Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII (7 page)

When the convocations met in January 1531, the clergy soon found themselves bargaining with the king over the terms of a settlement. This was undoubtedly Henry’s intention, because to have pressed ahead with the indictment would have created enormous problems, not least how to fund a church whose entire property had been declared forfeit. They eventually settled for fines, or grants as they were called, of £118,000; £100,000 for Canterbury and £18,000 for York. Before this could be accepted, however, there was an exchange of articles with the king, whereby the clergy requested five years to pay, and Henry demanded that convocation recognise his ecclesiastical jurisdiction. After considerable debate, and further exchanges with the Council, in early February an agreement was reached, whereby the king accepted the delayed payment, and the clergy accepted the king’s supremacy over the Church. This last clause proved to be particularly contentious, and was agreed to only with the saving clause ‘in so far as the law of Christ allows’. This form of words, which could mean everything or nothing according to how they were interpreted, was apparently suggested by Cromwell, who, with Thomas Audley, sat in on the convocation debate on the king’s behalf.
¹¹
It was not mentioned, except by implication, when Parliament confirmed the royal pardon later in the same session. It was stated instead that the exercising of spiritual jurisdiction

shall be by authority of this present pardon, acquitted, pardoned, released and discharged against His Highness, his heirs, successors and executors, and every of them, of all manner offences, contempts and trespasses committed or done against all and singular statute and statutes of provisors, provisions or praemunire and every of them.
¹²

Henry was at pains to reassure the clergy that he did not mean by this any extension of the powers which he already exercised under the statutes, and that, although he saw himself as ‘Supreme Head and Protector’ of the Church, he did not intend to exercise spiritual functions in his own person. Bishop Fisher was not reassured. In continuing to object to the agreement now reached, he asked the pertinent question,

What if he should shortly after change his mind, and exercise in deed the supremacy over the church of this realm. Or what if he should die and his successor challenge the continuance of the same? Or what if the crown of this realm should in time fall to an infant or a woman that shall still continue and take the same upon them? What shall we then do? Whom shall we sue unto? Or where shall we have remedy?
¹³

All contingencies which were to arise in due course. However, for the time being Henry took his money and professed himself satisfied. This may partly have been because he was finding his relations with the papacy increasingly difficult, and partly because at about the same time he received a courteous letter from the newly formed Schmalkaldic League. This explained and justified the stand that the Lutheran princes had taken at the Diet of Augsburg in the previous year, in terms which might have been designed to appeal to Henry, emphasising as it did the jurisdictional dispute with the papacy, and playing down the doctrinal aspects. This letter was probably the work of Philip Melanchthon, who was at the same time working on his
Apology of the Augsburg Confession
, which was an irenic response to the Catholic Confutation which had appeared towards the end of 1530.
¹⁴
For whatever reason, the king was markedly less hostile to the Lutherans in 1531 than he was either before or after, and in May he responded to the League’s letter in non-committal but positive terms.

