Tudors (History of England Vol 2)

by Ackroyd, Peter

  In the early days of April the king dispatched the petition to the archbishop of Canterbury, already sitting in convocation, and demanded a swift reply. He received it a week later. The clergy denied all the charges raised against them and asserted that their power of legislation was based upon the Scriptures; their activities were in no way detrimental to the royal prerogative. The king then summoned the representatives of the Commons into his presence, and gave them the clerical response. ‘We think this answer will smally please you,’ he told them, ‘for it seemeth to us very slender. You be a great sort of wise men; I doubt not but you will look circumspectly in the matter, and we will be indifferent between you.’ The king had therefore implicitly pitted the Commons against the Church.

  The bishops knew that their answer had failed to satisfy the king or the parliament, and so they immediately offered one concession. They pledged that in the king’s lifetime they would never introduce legislation in matters unconnected with faith; the qualification was a very slender one, and did not resolve anything. On 11 May the king once more invited a delegation for a formal interview. ‘I have discovered,’ he said, ‘that the clergy owe me only one half of an allegiance. All the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the pope clean contrary to the oath they make to us so that they seem his subjects and not ours.’ This was disingenuous, but the king’s intention was becoming clear. He was intent upon fundamentally destroying the power and the authority of the pope.

  He sent another memorial to the convocation or, rather, he issued a series of demands. No new canons, or legislative orders, were to be proposed or enacted without royal licence. All existing ecclesiastical laws were to be reviewed by a panel of ecclesiastics and parliamentarians, sixteen on either side, and a majority verdict would suffice for abolition. Any such majority verdict would then be upheld by the king, whose authority was supreme.

  The convocation debated the matter for five days, but by that time the king had grown impatient. He demanded an answer. With one exception, the bishop of Bath, all the clergy then replied that they accepted the proposals in full knowledge of the king’s ‘excellent wisdom, princely goodness and fervent zeal to the promotion of God’s honour’. Their answer, or surrender, became known as the ‘Submission of the Clergy’. The Spanish ambassador wrote that ‘churchmen will now be of less account than shoemakers, who at least have the power of assembling and making their own statutes’. At a later date the great historian Lord Acton would describe the ‘Submission’ as representing ‘the advent of a new polity’. The independent nation state of England could not truly have emerged without this radical separation from the authority of Rome. Yet the change can be put in more immediate terms. An absolute monarch needed absolute rule over all his subjects, lay and clerical.

  On the day after the ‘Submission’ Thomas More resigned, or was forced to resign, as chancellor. He had become too prominent a supporter of the pope, and of the old rights of the Church. ‘If a lion knew his own strength,’ he had once said of the king, ‘hard were it for any man to rule him.’ There was one other who still resisted the wishes of the king. John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was in secret communication with the Spanish ambassador; they agreed that, if they accidentally met in public, they would ignore one another. Yet within months Fisher was suggesting that a Spanish invasion force should sail to England and overthrow the king. The archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, dictated to his scribes a testament in which he denounced the legislation against the Church. ‘By these writings,’ he said, ‘we do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them.’ Then he lay down and died, beyond the reach of the king at last. Out of the habit of obedience, and of loyalty to the throne, all the other bishops acquiesced. It is probable, also, that they feared the wrath of the king.

  Henry sought the support of parliament at every stage in these proceedings largely for the sake of safety. The king himself went to parliament on three separate occasions in order to sway the vote. He could not be sure how the country would receive the great changes he was preparing. So he tried to make it seem that the Commons, in particular, were instigating or seeking the measures against the Church. Although he was in effect the sole mover of the anti-clerical legislation, he deemed it best to appear above the fray.

  In the process the Commons itself acquired additional authority and came to be regarded as a partner to the king. In a later address the king told parliament that ‘we be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together in one body politic’. This was effectively a new doctrine of state whereby ‘the king in parliament’ wielded supreme authority in a newly united nation.

