Cranmer and the reformation in England

Preface

The purpose of this volume is not so much to present a biography of Cranmer as to give a sketch of that ecclesiastical period throughout which he remains a consistently prominent figure : a period during which he, more than any other single individual, left his personal impress upon a national institution.

It is a peculiarity of the Reformation in England that it is not associated with any one figure of heroic proportions. Germany has her Luther; the Netherlands, William the Silent ; Calvin dominated half the Protestant world, and more ; Knox, dour and grim as he was, had no little of the heroic quality. In England neither Cranmer nor any other occupies a corresponding position. There is a sense in which the historian may legitimately speak of a person as having created a movement ; but he may not say it of Cranmer. He does not absorb the interest while associates fall into the background ; we feel that it is the mediocrity of his associates which enables him to absorb so much as he does.

This is apt to be the way with England. The Reformation has its political counterpart, not in the Great Rebellion with its Hampden and its Cromwell, but in vi PREFACE

the " Glorious Revolution " with its inglorious Whigs. To them we owe our constitutional liberties ; and it is to men of a similar calibre that we owe our religious emancipation.

Amongst the various figures, however, Cranmer holds the position of pre-eminence. Our Reformation in the sixteenth century may be described as having had four stages. During the first there is a movement intellectual and moral, but legislation does not intervene. This closes in 1529. In the second stage the fundamental feature is the assertion of Secular supremacy over Ecclesiastical administration ; in the third it is the revision of ecclesiastical ordinances. The fiery interlude of Mary's reign leads to the fourth stage — in effect the confirmation of the two preceding in a recognised and established system. The Reformation becomes an accomplished fact. From that time the body ecclesiastical, as recognised by the State, alters very little in character; any vigorous reforming movements thereafter, the lines of which extend beyond the scheme of the Elizabethan settlement, tending to result in separation from the established organisation rather than in changes within it.

In the first of these four stages Cranmer does not appear. He belonged to the movement, but he had no active part in it. In the second stage the leading figures are Henry vni. and Thomas Cromwell : Cranmer fluttering through it, sometimes encouraging, generally acquiescent, occasionally offering a somewhat ineffective resistance, never more than an influence. In the third he is the controlling character ; not indeed displaying a vigorous mastery, but on the whole successfully maintaining a position which but for him would

PREFACE vii

assuredly not have been maintained at the time nor accepted — as it was — in the fourth stage, when he had already earned the martyr's crown. In these two stages, the second and third, the work of the Reformation was wrought, and the course shaped which it should take in the future. It is right, therefore, that his should stand as the representative name. The first stage is in this volume treated as an extended prologue ; the fourth only as epilogue.

The telling of this story involves certain difficulties. An attitude of enthusiasm would be pleasant ; but for the most part the subject forbids enthusiasm. To play the advocate for a party is easy ; but with Henry and Cromwell, Cranmer and Gardiner, Northumberland and Mary Tudor to depict, it is in no wise easy to " nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice." It appears all but impossible to write of those times without yielding either to the Roman, the Anglican, or the Puritan bias. Till a comparatively recent period there was no hearing for any but the last school; of late years those Anglicans who reject the name of Protestant have held the field, save for some acute, if not always convincing, expositions of the Romanist point of view. It is hardly possible to make a single statement as to the beliefs, motives, intentions, or character of any one of our dramatis personal which will not be quite honestly and quite flatly contradicted by the adherents of one or other of the three schools : so that the discovery of truth becomes a highly complicated process.

To this must be added a special perplexity — party terminology. Convenience brought about the practice of using the term Catholic as equivalent to Romanist, viii PREFACE

and opposing it to the term Protestant. Then came a revival of " Catholic " in its wider and legitimate sense ; but it was still maintained as a contrary to Protestant, the sense of which was narrowed till it became almost equivalent to Calvinist ; and the two words have become party badges within a Church which is at once essentially Catholic in virtue of its continuity, and essentially Protestant in virtue of its Reformation.

I have attempted in these pages to revert to a legitimate use of these terms. The primary antagonism is between the Romanists, who maintained the papal authority, and the Protestants, who rejected it. The secondary antagonism is between the Catholics, who maintained the authority of tradition and the early Fathers, and the Puritans, who held by the words of Scripture. The Catholic may be either Romanist or Protestant. The Protestant may be either Puritan or Catholic. The mutually exclusive terms are, Romanist and Protestant, Puritan and Catholic.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

Chapter I

Pioneers of the Reformation — Europe in the Fifteenth Century- — The New Learning — Savonarola — State of England — The Supplicacyon for the Beggcrs — Ecclesiastical Corruption — Its Causes — Special Conditions in England — Motive Force for Reformation .........

