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England's position in the Roman Catholic Church was the product of a number of distant historical events. In 1172 King Henry II was forced to concede under Papal pressure to recognize clerical rights of sanctuary and to have their cases heard in ecclesiastical courts. These extraordinary rights, called benefit of clergy, continued to be exercised by the "churchmen" until late in the fifteenth century when Henry VII was able to get them set aside in the cases of treason and murder.
King John had been forced to surrender his kingdom to the Papacy in 1213; subsequently he received it back as a fief. Innocent III and subsequent Popes had claimed all English churches as papal property and England itself as a province of the Roman See. Nevertheless, the Statute of Mortmain in 1279 had attempted to regulate the sale or other transfer to the Church of lands held in tenancy to great seigneurs and even to the King. Tenants sometimes did this innocently, but other times it served as a means of escaping their obligations. Mortmain deprived them of this option by forcing all sellers to secure first a license from the King. This only slowed the expansion of the Church's landed wealth because it was not effectively or consistently enforced.
During the fourteenth century while the Papacy was residing at Avignon and cooperating very closely with the French crown, the English government passed, in 1351, the Statute of Provisors, which was a not very efficient or successful attempt to stop Papal provisions of non-Englishmen to church posts in England. Later during the Schism, a second Statute of Provisors, more strict than the first, was issued in 1390, but even it soon became a dead letter for various reasons, among them the weakness of the Papacy in the early fifteenth century. The Statute of Praemunire was first issued in 1353 in the attempt to prevent the intrusion of papal courts into England and it specifically forbade any Englishman to appeal to any court outside the realm. This law also became more or less inoperative by the fifteenth century.
The English Convocations of the Clergy (Canterbury and York), that part of Parliament made up of the representatives of the Church under the two English Archbishops had gained an independent status. The Convocations were able to make rules, set fees and establish standards without the consent of the rest of the Commons, that part of Parliament made up of the representatives of the Shires, Burroughs, etc.
England's position in the Roman Catholic Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had turned out differently than some of the states on the Continent for another reason. While the papacy surrendered financial and administrative control over the church to state governments in Spain, Italy, and southern Germany, the English kings were never in a position to demand these concessions. Henry VII was only able to wring some concessions from the papacy in limiting benefit of clergy to crimes less than treason and murder. This left England in a very vulnerable position. Approximately twenty percent of England's national wealth was in the hands of the Church and enormous amounts of money were annually skimmed off the English economy. The estimate is that 220,000 pounds sterling was Rome's take in the average year. In addition, some of the worst administrative abuses, especially the twins, pluralism and absenteeism, were imposed on the English. Such abuses were not allowed in Spain or in France to the degree they were prevalent in England. Anti-clericalism was also quite evident. A London lawyer, Simon Fish, wrote a pamphlet in 1527 complaining about the yearly extractions of wealth and the abuses of the ecclesiastical organization. Although exaggerated and inflammatory, "The Very Beggars' Supplication Against Popery" was an influential expression of anticlerical sentiment.
Although the Lollard heresy had been officially declared extinct by the Church in 1431, it surfaced repeatedly, especially among the more worldly-wise urban dwellers. As late as 1521 the Bishop of London had rounded up nearly 500 Lollards in one sweap. Even if Lollardly was officially dead its vibrancy is attested by the fact that every major writing from Wyclif's pen survived and they were widely known.
Beyond the deep seated English concern about these abuses and the lurking criticisms of John Wyclif, there was no widespread dissatisfaction with the doctrines of Catholicism. This explains why, in England, theological reform came only after administrative reforms--virtually the opposite of the order of things in Germany and Switzerland where theological reform was at the forefront. The English sympathizers for the reforms on the continent were known as the "Germans". These so-called "Germans" at Cambridge were scholars that were not only aware of Wycliff's views but also students of Luther's criticism of the Church. These included John Frith, Robert Barnes, Hugh Latimer and William Tyndale. Beyond the University circle Lutheran tracts began to appear as early as 1519 and enjoy widespread popular circulation.
