MHcS,

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS

EDITED BY
OLIPHANT SMEATON

. Cranmer and
The Reformation in England
By Arthur D. Innes, M.A.

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS

Cranmer and
The Reformation in England

By
Arthur D. Innes, M.A.
Sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford

New York. Charles Scribner's Sons
1 900

PREFACE

The purpose of this volume is not so much to present
a biography of Cranmer as to give a sketch of that
ecclesiastical period throughout which he remains a
consistently prominent figure : a period during which
he, more than any other single individual, left his
personal impress upon a national institution.
It is a peculiarity of the Reformation in England
that it is not associated with any one figure of heroic
proportions. Germany has her Luther; the Nether
lands, William the Silent ; Calvin dominated half the
Protestant world, and more; Knox, dour and grim
as he was, had no little of the heroic quality. In
England neither Cranmer nor any other occupies a
corresponding position. There is a sense in which the
historian may legitimately speak of a person as having
created a movement ; but he may not say it of Cranmer.
He does not absorb the interest while associates fall
into the background ; we feel that it is the mediocrity
of his associates which enables him to absorb so much
as he does.
This is apt to be the way with England. The Refor
mation has its political counterpart, not in the Great
Rebellion with its Hampden and its Cromwell, but in

VI

PREFACE

the " Glorious Revolution " with its inglorious Whigs.
To them we owe our constitutional liberties ; and it is
to men of a similar calibre that we owe our religious
emancipation. Amongst the various figures, however, Cranmer
holds the position of pre-eminence. Our Reformation
in the sixteenth century may be described as having
had four stages. During the first there is a movement
intellectual and moral, but legislation does not in
tervene. This closes in 1529. In the second stage
the fundamental feature is the assertion of Secular
supremacy over Ecclesiastical administration ; in the
third it is the revision of ecclesiastical ordinances. The
fiery interlude of Mary's reign leads to the fourth
stage — in effect the confirmation of the two preceding
in a recognised and established system. The Reforma
tion becomes an accomplished fact. From that time
the body ecclesiastical, as recognised by the State,
alters very little in character; any vigorous reform
ing movements thereafter, the lines of which extend
beyond the scheme of the Elizabethan settlement,
tending to result in separation from the established
organisation rather than in changes within it.
In the first of these four stages Cranmer does not
appear. He belonged to the movement, but he had no
active part in it. In the second stage the leading
figures are Henry vin. and Thomas Cromwell : Cranmer
fluttering through it, sometimes encouraging, generally
acquiescent, occasionally offering a somewhat ineffective
resistance, never more than an influence. In the third
he is the controlling character ; not indeed displaying
a vigorous mastery, but on the whole successfully
maintaining a position which but for him would

PREFACE vii
assuredly not have been maintained at the time nor
accepted — as it was — in the fourth stage, when he had
already earned the martyr's crown. In these two
stages, the second and third, the work of the Refor
mation was wrought, and the course shaped which it
should take in the future. It is right, therefore, that
his should stand as the representative name. The first
stage is in this volume treated as an extended prologue ;
the fourth only as epilogue.
The telling of this story involves certain difficulties.
An attitude of enthusiasm would be pleasant ; but for
the most part the subject forbids enthusiasm. To play
the advocate for a party is easy ; but with Henry and
Cromwell, Cranmer and Gardiner, Northumberland
and Mary Tudor to depict, it is in no wise easy to
" nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice."
It appears all but impossible to write of those times
without yielding either to the Roman, the Anglican,
or the Puritan bias. Till a comparatively recent
period there was no hearing for any but the last
school; of late years those Anglicans who reject the
name of Protestant have held the field, save for some
acute, if not always convincing, expositions of the
Romanist point of view. It is hardly possible to make
a single statement as to the beliefs, motives, intentions,
or character of any one of our dramatis personce which
will not be quite honestly and quite flatly contra
dicted by the adherents of one or other of the three
schools : so that the discovery of truth becomes a highly
complicated process.
To this must be added a special perplexity — party
terminology. Convenience brought about the practice
of using the term Catholic as equivalent to Romanist,

viii PREFACE
and opposing it to the term Protestant. Then came a
revival of " Catholic " in its wider and legitimate sense ;
but it was still maintained as a contrary to Protestant,
the sense of which was narrowed till it became almost
equivalent to Calvinist ; and the two words have
become party badges within a Church which is at once
essentially Catholic in virtue of its continuity, and
essentially Protestant in virtue of its Reformation.
I have attempted in these pages to revert to a legiti
mate use of these terms. The primary antagonism is
between the Romanists, who maintained the papal
authority, and the Protestants, who rejected it. The
secondary antagonism is between the Catholics, who
maintained the authority of tradition and the early
Fathers, and the Puritans, who held by the words of
Scripture. The Catholic may be either Romanist or
Protestant. The Protestant may be either Puritan or
Catholic. The mutually exclusive terms are, Romanist
and Protestant, Puritan and Catholic.

CONTENTS

PA8E
Preface  v
Chronological Tables .  xiii

CHAPTER I
Prologue : Unrest
Pioneers of the Reformation — Europe in the Fifteenth Century —
The New Learning — Savonarola — State of England — The
Supplicacyon for the Beggcrs — Ecclesiastical Corruption
— Its Causes — Special Conditions in England — Motive Force
for Reformation 

CHAPTER II
Prologue: The Scholars' Movement, 1496-1529
Colet Leotures at Oxford — The New Method — Characteristics —
Erasmus at Oxford — Colet Dean of St. Paul's — Accession of
Henry vm. — Erasmus and More — The Utopia — Religion in
Utopia — Characteristics of the Scholars — The New Testament
of Erasmus — The Extirpation of Heresy — Colct's Address to
Convocation — The Reformation Intended . . . .12
CHAPTER III
Prologue : The Lutheran Revolt, 1517-1530
Luther and Erasmus — The Meaning of Luther — Luther and Tetzel
— Luther and the Papal Bull — The Diet of Worms — The
Edict of Worms — The Heads of the Christian States — The
Peasants' War — The Papal Elections — Political Consequences
— The Diet of Spires — The Sack of Rome — The Protest of
Spires — The Schmalkaldic League, and After — The Zurich
Reformers — The Augsburg Confession  23

x CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
A Tender Conscience : 1503-1529
PAGE
Henry vm — His Marriage with Catherine of Aragon — The
Dispensation — A Conscience Undisturbed — A Conscience
Awakened — Views on the Nullity of the Marriage— First
Steps for " Divorce "—Their Failure— The New Method . 35
CHAPTER V
The King's Instruments
Cranmer at Cambridge — The Discovery of Cranmer — The Bearing
of his Theory of the Divorce — The King and the Scholar —
The Training of a Primate — Thomas Cromwell — His Char
acter — Italy : the " Prince " — Cromwell the Adventurer —
Cromwell and Wolsey — Cromwell and Henry ... 42
CHAPTER VI
The Supreme Head : 1529-1534
Aspects of Henry's Reformation — It was not Doctrinal — Papal
Supremacy — The Divorce and the Universities — Cranmer
made Archbisbop — Act in Restraint of Appeals — Cranmer
pronounces the Divorce — Papal Condemnation thereof —
Annates Act — Reformation Parliament — First Acts against
Abuses — Heresy-Hunting — The Clergy under Pramunire —
The ' ' Supremacy " Clause — The Supplication against the
Ordinaries — The Bill of Wards — Answers of Convocation —
"Submission of the Clergy " — Resignation of Thomas More —
Benefit of Clergy — Effects of tho Legislation — Its Character . 52
CHAPTER VII
The Hand of Cromwell : 1534-1540
Legislation of 1534 — Act of Succession — More and Fisher refuse
the Oath — Further Legislation, 1534-5— Execution of More
and Fisher — Cranmer aud the King's Victims — Cromwell
Vicar-General — The Monastio System — Corruption of the
Monasteries— Previous Evidence — The Evidence before Parlia-
ment — The First Visitation and Suppression — The Pilgrimage
of Grace— Completion of the Suppression— Tuning tho Pulpits
— Fall of Cromwell  66

CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VIII
Fidei Defensor : 1529-1547 TAGE
Cranmer and Royal Supremacy — Freedom of Conscience — Henry's
Views on Authority — Restraint of Superstitious Practices —
Translation of Scripture— Suppression of Heresy — Tyndale's
Bible — Coverdale, Matthew, and the Great Bible — Proposed
Revision — The English Litany — The Ten Articles — The
Bishops' Book — The German Protestants — The Six Articles —
Celibacy — The King's Book — Discussions on the Sacraments
and on Orders — The Rationale — Death and Character of
Henry  80
CHAPTER IX
Affairs on the Continent : 1530-1563
The German Modus Vivendi — Henry vni. holds aloof — The Polit
ical Riddle — Growth and Fall of the Schmalkaldic League —
Demand for a General Council — Difficulty of summoning
one — The Diet of Ratisbon — Council summoned at Trent —
Ignatius Loyola — The Jesuit System — Calvin and Calvinism
• — The Position in 1547 — Maurice of Saxony — From the Peace
of Augsburg to 1563  97
CHAPTER X
Josiah: 1547-1549
The New Government— Gardiner in Opposition — Theories of the
Eucharist — Justification — Purgatory — Celibacy — Images —
The Plan of Campaign — The Homilies — The Paraphrase —
The Visitation — Imprisonment of Gardiner and Bonner —
Legislation of Edward's First Year — War against Images —
Suppression of Preaching — New Order of Communion — The
First Prayer-Book .  Ill
CHAPTER XI
The Puritan Eddy: 1549-1553
Weakness of Edward's Government — Reform and Plunder — The
Western Rising — Ket's Rising — Fall of Somerset — Swiss
Influences — Ridley — Alasco — Hooper and Knox — Cranmer
and the Eucharist — Aggressive Reformers — Nonconformity
— "Reformatio Legum" — Second Act of Uniformity — Second
Prayer-Book— The Ordinal— The Forty-Two Articles— Char
acter of the Government — Cranmer's Reformation . .127

xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER XII
Reaction and Counter-Reaction : 1553-1559
PAGE
Northumberland's Plot — Moderation of Mary — Imprisonment of
Bishops — Repeal of Ecclesiastical Laws — Wyatt's Rebellion :
its Consequences — The Married Clergy — Character of Parlia
ment — Marriage of Philip and Mary — Gardiner — Reconcilia
tion with Rome — Character of Mary — First Year of Persecu
tion — Who were the Persecutors ? — Bonner and Gardiner —
Unique Character of the Persecution — Resulting Reaction . 143
CHAPTER XIII
The Least of the Martyrs : 1529-1556
The Martyrs' Reward — The Reproach of Cranmer — Under Henry
viii. — Cranmer and the Supremacy — His Work under Edward
— His Lack of Self- 1! rliance — His Occasion al Courage — Cranmer
under Attainder — The Three Bishops at Oxford — Cranmer's
Trial and Condemnation — He asks to "confer" — Submis
sion, Degradation, and Appeal — Third and Fourth Submis
sions — The Recantation — The Second Recantation — The
Virtue of Courage — Last Days — St Mary's Church — The
Witness . . . . . . 157
CHAPTER XIV
Epilogue : The Reformation in England
Results — Two Aspects of the Reformation — Sovereignty of the
Temporal Power — Becket and Cranmer — Cranmer and Com
prehension — The Clergy and the Reformation — Comprehen
sion and Ambiguity — Elizabeth— Rival Theories — Church
and Nation Commensurate — Church Endowments — Church a
Divine Institution — The Laity and the Reformation : First
Stages ; Under Edward ; Under Mary— English Protestantism 175
Index  ... .191

LIST OF CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES

I. Contemporary Sovereigns, 1501-1560.
II. Notable Dates bearing on the Reformation,
BEFORE 1529.
III. Henry viii.'s Reformation, 1529-1547.
IV. Cranmer's Reformation, 1547-1553.
V. The Reactions, 1553-1559.

I. Contemporary Sovereigns, 1501-1560.

<*

Date.

England.

Rome.

Empire.

Spain.

France.

1501

Henry vn.

Alexander vi.

Maximilian I.

Ferdinand.

Louis xii.

1503

Pius m.

1503
Julius ii.
1509
Henry viii.
1513
Leo x.
1515
Francis I.
1516
Charles v.
15191522
Adrian vi.
Charles v.
1523
Clement vii.
1534
Paul m.
1547
Edward vi. (January).
Henry H.
1550
Julius m.
1553
Mary (July).
1555
Marcellus n.
1555
Paul iv.
1556
Ferdinand i.
Philip n.
1558
Elizabeth (November).
1559
Pius iv.
Francis II.
1560
Charles IX.
II. Notable Dates bearing on the Reformation, before 1529.

138414151440 1453
1466 1478 1483
1484 148914901491 1492

1494
14961497149815001501 15021503

1505

Death of Wiclif.
Huss burned.
Gutenberg's Printing Press {circa).
Fall of Constantinople.
Birth of Erasmus and Colet.
Birth of More.
Birth of Luther.
Birth of Zwingli.
Birth of Cranmer.
Savonarola in Florence.
Birth of Henry vm. and Ignatius Loyola.
Alexander vi. Pope. Death of Lorenzo de
Medici.
More and Colet at Oxford.
Discovery of America.
Birth of Francis I.
Colet begins to lecture at Oxford.
Birth of Melanchthon.
Erasmus meets More and Colet.
Birth of Charles v.
Marriage of Prince Arthur and Catherine.
Death of Prince Arthur.
Julius n. Pope.
Dispensation for Marriage of Henry and
Catherine.
Cranmer goes to Cambridge.
Colet Dean of St. Paul's. Birth of Knox.

1509
151115131515 1516

151715191520 1521
1522152315241525152615271529

Accession of Henry rm. Birth of Calvin.
Erasmus at Cambridge. "The Praise of
Folly."
Leo x Pope.
Accession of Francis I. Marignano.
More's "Utopia."
Erasmus' " Greek Testament." Birth of Mary.
Charles v. King of Spain.
Luther and Indulgences.
Zwingli at Zurich. Charles v. Emperor.
Death of Colet.
Field of Cloth of Gold.
Luther burns the Pope's Bull.
Diet and Edict of Worms.
Death of Leo x. (December).
Adrian VI. Pope. Disappointment of Wolsey.
Clement vn. Pope. Second Disappointment of
Wolsey.
German Peasants' Revolt.
Battle of Pavia. Change of English Policy.
Diet of Spires. Tyndale's New Testament.
Sack of Rome.
Henry begins Divorce Negotiations.
Failure of Divorce Proceedings in England.
The Case revoked to Rome. Fall of Wolsey.
Protest of Spires.
Reformation Parliament meets.

III. Henry viii.'s Reformation, 1529-1547.

Year.

Europe.

England.

General.

Parliamentary.

152915301531
1532
1533
1534

Protest of Spires.
Augsburg Diet and Confession.
League of Schmalkald (Dec.).
Death of Zwingli.
Treaty of Nuremberg, between
Charles and Protestants.
Pope pronounces Divorce null.
Pope condemns the Divorce.
Paul in. succeeds Clement vu.
Loyola at Montmartre.

Fall of Wolsey. More Chancellor.
Cranmer in favour.
Clergy threatened with Praemunire.
Rise of Cromwell.
Cranmer in Italy. Wolsey dies (Nov. ).
Convocation grants a Subsidy, and
accepts the qualified Supremacy
Clause.
Cranmer marries, in Germany.
"Submission ofthe Clergy."
More resigns. Warham dies.
Secret Marriage of Henry and Anne
Boleyn.
Cranmer Arc/Aishop (March). The
Oaths.
Cranmer pronounces " Diaim."
King and Cranmer appeal to General
Council.
Elizabeth born.
Repudiation of Papal Jurisdiction by
Convocations and Universities.
More and Fisher imprisoned.

Meeting of Reformation Parliament.
Probate, Mortuaries, and Pluralities [Acts.
Supplication against the Ordinaries.
Annates Act («, Provisional).
Benefit of Clergy Act (»).
Actin Restraint of Appeals.
Act of Submission of Clergy and in
Restraint of Appeals.
Annates Act (|S), with congt d'Slire.
Peter Pence Act.
Succession Act (»).
Act of Supremacy.
Treasons Act.

Act of Succession (/S).

1535

Contarini and Pole Cardinals.

Annates Act (y) transferring to Crown.
Fisher chosen for Cardinal.
Execution of More and Fisher.
English Negotiations with Pro
Coverdale's Bible.
testants.
Cromwell Vicar-General.
Anabaptists at Miinster.
Visitation of Monasteries begins.
1536
Benefit of Clergy Act (/3).
Act for Commission on Ecclesiastical
Laws.
English Bible to be set up in Churches.
Act Dissolving Lesser Monasteries.
Death of Erasmus.
Execution of Anne Boleyn.
Marriage with Jane Seymour.
End of Reformation Parliament.
Calvin's Institutes.
The Ten Articles.
Pilgrimage of Grace.
1537
New Visitation of Monasteries.
The Bishops' Book.
Birth of Edward.
Matthew's Bible.
1538
Calvin banished from Geneva.
Lutheran Deputation to England.
1539
The Great FA! :1c.
Idssolution of all Monasteries.
•Six Articles A ct.
Royal Proclamations given force of
1540
Paul in. recognises the Order
Marriage with Anne of Cleves.
[Law.
of Jesuits.
Attainder and Execution of Cromwell.
1541
Calvin returns to Geneva.
Diet of Ratisbon.
1542
Council of Trent convoked.
Inquisition at Rome.
1543
Order of Jesuits confirmed.
The King's Book.
Convocation appoints a Commission
to prepare a new Service-Book.
1544
Charles v. and Francis at peace.
Litany in English authorised.
1545
Council of Trent opened (Dec).
1546
Death of Luther (February).
Schmalkaldic War.
Chantries given to the King.
1547
Death of Francis I. (March).
Death of Henry (28th January).
IV. Cranmer's Reformation, 1547-1553.

X
<

England

Year

Europe.

