Tudors (History of England Vol 2)

by Ackroyd, Peter

  A parliament was also summoned in the spring of 1539 to consider matters of religion. A contemporary reported that it was assembled to negotiate ‘a thorough unity and uniformity established for the reformation of the church of this realm’. Unity was not easily to be won.

  Various opinions, for example, were maintained over the bread and the wine offered in the Mass. The orthodox Catholic faithful upheld the doctrine of transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine became in actual fact the body and blood of Christ. This is a mystery of the faith. It is believed because it is impossible, and proof of the overwhelming power of God. Luther also believed in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, but denied that He was there ‘in substance’; his belief was in something that became known as consubstantiation or sacramental union, whereby the integrity of the bread and wine remain even while being transformed by the body and blood of Christ.

  The more radical reformers, intent upon destroying priestly power and what were for them superstitious rituals, declared that the Eucharist was only a commemoration or remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice that had been performed once and for ever; it could not be endlessly rehearsed at the altar. ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ should therefore be translated as ‘This signifies my body’. Christ was in heaven; He was not on the earth, even at Mass.

  Endless permutations could of course be devised between these three statements of belief. Thus one reformer declined to believe that the bread and wine are miraculously changed, but conceded that ‘the Body and Blood of Christ are truly received by faith’ when the worshipper partakes of them in perfect piety. This was known as ‘virtualism’. In an age when religion was the single most important aspect of social life, these debates were also matters of state. At the beginning of the parliamentary session a small committee was set up to examine all of the issues, the most tendentious being the question of the Blessed Sacrament.

  The committee comprised four conservative and four reforming bishops, with Cromwell presiding as vicegerent in religious matters. Of course they could come to no shared conclusions, and Henry stepped forward. He allowed the conservative duke of Norfolk to present six simple questions to the House of Lords that were so framed as to yield only one possible answer. The result of their deliberations emerged in the document known as the Act of the Six Articles that clearly restated the orthodox position on such matters as confession and clerical celibacy. It was essentially a device to quell religious controversy and forge unity in matters of doctrine. It became known to those who detested it as ‘the whip with six strings’ or ‘the bloody act’.

  The Six Articles were a strong rebuff to reformers such as Cranmer and Cromwell, and were a clear victory for the conservative faction. Transubstantiation was upheld in all but name, although Cranmer had finally managed to remove the term itself. But Henry had the last word; in his own hand he amended the draft of the Act so that the bread and wine were now ordained to be ‘none other substances but the substance of his foresaid natural body’. After Henry’s death Cranmer declared that ‘Christ is eaten with the heart. Eating with the mouth cannot give life. The righteous alone can eat the Body of Christ.’ But for the moment he was forced to remain silent.

  At a later date he also recorded his opinion that the Act of the Six Articles ‘was so much against the truth, and common judgements both of divines and lawyers, that if the king’s majesty himself had not come personally into the parliament house, those laws had never passed’. Yet they seem to have been welcomed by the populace. The French ambassador wrote to his court that ‘the people show great joy at the king’s declaration touching the sacrament, being much more inclined to the old religion than to the new opinions’. The people were not even prepared to read their prayers in English. ‘How loath be our priests to teach the commandments,’ one reformer lamented, ‘the articles of faith and the pater noster, in English! Again how unwilling be the people to learn it! Yea, they jest at it calling it the new pater noster . . .’

  The denial of transubstantiation was now to be punished by death in the fire, while the refusal to subscribe to the other five articles led to the forfeiture of all goods and imprisonment at the king’s pleasure. It was the most severe religious law in English history. The articles were essentially the king’s declaration of faith. It was a faith shaped by the will of the ruler and by the power of punishment. It is reported that some 200 were arrested and held in prison; they had, in the phrase of the period, been ‘brought into trouble’. Some free spirits were not hindered. John Harridaunce, known as the inspired bricklayer of Whitechapel, was still preaching out of his window between nine and twelve at night, where he referred to the religious reformers as ‘setters forth of light’. When a neighbouring baker warned him that he was breaking the tenets of the Six Articles he replied that ‘it is fit for me to be burnt as for thee to bake a loaf’.

  The duke of Norfolk remarked to his chaplain, ‘You see, we have hindered priests from having wives.’

  ‘And can your grace’, the chaplain replied, ‘prevent also men’s wives from having priests?’

  Two bishops were forced to resign their sees as a result of the new measures; Hugh Latimer left Worcester and Nicholas Shaxton left Salisbury. Archbishop Cranmer was obliged to send his wife and children into exile. In the early summer the archbishop summoned a Scottish evangelical, Alexander Alesius, to Lambeth palace. ‘Happy man that you are,’ he said, ‘you can escape! Would that I were at liberty to do the same; truly my see would not hold me back.’ He then admitted that he had signed the decree when ‘compelled by fear’. The Lutherans of Germany were horrified by the Act, which they regarded as the end of religious reform in England. The king had shown his true colours. He was not in the least evangelical. He only wished to augment his revenues, with the treasures of the old Church, and to increase his power.

