in upon those poor men in their perplexity. The bishops had settled among themselves that each diocese should make its own arrangements; and some of these great persons intended to spare their own shoulders to the utmost decent extremity. With this object, Stokesley, Bishop of London, who was just then very busy burning heretics, and therefore in bad odour with the people, resolved to call a meeting of five or six of his clergy, on whom he could depend; and passing quietly with their assistance such resolutions as seemed convenient, to avoid in this way the more doubtful expedient of a large assembly.

The necessary intimations were given, and the meeting was to be held on the 1st of September, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's. The bishop arrived at the time appointed, but unhappily for his hopes, not only the chosen six, but with them six hundred of the clergy of Middlesex, accompanied by a mob of the London citizens, all gathered in a crowd at the Chapter-house door, and clamouring to be admitted.

The bishop, trusting in the strength of the chains and bolts, and still hoping to manage the affair officially, sent out a list of persons who might be allowed to take part in the proceedings, and these with difficulty made their way to the entrance. A rush was made by the others as they were going in, and there was a scuffle, which ended for the moment in the victory of the officials: but the triumph was of brief duration; the excluded clergy were now encouraged by the people; they returned vigorously to the attack, broke down the doors, "struck the bishop's officers over the face," and the whole crowd, priests and laity, rushed together, storming and shouting, into the Chapter-house. The scene may be easily imagined; dust flying, gowns torn, heads broken, well-fed faces in the hot September weather steaming with anger and exertion, and every voice in loudest outcry. At length the clamour was partially subdued, and the bishop, beautifully equal to the emergency, arose bland and persuasive.

"My brethren," he said, "I marvel not a little why ye be so heady. Ye know not what shall be said to you, therefore I pray you keep silence, and hear me patiently. My friends, ye all know that we be men, frail of condition and no angels; and by frailty and lack of wisdom we have misdemeaned ourselves towards the king our sovereign lord and his laws; so that all we of the clergy were in premunire, by reason whereof all our promotions, lands, goods, and chattels were to him forfeit, and our bodies ready to be imprisoned. Yet his Grace, moved with pity and compassion, demanded of us what we could say why he should not extend his laws upon us.

"Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy, to whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy. Then for all our great offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of his laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one hundred thousand pounds, to be paid in five years. And though this sum may be more than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we should have borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably exhort you to bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards payment of this sum granted."[338]

The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of the form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the reasoning. It confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the true provocation which had led to the penalty—the unjust extortion of the high church officials—was ignored. The crowd laughed and hooted. The clergy fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was shortly answered by one of them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest. Victual and all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay. Besides that, my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops and abbots which have offended pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of applause. The bishop's officers gave the priests high words. The priests threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition. From words they passed to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion. For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed, and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.

This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their privileges. The convocation and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced. The initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical manner to the last. A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately died, by name Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and leaving no money to be expended in masses.[340] Such notorious heresy could not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled clergy[341] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn it. Their audacity displayed at once the power which they possessed, and the temper in which they were disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have been responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was carried into execution before Henry had time to interfere.[342] It was the last act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and the legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy, convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the living Latimer,[343] when they were recalled to their senses by a summons to prepare some more reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made for them on their privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were to be lived by Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own delinquencies were for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of Commons at the same time proceeded to frame necessary bills on the other points of their complaint.

The first act upon the roll recalls the Constitutions of Clarendon and the famous quarrel between Becket and the Crown. When Catholicism was a living belief, when ordained priests were held really and truly to possess those awful powers which the mystery of transubstantiation assigns to them, they were acknowledged by common consent to be an order apart from the rest of mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable only to spiritual jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they committed crimes, they should escape the retributive consequences of those crimes: offenders against the law might (originally at least) be degraded, if the bishops thought good, and stripped of their commission be delivered thus to the secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment for such persons was of a more awful kind, proportioned to the magnitude of the fault; and was conveyed or held to be conveyed in the infliction of the spiritual death of excommunication. Excommunication was, in real earnest, the death of the soul, at a time when communion with the church was the only means by which the soul could be made partaker of the divine life; and it was a noble thing to believe that there was something worse for a man than legal penalties on his person or on his mortal body; it was beautiful to recognise in an active living form, that the heaviest ill which could befall a man was to be cut off from God. But it is only for periods that humanity can endure the atmosphere of these high altitudes of morality. The early Christians attempted a community of goods, but they were unequal to it for more than a generation. The discipline of Catholicism was assisted by superstition,—it remained vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it languished at last; and although there was so great virtue in a living idea, that its forms preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when in their effect and working they had become as evil as they once were noble; yet reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these forms were to submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of the persons whom they affected.

