Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (20 page)

Not everyone fully appreciated the implications of these events. But Sir Thomas More did. He resigned the chancellorship the next day. Cromwell, whose official position was king’s secretary, was now Henry’s undisputed first minister. As we have seen, he was a brilliant parliamentary tactician, as well as an able debater and a tireless worker. John Foxe summed up Cromwell’s other virtues as “pregnant in wit …, in judgment discreet, in tongue eloquent, in service faithful, in stomach courageous, in his pen active.”
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He could be cunning and ruthless in pursuit of his goals or in defense of his position. These qualities would enable him to dominate the political scene for the rest of the 1530s and secure for the king not only his divorce, but a great deal more besides.

With the English clergy brought to heel, things began to move quickly. Toward the end of 1532, Anne became pregnant. In January 1533 Thomas Cranmer, the king’s choice as the next archbishop of Canterbury, secretly married the two lovers. (Since Henry believed his first marriage to be invalid, this would not have constituted bigamy in his eyes.) In the spring of 1533 Cromwell opened the parliamentary front once again – and this time decisively – with the Act in Restraint of Appeals. This statute forbade appeals of ecclesiastical cases (like Catherine’s) to foreign jurisdictions (like Rome). That is, it stated explicitly that the king’s justice was the highest justice to which an English subject could appeal; there was no further recourse beyond England. Cromwell justified this in the Act’s preamble, which stated: “this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same” (24 Henry VIII, c. 12).

Put simply, the medieval concept of dual loyalty to a separate king as head of the State and pope as head of the Church was over. The king was to be regarded as the head of all. No other loyalty was to interfere. These words and the Act which they introduce can be viewed as the capstone of Henry VII’s attempt to unify the English people under Tudor rule. As we shall see, some historians have argued that it laid the foundation for the English state’s later assumption of power in other areas, such as law enforcement, social welfare, and education.

Of more immediate point, the Act in Restraint of Appeals marks a clear break with Rome: since no other authority but the monarch was to have power over or be appealed to by English subjects, the pope’s authority in England was a dead letter (although technically the Act retained papal oversight over heresy cases). As a result, the Vatican could do nothing to prevent Henry’s long-sought-after divorce. In May 1533 Cranmer heard the divorce case and, predictably, pronounced the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to be null and void. In June, he set the crown on Queen Anne at Westminster. In September, Anne gave birth – to a daughter, named Elizabeth. The king did not conceal his disappointment.

Still, the new queen and the new heir necessitated a new Act of Succession. This statute declared Mary illegitimate and reserved the royal succession to the heirs of Anne’s body. Further, it was now treason to deny this new order of succession “in writing, print, deed or act.” That is, mere words could be punished by death. Eventually, all adult males were required to swear agreement to the new disposition. In 1534 Parliament spelled out what was already true in practice by passing the Act of Supremacy, which made the king “the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England” (26 Henry VIII, c. 1). A further Act in Restraint of Annates diverted the payment of First Fruits and Tenths to the king’s coffers – at substantially higher rates. Additional legislation regulated the prosecution of heretics, gave the selection of bishops to the Crown, and legalized the questioning of the pope’s authority. Finally, a new Treason Act was passed, declaring it a capital crime to speak against the succession, the king’s title (including his headship of the Church of England), or to call the king or queen a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper. Clearly, somebody anticipated trouble!

In 1534 Cromwell was named the king’s vice-gerent in ecclesiastical affairs, that is, his deputy as head of the Church. As such, he licensed preachers and saw that the oaths were sworn. In April 1535 he issued a circular letter to the bishops, nobility, and JPs ordering the imprisonment of clergy who preached against the Royal Supremacy. He subsequently ordered the erasure of the pope’s name from mass books, the despoiling of shrines, and, more positively, the placement of the Bible, translated into English, in parish churches. He also commissioned a preaching campaign, as well as scores of English-language tracts and Latin treatises to promote the Royal Supremacy at home and abroad. Finally, in 1536, Parliament passed an Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome and, for reasons only partly religious, began to legislate the Dissolution of the Monasteries and Convents in England and the confiscation of their lands by the Crown.

