They suggested bishops who the pope usually accepted.
Henry II had gone head to head with Thomas Becket (the pope's man) in
the 1160s over the issue of criminal priests.
In 1393 the Act of Provisors and Praemunire said that no foreign priest
could be appointed without the king's consent.
Henry sorted his position in relation to the Church through the sees of
Canterbury or York. In Chapter 5 you see how closely he worked with
Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, over his later wives. At other
times Henry used Parliament to pass new laws (see the Cheat Sheet's notable
Tudor laws).
Here's a rundown of how the king asserted his position:
1531: Henry accused all churchmen of having accepted the pope's
supremacy in making Thomas Wolsey the pope's legate (ambassador).
Essentially, this was the king throwing his weight around.
1532: The Supplication against the Ordinaries was a long list of griev-
ances from Parliament about what was wrong with the Church (the list
was actually written by Henry's adviser, Cromwell) and from then on all
Church laws were to be shown to Henry for approval.
1533: The Act of Restraint in Appeals meant that nobody could appeal to
Rome as a higher authority than the king.
1535: Canonical (Church) law was banned as a study in the universities
and all reference to the pope was removed from the liturgy (wording of
services).
Breaking with Rome
The papacy wasn't expecting Henry's `great matter' (his quest for a male heir;
see Chapter 3) and his demand for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
Petitioning the pope
As we explain in Chapter 5, Henry was desperate to annul his marriage to
his wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she'd been unsuccessful in bearing
him a male heir. But Henry's legal team told him that the Pope couldn't set
aside God's word, and in any case, Clement VII's was in a difficult position:
as we explain in Chapter 4, he was very worried about upsetting Charles V,
Catherine's nephew, whose army was camped outside Rome. Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 107 So Henry sent his adviser Wolsey to France to try to get himself set up as acting pope (he was a cardinal after all). But this didn't work. So Henry sent two requests to the pope for annulment, which failed (as we explain in Chapter 5, Catherine got Charles on side, which didn't help Henry's case). Wolsey, Stephen Gardiner and Richard Fox all badgered Clement, but it was no go.
Stepping up the action On 18 June 1529 a court was held at Blackfriars in London to decide on the legality of the Henry�Catherine marriage. Catherine gave her point of view and then left and refused to return. Henry gave his opinion. The whole thing became bogged down in technicalities and the case was adjourned until October. The court never met again. It was now that a furious Henry sacked Wolsey (see Chapter 4).
Next, Henry decided to canvas opinion and sent out letters to the great European universities as well as to libraries and known experts in Canon Law and the Bible. The replies were published in Latin and English in November 1531.
The king also got a number of his nobles to write to Clement, urging him to get a move on with a solution.
When none of this had any effect, Henry lost his cool and called the pope a `sinful bastard' (technically, Clement was born out of wedlock) who'd bought his position (technically, right again) and who had no right to adjudicate on Henry's marriage (ah, well, that was the whole point, wasn't it).
Losing his patience As we detail in Chapters 4 and 5, Henry now began to move faster.
He threatened his clergy with the Praemunire charge (see `Laying the
foundation for the Royal Supremacy').
Increasingly, he took the advice of his new legal eagle, Cromwell (see
Chapter 4).
He made Anne Boleyn pregnant.
He married Anne secretly in January 1533.
Henry's marriage to Catherine was called null and void by convocation
(leading churchmen) in April.
In retaliation Clement threatened excommunication: take Catherine back or
face hell's fire for eternity. Both men probably thought the other was bluffing �
Henry was obstinate and opinionated; Clement was devious and evasive.
Divorcing the Catholic Church
Henry never accepted Clement's excommunication � after all, the man
was deeply flawed in every respect. What this meant was that the ideas
of the new pope, Paul III (the legendary Peter O'Toole played him in The
Tudors), which began the Catholic fightback in Europe called the Counter-
Reformation, didn't affect Henry or England at all.
Pope Paul tried to patch things up with Henry in the summer of 1536 after
both Catherine and Anne Boleyn were dead. By this time, however, Henry
had declared himself supreme head of the Church and was about to destroy
the monasteries (see `Dissolving the monasteries', later in this chapter). He
believed his own propaganda that all this was God's will and already had the
scent of money in his nostrils.
Running a New Church
As supreme head of the Church, Henry acquired new powers.
He ran the Church's legal side.
He appointed archbishops and bishops.
He looked after all property (which was huge).
He collected all Church taxes (such as Peter's Pence and First Fruits).
He decided how services should be run.
Taking the lead, bit by bit
Working out his new position took time, and Henry did it in stages;
1531: Henry tried to insist that pardons for offences must go
through him.
1532: The Church passed its legal side to Henry.
1532: Parliament agreed to Henry getting Church taxes rather than
the Pope. Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 109
1533: The Act in Restraint of Appeals severed links with Rome.