I have already alluded to the abuse of "benefit of clergy;"[344] we have arrived at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally put away,—a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of the evil, but touched only its extreme outworks. The clergy had monopolised the learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to their body being able to read or write, their privileges became co-extensive, as I above stated, with these acquirements. The exemption from secular jurisdiction, which they obtained in virtue of their sacred character, had been used as a protection in villainy for every scoundrel who could write his name. Under this plea, felons of the worst kind might claim, till this time, to be taken out of the hands of the law judges, and to be tried at the bishops' tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a monstrous solecism had Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever welcomed as the ready expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester's cook, who was a "clerk," parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced him without trial, by attainder. They now passed a general act, remarkable alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to provide.[345] The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be remedied, and the historical position of it. It dwelt upon the assurances which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as often as they had been made; so that "continually manifest thieves and murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders by the king's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy remedy thereto."

To provide such necessary remedy, it was enacted that thenceforward no person under the degree of subdeacon, if guilty of felony, should be allowed to plead "his clergy" any more, but should be proceeded against by the ordinary law. So far it was possible to go—an enormous step if we think of what the evil had been; and in such matters to make a beginning was the true difficulty—it was the logical premise from which the conclusion could not choose but follow. Yet such was the mystical sacredness which clung about the ordained clergy, that their patent profligacy had not yet destroyed it—a priest might still commit a murder, and the profane hand of the law might not reach to him.

The measure, however, if imperfect, was excellent in its degree; and when this had been accomplished, the House proceeded next to deal with the Arches Court—the one enormous grievance of the time. The petition of the Commons has already exhibited the condition of this institution; but the act by which the power of it was limited added more than one particular to what had been previously stated, and the first twenty lines of the statute which was now passed[346] may be recommended to the consideration of the modern censors of the Reformation. The framer of the resolution was no bad friend to the bishops, if they had possessed the faculty of knowing who their true friends were, for the statement of complaint was limited, mild, and moderate. Again, as with the "benefit of clergy," the real ground for surprise is that any fraction of a system so indefensible should have been permitted to continue. The courts were nothing else but the vicious sources of unjust revenue; and with the opportunity so fairly offered, it is strange indeed that they were not swept utterly away. But sweeping measures have never found favour in England. There has ever been in English legislation, even when most reforming, that temperate spirit of equity which has refused to visit the sins of centuries upon a single generation. The statute limited its accusations to the points which it was designed to correct, and touched these with a hand firmly gentle.

"Whereas great numbers of the king's subjects," says the preamble, "as well men, wives, servants, or others dwelling in divers dioceses of the realm of England and Wales, heretofore have been at many times called by citations and other processes compulsory to appear in the Arches, Audience, and other high Courts of the archbishops of this realm, far from and out of the dioceses where such persons are inhabitant and dwelling; and many times to answer to surmised and feigned causes and matters, which have been sued more for vexation and malice than from any just cause of suit; and when certificate hath been made by the sumners, apparitors, or any such light litterate persons, that the party against whom such citations have been awarded hath been cited or summoned; and thereupon the same party so certified to be cited or summoned hath not appeared according to the certificate, the same party therefore hath been excommunicated, or, at the least, suspended from all divine service; and thereupon, before that he or she could be absolved, hath been compelled, not only to pay the fees of the court whereunto he or she was so called, amounting to the sum of two shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but also to pay to the sumner, for every mile distant from the place where he or she then dwelled unto the same court whereunto he or she was summoned to appear, twopence; to the great charge and impoverishment of the king's subjects, and to the great occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and servants, and to the great impairment and diminution of their good names and honesties—be it enacted——" We ask what?—looking with impatience for some large measure to follow these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting itself with forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man out of his own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was any bitter spirit against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance and complacent endurance of all tolerable evil.

Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper. The Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further absorbing the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the clergy using their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to leave estates to provide a priest for ever "to sing for their souls." The arrangement was convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both, certainly for one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was not to the advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a man a perpetual power over the disposition of property to atone for the iniquities of his life. But the privilege was not abolished altogether; it was submitted only to reasonable limitation. Men might still burden their lands to find a priest for twenty years. After twenty years the lands were to relapse for the service of the living, and sinners were expected in equity to bear the consequence in their own persons of such offences as remained after that time unexpiated.[348]

Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first complained of were in a fair way of being remedied. The exorbitant charges for mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal exactions for the sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical courts, the non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular occupations and extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either terminated or brought within bounds. There remained yet to be disposed of the legislative power of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions for heresy. The last of these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former was under reconsideration by the convocation itself, which at length was arriving at a truer conception of its position; and this question was not therefore to be dealt with by the legislature.

One more important measure, however, was passed by parliament before it separated, and it is noticeable as the first step which was taken in the momentous direction of a breach with the See of Rome. A practice had existed for some hundreds of years in all the churches of Europe, that bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to the pope, on receiving their bulls of investment, one year's income from their new preferments. It was called the payment of annates, or firstfruits, and had originated in the time of the crusades, as a means of providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it had settled into custom,[349] and was one of the chief resources of the papal revenue. From England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been paid out of the country in fifty years;[350] and the impost was alike oppressive to individuals and injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks frequently at an advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two or three years of their nomination, their elevation had sometimes involved their families and friends in debt and embarrassment;[351] while the annual export of so much bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious metals formed the only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before a quarrel with the court of Rome had been thought of as a possible contingency, the king had laboured with the pope to terminate the system by some equitable composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had been mentioned more than once in connection with the threats of a separation. The pope had made light of these threats, believing them to be no more than words; there was an opportunity, therefore, of proving that the English government was really in earnest, in a manner which would touch him in a point where he was naturally sensitive, and would show him at the same time that he could not wholly count on the attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in fact, the church itself was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of the bishops and the secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a stronger faith in their own privileges than in the union of Christendom; and if they could purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a quarrel with the pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope, regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner, followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew more intractable, the famous notion that the English church could and should subsist as a separate communion, independent of foreign control, self governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without variation to Catholic doctrine. This principle (if we may so abuse the word) shot rapidly into popularity: a party formed about it strong in parliament, strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country gentlemen and the higher clergy—a respectable, wealthy, powerful body, trading upon a solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to its maintenance, and in their artificial horror of being identified with heresy, the most relentless persecutors of the Protestants. This party, unreal as they were, and influential perhaps in virtue of their unreality, became for the moment the arbiters of the Church of England; and the bishops belonging to it, and each rising ecclesiastic who hoped to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance of the annates as an opportunity for a demonstration of their strength. On this question, with a fair show of justice, they could at once relieve themselves of a burden which pressed upon their purses, and as they supposed, gratify the king. The conservatives were still numerically the strongest, and for a time remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,[352] but their convictions were too feeble to resist the influence brought to bear upon them, and when Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess, the two Houses of Convocation presented an address to the crown for the abolition of the impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and indirect,—the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the thousand similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the Church of England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome, and weighty injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.[353]

That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence of the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their address: "May it please your Grace," they concluded, after detailing their occasions for complaint,—"may it please your Grace to cause the said unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of your high Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process against this realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain bishops' bulls till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the said annates is against the law of God and the pope's own laws, forbidding the buying or selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and forasmuch as all good Christian men be more bound to obey God than any man; and forasmuch as St. Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as walk inordinately; may it please your Highness to ordain in this present parliament that the obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See of Rome."[354]

It was perhaps cruel to compel the clergy to be the first to mention separation—or the language may have been furnished by the Erastian party in the Church, who hoped to gratify the King by it, and save the annates for themselves; but there was no intention, if the battle was really to be fought, of decorating the clergy with the spoils. The bill was passed, but passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown if the pope would consent to a compromise of settling the question by a composition. There was a Papal party in the House of Commons whose opposition had perhaps to be considered,[355] and the annates were left suspended before Clement at once as a menace and a bribe.