  In the early autumn of 1532 the king placed a mantle of crimson velvet, and a golden coronet, upon Anne Boleyn. She had been given a hereditary peerage, as marquess of Pembroke, the first woman to be so honoured in England. It was clear that she was soon to be further exalted. A number of the queen’s jewels were now transferred to her, despite Katherine’s vehement protests. Yet all was not well. When the king took her on progress through the southern counties the response of the people was at best sullen when not overtly hostile. Henry scrutinized the faces of all the members of the court, when they were in her presence, to ensure that they paid her the right measure of respect. It was reported that the king ‘begged the lords to go and visit and make their court to the new queen’.

  A number of tracts were published around this time by the king’s printer, Thomas Berthelet, supporting the king’s ‘great matter’. One of them, A Glass of the Truth, may have in part been written by the king himself. It defended Henry’s decision to separate from Katherine by reason of biblical injunction, but also included some private details about her supposed wedding night with Prince Arthur.

  He took Anne with him on a journey to France; now that he had come close to an open breach with Charles V, the nephew of the queen, he was obliged to maintain his alliance with Francis I. But the sister of the French king, and other ladies of the court at Paris, declined to meet her; Henry’s own sister, Mary, had also refused to accompany them across the Channel. Anne was obliged to remain in Calais, while Henry proceeded to Boulogne for his interview with the French sovereign. Their visit lasted far longer than they intended, when severe gales and storms prevented them from embarking in the Swallow for a fortnight. When they did eventually return to England they were confronted at Canterbury by Elizabeth Barton, ‘the mad nun of Kent’, who once more lectured them on their transgressions and prophesied calamity.

  Yet the mind and intention of the king could not now be changed. It seems that, a few days later, he slept with Anne Boleyn. Certainly, by the beginning of December, she was pregnant. The birth of Elizabeth occurred nine months later. The only possible reason for the decision to begin sexual relations was the certainty that the two had now agreed upon an immediate marriage. There are reports that a secret ceremony took place two days after their return from France, with only Anne’s close family as witnesses, but they cannot be proven. It is likely, however, that the king would have taken the precaution of some official ritual before inseminating his lover. The risk of an illegitimate child was too great.

  A formal marriage did take place in the following month when, just before dawn on 25 January 1533, they were united by the king’s chaplain in the ‘high chamber’ above the newly built Holbein Gate at Whitehall Palace. The other circumstances of the marriage are not known, but it is believed that two or three of the king’s privy chamber were present. Soon afterwards the preachers of the court began to pray for ‘Anne, the queen’, and Katherine was ordered to omit the title. By the following month the condition of Anne Boleyn was widely known, and the lady herself began to joke about her new-found craving for apples; her laughter rang around the hallways. She told the Venetian ambassador that ‘God had inspired his Majesty to marry her’.

  Their union took place in the full anticipation of
a final break with Rome. A parliament had been called at the beginning of February. Its first measures were concerned with the quality of shoe leather and the fair price of goods; crows and ravens were to be destroyed, and the road from the Strand to Charing Cross should be paved. Only then did the members direct their attention to more spiritual matters. The Act in Restraint of Appeals declared that all ecclesiastical cases should be determined within England itself with no reference to any supposed higher authority; this meant that the matter of the king’s separation would be adjudicated in London and Canterbury rather than in Rome. It has been described as the most important statute of the sixteenth century, for it was the one that effectively destroyed the polity of the Middle Ages.

  The prologue to the Act itself sufficiently emphasized the king’s imperial longings. It declared that ‘whereas, by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King . . . unto whom a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms and by names of spirituality and temporality, be bounden and owe to bear, next to god, a natural and humble obedience’. So the reformation of religion was to be conceived as a welcome return to the past. All the changes and novelties claimed the authority of ancient law and practice. There is no mention of ‘the pope’s holiness’, as there had been in previous statutes, only of ‘the see of Rome’. Henry had recovered his imperial dignity as absolute ruler, with the expectation that he would acquire control over the entire British Isles. Twenty years earlier he had named two new ships the Henry Imperial and the Mary Imperial. Seals and medals were issued showing him sitting in state.

