Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (14 page)

A Supremacy Act was also passed that gave legal and coherent form to all of the powers that the king had assumed, with the statement that ‘the king our sovereign lord, and his heirs and successors, shall be taken, accepted and reputed as the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England, called
Anglicana Ecclesia
’. He could reform all errors and correct all heresies; his spiritual authority could not be challenged. He lacked only
potestas ordinis
; because he was not a priest, he had no right to administer the sacraments or to preach. He was the Catholic head of a Catholic Church. Thus, in the words of John Foxe, the pope was ‘abolished, eradicated and exploded out of this land’. The king was effectively acting upon a principle of English thought and practice that had first manifested itself in the twelfth century. The opposition between William Rufus and Anselm of Canterbury was similar to that between Henry and Archbishop Warham. One of the servants of the king’s father, Edmund Dudley, had stated twenty years before that ‘the root of the love of God, which is to know Him with good works, within this realm must chiefly grow by our sovereign lord the king’. This veneration of the Crown was one of the abiding aspects of English history.

The frontispiece to Miles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible, published in 1535, displayed an image of the king sitting on his throne beneath the Almighty. Henry holds in each hand a book on which is written ‘The Word of God’; he is giving copies to Cranmer
and to another bishop, saying ‘Take this and preach’. In the lower part of the frontispiece the people are shouting ‘
Vivat Rex! Vivat Rex!
’ while children who know no Latin are saying ‘God save the King!’

In retaliation for the Act of Supremacy the pope issued a bull of interdict and deposition against the king. Henry was now a thing accursed; on his death his body should be denied burial, while his soul could be cast into hell for ever. The people of England would be declared contumacious unless they rose in instant rebellion; their marriages would be deemed illegal and their wills invalid. No true son of the Church should now trade, or communicate, with the island. On the urgent wish of the French king, however, the pope did not publish this general excommunication for three years. At this juncture, foreign politics came to the assistance of Henry.

The more conservative of the bishops believed that Henry would now be the bulwark against German heresy, while Cranmer hoped that the king would be the instrument of reform. In this expectation he was joined by Thomas Cromwell, who knew that his master could now grow rich as well as powerful. A document had been prepared entitled ‘Things to be moved for the king’s highness for an increase and augmentation to be had for the maintenance of his most royal estate’. It was proposed that the lands and incomes of the Church should in large part be diverted to the king’s treasury.

At the beginning of 1535, therefore, a survey of the Church’s worth was undertaken. It was the largest such report since the Domesday Book of the eleventh century. The officials from every cathedral and every parish church, every monastery and every hospital, every convent and every collegiate church, were obliged to open their estate books and their accounts; they were questioned on oath about their income from tithes and from lands. They were asked to give an account of their gold chalices and their silver candlesticks. Within a short time the king knew exactly how much he could expect from church revenue, having already laid down that a tenth of its income should be his. In the process he took much more than the pope ever did.

In the same period Thomas Cromwell had been appointed
‘vicegerent’, or administrative deputy in spiritual matters, precisely in order to supervise the collection of revenue. He was accustomed to questions of church money; it had been he who, under Wolsey, had appropriated the incomes of certain monasteries for the sake of the cardinal’s new college at Oxford. In the summer of the year the ‘visitations’ of the smaller monasteries began in the west of England, seeking out instances of venality and immorality among the monks and abbots; the visitors were given power to discipline or remove recalcitrant clergy, and encouraged the brothers to denounce one another for various sins. It was said of one prior that he ‘hath but six children and but one daughter . . . he thanks God he never meddled with married women, but all with maidens the fairest that could be got . . . the pope, considering his fragility, gave him licence to keep an whore’. It was decreed that no abbot or monk should be permitted to walk outside the walls of the monastery. It was also determined that all religious under the age of twenty-four were to be dismissed. Some novices had appeared at service in top-boots and hats with satin rosettes.