"Forasmuch," concluded the statute, "as the King's Highness and this his high Court of Parliament neither have nor do intend in this or any other like cause any manner of extremity or violence, before gentle courtesy and friendly ways and means be first approved and attempted, and without a very great urgent cause and occasion given to the contrary; but principally coveting to disburden this Realm of the said great exactions and intolerable charges of annates and firstfruits: [the said Court of Parliament] have therefore thought convenient to commit the final order and determination of the premises unto the King's Highness, so that if it may seem to his high wisdom and most prudent discretion meet to move the Pope's Holiness and the Court of Rome, amicably, charitably, and reasonably, to compound either to extinct the said annates, or by some friendly, loving, and tolerable composition to moderate the same in such way as may be by this his Realm easily borne and sustained, then those ways of composition once taken shall stand in the strength, force, and effect of a law."[356]

The business of the session was closing. It remained to receive the reply of convocation on the limitation of its powers. The convocation, presuming, perhaps, upon its concessions on the annates question, and untamed by the premunire, had framed their answer in the same spirit which had been previously exhibited by the bishops. They had re-asserted their claims as resting on divine authority, and had declined to acknowledge the right of any secular power to restrain or meddle with them.[357] The second answer, as may be supposed, fared no better than the first. It was returned with a peremptory demand for submission; and taught by experience the uselessness of further opposition, the clergy with a bad grace complied. The form was again drawn by the bishops, and it is amusing to trace the workings of their humbled spirit in their reluctant descent from their high estate. They still laboured to protect their dignity in the terms of their concession:—

"As concerning such constitutions and ordinances provincial," they wrote, "as shall be made hereafter by your most humble subjects, we having our special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely goodness, and fervent zeal for the promotion of God's honour and Christian religion, and specially in your incomparable learning far exceeding in our judgment the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of; and not doubting but that the same should still continue and daily increase in your Majesty; do offer and promise here unto the same, that from henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put in execution any such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time coming, unless your Highness by your Royal assent shall license us to make, promulge, and execute such constitutions, and the same so made be approved by your Highness's authority.

"And whereas your Highness's most honourable Commons do pretend that divers of the constitutions provincial, which have been heretofore enacted, be not only much prejudicial to your Highness's prerogative royal, but be also overmuch onerous to your said Commons, we, your most humble servants for the consideration before said, be contented to refer all the said constitutions to the judgment of your Grace only. And whatsoever of the same shall finally be found prejudicial and overmuch onerous as is pretended, we offer and promise your Highness to moderate or utterly to abrogate and annul the same, according to the judgment of your Grace. Saving to us always such liberties and immunities of this Church of England as hath been granted unto the same by the goodness and benignity of your Highness and of others your most noble progenitors; with such constitutions provincial as do stand with the laws of Almighty God and of your Realm heretofore made, which we most humbly beseech your Grace to ratify and approve by your most Royal assent for the better execution of the same in times to come."[358]

The acknowledgment appeared to be complete, and might perhaps have been accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent acuteness of the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their hands, they discovered—what had no doubt been intended as a loophole for future evasion—that the grounds which were alleged to excuse the submission were the virtues of the reigning king: and therefore, as they sagaciously argued, the submission must only remain in force for his life. They introduced a limitation to that effect. Some further paltry dabbling was also attempted with the phraseology: and at length, impatient with such dishonest trifling, and weary of a discussion in which they had resolved to allow but one conclusion, the king and the legislature thought it well to interfere with a high hand, and cut short such unprofitable folly. The language of the bishops was converted into an act of parliament; a mixed commission was appointed to revise the canon law, and the clergy with a few brief strokes were reduced for ever into their fit position of subjects.[359] Thus with a moderate hand this great revolution was effected, and, to outward appearance, with offence to none except the sufferers, whose misuse of power when they possessed it deprived them of all sympathy in their fall.

But no change of so vast a kind can be other than a stone of stumbling to those many persons for whom the beaten ways of life alone are tolerable, and who, when these ways are broken, are bewildered and lost. Religion, when men are under its influence at all, so absorbs their senses, and so pervades all their associations, that no faults in the ministers of it can divest their persons of reverence; and just and necessary as all these alterations were, many a pious and noble heart was wounded, many a man was asking himself in his perplexity where things would end, and still more sadly, where, if these quarrels deepened, would lie his own duty. Now the Nun of Kent grew louder in her Cassandra wailings. Now the mendicant friars mounted the pulpits exclaiming sacrilege; bold men, who feared nothing that men could do to them, and who dared in the king's own presence, and in his own chapel, to denounce him by name.[360] The sacred associations of twelve centuries were tumbling into ruin; and hot and angry as men had been before the work began, the hearts of numbers sank in them when they "saw what was done;" and they fell away slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at last treason.