William Tyndale was the most influential of the Cambridge "Germans". He would eventually die a martyrs' death on the Continent in October, 1536. Born about 1494 in Gloucestershire, he took his bachelor's at Oxford in 1512 and his master's in 1515. When the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, denied his request for funds to translate the Bible into English he found other means. With the monetary assistance of Humphrey Munmouth, a London merchant, he left England in 1524. He moved from place to place to stay one step ahead of Catholic authorities. He published the first English New Testament at Worms in 1526, and it soon appeared in England. Many of his New Testaments were purchased by authorities and burned. In 1530 Henry VIII issued a decree prohibiting the possession of the scripture in any "vulgar tongue".
Tyndale's own writings, "The Parable of the Wicked Mammon" and "The Obedience of a Christian Man," both published in 1528, were inspirations to later reformers. Meanwhile, Tyndale revised his New Testament translation and continued his translation work, completing and publishing the Pentateuch in 1530 and the Book of Jonah in 1531. His work was finally interrupted when the Englishman with whom he was living at the time in Antwerp could not pass up the chance to brag about his house guest to some of his business associates. Tyndale was kidnapped and brought before the city court, which, acting on the instructions of the Church, threw him into prison. There he struggled for sixteen months continuing his work. He was publically executed (bound to a stake, strangled, and burned) for the crime of translating the Holy Scriptures into the vulgar English tongue.
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Twenty-nine year old Henry VII Tudor became King of England in 1485 at the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses. His bride, Elizabeth York, became the mother of two sons, Arthur and Henry, and a daughter, Margaret. In 1501 Margaret married James IV of Scottland. Arthur was being groomed to succeed his father. Ferdinand the king of Aragon wished to establish an alliance with Henry VII. In 1502 fifteen year old Arthur married Catherine of Aragon, younger daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Catherine lived with Arthur for five months before his death in 1502. To keep the dowry and the Anglo-Spanish alliance that came with Catherine, Henry VII immediately made the arrangements for her to become the wife of his younger son, Henry VIII who succeeded his father, Henry VII, two months prior to his eighteenth birthday in 1509.
Before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses England had been the most efficiently centralized and governed kingdom in western Europe. As a result of the chaos the power of the crown had eroded considerably. Henry VII had an arduous task before him. While a cool headed, very perceptive monarch Henry was both aggressive and tenacious. The lesser nobility and the burgeoning middle class both pinned their hopes on him as the man to restore order and security. Most of his outstanding ministers came from the middle class.
The upper nobility, the barons, had taken an active part in the wars and were not ready to quietly surrender their prerogatives. Many of these barons had in their service sizeable groups of armed retainers that could be mobilized at the drop of a hat. To enforce existing laws Henry found it necessary to appeal to the extraordinary. The Court of Star Chamber was the King's Council acting as a high court. It was not bound by English common law procedures; there were no juries to be bribed nor local judges to intimidate. The Star Chambers' powers were as broad as the necessity for action and dramatically efficient. Although they could employ torture to secure evidence, they did not have the power to impose the death penalty. Although the Star Chamber could not draw blood, it did produce a stream of wealth into the royal coffers. It was an efficient instrument to bring the barons into check. His success, however, was in part due to the depleted numbers of powerful barons; there were only 27.
Henry VII gave considerable attention to the advancement of the middle class, particularly English commercial enterprises. A series of treaties with the Netherlands, Denmark and Venice broadened the opportunities of English merchants to sell English produce. The first of the Navigation Acts were passed restricting the importation of certain goods to English ships. The steady demand for wool both to export to the Netherlands and to satisfy England's growing textile industry stimulated many of the lower nobility of England to go into the sheep raising business. Prices for other agricultural produce were depressed as stability returned to the countryside after the wars were over. This motivated the nobility to reclaim their seigneural lands, evict the renters and turn the arable into pastures In seeking other ways to expand the grazing areas for their flocks, they "enclosed" (fenced off) sections of the "common" at the expense of the peasants, collectively, in the village. Many peasants were left without sufficient pasturage for their livestock and poultry and were forced by necessity to sell portions, or all of their arable strips for a severely depressed price and endure the marginal existence of the landless farm laborers. Some in desperation moved to the towns depending upon meager and uncertain opportunities for employment. This whole process, called the first enclosure movement, was a time of unrest and misery among the lower classes.
