416 A TRACTABLE PARLIAMENT. [1539. attendance. "But if the king's pleasure be so, I would be gladly carried thither in a horse-litter, to accomplish his grace's pleasure and commandment, rather than to tarry at home." He was not one of those who met to register their own fall. He had a harder fate than mere deprivation. In that parliament there were also present the two archbishops and eighteen bishops. There were forty-nine temporal peers summoned. If the ecclesiastics had mustered in their full strength, the spiritual and temporal peers would have been of equal number.† In the second session of the same parliament the proportion was changed, never again to be restored. The abbots had then vanished from the legislature. "His grace's pleasure and commandment" had been accomplished. But it was not accomplished without an amount of labour and management which might appear to be a characteristic of modern rather than of ancient times. The returns to the Lower House of knights and burgesses, who should be wholly conformable, was accomplished by the unremitting care of Henry's ministers. On the 17th of March, five weeks before the meeting of parliament, Cromwell writes to Henry, "For your grace's parliament, I have appointed your majesty's servant, Mr. Morison, to be one of them. No doubt he shall be ready to answer, and take up such as would crack or face with literature of learning, or indirected ways, if any such shall be, as I think there shall be few or none; for as much as I, and other your dedicate councillors, be about to bring all things so to pass, that your majesty had never more tractable parliament." A "tractable parliament" was the machinery by which tyranny sought to do its work in England, after the old spirit of freedom had been crushed under the Tudor heel. It was necessary to put the drapery of representation over the naked form of despotism. One sound constitutional historian, in stating that the immense revolutions of Henry's time could never have been effected without the concurrence of parliament-that the spoliation of property, and the condemnation of the innocent, were accomplished by their acquiescence and co-operation-holds that their subservience was not ultimately injurious to public liberty, because "it accustomed the people to set no bounds to the authority of those who bestowed it on the king."§ But let us not forget that if the people had not been trained, by long traditions of individual liberty, to rely upon themselves, the subservience of parliament might have ultimately accomplished a more dangerous, because more complicated, tyranny than that of uncontrolled monarchical supremacy. Happily the roots of English freedom were too deeply imbedded in the soil, for the old tree to be destroyed by the storms of regal power, or the blights of representative corruption. The ancient spirit which upheld justice and civil rights survived in the most dangerous times, such as in other countries left the people grovelling before the throne. The essential difference was, that in England, from the earliest days a great part of the administrative functions of government was wrought out by the people themselves. The local constitutions of the feudal ages had not been destroyed or changed. They were carried forward into the whole theory and practice of a state of society from which slavery and villanage had departed. They retained their strongholds State Papers, vol. i., See the list in Parliamentary History, vol. i., p. 533. § Mackintosh, History of England, vol. ii., p. 240. 1539.] ACT FOR THE KING TO MAKE BISHOPS. 417 in parish and borough-in the village vestry and the corporate guild. They survived in the constable and the justice of the peace. There were institutions besides those of crown and parliament. These might be tyrannous and corrupt; but the elements of freedom still abided with the people. "The imperfection of certain organs matters nothing, because the whole is instinct with life." * If Ralph Sadler, in 1539, could openly write to a new member to repair to him, "to speak with the duke of Norfolk by whom ye shall know the king his pleasure, how ye shall order yourself in the parliamenthouse," +-there were, no doubt, others who endured such domination in secret displeasure. The Saxon temper would chafe and fume, and would have to bide its time, even for a century. But it was the spark that, some day, would fly up in the face of tyranny. Even in the ashes of freedom lived its wonted fires. The "act for dissolution of abbeys" was a formal statute, to make perfect the work that was practically accomplished. It vested the remaining monastic possessions in the king, of which the greater number had been surrendered; and it confirmed all future surrenders. It annulled leases granted a year previous to each surrender. Other business had preceded this enactment; but all other matters were of secondary importance, or depended upon the accomplishment of this measure. Of the public opinion as to this sweeping confiscation, Burnet says, "this suppression of abbeys was universally censured; and besides the common exceptions which those that favoured the old superstition made, it was questioned whether the lands that formerly belonged to religious houses ought to have returned to the founders and donors, by way of reverter; or to have fallen to the lords of whom the lands were holden, by way of escheat; or to have come to the crown." Lord Herbert says, "this rapine upon the Church, with the miserable ruin of themselves and houses, was divulged abroad in such terms as astonished the whole Christian world. For though the excessive number of them excused the king in some part, for the first suppression, the latter had no such specious pretext." In our day we properly look upon these institutions as having been, if not nurseries of vice and idleness, unsuited even