The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction, was the resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.[361] More had not been an illiberal man; when he wrote the Utopia, he seemed even to be in advance of his time. None could see the rogue's face under the cowl clearer than he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the delusions of Anglicanism; and as he saw the inevitable tendency of the Reformation to lead ultimately to a change of doctrine, he attached himself with increasing determination to the cause of the pope and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive prescience of what would follow from it, he had from the first been opposed to the divorce; and he had not concealed his feeling from the king at the time when the latter had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In consenting to become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties; he had held his office for two years and a half—and it would have been well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal—for in his ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; it was time for him to retire from a world not moving to his mind; and in the fair tranquillity of his family prepare himself for the evil days which he foresaw. In May, 1532, he petitioned for permission to resign, resting his request unobtrusively on failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose his services.

Parallel to More's retirement, and though less important, yet still noticeable, is a proceeding of old Archbishop Warham under the same trying circumstances. In the days of his prosperity, Warham had never reached to greatness as a man. He had been a great ecclesiastic, successful, dignified, important, but without those highest qualities which command respect or interest. The iniquities of Warham's spiritual courts were greater than those of any other in England. He had not made them what they were. They grew by their own proper corruption; and he was no more responsible for them than every man is responsible for the continuance of an evil by which he profits, and which he has power to remedy. We must look upon him as the leader of the bishops in their opposition to the reform; and he was the probable author of the famous answer to the Commons' petition, which led to such momentous consequences.[362] These consequences he had lived partially to see. Powerless to struggle against the stream, he had seen swept away one by one those gigantic privileges to which he had asserted for his order a claim divinely sanctioned; and he withdrew himself heartbroken, into his palace at Lambeth, and there entered his solemn protest against all which had been done. Too ill to write, and trembling on the edge of the grave, he dictated to his notaries from his bed these not unaffecting words:—

"In the name of God, Amen. We, William, by Divine Providence Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, hereby publicly and expressly do protest for ourselves and for our Holy Metropolitan Church of Canterbury, that to any statute passed or hereafter to be passed in this present Parliament, began the third of November, 1529, and continued until this present time; in so far as such statute or statutes be in derogation of the Pope of Rome or the Apostolic See, or be to the hurt, prejudice, or limitation of the powers of the Church, or shall tend to the subverting, enervating, derogating from, or diminishing the laws, customs, privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminence of liberties of our Metropolitan Church of Canterbury; we neither will, nor intend, nor with clear conscience are able to consent to the same, but by these writings we do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them."[363]

Thus formally having delivered his soul, he laid himself down and died.



CHAPTER V

MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN

Although in the question of the divorce the king had interfered despotically to control the judgment of the universities, he had made no attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he had desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which made a crime of a difference of opinion on the pope's dispensing powers; and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a locus suspectus, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an ostentatious display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been made chancellor, although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert Tunstal, who had been her counsel, was promoted to the see of Durham. The Nun of Kent, if her word was to be believed, had been offered an abbey,[364] and that Henry permitted language to pass unnoticed of the most uncontrolled violence, appears from a multitude of informations which were forwarded to the government from all parts of the country. But while imposing no restraint on the expression of opinion, the council were careful to keep themselves well informed of the opinions which were expressed, and an instrument was ready made to their hands, which placed them in easy possession of what they desired. Among the many abominable practices which had been introduced by the ecclesiastical courts, not the least hateful was the system of espionage with which they had saturated English society; encouraging servants to be spies on their masters, children on their parents, neighbours on their neighbours, inviting every one who heard language spoken anywhere of doubtful allegiance to the church, to report the words to the nearest official, as an occasion of instant process. It is not without a feeling of satisfaction, that we find this detestable invention recoiling upon the heads of its authors. Those who had so long suffered under it, found an opportunity in the turning tide, of revenging themselves on their oppressors; and the country was covered with a ready-made army of spies, who, with ears ever open, were on the watch for impatient or disaffected language in their clerical superiors, and furnished steady reports of such language to Cromwell.[365]

Specimens of these informations will throw curious light on the feelings of a portion at least of the people. The English licence of speech, if not recognised to the same extent as it is at present, was certainly as fully practised. On the return of the Abbot of Whitby from the convocation at York in the summer of 1532, when the premunire money was voted, the following conversation was reported as having been overheard in the abbey.