This attitude may also have been conditioned by the fact that he was pursuing Tyndale with offers of reconciliation. William Tyndale had fled to the Continent in 1525, having failed in his bid to persuade Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of London, to support his plans for a translation of the Bible into English. Since then he had produced an English version of the New Testament, which various agents had smuggled into England. This had provoked savage proclamations in March 1529 and June 1530 against erroneous books, which had named Tyndale, along with Simon Fish and John Frith, as one of those whose works were contrary to the Catholic faith.
¹⁵
By the end of 1530 this campaign was being orchestrated by Sir Thomas More, and although Henry did not dissent from it, there are signs that his own position had shifted slightly. Tyndale had also written
The Obedience of a Christian Man
, certain aspects of which appealed to the king, and this had suggested the possibility of recruiting him to the propaganda campaign in favour of the annulment of Henry’s first marriage, which was then beginning to gather momentum.
¹⁶
It is also possible that he was listening to the advice of Thomas Cromwell, whose Christian Humanism was beginning to edge in an unorthodox direction at the same time. Although certainly not a Lutheran at this (or any other) stage, he was very much the king’s man on his marriage issue, and as such would have suggested the recruitment of Tyndale as a supporter. This would be made more likely if he knew of Henry’s reaction to the
Obedience
, which he almost certainly did because he was in alliance with Anne Boleyn at this time. It was therefore Stephen Vaughn, Cromwell’s friend and servant, who was chosen to go across to Antwerp to sound him out.
¹⁷
The choice of Vaughn for this mission is made more significant by the fact that, on a previous visit to Brabant, questions had been raised about his orthodoxy, and More had an unfriendly eye upon him. He wrote to Tyndale as soon as he arrived, which was probably before Christmas 1530, and reported to the king on 26 January. In spite of having some difficulty in locating the reformer, he had eventually got a letter through, offering him a safe conduct for his return. It is not clear whether the condition of defending the king’s position was made at this time or not, and Vaughn described his instructions as contradictory, but Tyndale’s response was in any case a polite refusal. He feared a trap, and although he did not say so, clearly did not trust the king’s word.
¹⁸
In view of the fierceness of the dispute with Thomas More in which he was engaged, this was a sensible decision, and bearing in mind that he could not in conscience have promoted Henry’s matrimonial cause, the only rational thing to have done. Vaughn, however, also reported to Cromwell at the same time, and said things which he would not have ventured to say to the king. He doubted very much whether Tyndale would ever return to England while More was in office, and, having answered More’s attack on him, would write no further polemic, but would concentrate rather on his translation of the Old Testament. Tyndale was a wiser man than Henry took him for, and he wished to God that he was back in England.
¹⁹
Obviously he considered it to be safer to commend Tyndale to Cromwell than to the king. This is confirmed by a subsequent letter, written by Vaughn on 25 March, with which he enclosed a copy of Tyndale’s latest answer to More, and an anxious enquiry as to whether it would be safe to let the king see it. His concern was justified because, in the spring of 1531, convocation was still pursuing known evangelicals, including Edward Crome and Hugh Latimer, with charges of heresy, and it was only a rapid climbdown by the latter which protected them from prosecution.
²⁰
Cromwell may well have recommended submission, because he was beginning to emerge as a discreet patron of evangelical causes, and was a party to a suit which Richard Tracy and his father’s executors brought against the chancellor of Worcester diocese. William Tracy had left a will in which he had expressed a belief in justification by faith alone, which was classic Lutheran doctrine, and which the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced heretical. The chancellor had then caused his body to be exhumed and burnt. His executors, with Cromwell’s support, successfully sued the chancellor for exceeding his powers and won damages of £300.
²¹
The money, however, was unimportant by comparison with the principle involved, whereby the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was curtailed. Henry could hardly object to such a decision, which was very much in accordance with the views expressed in his pardon of the clergy, and if Cromwell was testing the waters of Henry’s acquiescence, then he had done so successfully.

They were treading a tightrope, because when Vaughn ventured to send a copy of a part of Tyndale’s
Answer to More
to the king on 18 April, with a commendation of the author as a loyal subject, he provoked what must have been a completely unexpected rebuke from Cromwell. It seems that the latter was instructed by Henry to reply on his behalf, and the surviving draft of the letter bears much evidence of revision. It is an inconsistent document including many harsh words against Tyndale, but ending with a postscript in which Cromwell urges his agent to carry on as before!
²²
It is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose that the postscript was added after Henry had vetted the main letter. Anyway there was no royal rebuke for Cromwell, and no recall for Stephen Vaughn. On 20 May the latter, quite unabashed, was telling the king that Tyndale earnestly wanted a reconciliation, and was longing for the day when Henry would authorise an English translation of the Scriptures.
²³
Either he had missed the point of the letter he had earlier received, or Henry had changed his mind about the validity of his mission. That this may have been the case is indicated by Vaughn’s next letter to Cromwell, dated 19 June, with which he enclosed an unnamed book of Luther’s, which would have been a rash thing to have done had not some word of the king’s shift of position reached him. However he hesitated to send a copy of Melanchthon’s treatise on the Augsburg Confession to Henry, in case it should fall into unfriendly hands, and in that he was undoubtedly wise. Tyndale, Vaughn went on to explain, had now completed his translation of Jonah, and encouraged George Joye, another evangelical exile, to translate the prophecies of Isaiah. Both these works had been printed in Antwerp, and would appear in England in due course. He sent this letter in two copies,
²⁴
presumably fearing interception, and that was a wise precaution, because Henry’s attitude appears to have been completely schizophrenic. On the one hand he was allowing John Stokesley, the Bishop of London, and Sir Thomas More to wage a fierce war on heretics, and on the other encouraging Vaughn and Cromwell in their dealings with Continental Lutherans and their fellow travellers. Thomas Bilney went to the stake in August 1531, and Richard Bayfield in November, which could not have happened without the king’s permission. On 3 December another proclamation denounced Tyndale as a spreader of seditious heresy, and at the same time More was trying to extract from George Constantine relevant details of his dealings with Vaughn, who was understandably apprehensive.
²⁵
Nevertheless on 14 November he wrote again (in two copies) to Cromwell, enclosing a copy of Robert Barnes’s
Supplication unto King Henry VIII
, and urging that he present it to the king and commend its author. Since Barnes had fled from England two years earlier, and made his way to Wittenburg, where he became a pupil of Luther, this might seem an exceptionally rash course to have advocated, and we do not know whether Cromwell followed up his suggestion.
²⁶
Probably not in view of the fate of Richard Bayfield at about that time. In a letter dated 6 December he urged Vaughn to be extra careful and watchful, in order not to give More any pretext to move against him; Vaughn replied a few days later, declaring that he was neither a Lutheran nor a ‘Tyndalian’. This profession may have been honest in terms of his doctrinal allegiance, but scarcely explained his dealings with the reformers, and may well have been inserted for the benefit of the king, to whom it was clearly intended to be shown.
²⁷
Henry may even have been convinced, because Vaughn was able to continue his search for Lutheran books on Cromwell’s behalf, and the latter was able early in 1532 to secure a safe conduct for Barnes to come to England. Unlike Tyndale, Barnes was willing to take that risk, and even had a private audience with the king. Although his supplication was offensive to the monarch in the sense that it advocated justification by faith alone, it also explained a number of Lutheran tenets in terms which were acceptable to Henry, and contained a fulsome declaration of loyalty to his sovereign.
²⁸
The king would have been looking for some endorsement of his position on his marriage, and over that it is likely that Barnes was non-committal, because rather to everyone’s surprise, Luther himself had emerged as a strong supporter of Catherine, brushing aside Henry’s Levitical arguments as irrelevant. He recognised the king’s need for a male heir, and advocated bigamy as a solution to the problem. Henry was unimpressed, but he did not abandon his cautious interest in the Lutheran alliance, nor take any action against Barnes, Vaughn or Cromwell.