to their own times, and as utterly incompatible with the progress of religious freedom, and therefore with national prosperity and happiness. But we should grossly err if we believed that they were wholly useless. Even Henry did not dare to appropriate these vast possessions without a pretence that he was about to devote some portion of them to great public uses. The act for the dissolution of the abbeys was followed by "an act for the king to make bishops." The preamble to the draft of this statute is written in king. Henry's own hand: "Forasmuch as it is not unknown the slothful and ungodly life which hath been used amongst all those sort which have borne the name of religious folk; and to the intent that from henceforth many of them might be turned to better use as hereafter shall follow, whereby God's word might be the better set forth; children brought up in learning; clerks nourished in the universities; old servants decayed to have livings; almshouses for poor folks to be sustained in; readers of Greek, Hebrew, and De Tocqueville, "Society in France," translated by Henry Reeve, page 321. VOL. II. EE 418 APPLICATION OF THE MONASTIC REVENUES. [1539. Latin to have good stipend; daily alms to be ministered; mending of highways; exhibition for ministers of the Church; it is thought unto the king's highness most expedient and necessary that more bishoprics and colleges shall be established."* Here is, indeed, a goodly catalogue of noble intentions. Who, after the effects of the first sudden change had passed away, could have failed to rejoice in seeing the Gospel preached, children educated, learning encouraged, the indigent assisted, the means of communication promoted! Here is a large project of civilisation, to be accomplished by the absorption of one-fifth of the lands of the kingdom into the possessions of the crown! What a noble title of the honest reformer would king Henry have attained by the realisation of these projects! The abbey-walls were pulled down; the lead melted; the timber sold; the painted windows destroyed. Alas! the records of the time show wonderful schemes for the establishment in each bishopric of preachers, readers, students, scholars, schoolmasters-large sums for alms, mending of highways—all to be "founded and established by the king's majesty's goodness." But the far greater part of these waste-paper projects remained wholly undone till the next reign, and then most grudgingly and imperfectly. "The king's majesty's goodness" remained satisfied that he should have a convenient fund to draw upon for the maintenance of his extravagant household and his absurd wars; for "the upholding of dice-playing, masking, and banquetting," with other recreations that are not suited to delicate ears. The king grew bolder in a short time; and when he went to parliament to sanction another spoliation, the abolition of the chantries-ancient endowments for almsgiving connected with obits, or praying for souls-he honestly said, speaking by the voice of the slavish parliament, that the revenues of the same should be devoted to the expenses of the wars against France and Scotland; and "for the maintenance of your most royal estate, honour, dignity, and estimation, which all your said loving subjects, of natural duty, be bound to conserve and increase by all such ways and means as they can devise."+ Schools, alms-gifts, were attached to the smallest as well as the largest religious houses. These were all destroyed, when the funds for their support were swept into the king's exchequer. Henry's "goodness" was chiefly confined to the establishment of six new bishoprics, by his letters patent. This was a small performance of a large promise. Whilst he swept away the strongholds of the supremacy of Rome, he annihilated the greater part of those ancient possessions, out of which a pure religion might have been diffused over an instructed people. The magnificent endowments of ages that were past might have been preserved, not to perpetuate error, but to become living fountains of future piety and knowledge. It was the divine will that it should be otherwise; that, painfully and laboriously, the reformed faith might be built up upon sounder foundations than the temporal riches of an outworn institution. The destruction of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, in 1540, was as remarkable an example of the changes of opinion as the dissolution of the abbeys. Eighteen years only had passed since the heroic defenders of Rhodes had quitted their island for ever. When their conqueror, the Sultan 31 Henry VIII. c. 9. +37 Henry VIII. c. 4. 1539.] THE SIX ARTICLES. 419 Solyman, had paid a tribute of respect to their grand-master, he said, "It is not without pain that I force this Christian, at his time of life, to leave his dwelling." Henry of England had less generosity than the infidel. The act of parliament which expelled the knights of St. John from their ancient priory in Clerkenwell-to appropriate its vast buildings "as a storehouse for the king's toils and nets for hunting, and for the wars "-coldly says, that "considering that the isle of Rhodes, whereby the said religion took their old name and foundation, is destroyed by the Turks," it is "much better" that the possessions of the order should be "employed and spent within this realm."