Reaction

These actions were revolutionary, for they changed the fundamental constitution not just of Church and State, but of society itself. This raises some obvious questions. Did Henry and Cromwell get away with it and, if so, how? After all, if most people really were happy Catholics before the Reformation, how could they possibly put up with this hostile takeover of their beloved Church? How did they react? Most seem not to have reacted at all. For example, the majority of people who were asked to swear the oath to the new succession did so. Why? The answer probably varied according to the oath-taker’s rank. At court, most of the great nobles probably swore the oath because they were afraid: afraid of the king’s wrath, afraid of losing their offices, their pensions, their titles, their lands, and perhaps even their lives. If this does explain their actions, then it is yet more evidence that Henry VII and his son had, by honeyed persuasion and ruthless intimidation, won the fear and respect of their mightiest subjects. Additionally, the nobility and gentry at court and in the countryside may have gone along with the oath because they agreed that the king needed a male heir and feared another civil war as much as he did. Eventually, these groups would be further won over to the Reformation by the opportunity to acquire Church lands confiscated in the Dissolution of the Monasteries (see below).

As for the parish clergy, they seem to have been genuinely divided. Most went along with Cromwell’s orders, some undoubtedly seeing the Acts of the early 1530s as part of yet another struggle between monarch and pope and hardly worth the risk of one’s living or life. But there is plenty of evidence of dissident priests refusing to cooperate. Some went so far as to preach against these measures. City-dwellers and townsmen, the group most receptive to Luther’s ideas, may have embraced the new succession as the price to be paid for Church reform. Many people of lesser rank were not asked to take the oath and so had no choice to make as yet. But at this level there is substantial evidence of popular discontent: some called Henry a knave, an adulterer, or a heretic. But when males in this group
were
asked to swear, most did so. Perhaps Cromwell’s preaching and pamphlet campaign worked. Perhaps, if Catherine and Mary were popular, Henry was more so – or more feared. Perhaps, given the relatively low level of theological consciousness among the laity, many English men and women simply did not understand what was at stake.

But some did understand. At the higher echelons of society, it is true, only a few had the courage to oppose Henry. Among the upper clergy only Bishop Fisher, who had defended Catherine at her trial, refused to take the oath. Among laymen, some northern peers grumbled, but did nothing. The most prominent refuser was Sir Thomas More. After resigning the chancellorship in May 1532, he attempted to live quietly on his estate at Chelsea, out of the king’s eye. Both More and Fisher were perfectly willing to agree to the new succession as a matter of political and dynastic expediency. But they could not, as good sons of the Church, deny the legitimacy of the first marriage; that would be to deny the validity of the papal dispensation of 1504. Henry knew this, and that even their silent criticism damaged his claim to have followed the national will. Eventually, both men were imprisoned and tried on the charge of having violated the new Treason Act by speaking against the new order of succession. At trial, More, in particular, mounted a dazzling defense, but both he and Fisher were convicted on perjured testimony and executed in the summer of 1535. In fact, the judicial murder of More and Fisher was a propaganda disaster for Henry, especially abroad. More’s dying words were a ringing declaration against the notion of unitary sovereignty and for some sort of separation of Church and State: “I die,” More stated, “[t]he King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
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Nor were More and Fisher the king’s only victims. A number of Carthusian monks who could not accept the new regime were tortured and executed as an example to the rest of the clergy. Elizabeth Barton (ca. 1506–34), the Holy Maid of Kent, got into trouble by preaching that if Henry went ahead with his plans “that then within one month after such marriage he should no longer be King of this Realm, and in the reputation of Almighty God should not be King one day nor one hour, and that he should die a villain’s death.”
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She was silenced by act of attainder in April 1534. This was one of 122 attainders passed between that year and the end of the reign in 1547. In just the first six years following the break with Rome there were over 300 executions for treason. Most of these came in response to the
Pilgrimage of Grace
. The Pilgrimage of Grace was a series of risings which began in Lincolnshire on October 1, 1536. Encouraged by local clergymen, the revolt spread to Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire by the following spring. The most important of these disturbances was led by a Yorkshire gentleman, Robert Aske (ca. 1500–37), who seized much of the northeast with a force of some 30,000 men.