  There was a significant epilogue to the passing of the Act. Thomas Cranmer, wrestling with his highly developed conscience, made a series of scholarly notes on the mistakes and misjudgements contained in the articles. His secretary, Ralph Morice, took a wherry from Lambeth to deliver the notebook to the king himself. On the south side of the river, at this moment, a bear-baiting was being held. The bear broke loose from its tormentors and plunged into the Thames, hotly pursued by the dogs.

  All the passengers in the wherry, with the exception of Cranmer’s secretary, leaped into the water. The bear then clambered into the boat, at which point Morice lost his nerve and jumped overboard. All thought of the notebook left him in his desire to be rescued. When he finally reached land, however, he saw the book floating on the water. He called out to the bear-ward to retrieve it. But when the man took up the book, he handed it to a priest. The cleric saw immediately that these were notes against the Six Articles and accused Morice of treason. In the ensuing argument Morice foolishly confessed that the notes had been written by the archbishop of Canterbury himself. The priest refused to hand them back.

  Morice now fell into a panic and in his distress called upon Thomas Cromwell. On the following morning Cromwell summoned the priest, who was about to hand the book to one of Cranmer’s enemies. Cromwell ‘took the book out of his hands, and threatened him severely for his presumption in meddling with a privy councillor’s book’. The story is an indication, if nothing else, of the fears and tensions within the court itself. Reports circulated at the time that Cranmer had been sent to the Tower and even that he had been executed. In the same period Thomas Cromwell and the duke of Norfolk had a furious quarrel at Cromwell’s house; the subject of the dispute is not known. Could it be that Cromwell himself was now no longer safe?

  13

  The fall

  Henry had been seeking another wife ever since the death of Jane Seymour; another son was likely to guarantee the future of his dynasty. The wives of kings were generally considered to be little more than brood mares. Charles V had proposed the duchess of Milan to him, and the French court had suggested various other ladies for the dubious honour of obtaini
ng his hand. He asked the French ambassador to convey eight of them to Calais, where he could inspect them all at once; the invitation was declined.

  Yet Cromwell, favouring a union with the Protestant princes of northern Europe, took the part of Anne of Cleves. Her father, only recently dead, had been a reformer if not precisely a Lutheran; Anne’s older sister was already married to the elector of Saxony. They would be invaluable allies. Henry also feared the collaboration between the French king and the emperor, together with the pope, in any future enterprise against England. At that very moment Charles V was travelling from Spain into France. Henry needed friends.

  It was whispered that Anne of Cleves was as modest as she was beautiful; a portrait of her, executed by Hans Holbein, was brought to England. The king gazed upon it and pronounced her to be eminently worthy of marriage. It was reported at the time that she spoke no language but German and that she had no ear for music. Yet in matters of state these are trifles. After the conclusion of some months of negotiation, the lady was shipped to England at the end of 1539. Henry was so eager to see her that he rode incognito to Rochester, where he looked upon her secretly. He did not like what he saw, comparing her to a Flanders mare. He berated the earl of Southampton for having written, from Calais, about her beauty. The earl excused himself on the grounds that he believed matters had gone too far to be reversed. The king’s anger then fell upon Cromwell. He told him that the proposed bride was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’. He then asserted that ‘if I had known what I know now, she should not have come into this realm’. At a later meeting he asked him, ‘Is there none other remedy but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?’

  There was no remedy. He did not dare to renounce her at the cost of alienating his new allies in northern Europe and, as he put it, ‘for fear of making a ruffle in the world’. ‘I am not well handled,’ he told Cromwell. Cromwell would pay the price at a later date. The marriage was duly solemnized on 6 January 1540, even as the king was making it clear to his court that he had taken a great dislike to his bride. He was always scrupulously polite to her and, knowing no English, she may have been unaware of his aversion. The morning after the marriage Cromwell asked him if he now liked her more. No. He suspected that she was not a virgin, and she had such ‘displeasant smells’ about her that he loathed her more than ever. He doubted if the marriage would ever be consummated. In that speculation he proved to be right. The royal couple were married for a little over six months and, although on occasions they lay in the same bed, there was no progeny. Instead the king told one of his doctors that he had ‘duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno’ or, in common parlance, two wet dreams.

  A courtier had come up to Cromwell as he stood alone in a gallery, leaning against a window. ‘For God’s sake,’ he told Cromwell, ‘devise how his grace may be relieved by one way or another.’

  ‘Yes, but what and how?’ Cromwell broke away saying, ‘Well, well, it is a great matter.’

  Eventually it was proposed that there should be an amicable separation; Anne of Cleves would not follow the same path as Anne Boleyn or even Katherine of Aragon. The convocation of the clergy were persuaded to declare the marriage null and invalid, on the grounds that there had been no issue, and parliament confirmed the verdict. Anne of Cleves herself did not seem particularly discomfited by the dissolution of her marriage, and was in any case given a generous pension. She learned English quickly enough, and settled down in the country for the next seventeen years with very few regrets. One of the many properties she owned is still to be seen in Lewes.

