THE ENGLISH CHURCH SPLITS FROM ROME
On 11 June 1509, the new king, Henry VIII, married his late brother’s widow, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. In the course of the following twenty-four years, she became pregnant six times but only a daughter, Mary, survived infancy. With his wife soon to reach her fortieth year, Henry gave up hope that she would provide him with the male heir upon which he believed the security of the Tudor dynasty depended. After all, the family had come to power only as the consequence of the thirty years of dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses, and the sole precedent for an English queen attempting to rule in her own right was hardly encouraging: the Empress Matilda’s failed effort in 1141.
Unfortunately for Catherine of Aragon, by 1526 Henry had fallen for one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting. Much younger than Catherine, Anne Boleyn seemed far more likely to bear him a son, but to marry her Henry needed first to receive from the pope an annulment of his first marriage. This became known, euphemistically, as the ‘King’s Great Matter’. Pondering his failure to produce an heir, Henry had alighted on a text in Leviticus, warning that a sexual relationship with a brother’s wife would be cursed with childlessness. The case rested on the suggestion that the original papal dispensation, authorizing Henry to marry his brother’s widow, should not have given because it had been based upon the belief that Catherine’s first marriage had not been consummated. It was a presumption suddenly convenient to dispute. However, Pope Clement VII procrastinated, refusing to meekly do the English king’s bidding. His decision was not based on doctrine alone: Rome had been sacked and Clement was the virtual prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who was also Catherine’s nephew.
From parliament’s petition to the pope, 1530
To the most holy father and Lord in Christ, Lord Clement, by divine providence seventh pope of that name, we kiss your feet in all humility and pray for your happiness which we desire to be eternal, in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Most blessed father, in the case of the marriage of our unconquered and most serene prince, our Lord, defender of the faith of England and France and Lord of Scotland, many relevant arguments on the matter have been used to entreat and petition your Holiness for help, so that a conclusion can be reached as quickly as possible – a conclusion which we have long desired with all our hearts and, so far, have awaited from your Holiness in anticipation, but without result. Consequently, because this dispute has been so long protracted that it is now critical, our kingdom finds itself in a situation where we cannot be altogether silent. Our Royal Majesty, our head and to that extent the soul of us all, and we in his words – like limbs in harmony with the head, a soundly unified body – have prayed with much anxiety to your Holiness. We have, however, prayed in vain. So we are now impelled by the weight of our grief, separately and individually, to write and make this demand.
Never one to be kept waiting, Henry tried to speed up the process with a succession of diplomatic overtures to Clement. On 13 July 1530, the most elaborate of these took the form of a parliamentary petition to which the archbishops of Canterbury and York attached their seals, together with those of four bishops and the leading peers of the realm. Presumptively taking the likelihood of an annulment for granted, it urged the pope to hurry up with granting it.
His Holiness was not to be so easily sway ed, with the momentous consequence that it was Henry who divorced England from Rome. Thomas Cranmer, once installed as the new archbishop of Canterbury, dutifully set to his task. In May 1533 he pronounced that Henry’s marriage to Catherine was annulled and that the private marriage ceremony the king had contracted with Anne was legal. If Anne were to give birth, any child of hers would therefore be legitimate. In the same year, Parliament bowed to Henry’s will and asserted Rome’s jurisdiction over England to be illegal. The 1534 Act of Supremacy declared Henry to be ‘the only supreme head of the Church’.
The king’s personal problems led to the creation of a state Church, independent of Rome, but they did not make the country Protestant. Indeed, for the laity, the change made only superficial differences to their daily worship. The Church of England remained essentially Catholic. The 1539 Act of Six Articles not only demonstrated that Henry was still opposed to Protestant ‘heresies’ but reaffirmed Catholic doctrine on clerical celibacy and transubstantiation (the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the sacrament). The traditional liturgy was kept in place as was the power of Church courts. That the bishops were appointed by the Crown was only a formal acknowledgement that it was the monarch who had, in reality, mostly been nominating them in previous centuries.
This painting, attributed to Joos van Cleve, shows Henry VIII in c.1535 while he was married to Anne Boleyn. His scroll quotes the gospel of Mark 16:15, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’
Yet while life in the parish and the cathedral continued with merely minor modifications, monastic houses fared very differently. In the wake of revelations of corruption and scandal, the minor monasteries were dissolved in 1536. This was followed in 1539 by legislation to dissolve the major monasteries. By 1540, the Crown had taken over 800 monastic houses. The primary rationale was financial. The state needed money, in particular to engage in war with France. Indeed, by 1547, two-thirds of the revenue raised from monastic dissolution had been wasted on this martial enterprise. From 1545 the wealth of the private or institutional chapels known as chantries was also appropriated by the state. This represented not just an extraordinary transferral of resources, but a frontal assault on the traditional spiritual institutions of the nation.
Alas, the woman for whom Henry deemed it worth breaking with Rome soon disappointed him. After several attempts, she produced a mere daughter, Elizabeth. Henry had Anne beheaded in 1536 on (spurious) charges of adultery, incest and treason, and proceeded to marry the third of his six wives, Jane Seymour. She died giving birth to the male heir for whom he had been prepared to go to such lengths. As Edward VI, he was to succeed his father in 1547, transforming the state religion during his brief reign to the Protestant faith. The greater irony, however, was that for all his desire for a son, it was Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth, who ultimately proved the most capable and celebrated ruler of the age.