CHAPTER II Prologue : The Scholars' Movement, 1496-1529

Colet Lectures at Oxford — The New Method— Characteristics — Erasmus at Oxford — Colet Dean of St. Paul's — Accession of Henry vin. — Erasmus and More — The Utopia — Religion in Utopia — Characteristics of the Scholars — The New Testament of Erasmus — The Extirpation of Heresy — Colet's Address to Convocation — The Reformation Intended . . . .12

CHAPTER III Prologue : The Lutheran Revolt, 1517-1530

Luther and Erasmus — The Meaning of Luther — Luther and Tetzel — Luther and the Papal Bull — The Diet of Worms — The Edict of Worms — The Heads of the Christian States — The Peasants' War — The Papal Elections — Political Consequences —The Diet of Spires— The Sack of Rome— The Protest of Spires — The Schmalkaldic League, and After — The Zurich Reformers — The Augshurg Confession 23

CONTENTS

Chapter IV Page

Henry vni — His Marriage with Catherine of Aragon — The Dispensation — A Conscience Undisturbed — A Conscience Awakened — Views on the Nullity of the Marriage — First Steps for "Divorce"— Their Failure— The New Method . 35

Chapter V

Cranmer at Cambridge — The Discovery of Cranmer — The Bearing of his Theory of the Divorce — The King and the Scholar — The Training of a Primate — Thomas Cromwell — His Character — Italy : the " Prince " — Cromwell the Adventurer — Cromwell and Wolsey — Cromwell and Henry ... 42

Chapter VI

Aspects of Henry's Reformation — It was not Doctrinal — Papal Supremacy — The Divorce and the Universities — Cranmer made Archbishop — Act in Restraint of Appeals — Cranmer pronounces the Divorce — Papal Condemnation thereof — Annates Act — Reformation Parliament — First Acts against Abuses — Heresy-Hunting — The Clergy under Praemunire — The " Supremacy " Clause — The Supplication against the Ordinaries — The Bill of Wards — Answers of Convocation — "Submission of the Clergy "• — Resignation of Thomas More — Benefit of Clergy — Effects of the Legislation — Its Character . 52

Chapter VII

Legislation of 1534 — Act of Succession — More and Fisher refuse the Oath — Further Legislation, 1534-5 — Execution of More and Fisher — Cranmer and the King's Victims — Cromwell Vicar-General — The Monastic System- — Corruption of the Monasteries — Previous Evidence — The Evidence before Parliament — The First Visitation and Suppression — The Pilgrimage of Grace — Completion of the Suppression — Tuning the Pulpits —Fall of Cromwell 66

CONTENTS xi

Chapter VIII Page

Cranmer and Royal Supremacy — Freedom of Conscience — Henry's Views on Authority — Restraint of Superstitious Practices — Translation of Scripture — Suppression of Heresy — Tyndale's Bible — Coverdale, Matthew, and the Great Bible — Proposed Revision — The English Litany — The Ten Articles — The Bishops' Book — The German Protestants — The Six Articles — Celibacy — The King's Book — Discussions on the Sacraments and on Orders — The Eationale — Death and Character of Henry 80

Chapter IX

The German Modus Vivendi — Henry viii. holds aloof — The Political Riddle — Growth and Fall of the Schmalkaldic League — Demand for a General Council — Difficulty of summoning one — The Diet of Ratisbon — Council summoned at Trent — Ignatius Loyola — The Jesuit System- — Calvin and Calvinism — The Position in 1547 — Maurice of Saxony — From the Peace of Augsburg to 1563 97

Chapter X

The New Government— Gardiner in Opposition — Theories of the Eucharist — Justification — Purgatory — Celibacy — Images — The Plan of Campaign — The Homilies — The Paraphrase — The Visitation — Imprisonment of Gardiner and Bonner — Legislation of Edward's First Year — War against Images — Suppression of Preaching — New Order of Communion — The First Prayer-Book Ill

Chapter XI

Weakness of Edward's Government — Reform and Plunder — The Western Rising — Ket's Rising — Fall of Somerset — Swiss Influences — Ridley — Alasco — Hooper and Knox — Cranmer and the Eucharist — Aggressive Reformers — Nonconformity — " Reformatio Legum"— Second Act of Uniformity — Second Prayer-Book— The Ordinal— The Forty-Two Articles— Character of the Government — Cranmer's Reformation . .127 xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII Reaction and Counter-Reaction : 1553-1559 PAGE