General.
Parliamentary.
1547
Accession of Henry n. (France).
Somerset Protector.
Council of Trent transferred to
Proclamation against Images.
Bologna.
Homilies ; " Paraphrase" of Erasmus.
Battle of Muhlberg.
Gardiner and Bonner imprisoned.
Act for Receiving in both kinds.
Convocation asks for Veto, or Re
Repeal of Treasons and Six Articles
presentation, and Commission on
Ecclesiastical Laws.
Acts.
Chantries given to the King.
1548
Interim of Augsburg.
Windsor Commission appointed.
Suspension of Council.
New Order of Communion.
1549
First Prayer-Bool-.
Peter Martyr at Oxford.
Act of Uniformity (21st January).
Western Rising.
Act legalising Marriage of Priests.
Ket's Rising.
Death of Paul in.
Full of Somerset.
Act against Images.
1550
Julius ill. Pope.
Commission for Ecclesiastical Laws
reappointed.
Bucer at Cambridge.
New Ordinal authorised.
New Ordinal issued.
Hooper refuses a Bishopric. Non
conformity.
1551
Council renewed at Trent.
Hooper accepts.
Reformatio Leguin Eeclesiasticarum.
1552
Maurice of Saxony.
Exeeution of Somerset.
Second Act of Uniformity, and
Treaty of Pa.ssau.
Prayer-Book.
1553
Furl a- Tion A Hides.
Death of Edward (6th July). Mary.
Year.

Europe.

England.

General.

Parliamentary.

15531554 1555 1556155715581559

Death of Maurice of Saxony.
Peace of A ugsburg.
Paul iv. Pope.
Qhojrles V. abdicates.
Philip n. King of Spain.
Ferdinand I. Emperor.
Death of Charles v.
Pius iv. Pope.

Failure of Northumberland's Plot.
Gardiner Lord Chancellor. Bonner
restored.
Cranmer and others imprisoned.
Wyatt's Rebellion. Lady Jane exe
cuted.
Married Clergy deprived.
Three Bishops removed to Oxford.
Spanish Marriage (July).
I'ole received as Legale.
Rogers Prolo-Martyr (4th February).
Hooper, Ferrar, and some seventy
others burned this year.
Cranmer summoned "to Rome" (Sept. ).
Trial of Cranmer at Oxford.
Ridley and Latimer burned (Oct.).
Gardiner dies (November).
Cranrner's First Submission (Jan.).
,, Second, Third, and Fourth
Submissions (February).
,, Appeal to General Council
(February).
,, Two Recantations (March).
,, Martyrdom (21st March).
Pole becomes Archbishop.
Persecution continues till
Death of Mary and of Pole (Nov.).
Accession of Elizabeth.
Parker Archbishop.

Repeal of EdwarcCs Ecclesiastical
Laws.
Submission of Parliament to Rome.
Revival of Heresy Acts.
Repeal of Statutes against Rome since
[1529.
Tenths and First- Fruits restored.
Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity.

OEANMEE

CHAPTEE I
Prologue: Unrest
The Reformation in England, treated as a separate
phenomenon, begins with what may be called the
movement for a constitutional reform : reform free
from any schismatic character. In a sense, Wiclif was
the father of the Reformation ; but he and his disciples
were in revolt against the powers that be, and they
hardly brought reform nearer. They were but pioneers.
Lollardry as a religious movement obtained no general
hold, its social and economic aspects being more prom
inent. Reformation of the Church, a new moral and
religious standard, entered the sphere of practical
politics when it came to be demanded by her own
most loyal sons without arousing the opposition of
the State. And therefore it is with the " Oxford
Reformers " that the era may be said to commence :
in the closing decade of the fifteenth century.
Not in England only, but throughout Christendom,
the time for purgation had arrived. The conscience

2 CRANMER
of the Western World imperatively needed arousing.
State-craft during the last hundred years had degener
ated into a science of pure expediency which recognised
no moral law. Our own Henry v. was the mirror of
chivalry; the absolute sincerity of his religious con
viction has never been questioned; but he plunged
into a war which for sheer inexcusable aggression is
unsurpassed. The English were driven out of France
by one who is perhaps the most perfectly heroic figure
in history ; men whose standard of nobility was cer
tainly no whit below the average of their time burned
her for a witch and a heretic. Europe permitted
the Turk to vaunt the triumph of the Crescent over
the Cross. Louis XI. indulged himself in ecstasies
of fetish - worship in the intervals of concocting
treacheries. In Italy the arts of lying and poisoning
were achieving their finest consummation. Every
where learning had sunk to its lowest ebb. The
genuine subtleties of the earlier scholasticism had
given place to a mere barren logomachy. Among
the clergy, advancement was the reward, not of holi
ness, learning, eloquence, administrative ability, but of
connection by blood or by service with powerful
families. But light was to illumine the intellectual darkness.
Before 1450 the printing press had taken form; and
now the shame of Christendom was to become its
salvation. Constantinople fell in 1453; the fugitives
brought with them the forgotten literature of the
ancient world. The feast suddenly set before them
proved, perhaps, something too intoxicating to the
finer intelligences; the prevailing materialism, intel-
lectualised, was hardly rendered more edifying though

PROLOGUE: UNREST 3
it was less gross. But the New Learning soon passed to
those who were prepared to make a nobler use of it ;
who could grasp its spiritual significance as well as its
pagan fascination ; and with the opportunity to know
came an increased desire of knowing. The New
Culture, moralised, formed the Conservative element
of the Reformation ; while, by giving the Peoples an
open Bible, it provided a revolutionary and Puritan
basis. Thus the extreme Reformers took their stand
on the letter of Scripture, the Conservatives took
theirs on its reasonable interpretation.
The first effect, however, of the New Learning did
not tend to reformation at all, but to a sceptical con
formity on the part of the cultured, an increasingly
shameless abuse of their office by the clergy, and a
popular depth of superstition, not, it may be, really
greater than before, but more remarkable by contrast
with intellectual licence. The consummation was
reached when almost the vilest member of quite the
vilest family whose names disgrace the annals of Europe
was elected as the Vicar of Christ on earth in the
person of the Borgia, Pope Alexander vi., in 1492.
Almost simultaneously with this utmost degradation
of the highest office in Christendom there arose in
Florence, trumpet - tongued, comminatory, prophetic,
the forerunner of reform, Girolamo Savonarola. The
tangible effects in Italy were shortlived enough; but
the spark of moral enthusiasm was kindled, and the
intelligent perception of fraud had already been
aroused. Between the two, the corruptions which had
overgrown the Church were doomed, in part at least,
to be swept away.
In Italy, no doubt, that corruption had assumed its

4 CRANMER
most portentous proportions; in England, probably,
it was less marked than anywhere on the Continent.
The English people have a genius for preserving the
decencies; and the relative prevalence of free insti
tutions, coupled with an unfailing resistance to all
attempts at establishing an ecclesiastical within the
secular imperium, had enforced sobriety. Standing
altogether outside the pale of the Empire, England
was endowed with a national unity unknown in more
southern lands ; and was enabled to preserve a certain
orderliness, even through the turmoil of thirty years
of civil war, which the European States could not
parallel. Most important of all, her insular position
had imparted or secured a national character to the
Church within her borders, so that the clergy and the
ecclesiastical organisation generally stood in an excep
tionally close relation to the State, and in an exception
ally independent relation to the Holy See.
It is singularly difficult to arrive with even approxi
mate certainty at a clear idea of the condition of the
Church in England before and during the first fifty
years of the sixteenth century. Some of the anti-
ecclesiastical literature of the times appears more akin
to the rhetoric of the Hyde Park agitator of to-day
than to anything else. Putrescence would be a mild
term for the state of things therein described.
About the year 1527 one Simon Fish wrote a book
entitled A Supplicacyon for the Beggers, being pro
fessedly a suggestion that the money appropriated to
the support of the clergy would be more profitably
bestowed upon the poor, the maimed, and the halt,
who were dependent on charity for their livelihood.
It is, in fact, an all-round indictment of the clergy.

PROLOGUE: UNREST 5
" There is yn the tymes of youre noble predecessours
passed craftily crept into this your realme an other
sort (not of impotent but) of strong puissaunt and
counterfeit holy and ydell beggers and vacabundes.
. . . These are (not the herdes, but the rauinous
wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke)
the Bisshoppes, Abbottes, Priours, Deacons, Arch
deacons, Suffraganes, Prestes, Monkes, Chanons, Freres,
Pardoners, and Somners." This " rauinous, cruell, and
insatiabill generacion " are proved by a curious arith
metical process to have absorbed half the landed estate
of the country, and to fatten upon alms at the rate of
nearly £50,000 per annum, although numbering but one
in four hundred of the population. "And whate do
al these gredy sort of sturdy idell holy theues ? . . .
Nothing but that all your subiectes shulde fall into
disobedience, and rebellion against your grace and be
under theim. . . . These be they that corrupt the hole
generation of mankind yn your realme." The charge
of unbridled sexual immorality is hurled at the
" bloudsuppers " with a sweeping universality and a
copiousness of language which would reduce to envious
despair the most uncompromising enemy of a bloated
aristocracy. "Where is your swerde, power, crowne,
and dignitie, become that shuld punische the felonies,
rapes, murdres, and treasons committed by this sinfull
generacion ? " It is a trifle comic to find this flagel-
lator of ecclesiastical vices going back to include in his
curse Stephen Langton, the stout opponent of King
John's tyranny ; that monarch being represented as a
holy and righteous ruler ! It appears, however, on
perusal that the moving cause of this pamphlet was
the punishment for heresy of one Richard Hunne,