1534: The Supremacy Act said `the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and
successors kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted and reputed the
only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church in England'. Job done!
Anybody who refused to accept Henry's new position was guilty of high treason. Thomas More and John Fisher, look out! (See Chapter 4 on Henry's enemies.)
Meeting the reformers In Europe the Reformation, which began with the German monk Martin Luther in 1517, spread like wildfire and threw up other, ever more extremist revolutionaries � men like Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin.
Henry's religious beliefs changed only slightly over time, and had more to do with politics than piety. But he had some home grown reformers in England.
Thomas Cranmer Cranmer was a fellow (tutor) of Jesus College, Cambridge and a personal friend of Henry's. He was a serious Bible scholar and knew his stuff, but he was sent by Henry on a diplomatic mission to Germany and there he saw Lutheran worship going on for the first time. He even married a German girl while he was there and came back to England rather reluctantly. When he was made archbishop of Canterbury in March 1533 he was pretty off the wall in traditional terms, but he wasn't a Lutheran.
William Tyndale Tyndale was an Oxford scholar who was a humanist. He wanted to translate the Bible into English but couldn't find Church support for this in England, so he went to Hamburg, Cologne and finally Antwerp to get his project off the ground. When the book first appeared in England it was destroyed on the orders of the bishops, so Tyndale holds the record as being the first Englishman to have his book burnt in his own country.
The Lutheran propaganda Tyndale wrote from 1528 was music to Henry's ears because it said that the rulers of each state and not the pope should run their own churches and should beware of dodgy churchmen. Henry tried to use Tyndale's propaganda skills via Cromwell and his agent Stephen Vaughn, but Tyndale was arrested by Church authorities in Antwerp and burned alive (the punishment for heresy) in October 1536. 110 Part II: Handling Henry VIII
Robert Barnes
Barnes was a Cambridge-based Austin friar who got into trouble with
the university authorities in 1525 for preaching anti-Church sermons. In
1531 he went to Wittenberg in Germany and became a personal friend of
Martin Luther.
Henry got Cromwell to persuade Barnes to come back to see whether he
could be of use. Barnes acted as go-between in the political machinations
involving the Schmalkaldic League (see Chapter 5).
Together with Thomas Garrett and William Jerome, Barnes fell foul of the
arch-reactionary Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and found himself
in the Tower. Because they were all Cromwell's men and Cromwell himself
was charged with heresy in 1540, all three were burned at Smithfield, London
in July of that year.
There's no doubt that Protestantism was catching on in England, Wales
and Scotland in the 1540s and Henry's break with Rome not only made this
possible but encouraged it. All the tutors employed by Henry for his younger
children � John Cheke, Richard Cox and Roger Ascham � were Protestants.
Bible reading became an important part of everyday life. Eventually, every
family owned one and recorded family names in the front. The Bible became
the most widely sold book in history and most people in the past learned to
read from it. Today's parallel would be the use of home computers, which has
revolutionised communication and information over the last 20 years: some-
thing that was once available only to the few is now available to everybody.
Translating the Bible
Tyndale hadn't finished his translation when 1539 and ran to a second edition a year later.
he died, and anyway, technically the man Because Thomas Cranmer added a preface,
was a heretic. Miles Coverdale did a better it became known as the Great or Cranmer's
version and this was approved by Henry, so Bible. This was the edition `jangled about' in
sales soared. the pubs that Henry tried to make available to
gentlemen only (see the section `Read all about
In 1537 another English edition appeared, pub-
it'). In fact, there weren't enough Bibles to
lished by Grafton and Whitchurch and trans-
go round � only 5,500 books and just over
lated by John Rogers, who'd known Tyndale
8,000 parishes.
back in Antwerp. It was ready for use by Easter Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 111 Dissolving the monasteries If opposition to Henry's supremacy over the Church was to exist, it would probably come from the monasteries, the centre of support for the pope. In the summer and autumn of 1534 royal commissioners toured the country, asking all abbots, abbesses, priors and prioresses (the monasteries' top men and women) to take oaths to the Acts of Supremacy and Succession.
The next year, ominously, the commissioners came back to make an inven- tory of Church lands, goods and wealth.
The last time a monarch had done such a thing was in 1086�1087, when William the Conqueror wanted to know exactly how much his kingdom was worth. Frightened people thought this was the Day of Judgement as proph- esied in the Bible and the book that resulted was called Domesday.
What was Cromwell trying to do with this inventory?
Looking for excuses to topple the monasteries by finding them rich and
corrupt?
Listening to disgruntled people's grievances, which were taken as fact?
Choosing only certain houses (monasteries) to close down, in cases of
genuine corruption?
Finding reasons to shut down monasteries In 1536 there seemed to be no attempt to end monastic life for the sake of it. At first, Henry and Cromwell decided to shut down monasteries with less than 12 members and an income of less than �200 a year. All lands went to Henry.