Northumberland's Plot — Moderation of Mary — Imprisonment of Bishops — Repeal of Ecclesiastical Laws — Wyatt's Rebellion : its Consequences — The Married Clergy — Character of Parliament — Marriage of Philip and Mary — Gardiner — Reconciliation with Rome — Character of Mary — -First Year of Persecution — Who were the Persecutors ? — Conner and Gardiner — Unique Character of the Persecution — Resulting Reaction . 143

Chapter XIII

The Martyrs' Reward — The Reproach of Cranmer — Under Henry VIII.- — Cranmer and the Supremacy — His Work under Edward — His Lack of Self- Reliance — His Occasional Courage — Cranmer under Attainder — The Three Bishops at Oxford — Cranmer's Trial and Condemnation — He asks to "confer" — Submission, Degradation, and Appeal — Third and Fourth Submissions — The Recantation — The Second Recantation — The Virtue of Courage— Last Days — St Mary's Church — The Witness .......... 157

CHAPTER XIV Epilogue : The Reformation in England

Results — Two Aspects of the Reformation — Sovereignty of the Temporal Power — Becket and Cranmer — Cranmer and Comprehension — The Clergy and the Reformation — Comprehension and Ambiguity — Elizabeth — Rival Theories — Church and Nation Commensurate — Church Endowments — Church a Divine Institution — The Laity and the Reformation : First Stages ; Under Edward ; Under Mary — English Protestantism 175

Index 191

LIST OF CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES

I. Contemporary Sovereigns, 1501-1560. II. Notable Dates bearing on the Reformation,

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Chapter I

The Reformation in England, treated as a separate phenomenon, begins with what may be called the movement for a constitutional reform : reform free from any schismatic character. In a sense, Wiclif was the father of the Reformation ; but he and his disciples were in revolt against the powers that be, and they hardly brought reform nearer. They were but pioneers. Lollardry as a religious movement obtained no general hold, its social and economic aspects being more prominent. Reformation of the Church, a new moral and religious standard, entered the sphere of practical politics when it came to be demanded by her own most loyal sons without arousing the opposition of the State. And therefore it is with the " Oxford Reformers " that the era may be said to commence : in the closing decade of the fifteenth century.

Not in England only, but throughout Christendom, the time for purgation had arrived. The conscience of the Western World imperatively needed arousing. State-craft during the last hundred years had degenerated into a science of pure expediency which recognised no moral law. Our own Henry V. was the mirror of chivalry; the absolute sincerity of his religious conviction has never been questioned ; but he plunged into a war which for sheer inexcusable aggression is unsurpassed. The English were driven out of France by one who is perhaps the most perfectly heroic figure in history ; men whose standard of nobility was certainly no whit below the average of their time burned her for a witch and a heretic. Europe permitted the Turk to vaunt the triumph of the Crescent over the Cross. Louis XI. indulged himself in ecstasies of fetish - worship in the intervals of concocting treacheries. In Italy the arts of lying and poisoning were achieving their finest consummation. Everywhere learning had sunk to its lowest ebb. The genuine subtleties of the earlier scholasticism had given place to a mere barren logomachy. Among the clergy, advancement was the reward, not of holiness, learning, eloquence, administrative ability, but of connection by blood or by service with powerful families.

But light was to illumine the intellectual darkness. Before 1450 the printing press had taken form ; and now the shame of Christendom was to become its salvation. Constantinople fell in 1453; the fugitives brought with them the forgotten literature of the ancient world. The feast suddenly set before them proved, perhaps, something too intoxicating to the finer intelligences ; the prevailing materialism, intellectualised, was hardly rendered more edifying though it was less gross. But the New Learning soon passed to those who were prepared to make a nobler use of it ; who could grasp its spiritual significance as well as its pagan fascination ; and with the opportunity to know came an increased desire of knowing. The New Culture, moralised, formed the Conservative element of the Reformation ; while, by giving the Peoples an open Bible, it provided a revolutionary and Puritan basis. Thus the extreme Reformers took their stand on the letter of Scripture, the Conservatives took theirs on its reasonable interpretation.