On the surface, the Pilgrimage of Grace appears to have been a popular reaction to the king’s divorce and religious policies. For example, the pilgrims wore badges depicting the Five Wounds of Christ and marched behind religious banners. Aske’s council at Pontefract, in Yorkshire, issued a series of demands including the end of heretical innovations, the recognition of the pope’s authority and Mary’s place in the succession, and the dismissal of Thomas Cromwell. This has led some historians to argue that the Pilgrimage of Grace was, as its title implies, a religious revolt in defense of the old Church. But the middle 1530s saw not only the break with Rome, but also an outbreak of plague, flooding, and several poor harvests. The rebels also called for fair taxes and rents, a halt to enclosures, and repeal of the Statute of Uses, an unpopular piece of land law which interfered with prevailing inheritance customs. This has led other historians to suggest that the Pilgrimage was more of a reaction to economic and social problems; that its religious demands were window dressing; and, therefore, that there was no widespread hostility in the North to either reformation or the king’s divorce and remarriage. The rebels’ demand for Cromwell’s dismissal is consistent with both interpretations.

Whatever the motivation for their demands, the rebels seem to have thought that the recent innovations in religion and land law were really Cromwell’s ideas and that, surely, when good King Henry heard their demands, he would dismiss his evil advisers, take pity upon his people, and redress their grievances. The king’s initial failure to crush the Pilgrimage must have added fuel to this comforting delusion. In fact, he sent the duke of Norfolk, the leading conservative Catholic peer and president of the Council of the North, with a small force to do just that. But when Norfolk met the pilgrims at Doncaster Bridge in Yorkshire in late 1536, he found himself hopelessly outnumbered. As a result, the duke agreed to present their demands to the king and also promised, on his master’s behalf, a general pardon and a free Parliament to address their grievances. Upon Norfolk’s return, the king angrily repudiated these concessions. He then waited until there was a new series of outbreaks in early 1537. These he put down, ruthlessly, in the spring, executing Aske and about 180 of the rebels.

The course and resolution of the Pilgrimage of Grace provide a few clear lessons. First, as we have seen before, Tudor rule was ruthless and unscrupulous. To forget that was to invite the gravest peril. Second, neither the Catholic nobles nor the general populace in the rest of the country – the prosperous South, the remote regions of East Anglia and the West Country – rose up to defend the pope, Queen Catherine, Princess Mary, or the old religion. They were apparently willing to accept a royal divorce, a royal remarriage, a new royal succession, and a royal head of the English Church. This suggests that they were, by and large, satisfied with Tudor rule. Third, from now on, religious controversies would be intimately bound up with political, social, and economic issues. Aske and his peasant supporters understood that relationship. So, as we shall see, did Thomas Cromwell.

A Tudor Revolution?

In 1953, the historian G. R. Elton published a hugely influential if controversial book entitled
The Tudor Revolution in Government
.
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Elton argued that the Pilgrims of Grace were onto something when they linked religious, political, and economic issues. While they may have been mistaken in letting the king off the hook, they were more than half right in seeing Thomas Cromwell as the engineer of a new and very different world. Elton argued that in the 1530s, Cromwell, with the king’s blessing, undertook to increase the power of the monarchy, and therefore of the State, in many aspects of English life. In order to do this, he launched a series of reforms designed to reduce the informal, household aspects of royal government in favor of efficient departments with national responsibilities run according to bureaucratic routine. The result was, in Elton’s view, the creation of the first modern nation-state and the rise of a new, efficient bureaucracy to run it.