Henry's success in keeping the expenses of government under rigorous control while aggressively developing all possible sources of revenue without increasing the tax burden on the lower classes filled the royal treasury to overflowing. On occasion Parliament did vote him a war subsidy to fight with France. He managed to avoid the conflict, pocket the subsidy and charge France a huge monetary indemnity in addition. The nobility were most often the target of his relentless conniving to collect enormous fines for their failures to comply to obscure and outdated laws. His lawyers were particularly adept in catching the nobility at infringements of the laws against livery and maintenance.
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Henry VIII, second son of Henry VII, lacked only two months being eighteen in 1509 when he inherited the throne. Seven weeks later he married Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and younger sister to Juana of Castile, the mother of Charles & Ferdinand Hapsburg. Catherine had come to England at age sixteen nearly a decade previously. Since she became the wife of Arthur, Henry VIII's older brother, and lived with him for five months, the English Churchmen secured a comprehensive dispensation from Pope Julius II. The dispensation allowed Catherine to marry Henry VIII in 1509 even in case the union with the groom's brother had been consummated.
The primary concern of any young king is to produce a male heir as early in his career as possible so that his dynasty will have a future. Henry VIII was disappointed that his marriage to the older Catherine did not produce the male heir. Catherine's children by her first four pregnancies did not survive infancy. Finally in 1516 the daughter Mary was born. As their further efforts (three more pregnancies) seemed as fruitless as their earlier ones Henry's attentions turned elsewhere. That he likely fathered at least one illegitimate offspring by 1522 may have convinced him that it was not his fault. It is generally conceded by authorities today that Henry's marriage to Catherine was almost certainly blighted as a consequence of the "Italian's disease" (syphilis).
Henry VIII soon became increasingly interested in solving his problem by setting Catherine aside and taking another legitimate wife in her place. In 1527 he enrolled the assistance of his Chancellor and chief counselor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. First they considered indicting Henry in an ecclesiastical court for "living in an unlawful union with his brother's wife". Although the idea seemed to be that the Papacy might, as a consequence, declare the marriage null and void, this scheme was soon abandoned. Instead Wolsey spent June 1527 collecting signatures on a petition to the Pope asking Clement VII to establish a Papal commission to look into the legality of the king's marriage.
Meanwhile, Henry's personal secretary traveled to Rome to present the Pope with three requests for the king to have his cake and eat it too:
Clement VII was currently confined in the Castle St Angelo at Rome by the rampaging troops of Charles V. Clement VII did not want to give Charles V any reasons to be unhappy with him under these circumstances. Afterall, Charles V was Catherine's nephew! The documents requested by the English were prepared but secretly falsified so that the Pope's signature actually granted nothing.
In the spring of 1528 Steven Gardiner and Edward Fox went to Rome with the king's renewed demands. Either the pope dispatches a legatine commission to England or the English Church would secede. The Pope duly commissioned Cardinal Campeggio in June 1528, but he did not arrive in England until winter and did not open court till May 31, 1529. Wolsey presented the evidence and Campeggio adjourned in July to make his decision. The Papacy intervened and recalled the case to the papal court in Rome.
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In November 1529, the Parliament that was to be known as "The Reformation Parliament" was convened. Its first actions were to petition the king to address the conflicts between the Church and the State with a view toward ending the abuses. They went on to itemize their grievances with the financial abuses of the Church in the case of wills, mortuaries, rents on church estates, secular employment, pluralities and absenteeism. The Convocations of the Clergy had traditionally the administration of all these issues. When the Commons passed the king's bills dealing with these issues the Churchmen grumbled and considered condemning the actions.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey resigned as Chancellor in October, 1529. However, because of the instigation of the very influential Anne Boleyn, Wolsey was arrested a few months later and charged with treason under the long obsolete Statute of Praemunire. Henry's lawyers now interpreted Wolsey's legatine authority and his appearance in Campeggio's court as breeches of that law. Wolsey died in November, 1530, before his case was heard. Thomas More became Chancellor.