6 CRANMER
who had " commenced accyon of premunire ageinst a
prest." It is impossible to take such an indictment as this
seriously. The language used would almost be extra
vagant if applied to the Tartar hordes who followed
the conquering banner of Tamerlane. Written when
the great Dean Colet was hardly cold in his grave,
when Warham was Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Fisher Bishop of Rochester, the frantic excesses of
Simon Fish stand condemned on their very face. And
yet, in the modern introduction to the reprint from
which the foregoing quotations are taken, the work is
described as a "terse and brave little book." It is,
indeed, conceivable that it was produced by a sincere
fanaticism, but if so it was fanaticism run mad. The
one thing to be said is that even the rankest fanaticism
and the fiercest hatred could never have evolved such
a parody of serious invective unless there had been
colourable grounds for holding the mass of the clergy
guilty of greed, worldliness, and lax morality.
We shall have to deal more specifically in a subsequent
chapter with the charges against the monasteries,
which were made the justification of the great spolia
tion. It is no longer possible to feel any reasonable
doubt that these were gravely, not to say grossly,
exaggerated ; but it is equally impossible to accept as
convincing the defence of their ingenious advocates.
It is unnecessary to fall back on the evidence of
men like Simon Fish, or on the traditions of scandal
readily accepted by Protestant controversialists in
days when monks, Jesuits, and the Inquisition were
inextricably mixed up in the popular mind with the
misdeeds, real and hypothetical, of the Spaniards. Nor

PROLOGUE: UNREST 7
is it necessary to lay any great stress on the reports of
commissioners appointed by a Government which was
deliberately concocting a case. Certain facts are
palpable. The clergy of England acknowledged the
primacy of the pope, at whose hands the Archbishop
of Canterbury received the pallium, and England was
not free from the corruption of the papal dominion.
At Rome the higher ecclesiastical powers were
debased enough to place the Borgia on the papal
throne. Continental bishops and archbishops practically
performed the functions of secular princes as well as
those of Fathers of the Church. They had large revenues
under their control. Their temptations were particu
larly strong. Instead of standing forth and denounc
ing the prevalent moral corruption, they went with it,
and the minor clergy followed the example set them in
high places. Probably they were no more prone to
iniquity than their lay neighbours, but their opportun
ities were greater, and they did not neglect them.
The same principles applied in England. A system
capable of working nobly while the clergy were
inspired by moral enthusiasm became ruinous when
enthusiasm died down. If bishops and abbots neglected
their pastoral responsibilities, it was only natural that
the sense of responsibility should dwindle away in the
parish priest and the monk. If the authorities were
lax in enforcing discipline, the rank and file were not
likely to be over-zealous. Without assuming anything
that can fairly be called universal corruption, it is
obvious that a very prevalent laxity was an inevitable
result of the conditions.
But beyond the slackness produced by immunity
from discipline, the temptation to positive abuse of the

8 CRANMER
sacred office was strong. According to the theory of
the Catholic Church, repentance and confession were
the conditions precedent of pardon and absolution for
sin; and it lay with the priest to judge on what terms
the absolution should be pronounced. Also, the prayers
of the Church would avail to mitigate the penalties
of purgatory. It was a very easy step from the latter
doctrine to teach that the prayers of the Church might
be bought ; and from the former, first, to the idea that
it was in the power of the priest to absolve or to refuse
absolution at will, and second, to the corollary that
absolution might in practice be bought. The con
clusion was obvious. By conciliating the clergy,
absolution might be obtained and the term of purga
tory be shortened. The powers of a priesthood
regarded as the sole legitimate channel for grace were
simply irresistible. Whatever the orthodox doctrine
might be, the theory vulgarly taught and held offered
an enormous inducement to the clergy, in plain terms,
to treat the Grace of God as a commodity which they
could sell at their own price. And there is no sort of
question that, with more or less honesty of intent,
great numbers of the clergy did yield to the induce
ment and teach that sin might be condoned and its
penalties escaped by adequate cash payment. That
the pure doctrine of the Catholic Church countenanced
no such theory or practice is nothing to the point.
The essence of the charge against the unreformed
Church is that its effectual teachings and actual
practices were distortions and abuses of the pure
doctrine. The same point applies to the case of the Monas
teries. The whole Monastic system in any possible

PROLOGUE: UNREST 9
form is open to attack and is capable of defence, as is
the doctrine that the priest is a needful intermediary
between man and God. But the effective demand for
a reformation was created not by the Monastic
system, but by the abuse of it. It is vain to point to
the rules of the religious houses, and say " these men
cannot have been idle, vicious, and luxurious." The
gravamen of the accusation against them was that their
rules were set at naught in practice. Primarily in
both cases, the principle was not challenged ; but when
the abuse found defenders in high places, the claim of
the principle was called in question. So at a later day
the American colonies submitted to taxation for com
mercial purposes ; but when taxation was applied for
revenue purposes, the newly claimed right was chal
lenged, and when it was defended the whole right of
taxation was attacked.
Directly or indirectly the clergy were in the habit
of making a highly profitable use of absolution and
masses for the dead. Nor did they hesitate in like
manner to encourage the worship of relics and of
images in a directly fraudulent manner for purposes of
gain ; attributing special virtues, for instance, to " Our
Lady" of this or that shrine — a proceeding utterly
irreconcilable with the doctrine that the image was to
be regarded merely as a symbol, and not as a thing in
itself worshipful; and displaying relics which they
knew to be sheer deceptions. Again, the charge has
nothing to do primarily with the theory that true
relics demand reverence, even that they may be
miraculously endowed; or with the contention that
images are to be commended as aids to worship.
This, then, was the state of things for which a

10 CRANMER
drastic remedy was required in England. The higher
clergy were for the most part engaged in political or
at any rate worldly interests rather than on those of
religion, high offices of State being much in their
hands. Their neglect of their responsibilities led
necessarily to a similar neglect on the part of their
lesser brethren. An almost universal laxity of disci
pline carried in its train a very general disposition
to extreme self-indulgence and idleness, frequently
accompanied by actually vicious living. The doctrines
of the Church were habitually distorted and abused,
not without practical sanction from the highest
quarters, in order to acquire money. The lay folk were
demoralised by the encouragement of the belief that a
long purse was an efficacious passport through purga
tory ; while symbols were effectively transformed into
idols, and reverence for the saints was perverted into
local fetish-worship. Learning had fallen into general
neglect, and the theology of the schools had sunk to a
pseudo-metaphysical and meaningless jargon.
These characteristics, however, were not peculiar to
the Church in England ; she showed them in varying
degrees in every country of Christendom. But there
were distinguishing features about the ecclesiastical
organisation in this country, which materially in
fluenced the course of the Reformation here.
The clergy in England had never from the earliest
1 days admitted the unqualified supremacy of the pope.
If he invaded their constitutional independence, they
were ready to appeal to the Crown ; as, when the
Crown threatened them, they were prepared to appeal
to Rome. Aggression on the part of one of those
rival authorities was tolerably certain to drive them

PROLOGUE: UNREST n
for the time being into the arms of the other ; but the
main position was never surrendered, that whatever
authority either pope or king preserved over them was
distinctly limited. The State, on the other hand, had
habitually, and with varying success, challenged the
papal authority, claiming for itself large powers of
control, even to the right of confiscating Church pro
perty. The Conqueror himself had forbidden the
admission of papal legates ; Henry n. had done battle
with Becket for the jurisdiction of the King's Courts
in disputes between clerics and laymen. The Statutes of
Mortmain had checked or attempted to check bestowal
of lands on the Church ; the Statutes of Provisors had
challenged papal claims to patronage ; the Statutes of
Praemunire had forbidden appeals to Rome ; the first
Edward laid a tax of one-half upon the clergy for his
wars; under the house of Lancaster large proposals
for sheer confiscation had been mooted as perfectly
legitimate. If the first real movement for reform was to emanate
from men of character and learning, the first legislative
action was to be initiated by a monarch who found
himself inconvenienced by papal claims, and for whom
the emancipation from papal authority and the filling
of his own coffers were the first consideration. He
was to find his instruments in an archbishop — selected,
no doubt, for that very purpose — who was ready to go
to unprecedented lengths in the recognition of royal
supremacy, and in a minister bent on consolidating
the absolute control of the Crown over every depart
ment of State.