  It is often suggested that Thomas Cromwell was the minister who oversaw or even devised these constitutional changes, but many hands were behind the proposals. Cranmer was naturally among them, but lawyers in parliament were also willing to help with drafts of the legislation. Many of them had been opposed to the powers of the ecclesiastical courts and had consistently favoured common law over canon law. It was, after all, their profession. A further consequence ensued. If canon law was subordinate to common law, it was also subordinate to the king. So by degrees the concept of imperium was formed. That concept is more properly known as ‘caesaro-papism’; the king was now both Caesar and pope. Henry was described as a king with a pope in his belly. Material consequences also arose from this dual authority. The imperial ambassador reported in the spring of this year that the king ‘was determined to reunite to the Crown the goods which the churchmen held of it’.

  Thomas Cranmer had been chosen by Henry for the archbishopric of Canterbury, on the death of William Warham, but it was still deemed necessary that he receive his authority from the pope. The old dispensation had to be observed for a little longer, if only to guarantee Cranmer’s legitimacy. So Henry withheld royal consent to the Act in Restraint of Appeals, just as he had resisted seizing the annates destined for Rome. To Pope Clement VII he still posed as the defender of the faith against a disobedient and anti-ecclesiastical Commons. He even asked the papal nuncio to accompany him on a visit to parliament.

  The pope obliged with a bull confirming Cranmer but, before the new archbishop swore his formal oath to Rome as legate of the Holy See, Cranmer declared that he was determined to fulfil only his obligations to God and to the king. At the end of March he was duly consecrated. It was time now for the next steps. The clergy, assembled at their convocation, declared the marriage between Henry and Katherine of Aragon to have been invalid. Only 19, out of 216, dissented. The rout of the Church was complete. John Fisher was placed under house arrest and was not released until the status of Anne Boleyn was finally confirmed.

  At an ecclesiastical court meeting in Dunstable, on 23 May, Cranmer issued a decree stating that the marriage with Anne Boleyn was fully lawful. The archbishop had previously written to Thomas Cromwell, pleading that the meeting of the court be kept a close secret; he did not want to run the risk of Katherine’s attendance. When Pope Clement VII heard of the verdict delivered by ‘my lord of Canterbury’ he declared that ‘such doings are too sore for me to stand still and do nothing. It is against my duty to God and the world to tolerate them.’ The bishop of London, present for the occasion, remonstrated with the pontiff. Whereupon Clement threatened to burn him alive or boil him in a cauldron of lead. The bishop told the king that the pope was ‘continually folding up and unwinding of his handkerchief, which he never does except when he is tickled to the very heart with great anger’.

  On the morning of 31 May Anne Boleyn was carried from the Tower to Westminster in a white chariot drawn by two palfreys in trappings of white damask; above her head was a golden canopy stringed with silver bells. The citizens and their wives had dressed the fronts of their houses with scarlet arras and crimson tapestries, so that the streets seemed to have become clouds of colour. The mystery plays were performed on special stages, and the fountains of London poured forth wine. On the following day she was taken from Westminster Hall to the abbey, where she was crowned as queen of England. ‘I did set the Crown on her head,’ Cranmer wrote, ‘and then was sung Te Deum.’

  Despite the grandeur of the ceremony, the feelings of the population might not be so adulatory. During her procession into the city the constables of each parish had stood on guard with their staves at the ready ‘for to cause the people to keep good room and order’. The monogram of the king and his new queen, ‘HA’, was interpreted by some as a ribald ‘Ha! Ha!’ Yet the Venetian envoy witnessed ‘the utmost order and tranquillity’ of the large crowds, even if part of that tranquillity might be better interpreted as silent hostility. The people had come out of curiosity, perhaps, rather than respect. It is reported that Anne herself counted only ten people who shouted out the customary greeting of ‘God save your Grace’. A contemporary writer, commenting on the intricate patterns of her coronation garments, suggested that ‘her dress was covered with tongues pierced with nails, to show the treatment which those who spoke against her might expect’. Power may be glorious but it can quickly become fierce; three years later the radiant new queen would experience this herself.