Meanwhile, other ideas were afoot. Thomas Cranmer, a clerk who was tutoring children in the home where the King's secretary was billeted had suggested to the secretary that the king might submit his problem to the Universities. When Henry VIII heard this idea he was fascinated. He appointed Cranmer as the Chaplain to the family of the Earl of Wiltshire, Thomas Boleyn, and commissioned him to write a paper on the subject in 1529. Then the king sent Cranmer as a diplomat to Germany.
Thomas Boleyn was dispatched in 1530 as a special emissary to Charles V with the mission of convincing him to allow a decree of nullity dissolving Catherine's marriage with Henry. Other emissaries were sent to several universities across Europe with uncertain and scandalous results.
Meanwhile the Convocations of the Clergy were busy taking actions against the influences of Luther. They had let the issue of their clash with the Commons rest for the moment but then an even bigger issue appeared, the posthumous conviction of Wolsey under the Statute of Praemunire. This was another infringement of the Church's privilege. They were caught completely off guard when in November, 1530, Henry's lawyers charged the whole body of the English clergy with suspicion of treason because they had acknowledged the legatine authority of Wolsey. The Convocations were stunned. In January the Convocation of Canterbury demonstrated its loyalty by donating 100,000 pounds sterling to the Royal coffers. York added 19,000 pounds to that. They were instructed to address their gifts to the "Protector and Supreme Head of the English Church and Clergy." This was too much. They finally submitted by amending the address with the addition of the phrase, "as far as the Law of Christ allows."
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Henry's frustration was then channeled in yet another direction by the rise of Wolsey's secretary, Thomas Cromwell, in the king's confidence beginning in 1531. This self-educated former wool carder is alleged to have planted the idea that once Henry had established himself as head of the English church he might well provide the judicial authority necessary to dissolve his marriage with Catherine.
Meanwhile the Commons made a second petition to the king, this one in March, 1532. This petition cited twelve clashes between the legislative powers of the Convocations and the Royal government (including the Commons). Henry just conveyed the petition to the Convocations asking them to respond. Again the Convocations submitted to the Royal authority. On the day the "Submission of the Clergy" was delivered to the King, May 16, 1532, Chancellor Thomas More resigned. Meanwhile, Commons passed three bills correcting abuses in the matters of Mortmain, Benefit of Clergy and Annates. In the latter issue, the "Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates", allowed the King to withhold Annates from the Papacy as a means of extracting cooperation from him.
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In January, 1533, the King learned that he was an expectant father. He secretly married Anne Boleyn on or about January 25.
In February, 1533, Commons passed the "Act in Restraint of Appeals". This act reinforced the Statute of Praemunire and went on to declare the English ecclesiastical courts competent to deal with not only administrative matters, but spiritual matters also.
In 1533 the layman Thomas Cromwell became Vicar-General of the English Church, in charge of all church wealth and property. Also in 1533 Thomas Cranmer was recalled from Germany (where he had married) and made Archbishop of Canterbury, March 30, 1533. On the very next day Cranmer demanded from Convocations a vote on "the King's Business." The vote was to deny the jurisdiction of the Pope in the case of the marriage between Henry and Catherine. Cranmer requested Royal permission to hear the case. The trial started on April 12. Cranmer announced the verdict in early May. Catherine of Aragon was no longer Queen and Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was valid. In June Anne was crowned at Westminster. On September 7, 1533, Elizabeth Tudor was born.
In 1534 Commons passed the "Acts of Succession" necessary to confirm the nullity of Henry's marriage to Catherine, the validity of his marriage to Anne, and the legitimacy of Ann's offspring. These acts also required all subjects to take an oath supporting them. Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester went to the Tower because they refused to take such an oath on the grounds that it would imply the repudiation of papal authority and commit them to declaring Catherine's child Mary illegitimate.