The visitors then turned their attention to the universities, where it was decided that the learning of the scholastics and the medieval doctors should be abandoned in favour of the humanist learning approved by Erasmus and other reformers. Daily lectures in Latin and in Greek, central to the principles of Renaissance learning, were instituted. The study of canon law was discontinued. If the visitations were primarily concerned with the raising of revenue, they also engaged themselves with matters of religious and educational renovation.

This was also the dying time. The monks of the Charterhouse were the first to be executed, having been arraigned under the Treasons Act just passed by parliament. The jury were not eager to sentence to death such holy men, but Cromwell told them that they would themselves suffer death if they refused. When their prior, John Haughton, heard the verdict he simply said, ‘This is the judgment of the world.’ On 4 May 1535, they were brought in their habits to the scaffold, the first time in English history that clergy have suffered in their ecclesiastical dress. Haughton was the first to die. He was partially hanged before his heart was ripped out and rubbed in his face; his bowels were then pulled from his
stomach, while he still lived, and burned before him. He was beheaded and his body cut into quarters. Two more followed, and then three in the next month. Many lords and courtiers were part of the crowd, including two dukes and an earl, and it was reported that ‘the king himself would have liked to see the butchery’. It was an image of his power over the Church and the people.

The citizens of London were less sanguine about the punishment and many were horrified that monks should suffer in their habits. It was observed that, since the day of their death, it had never ceased to rain. The corn harvest was a failure, yielding only a third of the usual crop. All this was conceived to be a sign of divine displeasure. Yet who now would dare to speak out against the king? Certain noblemen, however, sent secret messages to Spain in an effort to spur an invasion; it was said that the king had lost the hearts of all his subjects.

In a memorandum book belonging to Thomas Cromwell are the following notes:

Master Fisher was indeed put on trial in the middle of June, accused of high treason for having said that ‘the king our sovereign lord is not supreme head in earth of the Church of England’. His fate was not averted by the decision of the pope to grant him the red hat of a cardinal. To Henry this seemed to be mere meddling in the affairs of England, and he promised that his head would be off before the hat was on. The hat got as far as Calais.

A jury of twelve freeholders condemned the aged cleric to a traitor’s death, in the manner of the Carthusians, but true to his word Henry commuted the punishment to a simple beheading. Five days later, on 22 June 1535, Fisher was taken to the scaffold; emaciated and ill, he was too weak to walk to the site of execution on Tower Hill, and so he was carried in a chair where before his execution he besought those present to pray for him. ‘I beseech Almighty God,’ he said, ‘of His infinite goodness to save the king and this realm . . .’ His head was taken off at the first stroke, and
the observers were astonished that so much blood should gush from so skeletal a body.

The day after the execution the king attended an anti-papal pageant, based upon the Book of Revelation. Such spectacles and dramas were becoming more frequent. The imperial ambassador observed that the king sat retired ‘but was so pleased to see himself represented as cutting off the heads of the clergy that, in order to laugh at his ease and encourage the people, he discovered himself’.

Thomas More followed John Fisher to the scaffold. Four days after Fisher’s death a special commission was established to consider his case. Ever since his imprisonment in the Tower he had been cajoled and bullied by Cromwell, in the hope that he might relent. Cromwell even insinuated that More’s obstinacy, by providing a bad example, had helped to bring the Carthusians to destruction. This proved too much for even his patience to bear. ‘I do nobody harm,’ he replied, ‘I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.’

The trial was held in Westminster Hall, where he conducted himself with acuity and dignity. But the verdict was never for a moment in doubt. He was convicted of treason and five days later was led to Tower Hill where the axe awaited him. His last words were a jest to the executioner. ‘You will give me this day,’ he told him, ‘a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be able to give me. Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short; take heed, therefore, thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.’