The prior of the convent asked the abbot what the news were. "What news," said the abbot, "evil news. The king is ruled by a common —— Anne Boleyn, who has made all the spiritualty to be beggared, and the temporalty also. Further he told the prior of a sermon that he had heard in York, in which it was said, when a great wind rose in the west we should hear news. And he asked what that was; and he said a great man told him at York, and if he knew as much as three in England he would tell what the news were. And he said who were they? and he said the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, and the common —— Anne Boleyn."[366]

The dates of these papers cannot always be determined; this which follows, probably, is something later, but it shows the general temper in which the clergy were disposed to meet the measures of the government.

"Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a prophecy among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in his mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that his Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the church is the mother, and the church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth that he hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them that the King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his Grace's father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no secular knave should be head of the church; also that the abbot did know of these treasons, and had made no report thereof."[367]

Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous language was ventured. The pulpit of St. Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday with the polemics of the divorce; and if "the holy water of the court" made the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in London itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts with entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, Father Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to distinguish himself. Forest was warden of a convent of Observants at Greenwich attached to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's confessor, remained, with the majority of the friars, faithful to her interests, and fearless in the assertion of them. From their connection with the palace, the intercourse of these monks with the royal household was considerable; their position gave them influence, and Anne Boleyn tried the power of her charms, if possible, to gain them over. She had succeeded with a few of the weaker brothers, but she was unable (and her inability speaks remarkably for Henry's endurance of opposition through the early stages of the controversy) to protect those whose services she had won from the anger of their superiors. One monk in whom she was interested the warden imprisoned,[368] another there was an effort to expel,[369] because he was ready to preach on her side; and Forest himself preached a violent sermon at Paul's Cross, attacking Cromwell and indirectly the king.[370] He was sent for to the court, and the persecuted brothers expected their triumph; but he returned, as one of them wrote bitterly to Cromwell, having been received with respect and favour, as if, after all, the enmity of a brave man found more honour at the court than the complacency of cowardice. Father Forest, says this letter, has been with the king. "He says he spake with the king for half an hour and more, and was well retained by his Grace; and the King's Grace did send him a great piece of beef from his own table; and also he met with my Lord of Norfolk, and he says he took him in his arms and bade him welcome."[371]

Forest, unfortunately for himself, misconstrued forbearance into fear, and went his way at last, through treason and perjury, to the stake. In the meantime the Observants were left in possession of the royal chapel, the weak brother died in prison, and the king, when at Greenwich, continued to attend service, submitting to listen, as long as submission was possible, to the admonitions which the friars used the opportunity to deliver to him.

In these more courteous days we can form little conception of the licence which preachers in the sixteenth century allowed themselves, or the language which persons in high authority were often obliged to bear. Latimer spoke as freely to Henry VIII. of neglected duties, as to the peasants in his Wiltshire parish. St. Ambrose did not rebuke the Emperor Theodosius more haughtily than John Knox lectured Queen Mary and her ministers on the vanities of Holyrood; and Catholic priests, it seems, were not afraid to display even louder disrespect.

On Sunday, the first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was occupied by Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe as a Catholic incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of the Observants convent. His sermon had been upon the story of Ahab and Naboth, and his text had been, "Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall they lick thy blood, O king." Henry, the court, and most likely Anne Boleyn herself, were present; the first of May being the great holy-day of the English year, and always observed at Greenwich with peculiar splendour. The preacher had dilated at length upon the crimes and the fall of Ahab, and had drawn the portrait in all its magnificent wickedness. He had described the scene in the court of heaven, and spoken of the lying prophets who had mocked the monarch's hopes before the fatal battle. At the end, he turned directly to Henry, and assuming to himself the mission of Micaiah, he closed his address in the following audacious words:—"And now, O king," he said, "hear what I say to thee. I am that Micaiah whom thou wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful, and I know that I shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the waters of sorrow, yet because the Lord hath put it in my mouth I must speak it. There are other preachers, yea too many, which preach and persuade thee otherwise, feeding they folly and frail affections upon hopes of their own worldly promotion; and by that means they betray thy soul, thy honour, and thy posterity; to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and bishops, and I know not what. These I say are the four hundred prophets who, in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee. Take heed lest thou, being seduced, find Ahab's punishment, who had his blood licked up by the dogs."