CHAPTER XIV. WHEN Wolsey left, for ever, his palace of York Place, everything that he possessed was taken from him, under the sentence of the Court of King's Bench, that his lands, goods, and chattels were forfeited, and that his person was at the mercy of the king. The charge against him was, that, as legate, he had violated the statutes of præmunire, by exercising his powers under a foreign authority. To this charge Wolsey answered: "I have the king's licence in my coffers, under his hand and broad seal, for exercising and using the authority thereof [of the legatine prerogative] in the largest wise, the which now remaineth in the hands of my enemies."* Wolsey reached his desolate house of Esher, wholly unprovided with common necessaries, with "beds, sheets, tablecloths, cups, or dishes." He wrote to Dr. Stephen Gardiner, praying him to extend his benevolence towards him; and begging for pecuniary help from the sovereign who had stripped him of everything. On the 1st of November, Wolsey's faithful follower, Thomas Cromwell, rode to London from Esher, and whispered some words of magical import into the ears of the king, which saved Wolsey for a season, and made himself, in due time, the most powerful of Henry's servants. The parliament met on the 3rd of November. Thomas Cromwell, through some sudden influence, became a member. "There could nothing be spoken against my lord [Wolsey] in the parliament house," says Cavendish, "but he [Cromwell] would answer it incontinent, or else take until the next day; against which time he would resort to my lord to know what answer he should make in his behalf." The articles exhibited by the Lords against Wolsey-such as his writing to Rome, "Ego et Rex meus his putting the cardinal's hat on his York groat-his sending large sums to Rome-and similar charges of ecclesiastical assumption, were evidently held insufficient to sustain any accusation of offence "to the prince's person or to the state," as Wolsey himself alleged. It was not Henry's purpose then to crush Wolsey. The future was too doubtful to allow the king utterly to destroy a cardinal of the Roman see, whilst there was anything to hope in the matter of the divorce from the decision of the pope. There had not been a parliament called since 1523. During the legatine rule of Wolsey, the pecuniary exactions of the church had become oppressive to all ranks of the people. In the six weeks of their session, the Commons asserted their determination to set some bounds to a power which was more obnoxious, because more systematic in its pecuniary inflictions, than the illegal subsidies and the compulsory loans of the crown. The new chancellor, sir Thomas More, though a rigid Catholic in doctrine and discipline, was too wise and honest not to see that the rapacity of the officials of the church, and the general laxity as to pluralities and nonresidence, were shaking the foundations of ecclesiastical authority, even more than the covert hostility of the dreaded Lutherans. We cannot doubt that it was with his sanction that three important statutes were passed in Cavendish, p. 276. A.D. 1530. SIR THOMAS MORE, CHANCELLOR. 181 this parliament of the 21st year of Henry. By these statutes the fees to the church upon probates, and the demand for mortuaries, or corpse presents, were brought within reasonable limits. It was also declared unlawful for ecclesiastics to occupy farms; to buy and sell at profit any kind of produce; to keep tan-houses and breweries. These practices were prohibited under heavy penalties. The same statute regulated the holding of pluralities, and enforced residence. That the ecclesiastics would stoutly resist such attacks upon long-continued abuses, which in their minds had assumed the shape of rights, was a necessary result of their extensive power. During the progress of the discussions in parliament on these bills there was much railing on both sides. The spiritual persons regarded the promoters of these measures as heretics and schismatics, and defended their own practices by prescription and usage. These practices were regarded with the more hostility because there was a doubt, very widely spread, of the infallibility of the church. It was not only the dislike of proctors, and summoners, and apparitors which influenced many sober and religious persons; but the craving for some higher teaching than that which led to the burning of the English Testament in St. Paul's Churchyard. Many copies of Tyndale's translation had been brought into the country, "which books the common people used and daily read privily; which the clergy would not admit, for they punished such persons as had read, studied, or taught the same, with great extremity.' ."* Wolsey made strenuous efforts to restrain the printing of the Scripture in the people's tongue; and the kind nature of his successor, sir Thomas More, was so crusted over by his rigid habits of submission to the discipline of the church, that for the use and study of Tyndale's and Joy's Testaments "he imprisoned and punished a great number, so that for this cause a great rumour and controversy rose daily amongst the people."