  A deputation of councillors came to Katherine, now officially titled as princess dowager rather than queen. They informed her of the decision of the court at Dunstable and of the king’s marriage. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘we know the authority by which it has been done, by power rather than justice.’ She asked to see a copy of the proposals they had brought to her and, when she saw the phrase ‘princess dowager’, she took a pen and struck it out. In retaliation Henry reduced the size of her household. In the summer of that year two women were stripped and beaten with rods, their ears nailed to a wooden post, for having said that ‘queen Katherine is the true queen of England’.

  The king and his councillors now moved against Elizabeth Barton. In the summer of 1533 Henry asked Cranmer and Cromwell to investigate the claims and the behaviour of the nun, who is then said to have confessed ‘many mad follies’ to the archbishop. She was accused of high treason, by reason of her prophecies of the doom of the Tudors, and was taken to the Tower of London for questioning. It may be that she was put on the rack. In any case it was declared that she had confessed that all her visions and revelations had been impostures, and in a subsequent meeting of the Star Chamber ‘some of them began to murmur, and cry that she merited the fire’. It was then determined that the nun should be taken throughout the kingdom, and that she should in various places confess her fraudulence. At the beginning of 1534 she was ‘attainted’ in parliament of treason, and was later dragged through the streets from the Tower to Tyburn where she was beheaded. It was sufficiently clear that anyone who opposed the king was in mortal danger. The traditional pieties of the faithful, which had once blessed and sustained the nun, were not enough to save her.

  At the time of Elizabeth Barton’s arrest and confession the king was reported to be ‘very m
erry’. He had come through. He was pope and Caesar. He was compared to Solomon and to Samson. ‘I dare not cast my eyes but sidewise,’ a contemporary wrote, ‘upon the flaming beams of the king’s bright sun.’ He was building a new cock-pit for his palace at Whitehall, and his new queen was pregnant with what was hoped to be a male heir. The dynasty was at last secure.

  During the queen’s pregnancy, however, he was unfaithful. The identity of the woman is not known, but she was described by the imperial ambassador as ‘very beautiful’; he also said that ‘many nobles are assisting him in this affair’, perhaps as a way of humiliating Anne Boleyn. On discovering the relationship Anne confronted Henry and used ‘certain words which the king very much disliked’. His royal temper flared up and he is reported to have told her to ‘shut her eyes and endure as her betters have done’; he also declared that he could lower her as well as raise her.

  The storm passed, and Anne Boleyn still held the future within her. The astrologers and physicians of the court prognosticated the birth of a son, and Henry was hesitating between the names of Henry and Edward for his heir. Yet on 7 September, in a room known as the Chamber of the Virgins, Anne was delivered of a girl. ‘God has forgotten him entirely,’ the imperial ambassador wrote to his master. The infant was named Elizabeth after the king’s mother, Elizabeth of York. Henry was disappointed, but he professed to be hopeful that a son would soon follow. A week after the birth, Princess Mary, now seventeen, was stripped of her title; she was to be known now as ‘the Lady Mary, the king’s daughter’. She wrote a letter of gentle complaint, declaring that she was ‘his lawful daughter, born in true matrimony’. In his reply the king accused her of ‘forgetting her filial duty and allegiance’ and forbade her ‘arrogantly to usurp’ the title of princess. Three months later Elizabeth was taken in state to Hatfield House, in Hertfordshire, where her court was established. On the following day Mary was ordered to Hatfield, also, but only to enter ‘the service of the princess’. It was said that the king wished her to die of grief.