Then the process began to focus on the `manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living' that was supposed to go on in the monasteries. In the smaller houses, monks and nuns tended to come from a lower class than those in the great monasteries like Fountains and Rievaulx and their likeli- hood to sin was considered greater. (Figure 6-1 shows the locations of some of the better-known monasteries in England around this time.)
All those in holy orders (which, in this context, means those following a holy calling), male and female, took vows of poverty and chastity. They were sup- posed to be poor all their lives (Jesus's teaching told them so) and to be, in the case of nuns, `brides of Christ'. These rules were widely flouted but prob- ably less in the monasteries than elsewhere. 112 Part II: Handling Henry VIII
SCOTLAND
Hexham
Mount Grace
Cartmel Whitby
Rievaulx
Jervaulx Kirkham
Fountains
Selby
Bolton
Newstead
Walsingham
Croyland Wymondham
Wenlock
WALES Pershore
Hailes
Tewkesbury Waltham
Tintern Malmesbury Reculver
Bath Westminster
Canterbury
Glastonbury
Cleeve Romsey Battle
Figure 6-1: Sherborne Netley
Some of Buckfast
the better-
known
monasteries
in England. Chapter 6: Building a New Church: Henry and Religion 113
The Rood of Grace There were some genuine examples of corrup- they charged them for the opportunity to tion. At the Cistercian Abbey of Boxley in Kent witness this miracle. In February 1538 was a rood (crucifix) in which the head of Jesus Cromwell's commissioners discovered that the nodded, his eyes opened and his lips moved. figure was operated from behind by wires and This was just one example of the way in which pulleys worked by a hidden priest. For a more the Church conned a gullible public because modern version, think Wizard of Oz.
Despite the Rood of Grace (see the nearby sidebar), the commissioners could
find very little corruption in the smaller monasteries and some of them ended
up begging Henry to keep them open. Henry refused, except for a tiny handful
with which the king had personal dealings. About 290 were shut and selling
off the land brought in �18,000 a year for Henry.
After the small monasteries there were about 185 bigger ones. There, most
of the brothers went quietly, often under pressure from a local nobleman or
gentleman who was keen to buy up the land. Many abbots and priors were
probably bought off to enjoy a happy (and rich) retirement.
Cathedrals were different. Places like Canterbury, Norwich and Durham
became secular (non-monastic) churches, run by deans, not priors. Most of
the original priests stayed put, although some, pricked by their consciences,
may have fled to Catholic Europe.
When the dust settled, over 2,000 monks were unemployed. Some took pri-
vate work as curates or chantry priests (see Chapters 2 and 8). Now, Henry
set up new sees at Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, Oxford and Peterborough.
Fighting friars without fire
Friars were different from monks. They lived in the world and cared for the
old and sick. They were generally very popular � think Friar Tuck in the
Robin Hood stories � and were also usually poor, known as mendicants
or beggars.
Even so, Cromwell took them on, backed by parish priests who resented the
friars muscling in on their territory. Cromwell chose the ex-Dominican monk
Richard Ingworth to sort them out and he and his agents visited 380 friaries
in England and Wales, telling the friars their future. Most of the friars couldn't
accept the laws Ingworth laid down for them, so they were allowed to go and
their were friaries closed. 114 Part II: Handling Henry VIII
Destroying and pillaging
Cromwell's men wreaked large scale destruc- stained glass. They broke up abbey libraries and
tion as they looked for valuables. They smashed destroyed irreplaceable manuscripts. A group
the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury (read of Italians led by Giovanni Portarini were brought
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to see how important in as demolition experts, blowing up churches
this had been to medieval men and women). They with gunpowder. Some monasteries had their
ransacked St Swithun's tomb at Winchester and lead roofs removed, their stones used for local
threw about the bones of various Saxon kings. building and were allowed to rot (check out their
They melted down gold and silver, and smashed ruins all over England today).
Both monasteries and friaries had been blown away by the Royal Supremacy
and went with hardly a whimper.
Clearing up the cash: the Court of Augmentation
The large monasteries netted Henry about �117,000 a year and the small ones
�135,000 (because there were more of them). In the last year of his reign his
additional income was �65,000, apart from the �2 million he made by selling
off the monastic lands to the highest bidder. In total, he doubled his income
as a result of destroying a way of life.
The cash was handled by a new government department set up by Cromwell �
the Court of Augmentation of the King's Revenue. Because Cromwell ran this,
he increased his power and patronage, lining his own pockets and choosing his
own cash collectors at every level.
The total capital raised was �2,780,000, which all went on buildings like
Nonsuch, fortifications like Pendennis and Cowes and on war itself.
Expenditure in Henry's own household rose from �25,000 in 1538 to �45,700
in 1545. Henry believed in living life to the full!
By destroying the monasteries, and therefore the last link with the pope,
Henry had ended a way of life that had dominated English history for centu-
ries. No wonder his last words were said to be, `Monks, monks, monks.'