+ Accused persons were now subjected to secret examination; were detained in custody for unlimited periods; were discharged without amends; or consigned to the stake if condemned of heresy, or to make purgation and to bear a faggot to their shame and undoing. The king had obtained very large sums, by way of loan, from public bodies, and from individuals, in 1525, when the insurrections of Suffolk compelled him to withdraw the demand for a sixth of every man's substance. The Lords and Commons had now the audacity to renounce all claims to these loans, not only for themselves, but for every man to whom the king was indebted, in consideration of his highness's constant labours to defend his kingdom, to uphold the church, and to establish peace amongst his subjects. The parliament, which had accomplished such salutary reforms, and also perpetrated such gross injustice, was prorogued on the 17th December. "After the parliament was thus ended the king removed to Greenwich, and there kept his Christmas with the queen, in great triumph; with great plenty of viands, and divers disguisings and interludes, to the great rejoicing of his people."+ The emperor was to be crowned by the pope at Bologna, in February, 1530. On the 23rd of January, we find that the sum of 17437. 88. Od. is paid "by the king's commandment for the depechement of my lord Wiltshire and others, in their journey towards the emperor.' "My lord of Wiltshire" was Anne Boleyn's father. The "others " were Doctor Stokesley, elected bishop of London, and Doctor Henry Lee, the king's almoner. With them also "divers doctors, both of law and divinity." Amongst these was Thomas Cranmer, who was an inmate of the house of the earl of Wiltshire. This divine had expressed his opinion that the question, whether a man might marry his brother's widow, might be settled upon scriptural authority, expounded by learned divines, which opinions could be obtained as well in England as from Rome. The notion was communicated to the king; and Cranmer had to work out his lucky idea in a book which he was desired to write. He maintained that the marriage of Henry was condemned by the authority of the Scriptures, and that of councils and fathers of the church; and that the pope had no power to give a dispensation opposed to those sources of belief. In the embassy to the emperor, which was truly an embassy to Clement VII., Cranmer was associated to defend his own propositions. The war with the Imperialists had desolated the fairest spots of Lombardy. Famine and pestilence had completed the misery which war had begun. Amidst this national ruin, Clement had to place the crown on the head of Charles, as king of Lombardy, and emperor of the Romans. The ceremony took place at Bologna on the 24th of February. Before the emperor departed from Bologna the earl of Wiltshire had arrived. He had a difficult office to perform-that of moving the pope to a decided course, in the presence of Charles, who had very sufficient reasons for strenuously resisting the demands of Henry. He had to conciliate the emperor, by offering the restitution of queen Catherine's original dowry. He had to work upon the pope's fears, by intimating that "the Defender of the Faith" would pursue his own career, if the Holy See was inimical, without bending to its authority. Charles maintained a resolute attitude of hostility to the whole proceeding. The unhappy pope was in a fearful perplexity. The embassy returned home, having effected nothing. Cranmer remained, with the desire to contend the matter in a public disputation ; which, however, was not permitted. The declarations which were gathered from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and from universities and ecclesiastical bodies in France and Italy, were favourable to the desires of the king of England, as they pronounced against the lawfulness of his marriage with his brother's widow. In March, 1531, these opinions were laid before the House of Commons; and More, as chancellor, said, "Now you of this Commons House may report in your countries what you have seen and heard; and then all men shall openly perceive that the king has not attempted this matter of will or pleasure, as some strangers report, but only for the discharge of his conscience, and surety of the succession of the realm." * More, in his inmost heart, disliked the whole measure, and these official words must have come very hesitatingly from his lips. Early in February, Wolsey received a general pardon; and having been * Hall, p. 780. A.D. 1531. DEATH OF WOLSEY. 183 assured of the temporalities of the see of York, he took up his residence in the archiepiscopal city. The council had agreed to advance him a sum for the expenses of his journey, to which the king had added a thousand pounds. A circular letter was also sent with the royal signet, calling upon the nobles and gentlemen of the country to show themselves as regarded him, "of toward and benevolent mind, using, entreating, and accepting him as to his dignity doth appertain. "The king," says Hall, "all this year dissembled the matter, to see what he [Wolsey] would do at length." What he did was in the highest degree commendable. He lived with rational hospitality instead of ostentatious grandeur. After he was dead, a book was published, bearing an official character, in which it was said, that "he gave bishops a right good example how they might win men's hearts." The magnificence which the great minister had practised for twenty years, had become too much a part of his nature to be wholly changed for true simplicity of life in his altered fortunes; and Thomas Cromwell wrote to his former master, "Sir, some there be, that doth allege that your grace doth keep