The first effect, however, of the New Learning did not tend to reformation at all, but to a sceptical conformity on the part of the cultured, an increasingly shameless abuse of their office by the clergy, and a popular depth of superstition, not, it may be, really greater than before, but more remarkable by contrast with intellectual licence. The consummation was reached when almost the vilest member of quite the vilest family whose names disgrace the annals of Europe was elected as the Vicar of Christ on earth in the person of the Borgia, Pope Alexander VI., in 1492.

Almost simultaneously with this utmost degradation of the highest office in Christendom there arose in Florence, trumpet - tongued, comminatory, prophetic, the forerunner of reform, Girolamo Savonarola. The tangible effects in Italy were shortlived enough; but the spark of moral enthusiasm was kindled, and the intelligent perception of fraud had already been aroused. Between the two, the corruptions which had overgrown the Church were doomed, in part at least, to be swept away.

In Italy, no doubt, that corruption had assumed its most portentous proportions; in England, probably, it was less marked than anywhere on the Continent. The English people have a genius for preserving the decencies ; and the relative prevalence of free institutions, coupled with an unfailing resistance to all attempts at establishing an ecclesiastical within the secular imperium, had enforced sobriety. Standing altogether outside the pale of the Empire, England was endowed with a national unity unknown in more southern lands ; and was enabled to preserve a certain orderliness, even through the turmoil of thirty years of civil war, which the European States could not parallel. Most important of all, her insular position had imparted or secured a national character to the Church within her borders, so that the clergy and the ecclesiastical organisation generally stood in an exceptionally close relation to the State, and in an exceptionally independent relation to the Holy See.

It is singularly difficult to arrive with even approximate certainty at a clear idea of the condition of the Church in England before and during the first fifty years of the sixteenth century. Some of the antiecclesiastical literature of the times appears more akin to the rhetoric of the Hyde Park agitator of to-day than to anything else. Putrescence would be a mild term for the state of things therein described.

About the year 1527 one Simon Fish wrote a book entitled A Supplicacyon for the Beggers, being professedly a suggestion that the money appropriated to the support of the clergy would be more profitably bestowed upon the poor, the maimed, and the halt, who were dependent on charity for their livelihood. It is, in fact, an all-round indictment of the clergy.

" There is yn the tymes of youre noble predecessours passed craftily crept into this your realme an other sort (not of impotent but) of strong puissaunt and counterfeit holy and ydell beggers and vacabundes. . . . These are (not the herdes, but the rauinous wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke) the Bisshoppes, Abbottes, Priours, Deacons, Archdeacons, Suffraganes, Prestes, Monkes, Chanons, Freres, Pardoners, and Somners." This " rauinous, cruell, and insatiabill generacion " are proved by a curious arithmetical process to have absorbed half the landed estate of the country, and to fatten upon alms at the rate of nearly £50,000 per annum, although numbering but one in four hundred of the population. "And whate do al these gredy sort of sturdy idell holy theues ? . . . Nothing but that all your subiectes shulde fall into disobedience, and rebellion against your grace and be under theim. . . . These be they that corrupt the hole generation of mankind yn your realme." The charge of unbridled sexual immorality is hurled at the " bloudsuppers " with a sweeping universality and a copiousness of language which would reduce to envious despair the most uncompromising enemy of a bloated aristocracy. "Where is your swerde, power, crowne, and dignitie, become that shuld punische the felonies, rapes, murdres, and treasons committed by this sinfull generacion ? " It is a trifle comic to find this flagellator of ecclesiastical vices going back to include in his curse Stephen Langton, the stout opponent of King John's tyranny ; that monarch being represented as a holy and righteous ruler ! It appears, however, on perusal that the moving cause of this pamphlet was the punishment for heresy of one Richard Hunne, who had " commenced accyon of premunire ageinst a prest."

It is impossible to take such an indictment as this seriously. The language used would almost be extravagant if applied to the Tartar hordes who followed the conquering banner of Tamerlane. Written when the great Dean Colet was hardly cold in his grave, when Warham was Archbishop of Canterbury, and Fisher Bishop of Rochester, the frantic excesses of Simon Fish stand condemned on their very face. And yet, in the modern introduction to the reprint from which the foregoing quotations are taken, the work is described as a "terse and brave little book." It is, indeed, conceivable that it was produced by a sincere fanaticism, but if so it was fanaticism run mad. The one thing to be said is that even the rankest fanaticism and the fiercest hatred could never have evolved such a parody of serious invective unless there had been colourable grounds for holding the mass of the clergy guilty of greed, worldliness, and lax morality.