+ L'Isle Adam, the defender of Rhodes, broke his heart when he learnt that a king, who still affected some of the pomp of chivalry, had destroyed the last link that connected the England of the sixteenth century with the glories of the Crusades. The act for dissolution of abbeys is immediately followed in the statutebook by "an act abolishing diversity in opinions." The very title of this statute is sufficient evidence of its vain presumption. The king's majesty, being by God's law Supreme head of the whole Church and congregation of England, calling to mind the commodities which have ever followed unity of opinions, and the dangers of diversities of minds, especially of matters of Christian religion, caused certain articles to be discussed in parliament and in convocation. And also he "most graciously vouchsafed in his own princely person to descend and come into his said high court of parliament and council, and there, like a prince of most high prudence, and no less learning, opened and declared many things of high learning and great knowledge touching the said articles, matters, and questions, for an unity to be had in the same." The statute then sets forth that the desired unity was to be "charitably established," by the observance, under the most tremendous penalties, of Six Articles. Fox calls this statute, "The whip with six strings." It was something more terrible than a whip. It breathed the amplest threats of the stake in Smithfield and the gallows at Tyburn. The first article sets forth the doctrine that "in the most blessed sacrament of the altar, by the strength and efficacy of Christ's mighty word, it being spoken by the priest, is present really, under the form of bread and wine, the natural body and blood of our Saviour," and that "after the consecration there remaineth no substance of bread and wine, nor any other substance but the substance of Christ." This article regarding the real presence thus involves a condemnation of the minuter difference from the orthodox doctrine which the Lutherans called consubstantiation, as distinguished from the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation. The Defender of the Faith, in his character of Supreme head of the Church of England, has utterly rejected the papal authority; he has declared against pilgrimages, images, and relics; he has destroyed the monastic institutions; he has even permitted the translation of the scriptures in the vulgar tongue;-but not one tittle will he relax from the enforcement of those doctrines of the Romanists which are the barriers to any true reformation. The other five articles are directed against those who preached the necessity of administering the eucharist, in both kinds, to the laity; who advocated the marriage of priests, or the non Stow, +32 Hen. VIII. c. 24. 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14. 420 LATIMER AND SHAXTON RESIGN THEIR SEES. observance of female vows of chastity or widowhood; who maintained that private masses were not lawful or laudable; who asserted that auricular confession was not expedient. The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts upon such subjects was removed; and commissioners were appointed to examine accused persons, to commit to prison, to try before a jury of twelve men, and to pass sentence. Those who were convicted under the first article, "shall be deemed and adjudged heretics;" and "every such offender shall therefore have and suffer judgment, execution, pain, and pains of death by way of burning, without any abjuration, clergy, or sanctuary to be therefore permitted." Burnet remarks, that denying such offenders the benefit of abjuration was a severity beyond what had ever been put in prac tice before; for which remark Dr. Maitland sneers at the bishop's ideas of "honesty and martyrdom." * For any violation of either of the five other articles, by preaching or teaching in any school to the contrary, "every offender, on the same being therefore duly convicted or attainted," shall be adjudged a felon; "and shall therefore suffer pains of death, as in cases of felony." Any man or woman who had advisedly professed chastity or widowhood, and should afterwards marry, was to suffer the same penalty of death. Those who maintained doctrines against the articles where preaching was felony, were to lose lands and goods, and to be imprisoned; and for a second offence to suffer death. This, then, from the 12th of July, 1539, when the act of the Six Articles was to take effect, to the end of the reign of Henry, was the England of the Reformation. It would be difficult to understand how such a statute could have passed, if the great body of the people had been inclined to a higher species of reformation than consisted in the destructive principle which assailed the externals of the Church. Cranmer was too yielding, and Cromwell too politic, to oppose the party which carried this statute, backed by the irresistible force of the king's will. The doctrinal reformers were clearly a minority. The political reformers had got all they wanted in the plunder of the ancient Church. The subservient courtiers, who had become impropriators, and provided half-starved monks to do the service of the altar at the cheapest rate, were wholly indifferent to the principles through which the continental reformers were daily waxing in strength. Cranmer spoke against the bill; but he finally sent away his wife, to evade its penalties, and locked up for a more convenient season the secret of his heart as to the real presence. Latimer, on the 11th of July, resigned his bishopric of Worcester. He was subsequently arrested, on a charge of having spoken against some of the Six Articles; and he wore out six years of his life in a close imprisonment in the Tower. Shaxton, the bishop of Salisbury, also resigned. But he had to endure something far more terrible than the close cell in which Latimer fortified his heart against all fear of man's power to harm. The story of Shaxton's fall will be told in its due order. An acute and learned writer, somewhat startled into another extreme by the exaggerated statements of bloody persecutions under the Six Articles, has given a list of all the martyrs whom Fox mentions as having been put to death during the time that the act was in force—that is, during the last seven years of Henry the * "Essays on the Reformation," p. 255. |