CHAPTER II
Prologue : The Scholars' Movement, 1496-1529
The spark of moral enthusiasm kindled at Florence by
Savonarola was caught in England by John Colet.
Born in 1466, the same year probably as his cosmo
politan associate Erasmus, and twelve years before
Thomas More, the son of a wealthy and successful
London merchant who held the office of Lord Mayor,
Colet went to Oxford ; where, being still a young man,
he was inspired with a thirst for the New Learning
which Grocyn and Linacre were beginning to intro
duce from Italy; a thirst associated in his case with
a religious turn of thought which made him deliber
ately elect to take orders in preference to pursuing
the brilliant prospects undoubted^ opened by a
secular career to a man of his capacity, backed up by
his father's wealth and established position.
About 1494 he visited Italy, the home of scholars ;
leaving behind him at Oxford young More, who,
according to the not unusual practice, had gone up to
the university at the age of fourteen, and whose
brilliant gifts and fascinating character had probably
enabled him already to form an intimacy which was to
be lifelong with his senior.
Whether in the course of his travels Colet fell under

THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 13
the direct personal influence of Savonarola is un
certain; but it is hardly likely that he would have
omitted some sojourn in Florence when the great
preacher was at the height of his fame. At any
rate he returned to Oxford in 1496, his mind greatly
enriched by his experiences; and forthwith com
menced to deliver a series of lectures on the Pauline
Epistles which contributed a new departure in univer
sity teaching.
The fundamental change was the application of a
new method ; the method of critical exposition taking
the place of scholastic dissection: of studying a dis
course or treatise instead of dealing in a collection of
texts and phrases. The old way of commenting as it
were on a miscellaneous congeries of sentences — each of
which had to be elucidated, interpreted, complicated,
reinterpreted, illustrated by other sentences relevant
or irrelevant, allegorised, referred to authority, referred
to each other, and so prepared for interpretation all
over again in infinite series — gave place to an intelli
gent search for the meaning of the writer. Out of
this again emerged the perception that the Pauline
Epistles were exceedingly practical treatises on life
and conduct rather than a collection of puzzles for
the exercise of erudite ingenuity. And the lecturer's
enthusiasm for the vividly human personality of the
great apostle communicated itself to his hearers ;
sowing the seeds of revolt not against the Church but
against scholasticism.
The movement thus initiated was not in its nature
at all inimical to orthodoxy ; there was no suggestion
of heresy about it. It involved simply an appeal to
the learned to study the sacred texts in the tongue in

14 CRANMER
which they were written, instead of treating them as
extracts from Duns and Aquinas. It was a challenge
to the doctors of the schools, not an attack on the
dogmas of the Church.
The teacher was eloquent, vigorous, learned, original,
and very much in earnest. His lectures gathered
round him all the intelligence of the university, and
made no little stir. Colet did not confine his atten
tions exclusively to St. Paul, but was ready to apply
his critical principles to the whole of the Scriptures,
Old and New Testament alike, dwelling constantly on
the importance of going to the fountainhead, and
reading the originals, instead of treating the Vulgate
as a verbally inspired version, as was the common
habit. Even ordinarily cultivated persons were still
very much disposed to regard Greek as a dangerous
heathen tongue, the study of which might lead the
student woefully astray; and Thomas More seems to
have been hurried away from the university by his
father, in order to take to work seriously as a law
student, partly because the language of Plato was
suspected of being too alluring.
The scholastic prejudices were too long established
and too deeply rooted to be immediately removed ;
the local vis inertias offered a stolid resistance ; but
the movement appealed strongly to everything that
was best in Oxford. The peculiar characteristic of
the New Learning in England was, that practically
from the very beginning it was turned into the channel
of biblical research and religious inquiry by men who
were Christians first and scholars afterwards ; instead
of, as happened in Italy, the pursuit of pagan ideals
by men who were scholars first and Christians after-

THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 15
wards, if, indeed, they were Christians at all in any
thing but outward profession.
A few years later, about 1504 or 1505, Colet was
made Dean of St. Paul's, and transferred his activities to
London, where he rapidly achieved the highest reputa
tion as a preacher ; whose conversation in private life
maintained the same high level as his pulpit utter
ances, while his personal character was convincingly
admirable. It was while he was still at Oxford that Colet and
Erasmus became acquainted; possibly they had met
before in Paris. In 1498 Erasmus, visiting England,
was attracted to the university on the Isis, and formed
a deep and lasting friendship with Colet, and also with
More. More was to play his part in the movement as
a politician, a statesman, a man of letters, moving in
the world of affairs; Colet played his as a preacher
and teacher in Oxford and London ; not only scholars,
but kings, princes, and prelates in every European
State were to listen to the voice of Erasmus, though as
yet he had not achieved his later position.
At this time, in fact, Erasmus was Colet's pupil.
His latinity was, superior, but in Greek he was still a
long way behind; and Greek was very much more
important than Latin. The direction and the inspiration
which Erasmus derived from Colet were to issue later
in a work of vast importance; of more immediate
consequence, not to England only, but to all Europe,
than anything written by Colet himself ; yet, but for
Colet it is likely enough that it would never have
been written at all.
Eighteen years, however, were to elapse before
Erasmus published his edition of the Greek Testament.

16 CRANMER
When he left Oxford, after a brief sojourn, it was
much against the will of Colet, who would have per
suaded him even then to devote himself to exegesis;
but Erasmus was wiser, knowing that he had yet very
much to learn before he could speak with that con
fidence in himself which was needful to convince
others. In the interval, Colet was transferred to the deanery.
More, still a " beardless boy," so distinguished himself
in Parliament by his successful opposition to one of
Henry vn.'s demands for subsidies, that he had to
retire for a while into private life ; and when Erasmus
returned to England for another brief visit in 1505, he
found his two friends established in London, and in
constant intimate intercourse.
In 1509 Henry vii. died, and Henry viii. at the
age of eighteen succeeded him ; being at that time a
youth of the most brilliant promise. To a magnificent
physique were joined in him a brain of unusual acute-
ness, a geniality of manner, and a wealth of intellectual
culture, which gave hopes of a right royal disposition ;
hopes to be marred by the gradual development of a
cold-blooded selfishness and a fiery temper which had
not as yet betrayed themselves. The dead king had been
an exceptionally astute, strong, and capable monarch ;
but his sordid avarice, whatever political advantages it
may have conferred, had made him intensely unpopular.
The accession of the young prince, endowed with
every attractive quality, was hailed on all hands with
an outburst of enthusiasm. The Saturnian rule was
to be renewed; a golden age was to return. The
instruments of his father's tyranny were cast down ;
learning, the arts, civil justice, were to flourish in the

THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 17
land. The friends of Erasmus urged him to make
haste to return and rejoice in the sunlight.
Erasmus came ; and the sun continued to shine.
The high spirits of himself and his friends were
reflected in the "Encomium Morice," or "Praise of
Folly," which he wrote and published soon after his
arrival — a light-hearted satire on the follies, chiefly
scholastic and ecclesiastical, of the day, which, in a
humorous vein, strikes the keynote of reform as it
was understood by scholars and men of wit; neces
sarily avoiding in expression the high seriousness
which lay behind. The gift of combining that high
seriousness with a subtle and ever-present humour,
the jest which covers an earnest meaning, the earnest
which is conveyed in a jesting form, was Thomas
More's ; and shortly afterwards, in 1516, it took form
in the Utopia.
With greater clearness, because more seriously than
the Praise of Folly, the Utopia conveys the attitude
of the Reformers before Luther had identified re
form with war against the papacy. In depicting his
imaginary State in an otherwise unknown quarter of
that New World which Columbus had just revealed to
Europe, More was obviously not designing a society
such as might in his view have been reconstructed out
of a European country; any more than Plato would
have supposed it possible to reconstruct Athens on the
system of his Republic; but some fairly conclusive
inferences can be drawn both as to the prevailing
social conditions and the kind of improvements which
seemed desirable. More himself would hardly have
proposed to introduce his idealised conditions by
legalisation.

1 8 CRANMER
He starts from a position which no political theorist
will question ; which nevertheless was in singular
contrast to the practice of the time. This is the
Platonic doctrine that it is the function of the
governor to rule for the benefit of the governed.
If Thrasymachus could only have studied the Prince
of Macchiavelli, he would have felt even more thor
oughly convinced that there was something hopelessly
wrong with the Socratic argument ; that it was in
fact irredeemably opposed to human nature. But the
Utopia no less obviously assumes that the doctrine is
a complete invasion of all recognised practice. Its
author was quite evidently of opinion that so long as
princes were in the habit of hankering for extended
dominions, so long their actual dominions were doomed
to misgovernment. From the portions of his book
which deal with sumptuary and economic conditions,
it is easy to infer an England in which a vast army
of drones " polled and shaved " the workers ; wealthy
men with swarms of idle retainers ; vagabonds who
would not dig and were not at all ashamed to beg;
and in this host of the unproductive, he expressly
includes the " so great and so idle company of priests
and religious men as they call them."
This last item is made peculiarly significant by the
extreme restriction of the number of priests in Utopia
— thirteen of them only in every city, who are "of
exceeding holiness, being so few." Quite evidently,
there is in More's mind no disparagement of the
priestly office, but the contrary; yet a very strong
conviction that the multiplication of the " religious "
is in every way demoralising. At the same time there
is none of that extravagant condemnation suggested,

THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 19
in which the later enthusiasts for Reformation were
wont to indulge.
The whole section of the Utopia which touches on re
ligion strikes the note which one would expect — of toler
ation for all opinions provided that they are expressed
with decency and not actually immoral in tendency.
More held with Erasmus and Colet that the intricacies
of doctrine are not essential, provided that the cardinal
facts are realised; for the Utopians condemn those
who deny the Deity and the future life. At the same
time the traveller Raphael Hythlodey is obviously of
opinion that they were fully justified in suppressing
the zealous Christian, whose " word in season " was too
sulphurous for the public peace. That is the real
explanation of the apparent contradiction between the
Reformer More's theory of tolerance and the Lord
Chancellor More's practice of persecution. The
Peasants' War had come in the interval; and the
heretics on whom he laid stern hands were those whose
language was violent and their theories anarchical,
at least prima facie. A high standard of personal
morality ; a large toleration for divergences on
unessential points ; a rejection of grossly materialistic
accretions and palpable abuses; a contempt for the
uncritical and super-subtle logomachy of the schools ; a
desire to welcome light, and to spread knowledge, all
things being conducted with a due regard to public
order and discipline, — these were the common
characteristics of the scholar-reformers.
On the critical side, these views found their weightiest
expression in the edition of the New Testament which
Erasmus published at Basel in 1516. The work was
his application of the principle which he had learned

20 CRANMER
eighteen years before from Colet ; of going to the Greek
to find out what the evangelists and apostles really wrote.
Erasmus issued a Greek text with introductions and
with his own new Latin translation beside it. Textual
criticism was in its infancy, and he was never by any
means a master of Greek scholarship ; the text and
translation were both a long way from perfection;
but the publication broke up the stereotyped tradition
which had regarded the Vulgate as verbally inspired,
and a great step was taken in developing among
the younger generation the practice of studying the
Scriptures themselves in preference to the commentaries
of the doctors. That practice had been initiated at
Oxford by Colet, and was carried to Cambridge by
Erasmus himself, who had gone there as Professor of
Greek in 1511, under the patronage of War ham, Arch
bishop of Canterbury, and of Fisher,Bishop of Rochester.
There can be little doubt that Cranmer, then at Cam
bridge, and about twenty-two years of age, fell under
the influence of the great scholar ; though there is no
record of any personal intercourse between them.
How matters stood with the more definitely
religious side of the movement may be seen from
Colet's career at this time. Sporadic examples of
Lollardry, and, on the part of men of the old school,
such as Fitzjames, Bishop of London, some alarm at
the new-fangled methods of Colet himself and his
associates and disciples, combined to interest the king
and Convocation in the extirpation of heresy ; to which
particular end that assembly was summoned at the
beginning of 1512. The proceedings, however, show
clearly enough that the alarm did not extend to ecclesi
astics of any intellectual eminence. Colet himself

THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 21
was appointed to preach the opening sermon ; prosecu
tions for heresy diminished instead of increasing ; and
an attempt on the part of Fitzjames to have the dean
punished as a heretic was ignominiously snuffed out by
an archbishop who was on eminently good terms with
Erasmus. This sermon really amounted to a programme of the
Reformation as desired by Colet — a process of curing
heresy by common sense and right living, instead of
the favourite prescription of cautery. Primarily it
was an indictment of the secular and worldly way
of life prevalent among the clergy; the pursuit of
promotion, of highly -paid benefices, of pluralities ; the
legal greed of the ecclesiastical courts ; the devotion to
secular occupations ; things for which a remedy could
be found if the clergy, from the bishops down, would
merely exert themselves in their own persons to adopt
something like the standard which they were in any
case bound to profess. The moral was quite clear. If
the clergy set an example of spiritual living, very little
more would be heard of heresy, whereof the exciting
cause was usually to be found in a comparison between
the way of life of the apostles and that of their
successors, greatly to the disparagement of the latter.
The dean was plain-spoken and straightforward, and
did not shirk applying home-truths to the greatest,
from Wolsey down; and therefore what he did not
say may be put to the credit of his fellow-churchmen.
So that it is to be noted that the temptations to which
he charges them with yielding are not those of the
flesh and the devil, but of the world. If the
immoralities so freely attributed more particularly
to the regular clergy by the advanced Reformers had

22 CRANMER
been half so flagrant as has commonly been alleged, it
is hardly conceivable that Colet would have abstained
from strong expression on the subject.
Here, then, is the note of the Reformation which
was actually in steady progress ; before Luther lifted
up his voice, and Pope Leo by taking up the challenge
and resisting the movement converted its development
into a partisan struggle of creeds. For the knell of
the old stubborn and wilful ignorance was already
being tolled. There was indeed little sign that the
ecclesiastical magnates intended to withdraw from
State affairs when Wolsey was the king's chief
counsellor; and for many a year to come the
Tunstals and Gardiners were to be active politicians.
But already among the men who were Collet's con
temporaries or seniors all the most distinguished
were men of character and advocates of educational
progress, such as Warham and Fisher, and of younger
men, Gardiner and Latimer and Tunstal ; the
universities were following the new lights rather than
the old traditions ; Wolsey, founding Cardinal College
at Oxford with the proceeds of suppressed monastic
establishments of ill-repute, filled it with pupils of
the advanced teachers; Colet in his own school of
St. Paul's in London set the example of converting
pedagoguy into education ; which system he thoroughly
established before his death in 1519.
But the outlook of a Reformation to be effected by
sweetness and light was shattered by two Revolts,
utterly different in character, motive, and intention;
that of Luther in Germany, and that of King Henry
in England, whereby the Reformation became a
Revolution.

CHAPTER III
Prologue: The Lutheran Revolt, 1517-1530
There is an unlimited and perhaps not wholly unpro
fitable field of speculation open to theorists as to the
different course which history might have taken had
there been no Martin Luther to lead the Revolution.
Some sort of reformation was absolutely certain to
come. It might have been little more than an intel
lectual emancipation such as the Humanists initiated
in Italy ; or a process of intelligent moral amendment
such as the Oxford Reformers sought in England.
When Leo x. ascended the papal throne, it may well
have been supposed that Erasmus and those who
thought and taught with him were going to direct
the character of the movement. But all unwittingly,
Erasmus had brought not peace but a sword. For it
was he, as men said, who had laid the egg that Luther
hatched, and thereof came some of the most devastat
ing wars that Europe has known. For good or for
evil, on 10th December 1520, when Luther burned the
pope's Bull condemning him, he kindled the torch
of Revolution. When the Monk of Wittenberg took up
the challenge of the Head of the Christian World, the
appeal was no longer made to the wise, the learned,
and the great ones of the earth, but to the heart of the

24 CRANMER
people. The Reformation for Erasmus would have
been an affair of adaptations, compromises, recognising
that there was much to be said on both sides, much
that was better left alone. For Luther, it was a
warfare of truth against lies, with no unresolvable
half-truths. With Erasmus, it was a question what men
should be taught to believe ; with Luther, it was what
they should be moved to feel. Luther's theology was
not the vital part of him; Lutheranism was not the
vital product ; Rome, Geneva, and Oxford have influ
enced the structure and interpretation of creeds and
formularies not less than Wittenberg ; but the
passionate ardour for reality in things spiritual, the
personal responsibility for upholding truth, the en
thusiasm of conscience, which translated the Reforma
tion from an external official revision into an inward
regenerating force — these the modern world owes to
Martin Luther more than to any other man. When
the Anglican Church left Roman doctrine it borrowed
more from Calvin or Zwingli than from Luther; the
Huguenots of France, the Presbyterians of Scotland,
the Puritans of England derived their theology from
the same school ; but it was Luther who sounded the
call to arms, Luther who first grappled with the foe
and was not overthrown, Luther who gave revolt the
justification of success, Luther who proclaimed the
fundamental rule, that he must hold to the truth
as he conceived it, though all men should be against
him. But in 1517, when Leo x. found himself in want of
funds and proposed to supply himself by the method
of selling Indulgences, no one was thinking of revolt.
The theory of Indulgences had, indeed, been held up to

THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 25
derision, but that was a small matter — the temporal
potentates had no objection to them, and merely
haggled with his Holiness as to the share they were
to have out of the collection. It was only when
Tetzel was about to appear in Saxony that protest was
made by Professor Martin Luther, who nailed up his
ninety-three theses against Indulgences on the church
door ; which proceeding derived unexpected effect from
the fact that the Elector of Saxony acted upon it and
forbade Tetzel to enter his dominions.
During the three years following, events moved
more quickly than the papal court recognised. To
Leo, the Wittenberg monk seemed to be merely an
unimportant upstart, who might have to be suppressed
sooner or later. But Luther himself, having once
taken the plunge and openly opposed Rome, found
his opposition intensifying. He became alive to the
fact that the theology which he had imbibed from
St. Augustine could not, in many important particulars,
be brought into harmony with Roman teaching ; and he
further discovered that it was for maintaining pre
cisely these same Augustinian tenets, in the main, that
Wiclif and Huss had been condemned. The conclusion
was clear. Wiclif and Huss were certainly right;
therefore the Church which had condemned them
for heresy was certainly wrong, and its authority
naught. When matters reached this point, it seemed time to
repress so manifest a heretic ; and Luther heard that a
Bull was about to be issued against him. But he had
very thoroughly made up his mind. He had already
appealed to the authority of a General Council; he
now answered by an attack on the papal authority,

