Chapter VII: THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. (continued) (3)

No time was lost in trying the efficacy of Cromwell's daring scheme. To sever that ancient union, which had existed so many ages, and was hallowed in the eyes of the world by so many proud recollections was a task at which the stoutest heart and most iron resolution might have trembled; but Cromwell had taken a profound survey of the region he was about to invade, and had learned its weakest places. He relied on the unscrupulous impetuosity of the king's passion to bear him through; he relied far more on the finesse of his own genius. With the calmest resolution, he laid his finger on one single page of the statute-book, and knew that he was master of the Church. The law which rendered any one who received favours direct from the Pope guilty of a breach of the Statute of Præmunire, permitted the monarch to suspend the action of this Statute at his discretion. This he had done in the case of Wolsey. When he accepted the legatine authority, the cardinal took care to obtain a patent under the Great Seal, authorising the exercise of this foreign power. But Wolsey, when he was called in question for the administration of an office thus especially sanctioned by the Crown, neglected to produce this deed of indemnity, hoping still to be restored to the royal favour, and unwilling to irritate the king by any show of self-defence. There lay the concealed weapon which the shrewd eye of Cromwell had detected, and by which he could overturn the ecclesiastical fabric of ages. He declared, to the consternation of the whole hierarchy, that not only had Wolsey involved himself in all the penalties of Præmunire, but the whole of the clergy with him. They had admitted his exercise of the Papal authority, and thereby were become, in the language of the Statute, his "fautors and abettors."

Dire was the dismay which at this charge seized on the whole body of the clergy. The council ordered the Attorney-General to file an information against the entire ecclesiastical body. Convocation assembled in haste, and offered, as the price of a full pardon, £100,000. But still greater were the amazement and dismay of the clergy, when they found that this magnificent sum was rejected unless Convocation consented to declare, in the preamble to the grant, that the king was "the protector and only supreme head of the Church of England." By the king's permission, however, the venerable Archbishop Warham introduced and carried an amendment in Convocation, by which the grant was voted with this clause in the preamble:--"Of which church and clergy we acknowledge His Majesty to be the chief protector, the only and supreme lord, and, _as far as the law of God will allow_, the supreme head." The wedge was introduced; the severance was certain: the perfect accomplishment of it only awaited another opportunity for an easier issue. The northern convocation adopted the same language, and voted a grant of £18,840.

Henry, under the guidance of Cromwell, now procured an act to be passed by Parliament, abolishing the annates, or first-fruits, which furnished a considerable annual income to the Pope, and another abrogating the authority of the clergy in Convocation, and attaching that authority to the Crown. Feeling that in this struggle he should need the friendship of Francis, he proposed a new treaty with France, which was signed in London on the 23rd of June, 1532; and the more to strengthen the alliance the two monarchs met between Calais and Boulogne. Great preparations were made on both sides, and Henry begged Francis to bring his favourite mistress with him. This was as an excuse for Henry to bring Anne Boleyn, who was now created the Marchioness of Pembroke, and without whom he could go nowhere. It is said that Francis, during the interview, had urged Henry to wait no longer for the permission of the Pope, but to marry the Marchioness of Pembroke without further delay; but it is quite certain that another counsellor was more urgent, and that was--Time. It was high time, indeed, that the marriage should take place if they meant to legitimatise her offspring, for Anne Boleyn was with child. Accordingly, the marriage took place on the 25th of January, 1533. The ceremony, however, was strictly private. In fact the marriage was kept so secret that it was not even communicated to Cranmer, who had just returned from Germany, and taken up his abode in the family of Anne Boleyn. Cranmer, whilst in Germany, had married, Catholic priest as he was, the niece of Osiander, the Protestant minister of Nuremberg. This lady he had brought secretly to England, and was now living a married priest, in direct violation of the Church that he belonged to.

Archbishop Warham was now dead, and Henry nominated Cranmer to the vacant primacy. He was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the 30th of March, 1533, and he was immediately ordered to proceed with the divorces. The new primate, therefore, wrote on the 11th of April, a formal letter to the king, soliciting the issue of a commission to try that cause, and pronounce a definite sentence. This was immediately done; and Cranmer, as the head of this commission, accompanied by Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, Bath, and Wells, with many other divines and canonists, opened their court at Dunstable, in the monastery of St. Peter, six miles from Ampthill, where the queen resided. On the 12th of May Cranmer pronounced Catherine contumacious, and on the 23rd, he declared her marriage was null and invalid from the beginning. On the 28th, in a court held at Lambeth, the archbishop pronounced the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn to be good and valid. On the 1st of June, being Whit Sunday, Anne was crowned with every possible degree of pomp and display.

Henry, notwithstanding his separation from Rome, was anxious to obtain the sanction of his marriage by the Pope; but, instead of that, Clement fulminated his denunciations against him over Europe. He annulled Cranmer's sentence on Henry's first marriage, and published a bull excommunicating Henry and Anne, unless they separated before the next September, when the new queen expected her confinement. Henry despatched ambassadors to the different foreign courts to announce his marriage, and the reasons which had led him to it; but from no quarter did he receive much congratulation.

However sincere and earnest the two principals in this contest, the Pope and Henry, might be, there were at work in the Court of England and the Court of Rome parties really more powerful than their principals, who were resolved that the two desiderata to this pacification never should be yielded. Cromwell and his party commenced an active campaign in Parliament for breaking beyond remedy the tie with Rome, and establishing an independent church in this country. This able man, who for his past services was now made Chancellor of the Exchequer for life, framed a series of bills, and introduced them to Parliament, soon after the Christmas holidays. These included an act establishing the title of the king as supreme head of the English Church, and vesting in him the right to appoint to all bishoprics, and to decide all ecclesiastical causes. Payments or appeals to Rome were strictly forbidden by the confirmation of the Annates Act, the Act against "Peter Pence," and that "in Restraint of appeals" whereby the whole Roman jurisdiction in England was decisively repudiated.

By a further bill, the marriage of Catherine--strangely enough at the very moment that Henry had conceded its final decision at Rome--was declared unlawful, and that of Anne Boleyn confirmed. The issue by the first marriage was declared illegitimate, and excluded from the succession, and the issue of the marriage of Anne was made inheritable of the crown, and that only, and any one casting any slander on this marriage, or endeavouring to prejudice the succession of its issue, was declared guilty of high treason, if by writing, printing, or deed, and misprision of treason if by word. Thus was a new power established by the Crown; every person of full age, or on hereafter coming to full age, was to be sworn to obey this act. Not only new powers were thus created, but a new crime was invented; and though this statute was swept away in the course of a few years, yet it is a remarkable one, for it became the precedent for many a succeeding and despotic government.