Katherine of Aragon, witnessing the destruction of those whom she considered saints, sent an urgent letter to the pope with the message that ‘if a remedy be not applied shortly, there will be no end to ruined souls and martyred saints. The good will be firm and suffer. The lukewarm will fail if they find none to help them.’ But no help was at hand. The execution of More and Fisher, together with that of the Carthusian monks, was considered by the Catholic countries of Europe to be an act of barbarism, the Christian princes conveniently forgetting their own savage measures against supposed heretics. There was no Inquisition in England.

In the search for allies, therefore, it became advisable to reach some accord with the Protestant leaders of Germany. In a message to the elector of Saxony, for example, Henry congratulated him for his ‘most virtuous mind’ and declared that the two countries ‘standing together would be so much stronger to withstand their adversaries’. It was hoped that a league of the reforming nations of Europe might then be formed. It was also hoped that the king might be persuaded to sign the Lutheran confession of faith, known as the Confession of Augsburg, that had been drawn up five years before by the German princes. The proposals came to nothing.

The scope of the ‘visitations’ of the smaller monasteries was extended in the autumn of 1535. The visitors had previously confined their attentions to the west of England; when their work was completed there, they moved on to the east and to the south-east before travelling to the north at the beginning of 1536. The speed of their researches did not augur well for their reliability. Yet the visitors continually questioned and investigated the priors, the abbots, the monks and their servants: ‘Whether the divine service was kept up, day and night, in the right hours? And how many were commonly present, and who were frequently absent?’ ‘Whether they kept company with women, within or without the monastery? Or if there were any back-doors, by which women came within the precinct?’ ‘Whether they had any boys lying by them?’ ‘Whether any of the brethren were incorrigible?’ ‘Whether you do wear your religious habit continually, and never leave it off but when you go to bed?’

There were in all eighty-six questions. One prior was accused of preaching treason and was forced to his knees before he confessed. The abbot of Fountains kept six whores. The abbot of Battle was described to Cromwell as ‘the veriest hayne, beetle and buserde, and the arrentest chorle that ever I see’. A hayne was a wretch; a beetle was a blockhead; and a buserde was a stupid person. An arrentest chorle may be described as a thoroughly boorish wretch. The canons of Leicester Abbey were accused of buggery. The prior of Crutched Friars was found in bed with a
woman at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning. The abbot of West Langdon was described as the ‘drunkenest knave living’. The visitor, Richard Leyton, described to Cromwell how he had entered the abbot’s lodging. ‘I was a good space knocking at the abbot’s door; no voice answered, saving the abbot’s little dog that within his door fast locked bayed and barked. I found a short poleaxe standing behind the door, and with it I dashed the abbot’s door in pieces . . . and about the house I go, with that poleaxe in my hand, for this abbot is a dangerous desperate knave, and a hardy.’

The visitors also noted the number of shrines and relics that they observed in the course of their labours; they marked them under the heading of ‘
superstitio
’, a sign of the direction in which Cromwell and his servants were moving. At the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, for example, they found one of the stones with which St Stephen was killed and one of the coals with which St Lawrence was roasted. In the same establishment they came across the skull of St Petronilla that people sick of the fever placed on their heads. The monasteries were therefore considered to be beds of papistry, and it was said that the monks were in a sense the reserve army of Rome. Thomas Cromwell described them as ‘the pope’s spies’. If there was no evidence of wrongdoing, the visitors merely concluded that the monks were engaged in a conspiracy of silence. When sins are being actively looked for, they can always be found.

A parliament was called in February 1536, the last session of a body that had been assembled seven years before. It has since become known as the Reformation Parliament, and can perhaps be called the most important in all of English history. The king came into the House of Lords with a ‘declaration’ about the state of the monasteries, no doubt based upon the various reports of the visitors. Hugh Latimer, appointed bishop of Worcester in the previous year, was present on the occasion and records that ‘when their enormities were first read in the parliament house, they were so great and abominable that there was nothing but down with them’. Some dissent may have been expressed. According to one report the king summoned members of the Commons to the royal gallery. ‘I hear,’ he said, ‘that my bill will not pass, but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads.’