It is possible that this mild response was due to the latter’s increasing influence in the king’s counsels, because there is some evidence to suggest that Henry was beginning to perceive his dispute with the Pope as a jurisdictional issue only, which did not impinge upon the Catholicity of his faith.
²⁹
This was Cromwell’s view throughout, and his interest in Lutheran works was focused mainly on the German’s quarrel with the Church as an institution, rather than on debates about justification or the Eucharist. In his daily dealings with the king, he would have been very careful to stress this distinction, which increased the former’s confidence in him at no cost to his own conscience. It is not, therefore, particularly surprising that an attack should have been launched in Parliament against the clergy, while the fires of Smithfield were still consuming heretics. This took the form of the Supplication against the Ordinaries, which was introduced into the Commons towards the end of February 1532.
³⁰
This may have been designed to take the place of whatever the Duke of Norfolk had been hoping to produce from a meeting held on 14 February. At that meeting he had urged that matrimonial jurisdiction belonged to the king ‘who is emperor in his kingdom’, and not to the Pope. However the House was clearly not yet ready for so radical a notion, and nothing resulted. Instead the Commons turned back to what they understood and appreciated better – bashing the churchmen. The first draft of this document was produced in house, and it is not known by whom, but its consistency with what was shortly to become government policy make it likely that the councillors in the Commons played a leading part.
³¹
The supplication was redrafted several times, and the penultimate version is in the hand of Sir Thomas Audley, which makes it clear that by then it had become an official measure. As such, it was part of a two-pronged attack upon the Church, the other prong being the threat to papal revenues which eventually emerged as the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates. The draft of this Bill is partly in Thomas Cromwell’s hand, and that points to the strategist who was behind these congruent measures. It is indeed possible that the first draft of the supplication dates from the session of 1529, when such matters were very much in the minds of members. It was not introduced in that session, but an awareness of its existence might well have prompted Cromwell or Audley to seize on it as being relevant to the business of 1532, and might also account for the fact that it was rewritten. Cromwell revised the first part of the document completely, removing a reference to the role of the bishops in Parliament, so that it became a direct attack upon the legislative functions of convocation, where laws were made ‘without your royal assent or knowledge, or the assent or consent of any of your lay subjects’.
³²
The revised supplication went on to complain about the ‘light and frivolous’ causes for which laymen were summoned before the spiritual courts, and particularly of the
ex officio
procedure and the use of false witnesses. The complaints went on to cover the use of excommunication for ‘small and light’ causes, the excessive fees charged by the spiritual courts, and nepotism and simony in the conferring of benefices.
³³
The evidence suggests that this supplication was deliberately revived in 1532 as a part of a strategy of applying pressure to the English Church to make it more willing to do the king’s bidding over his marriage. It did not become an Act, but was nevertheless submitted to Henry, who passed it to convocation for their comments. The result was a resounding defence of clerical privileges, penned by Stephen Gardiner, the newly appointed Bishop of Winchester, and the king was not pleased, passing it back to the House of Commons with the message that it would ‘smally content’ them. This proved to be an understatement. The Parliament pressed its attack through a statute providing for the diversion of annates from the Pope to the Crown, and made it clear that Henry had accepted their supplication, and would act upon it. Gardiner, who was the king’s secretary, and who had misjudged the situation completely, hastily penned a treatise on
True Obedience
in order to redeem his career, and the convocation surrendered their legislative independence to the king.
³⁴
This last was what mattered, and, on receiving the news, Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor, recognising the defeat of his own campaign, which had been waged in alliance with the Church. By astute parliamentary management, Cromwell had won the first round in his battle for the king’s mind. Henry had battered the clergy into submission, and it now remained to see what use he would make of his victory.