We shall have to deal more specifically in a subsequent chapter with the charges against the monasteries, which were made the justification of the great spoliation. It is no longer possible to feel any reasonable doubt that these were gravely, not to say grossly, exaggerated ; but it is equally impossible to accept as convincing the defence of their ingenious advocates.

It is unnecessary to fall back on the evidence of men like Simon Fish, or on the traditions of scandal readily accepted by Protestant controversialists in days when monks, Jesuits, and the Inquisition were inextricably mixed up in the popular mind with the misdeeds, real and hypothetical, of the Spaniards. Nor is it necessary to lay any great stress on the reports of commissioners appointed by a Government which was deliberately concocting a case. Certain facts are palpable. The clergy of England acknowledged the primacy of the pope, at whose hands the Archbishop of Canterbury received the pallium, and England was not free from the corruption of the papal dominion.

At Rome the higher ecclesiastical powers were debased enough to place the Borgia on the papal throne. Continental bishops and archbishops practically performed the functions of secular princes as well as those of Fathers of the Church. They had large revenues under their control. Their temptations were particularly strong. Instead of standing forth and denouncing the prevalent moral corruption, they went with it, and the minor clergy followed the example set them in high places. Probably they were no more prone to iniquity than their lay neighbours, but their opportunities were greater, and they did not neglect them.

The same principles applied in England. A system capable of working nobly while the clergy were inspired by moral enthusiasm became ruinous when enthusiasm died down. If bishops and abbots neglected their pastoral responsibilities, it was only natural that the sense of responsibility should dwindle away in the parish priest and the monk. If the authorities were las in enforcing discipline, the rank and file were not likely to be over-zealous. Without assuming anything that can fairly be called universal corruption, it is obvious that a very prevalent laxity was an inevitable result of the conditions.

But beyond the slackness produced by immunity from discipline, the temptation to positive abuse of the sacred office was strong. According to the theory of the Catholic Church, repentance and confession were the conditions precedent of pardon and absolution for sin; and it lay with the priest to judge on what terms the absolution should be pronounced. Also, the prayers of the Church would avail to mitigate the penalties of purgatory. It was a very easy step from the latter doctrine to teach that the prayers of the Church might be bought ; and from the former, first, to the idea that it was in the power of the priest to absolve or to refuse absolution at will, and second, to the corollary that absolution might in practice be bought. The conclusion was obvious. By conciliating the clergy, absolution might be obtained and the term of purgatory be shortened. The powers of a priesthood regarded as the sole legitimate channel for grace were simply irresistible. Whatever the orthodox doctrine might be, the theory vulgarly taught and held offered an enormous inducement to the clergy, in plain terms, to treat the Grace of God as a commodity which they could sell at their own price. And there is no sort of question that, with more or less honesty of intent, great numbers of the clergy did yield to the inducement and teach that sin might be condoned and its penalties escaped by adequate cash payment. That the pure doctrine of the Catholic Church countenanced no such theory or practice is nothing to the point. The essence of the charge against the unreformed Church is that its effectual teachings and actual practices were distortions and abuses of the pure doctrine.

The same point applies to the case of the Monasteries. The whole Monastic system in any possible form is open to attack and is capable of defence, as is the doctrine that the priest is a needful intermediary between man and God. But the effective demand for a reformation was created not by the Monastic system, but by the abuse of it. It is vain to point to the rules of the religious houses, and say " these men cannot have been idle, vicious, and luxurious." The gravamen of the accusation against them was that their rules were set at naught in practice. Primarily in both cases, the principle was not challenged ; but when the abuse found defenders in high places, the claim of the principle was called in question. So at a later day the American colonies submitted to taxation for commercial purposes ; but when taxation was applied for revenue purposes, the newly claimed right was challenged, and when it was defended the whole right of taxation was attacked.

Directly or indirectly the clergy were in the habit of making a highly profitable use of absolution and masses for the dead. Nor did they hesitate in like manner to encourage the worship of relics and of images in a directly fraudulent manner for purposes of gain ; attributing special virtues, for instance, to " Our Lady" of this or that shrine — a proceeding utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine that the image was to be regarded merely as a symbol, and not as a thing in itself worshipful ; and displaying relics which they knew to be sheer deceptions. Again, the charge has nothing to do primarily with the theory that true relics demand reverence, even that they may be miraculously endowed; or with the contention that images are to be commended as aids to worship.