too great a house and family, and that ye are continually building." Within little more than two months after this warning of Cromwell, the enemies of Wolsey prevailed for the accomplishment of his complete ruin. On the 4th of November, the time approaching for his installation at York as archbishop, Wolsey was sitting at dinner at Cawood Castle, when he was told that the earl of Northumberland was come into his hall, with a great company. Wolsey went to receive him, and proffered him the hospitality of his house. He led the earl into his bed-chamber. Cavendish kept the door as gentleman-usher. "These two lords standing at a window by the chimney, in my lord's bed-chamber, the earl trembling said, with a very faint and soft voice unto my lord (laying his hand upon his arm), 'My lord, I arrest you of high treason." " Wolsey was committed to the custody of the earl's people, Cavendish having been chosen to attend upon him as the chief person, and taking an oath that was prescribed to him. In a few days they departed, amidst the tears and prayers of the archbishop's household. Wolsey remained at Sheffield-park for a fortnight, under the charge of the earl of Shrewsbury. Here he became ill. Thither came Master Kingston, the constable of the Tower. After three days' riding, the sick man and his guards reached Leicester Abbey, on a Saturday night. "Father abbot, I am come hither to leave my bones among you," were his memorable words. On the following Tuesday he was at the point of death; when he uttered these more memorable words to Master Kingston: "If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me over in my gray hairs." He died on the 29th of November, aged 59. In January, 1531, the parliament met after a long prorogation. The clergy were now subjected to prosecution in the King's Bench for having obeyed the power of Wolsey as legate, which obedience was held to bring them within the charge of being his "fautors and abettors." A compronise was effected, and the king granted "out of his high goodness and great benignity," a pardon to his spiritual subjects, they having "given Ellis, first series, vol. ii., p. 17. and granted to him a subsidy of one hundred thousand pounds."* This Act extended to the province of Canterbury. That of York had to pay a smaller sum in the following year. It was required in the grant that the king should be styled "the protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of England." The acknowledgment, after much contention, was made, with the addition of the words, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." The divorce had now been more than three years in agitation, and it appeared as far as ever from a conclusion under the papal authority. Henry was in dread of being cited to Rome; and in April, 1531, desired his ambassador, Dr. Benet, to use every means 'to put over the process, as long as ye may." The king desired that the cause should be decided in an indifferent place, by indifferent judges. The emperor was wholly opposed to the process being removed from Rome; and urged the pope to make no more delays in the matter. The emperor had with the pope a voice potential." At this period Henry was so far from connecting his impatience of the papal power with any favour to the doctrines of the reformers, that he instructed Vaughan, his ambassador in the Netherlands, "to advise a young man named Frith, to leave his wilful opinions and errors, and to return into his native country ;" and, through Cromwell also desired that good and wholesome exhortations for his conversion and amendment should be given to Tyndale. Frith did return; and, as Cranmer very unfeelingly wrote in 1533, was "to go unto the fire." Tyndale remained in the Netherlands, to be first imprisoned, and then strangled, by the persecutors of the reformers there, in 1536, after having published his admirable translations of the Scriptures, which the "Defender of the Faith" proscribed. In 1532 an Act was passed "concerning the payment of annates," or first-fruits of archbishoprics and bishoprics, to the Court of Rome." This statute limits the payment upon the papal bulls for consecration to five pounds for each hundred of yearly value; and in the case of the denial of such bulls provides for consecration in England without the papal authority. But the king's quarrel with Rome not yet having come to a final rupture, Henry was empowered to give or withhold his assent to the Act, by letters patent. The king did not confirm the Act of January, 1532, till July, 1533, when he had finally broken with Rome. Sir Thomas More held the great seal only about two years and a-half, and then resigned his office. He was a thoroughly conscientious minister, but he was in a false position. During his tenure of high place, the persecution of heretics was not violent. Erasmus has said, that it was a sufficient proof of his clemency that while he was chancellor no man was put to death "for these pestilent dogmas.' But he took part in the examination of heretics before the council; sanctioned their imprisonment; and caused a boy and a bedlamite to be whipped for "ungracious heresy," according to his own statement. In July, 1532, plans were laid for a meeting in the autumn between Henry and Francis; and the bishop of Bayonne wrote to the Great Master, de Montmorenci, that he well-knew that the greatest pleasure 22 Hen. VIII., c. 15. † State Papers, vol. vii., p. 317. |