  Henry was all the time attending carefully to the security and education of his only son. Edward was the key to the future. His first portrait, by Hans Holbein, was probably executed in 1540. It shows the infant dressed in rich robes, like a miniature version of his father. Like his father, too, he stares directly and calmly out of the canvas; his right hand is raised, as if he were about to make a declaration, and the rattle in his left hand closely resembles a tiny sceptre.

  In this year a tutor, Richard Cox, was appointed to guide the three-year-old boy in all the lessons a virtuous prince must learn; another tutor, John Cheke, was appointed four years later. The two men were humanist scholars in the tradition of Erasmus, and seem to have trodden the same middle path in religion as Henry himself. The teachers of the heir to the throne could never have been Lutherans. Yet the truth remains that Edward endorsed a more radical Protestantism almost as soon as he gained the throne. He was to be called ‘the godly imp’.

  He was instructed also in Greek and in Latin, of which he soon had a fair command. He would be introduced to the arts of horseriding and of archery, both fit for a king. As he acquired more learning the prince was given his own study, with a writing desk covered in black velvet; various mathematical and astronomical instruments were at his disposal, including a compass and a metal rule. A chess set lay on a shelf, while an hourglass hung from the wall. He had slates on which to write, as well as a variety of pens. In another room beside his bedchamber he kept miscellaneous papers concerning his mother, Jane Seymour, as well as his books; he also owned a puppet, and two pairs of spectacles. Diverse carved and painted objects, such as a spear and a staff ‘of unicorns’ horns garnished with silver gilt’, were also to be found.

  In the spring of 1540 Thomas Cromwell was created earl of Essex; his bright particular star was still in the ascendant. He was conducting the primary affairs of the nation; soon after his elevation he committed the bishop of Chichester to the Tower of London on the charge of favouring those who refused the oath of supremacy. He had also threatened the bishops of Durham, Winchester and Bath with the consequences of royal displeasure.

  Yet there were always mutterings against him. He treated the nobles with a high hand, so that the duke of Norfolk in particular became his implacable opponent. He was accused of being over-mighty and over-wealthy, and of recklessly squandering the king’s treasure.

  On the morning of 10 June 1540, he took his place in the Lords, as usual; at three in the afternoon of the same day he proceeded to his chair at the head of the council table. Norfolk shouted out, ‘Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit among gentlemen.’ ‘I am not a traitor,’ Cromwell replied. Whereupon the captain of the guard, and six other officers, came to him.

  ‘I arrest you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That, you will learn elsewhere.’

  In his fury Cromwell threw his cap down on the stone floor of the chamber. ‘This, then,’ he said ‘is the reward for all my services.’ The members of the council then erupted in a fury of antagonism, screaming abuse and thumping their fists on the table.

  It is impossible to unravel all the private suspicions and antagonisms that led to his fall. He was hated by many of the nobility who resented the fact that the son of a blacksmith should have risen above them. Those of the old faith detested him for his destruction of their shrines and monasteries. The public accusations against him were manifold. He was accused of taking bribes and of encroaching on royal authority in matters like pardoning convicted men and issuing commissions. He was indeed guilty of all these, if guilty is the right word. They were really activities that came with the job, and had previously been tolerated by the king. Bribery was the only way, for example, that the system of administration could work.

  Another set of charges concerned Cromwell’s beliefs; he was accused of holding heretical opinions and of supporting heretics in court and country. It was claimed that he was a Lutheran who had all the while been conspiring to change the religion of the nation; as the king’s ambassador to the emperor put it, he had allowed the impression that ‘all piety and religion, having no place, was banished out of England’. Letters between him and the Lutheran lords of Germany were discovered, although it is possible that they were forgeries. It was reported to the German princes that he had indirectly threatened to kill the king if Henry should attempt to reverse the pr
ocess of religious reform; he had said that he would strike a dagger into the heart of the man who should oppose reformation. If such a threat had been made, then Cromwell was guilty of treason. It was of course the principal charge against him.

  He was allowed to confront his accusers, but he was not permitted a public trial before his peers. He was instead subject to an Act of attainder for treason, a device that he himself had invented. The bill of attainder passed through both Lords and Commons without a single dissenting vote. Only Cranmer endeavoured to find a good word for him, and wrote to the king remarking on Cromwell’s past services. ‘I loved him as a friend,’ he said, ‘for so I took him to be.’

  It is sometimes asserted that Cromwell’s fate was largely the consequence of the fatal alignment between religion and politics, but the bungled marriage of Henry and Anne of Cleves also played some part in the matter. The French king and the emperor had failed to forge an alliance, so Henry no longer needed the princes of Germany for allies; the marriage had proved to be without purpose. Although Cromwell had expedited the union at Henry’s request and with Henry’s approval, he could not wholly shield himself from the king’s frustration and anger.

  Of course the force of the conservative reaction to Cromwell’s statutes of religion, for which the Pilgrimage of Grace is evidence, had shaken Henry; the king had colluded with them, but in the popular mind Cromwell was the prime mover of reform. He was the ‘evil counsellor’ who had given wicked advice to his sovereign. It was politic, therefore, that Cromwell should be given up.