Commons passed five decisive acts in 1534, which were designed to sever all connections with the Papacy. Annates were forbidden, Peter's Pence abolished, and appeals to the Pope for any reason were prohibited. The "Act of Supremacy" established the English Monarch as "Supreme Head of the Church of England" specifying that he exercised the potestas jurisdictionis over the church but did not exercise the potestas ordinis, the power of ordination. Another of the acts was the "Treason Act" which made calling the king "heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper" punishable by death. The Convocations also took their action in 1534 issuing the "Abjuration of the Papal Supremacy," declaring in part, "The Roman Pontif has no greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy Scriptures than any other foreign ... bishop."
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In 1534 Thomas Cromwell became Henry's chief Secretary and liaison with Commons. Cromwell now exercised his right of Vicar General over the Church to carry out a general visitation of all churches, monasteries and collegiate bodies. Cromwell reported his findings to Commons and secured the "Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries" in 1536. By this act 376 monasteries whose annual income was less than 200 pounds annually were disbanded. There was something of a popular protest, but it did not prevent the Royal confiscation of the lands and treasure. In 1539 the remainder of the monasteries in England were dissolved. Henry kept some of the land, used some to provide monastic pensions for indigent former monks and donated a little to education. The bulk of it was sold at very low cost to favored barons, townsmen and gentry, a policy that somewhat guaranteed popular support for the changes. It is perhaps instructive to note that the Shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, one of the more wealthy houses yielded twenty-six cartloads of gold and silver.
Catherine of Aragon died January 7, 1536. Anne Boleyn was executed after her second child was stillborn, May 19, 1536. Jane Seymore, whom Henry married May 20, 1536, died before the end of 1537 from complications following the birth of Prince Edward in October.
In July 1536, Henry issued The Ten Articles with the consent of the Convocations. Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, and other leading churchmen had hammered out these doctrinal positions. These articles were basically concessions in the direction of Lutheranism.
Thomas Cranmer, meanwhile, had been seeking to get an English Bible in circulation. Henry VIII had proscribed Tyndale's Bible in 1530, but there were still copies circulating. The Convocations had petitioned Cranmer in 1534 to prepare a new English Bible. Cranmer secured Miles Coverdale to edit the first licensed English Bible that appeared in 1535. Coverdale had made the translation directly from the Latin. Cranmer preferred the readings of the Tyndale translation which were made from Greek and Hebrew texts. Consequently he licensed John Rogers to publish a revised English text called Matthew's Bible in 1537. Matthew's Bible contained many marginal notes that were basically Lutheran. Consequently, Matthew's Bible was then revised by Miles Coverdale removing the Lutheran marginal notes. This latter edition was known as the "Great Bible" or "Cranmer's Bible" because he wrote a brief preface. It went through seven press runs between April 1540 and December 1541. In 1541 Henry proclaimed that a Bible shall be "set up in every parish Church for general reading." However, in 1543, Commons voted to prohibit women and ignorant people from reading the Bible either at church or at home.
By 1538 Henry VIII was strong enough and rich enough to no longer need the moral support of German Protestantism. In 1539 he secured "The Six Articles Act" from Commons. It was clearly a re-assertion of Catholicism without the Papacy and monasticism. The law stressed: (1) the importance of oral confession, (2)the value of private masses, (3) the inviolability of monastic vows, (4) clerical celibacy, (5) withholding the cup from the laity, and (6) transubstantiation. Furthermore, to deny transubstantiation one time was a capital offense and to deny any of the others twice would bring similar execution. First denials of the others brought imprisonment and confiscation of property.
On July 28, 1540, Thomas Cromwell was beheaded after having arranged an unfortunate marriage for Henry with Anne of Cleves from Flanders. Henry referred to her as "the Flanders Mare". On July 30, 1540, three clergymen with Protestant views were burned at Smithfield and three clergymen with Papal views were beheaded for denying the King's supremacy.
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