Reformation

Then, at Cranmer's advice, Henry appealed to the universities, and, apart from Oxford and Cambridge, eight of the greatest in Europe decided for him (Paris, Orleans, Bourges, Toulouse, Bo logna, Ferrara, Pavia and Padua). However much we may dis count these verdicts by royal pressure and other evidence which suggests bribery by both parties, yet on the whole "these opinions must stand for the general opinion of the learned, unless the di vines of France and Italy were more generally venal than is com monly supposed" (H. M. Gwatkin).

Supreme Head.

Already in 1529 Henry had begun to permit the circulation of anti-papal German pamphlets as a threat to the pope; and had even allowed his envoy to hint at further Lutheran developments. Next year, the bishop of Norwich complained of the impossibility of destroying heretical books so long as many folk believed the king to favour them. But at that very moment Henry was taking public measures against heresy, burning Tyn dale's New Testament, and forbidding all English Bibles until a version should be made "by great, learned and Catholic persons." This last (as More confessed about the same time) was a great desideratum ; yet no such orthodox version was made, or even attempted until long after England had broken finally with Rome (1582-1609).

Already, in 1529, Henry had begun an attack upon the clergy, probably upon the advice of his new minister, the adventurer Thomas Cromwell. Taking advantage of their notorious unpopu larity, Henry considerably curtailed the clerical exactions of which lay folk were complaining, and restricted the evils of plurality and non-residence. It was made a penal offense to evade this statute by seeking dispensation from Rome.

Next year, came a still plainer step. Henry, under form of law and without real justice, condemned the clergy of England for having allowed the papal legate to set up his court in England, in violation of the Statute of Praemunire. He extorted not only an enormous fine, but also an acknowledgment in the convocation of Canterbury that the king is "only and supreme lord [of the clergy] , and, as far as the law of Christ allows, even supreme head." But this weapon rested in its sheath until the parliament of 1532.

In this parliament, by means which cannot be palliated except on the plea that they were usual in the politics of that day, and that his adversaries were not more scrupulous, Henry first forced convocation, the parliament of the clergy, to accept three articles which definitely submitted Church to State in England. He then

procured from parliament a statute abolishing "annates," one of the most lucrative sources of papal revenue from England : this, however, he held in his hand at first only as a menace to Rome, until he had procured papal bulls of approval for the election of Cranmer as archbishop of Canterbury. Next, he procured a stat ute declaring the king supreme head of Church and State, and forbidding all appeals to Rome. Then, by a capitulation even more humiliating than the previous "submission of the clergy," convo cation, at Henry's demand, declared the nullity of Catharine's marriage. There was a mock-trial of the case at Dunstable, and Henry, who had already secretly married Anne Boleyn, was now free to make her his queen. How he then succeeded in defying papal excommunication, and in preventing any papal crusade be ing launched against him by the Catholic princes of Europe, is a purely political story. Before parliament dissolved, it passed a statute forbidding all further payments of any kind to "the bishop of Rome," and "an act for the submission of the clergy to the king's majesty." The rest of Henry's reign was spent in ruthless warfare against heretics who believed in mediaeval Catholicism less than he did, and against others who believed more than he. His "six articles" of 1539 rehearsed nearly all the main points of the mediaeval creed; to deny transubstantiation was made heresy, and there fore punishable with burning; to deny any of the other five was felony. Consequently the king was burning heretics on the one hand, while on the other he was enforcing obedience to the royal supremacy by beheading Fisher and More.

The Monasteries.

Three causes led him to strike at the mon asteries. They were pro-papal, wealthy, and not popular enough to find many defenders. Among the few points of importance upon which historians on both sides are agreed, are two which concern us here : that the monasteries necessarily considered their own cause bound up with the pope's and that one of the most remark able features of Henry's despotic reign is the absence of organized or determined resistance on the part of the clergy, whether clois tered or not. Henry was extravagant ; he wanted money ; and here was a comparatively easy prey. Everywhere else in Europe, the civil authority had already been obliged to interfere in the cause of monastic reform.