26 CRANMER
which was practically an invitation to the secular
powers to assert their own independence of papal
jurisdiction, and to stop the flow of revenue from their
territories into the papal coffers.
The appeal touched no small proportion of the
German princes ; and the cry of " Germany for the
Germans " was a telling one, when unsupported
doctrinal theses might have been viewed with suffi
cient coldness. But two immediate questions arose —
How would the Elector Frederic of Saxony take it?
and How would the newly made Emperor Charles v.
take it?
It was certainly not likely that the Emperor would
take the anti-papal line. But the Elector was prob
ably the most universally respected prince in Europe,
and it was only due to his own flat refusal of the
purple that Charles had been elected Emperor in his
stead in 1519. Fortunately for Luther, Frederic was
not only an eminently cool-headed and honourable
man ; he was also a friend of the New Learning, who
held Erasmus in high esteem. Erasmus had pelted
papal and priestly pretensions with ridicule for many
a year, and he was obviously in sympathy with what
was at least primarily an attack on papal and priestly
pretensions, though conducted after a fashion very
different from his own. Frederic consulted him, and
his advice was that, at any rate, protection should be
extended to Luther.
The Bull condemning Luther arrived, and forthwith
Luther burned it publicly (December 10). - By that
act he threw away the scabbard; the sword he had
drawn against Rome could never be sheathed again.
An Imperial Diet was about to assemble at Worms,

THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 27
and the pope addressed to Charles a letter inviting
him to crush the heretic. But the mind of the Diet
was divided. There might be few enough of the
nobles who cared about the doctrines of Transub
stantiation or Justification; but besides a creditable
bias in favour of giving a man fair play and an open
hearing, there were numbers of them in whom the.
national spirit had been roused, who were indignant
at papal and ecclesiastical encroachments. A safe-
conduct was granted to Luther. He came, knowing
that he was bearing his life in his hand, for a papal
safe-conduct had availed nothing to protect Huss. He
came to take his stand finally, to refuse to retract
a word, to hurl defiance at the pope under the eyes of
Christendom, to declare the fallibility of popes and
even councils, to deny the authority of a priesthood
to stand between man and his Maker.
But although Luther was, so to speak, the incarnation
of the revolt, he was not a pioneer but a leader; not a
prophet standing alone, but at once the herald and the
captain of battalions. Had there been treachery at
Worms, it would assuredly have been followed promptly
by armed insurrection ; not, it may be, strong enough
to have held out for long,' but quite sufficiently
threatening to give the papal party pause. Popular
sentiment and national sentiment were both on his
side, in spite of emperor and princes. The defiance
did not carry the Diet with him, but it destroyed all
prospect of a solid antagonism. His life was so
seriously in danger, that, as a measure of protection,
the Elector deliberately kidnapped him when he was
leaving, and concealed him in a Thuringian castle;
but if he had fallen, many a life would have paid for

28 CRANMER
his. The spirit of resistance was roused; and it is
hardly too much to say that if Luther had died in
1521, nine-tenths of his work would have been already
accomplished. The word had been spoken for which
half Christendom was waiting.
It was perfectly evident at Worms that public senti
ment was with Luther. But the young Emperor's
political designs placed him on the pope's side; he
made a treaty with the papal Nuncio ; and an edict
against Luther was drawn up, approved by those of
the Electors present in Worms without the formality
of discussion, and issued. Frederic had already left,
perceiving that he could not influence the result.
It is a matter of some little importance to observe
how youthful at this date were the princes at the head
of the leading nations. Henry of England was in his
thirtieth year; Francis of France in his twenty-
seventh; Charles, lord, by inheritance, of Spain, of
Austria, and of the Netherlands, and head of the
Empire by election, was not yet one-and-twenty.
Of the three, Francis at least was thirsting for martial
achievements, for which his appetite had been whetted
by the famous victory of Marignano in 1515. Henry
had dreams of recovering the French provinces ; while
his great minister, Wolsey, aspired to the popedom.
Charles and Francis were rivals in Italy, and the papal
alliance was of great value to the former.
At this stage then — 1521 — it was by no means agree
able to the schemes of Charles, of Henry, or of Henry's
minister to support any attack on the papacy. The
voice of Charles was given against Luther. Henry,
who prided himself on his theological capacity, wrote
a book against the Reformer's doctrine, in return for

THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 29
which Leo bestowed on him the complimentary title
of "Defender of the Faith." In the meantime, how
ever, the bulk of the people of North Germany took
their stand with Luther and the Elector of Saxony;
and Erasmus, on behalf of the New Learning, had
declared himself, up to a certain point, on the same
side. Charles had no inclination to push his support
of the pope to the extent of creating a German civil
war ; and, for the time, the Lutheran problem was in
effect left to simmer. Luther himself, hidden away
in his Thuringian retreat, was preparing that great
weapon of the German Reformation, his translation of
the Bible.
The religious question, however, was greatly com
plicated by social problems. As it had befallen in the
past in England, so now in Germany the grievances of
the peasantry were mixed up with the reform of the
Church. Extreme teachers arose, such as Carlstadt and
Miinzer, who incited the peasants to rebellion, while
they preached anti-papal doctrines. From them
derived those extreme reformers who in England
were classified as Anabaptists; and from their pro
ceedings, and the appalling bloodshed attending the
"Peasants' War," came that reaction which affected
so many of the best minds in England, and turned the
author of the Utopia into a hammer of heretics.
Luther himself, emerging from his compulsory
seclusion, gave no support to the peasants. Great and
genuine as their grievances were, Luther's theory was
entirely antagonistic to the idea of revolt against civil
authority; nor was he by any means in favour of
encouraging a breach between the governing powers
and the movement which he had originated. But it

30 CRANMER
was a matter of course that his opponents should lay
at his door the responsibility for all events growing
out of that movement.
The Diet of Worms, in fact, meant the alliance of
Charles, Leo, and Henry, though the last was inactive.
But before the year was out, Leo died, and Wolsey
was much disturbed by finding that Charles did not
push his candidature for the papacy. Leo's successor,
Adrian, proposed great things in the restoration of
discipline ; but he met with stolid resistance, and died
in 1523 without having accomplished anything. By
this time, Francis had lost much ground ; Charles was
no longer so anxious about the English alliance ; and
Wolsey's personal ambition, as well as his confidence
in the Emperor's good faith, received a rude shock,
when the Cardinal Giulio de Medici was elected to the
popedom as Clement vii.
Clement had been very much on the Spanish side
hitherto; but the progress of Charles's power began
to be alarming. To have the ambitions of Francis
checked was one thing ; to become the Emperor's puppet
was another. The danger became the greater when,
in 1525, Francis met with the disaster of Pavia, the
occasion of the celebrated phrase, "All is lost save
honour." The French king fell a prisoner into his
rival's hands. Charles, with whom negotiations had
for some time been carried on with a view to his
marriage with the Princess Mary of England, practi
cally broke with Henry by marrying the Infanta of
Portugal instead.
This change of relations had momentous results.
Whether Henry was already anxious to replace
Catherine of Aragon by Anne Boleyn is not abso-

THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 31
lutely certain ; but it was about this time that he
began to develop qualms of conscience as to the
validity of his marriage with Catherine, a scrupu
losity which had not been aroused while he was on
friendly terms with her Imperial nephew. Before he
had fairly brought his problem before Clement, Charles
had virtually acquired control of the papal policy:
since the pope could not be persuaded to gratify
Henry, Henry gradually arrived at the point of defy
ing the papal authority ; and hence arose the breach
with Rome.
At first, however, in 1526, the effect was not to
render Henry favourable to the Reformation, since at
first no unfriendliness to Clement was involved. In
the immediate result Clement turned against Charles ;
the Emperor was led to come to terms with his
Lutheran subjects, and found himself at war with
the pope.
The Diet of the Empire was held at Spires in
1526. The great Elector, Frederic of Saxony, had
just died. The outcome of the Diet, however, was
altogether favourable to the reforming party; the
Emperor in effect, through his brother Ferdinand,
withdrawing the anti-Lutheran edict of Worms, by
assenting to the general proposition that the several
States of the empire should act upon it or not as they
individually thought fit ; or, in the more pious formula
of the decree, " as each thought it could answer it to
God and the Emperor." The underlying theory was
afterwards crystallised in the phrase, " Cujus regio,
ejus religio."
This calling of a truce between the followers of the
rival religious schools in Germany effected for the time

32 CRANMER
being a harmony of obedience to the Emperor. Clement
was to pay the penalty for attempting to turn against
Charles. In the beginning of 1527 a German army,
mostly composed of self-styled Lutherans and under
the command of the redoubtable Lutheran general,
Frundsberg, crossed the Alps, marched upon Rome,
sacked the Holy City as it had not been sacked since
the time of Alaric, and held the pontiff in a virtual
thraldom. By 1529, however, Charles was desirous of having
Clement favourably disposed, and with at least the
appearance of being a free agent. He made up the
quarrel, though with a comfortable certainty that the
pope would not neglect his interests, and began again
to turn his attention to the practicability of suppress
ing the Lutheran movement. The anti- Lutheran
princes of Germany were eager, and the second Diet
of Spires reverted to the position taken up at Worms.
The protest of the other party earned for them the
title of " Protestants," which was for a long time to
come to be the accepted name of all who resisted
papal pretensions.
The resistance of the Protestant princes prevented
the effective carrying out of repressive measures as
the result of the Diet; and in 1530 a fresh Diet, at
which the Emperor was present, was held at Augsburg.
A decree was now issued forbidding the teaching of
Protestant doctrines, accompanied, however, by an
Imperial promise that a General Council should be
called to decide religious questions. Nevertheless,
the Protestants were by no means prepared to accept
this position, and, in the immediate expectation of
war, banded themselves together in the League of

THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 33
Schmalkald. But the imminence of the struggle was
averted by Turkish aggression, which made it neces
sary for all parties to agree to a temporary modus
vivendi. The civil war was postponed till after the
death of Luther, nearly sixteen years later.
From the time when Luther nailed up his theses
against Tetzel on the church door, the Lutheran
doctrines were steadily formulating and spreading.
Melanchthon, the wise scholar, was early joined to the
Wittenberg professor, refining and moderating. At
the same time Zwingli was laying at Zurich the
foundations of the Swiss school of reformers, char
acterised by less mysticism, and, it may be, by a
sterner logic than the German school. From the first,
the two groups did not greatly love one another ; and
as time passed, and the diversities between them
became more marked, their mutual amenities were to
be matched only by the anti-Roman diatribes of each.
During this first period, however, they stood united
against the. pope; and the foreigners flocking to
Zurich as well as to Wittenberg absorbed the more
Puritan ideas, which Calvin was to develop and
systematise a few years later. The immunity of the
Lutherans and the independence of the Swiss gave an
asylum to ecclesiastical rebels from other lands, who
were safe among them for many a year before Eng
land would allow them to raise their voices within her
coasts. In 1530 was drawn up the Confession of Augsburg,
which was the German Protestants' confession of
faith. It was the first great expression of a standard
of faith other than that of Rome. It was tentative,
not final ; but it serves as a landmark, a dividing line,
3

34 CRANMER
besides showing the inevitable trend of opinion when
once a severance from Rome should be effected. Pro
testantism had announced itself as a system, not a
mere negation. It had also definitely carried itself
beyond the limits of that intellectual and moral
revision to which Erasmus and More had pinned
their faith.

CHAPTER IV
A Tender Conscience: 1503-1529
In its earlier stage, as we have seen, the movement for
Reformation in England had taken its rise to a great
extent among men who stood for culture, order, and
development. They contemplated no schism and no
revolution, but a practical application of fundamental
principles to the removal of palpable abuses. It had
been their task to educate intelligent opinion to a
recognition of the need both for reform and for order.
On the Continent, Luther, with a shrewder insight it
may be, and without the opportunity for steady edu
cative work, found himself forced into a much more
revolutionary and undoubtedly to him much more con
genial attitude of open war with the existing system.
But neither the wit and learning of an Erasmus nor
the passionate appeal to truth against falsehood of a
Luther were to control the changes in England. They
were to be the direct outcome of the matrimonial pro
clivities of a monarch whose capacity for discovering
the identity of the dictates of conscience and conveni
ence is quite one of the most surprising phenomena of
history. Alliance \»ith the Spanish Crown had been a leading
feature of the policy of Henry vii. ; and to that end
35

36 CRANMER
his elder son Prince Arthur had been wedded to
Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella. But the death of the prince destroyed the
plan ; till the difficulty was met by the proposal that
the widow should be married to Prince Henry, now
heir to the English throne. The Church, however,
forbade the marriage of any man to his deceased
brother's wife. But Julius il, the pope of the day,
was ready to give his assistance, and to grant a dis
pensation making the marriage lawful ; and the new
contract was carried out.
The validity of the process was formally recognised
but secretly doubted at the time. The English king
was not altogether sorry to have a loophole for break
ing the alliance by challenging the marriage if Euro
pean complications should render such a step profitable ;
and the prince, at his instigation, signed a sort of
protest which might be produced later on if occasion
demanded it. However, the dispensation was granted,
the marriage took effect, and Henry and Catherine
lived as lawful man and wife for many years ; children
being born to them, of whom one only survived, to
become known in after days as Queen Mary of Eng
land. In justification of the dispensation, it was declared
that the first marriage had not been carried beyond
the stage of ceremonial completion, and therefore had
been only technical and formal. The dissolution of a
marriage under such circumstances being accounted no
breach of the moral law, it was generally held that so
far a dispensation treating it as of no effect was legiti
mate. But the dispensation issued was absolute, not
limited by any condition as to the first marriage being

A TENDER CONSCIENCE 37
incomplete; a claim being thus asserted to set aside
what was recognised as the moral law, and to sanction
a breach of it.
So long then as it was convenient to maintain the
validity of the marriage between Henry and Catherine,
it was easy to argue that in any case the pope had
assumed the moral responsibility for the whole affair,
while there was no appeal from his judgment as to its
ecclesiastical legality; and at any rate, if any cavils
were raised, the moral point could be set aside by the
assertion that the first marriage had been purely
formal. But when it became convenient to set the
marriage aside, it could be argued that the dispensa
tion, by claiming to abrogate the moral law, was
invalidated altogether ; that the formal nature of the
first marriage could not be maintained in face of the
form of the dispensation ; and that the pope could not
relieve the parties to the contract of their responsi
bility for continuing in a relation contrary to the
divine law.
When Martin Luther faced and defied the papal
authority, King Henry took the field against him with
a book which earned for him from the pope the title
of Defender of the Faith. The Spanish alliance was
in full favour at the time; Charles was the queen's
nephew ; to challenge the authority of the pope then
would have been ipso facto to call in question the
validity of the marriage with Catherine, as the king
saw shrewdly enough ; and he maintained that
authority with proportionate vigour. Sir Thomas
More, who was clearly in doubt as to the degree of
authority to be attributed to the pope, was even per
suaded by Henry to examine the question afresh;

38 CRANMER
whereby, unfortunately for himself, he was converted
to the view then prevailing in the royal mind ; with
the result that, being a thoroughly sincere person,
he could not be reconverted when the royal mind
changed. Before long, however, the political situation shifted ;
so did the personal. As early as 1522, Wolsey 's senti
ments towards the Spanish alliance had been modified
by the failure of Charles v. to support him as candi
date for the papacy. Another papal election in the
ensuing year confirmed the change of view. After the
battle of Pavia in 1525, the Emperor showed that he
intended to work out his own policy on the Continent
without consideration for Henry, broke off the scheme
by which he was to marry the young Princess Mary,
and married the Portuguese Infanta instead.
Also, Mary herself was the only living child of the
marriage, and there was now no prospect of Catherine
having a son ; so that there was very grave danger of
a renewal of the wars of succession which had so
recently devastated England.
Also, the king's eye had been taken by Anne Boleyn,
a young maid of honour to the queen.
The combination of circumstances aroused Henry's
slumbering conscience. Supposing after all his mar
riage was no marriage ? As long as he believed, and
his wife believed, in its validity, no one, of course,
could hold them seriously guilty for having acted on
the belief ; but if one of them came to doubt it, con
science clearly demanded the thorough investigation
of the question. It was even possible that a really
tender conscience might refuse to be set at rest by any
pronouncement, however authoritative, which did not

A TENDER CONSCIENCE 39
positively confirm the doubts. The train of argument
is easy to follow out. In the long-run, if conscience
was to be appeased, an authoritative announcement
would have to be procured against the marriage.
To begin with, the king and his great minister were
in convenient agreement. As yet there was no ques
tion of challenging papal authority generally ; that
would not have fallen within the range of Wolsey's
schemes, as he was still ambitious of acquiring the
popedom, and had no mind to see it shorn of any of
its powers. The immediate purpose was to invite the
present pope to declare that his predecessor had gone
beyond his authority — to affirm, in short, that the
decision of one pope might be revised by a successor :
to the end that the marriage might be annulled.
The attitude of the chief actors and of the general
public on the question is interesting. To Catherine,
from every imaginable point of view, the proposition
was intolerable : it was a ruse to get rid of her, and
nothing else, the king's unlawful desires being the
motive. Henry for his part was willing to be quit of
her on political grounds ; he was more than willing to
be rid of her on personal grounds ; and he may even
have persuaded himself that he desired it on consci
entious grounds. The Cardinal desired it for reasons
of State. There were many men who honestly held
that the marriage had been inadmissible on any pre
text ; but even of these not a few were of opinion that
a greater wrong was involved in invalidating than in
maintaining it in form. The people at large sympa
thised with the queen, and regarded the whole scheme
as the work of the Cardinal, and as standing utterly
self -condemned in consequence. The pope was anxious

40 CRANMER
to conciliate Henry, but more anxious to conciliate the
Emperor, while he was also very much afraid of any
step derogatory to his own claims.
The earlier stages of the intriguing which went on
are obscure. When the question was first mooted, the
king declared that his one wish was to be certified
that his marriage really was legitimate; and it is
tolerably certain that Archbishop Warham, Fisher of
Rochester, and others were deceived. A plan by which
the archbishops and the cardinal were to cite Henry
before them for living with his brother's widow fell
through. So did the surprisingly audacious suggestion
that Catherine should " enter religion," and the king
have a dispensation for a new marriage without rais
ing the question of the validity of the previous one
at all. Finally, the pope was persuaded to appoint
a Commission, consisting of Wolsey and Cardinal
Campeggio, to try the case ; but Campeggio's instruc
tions were entirely obstructive ; and after a long series
of checks and delays, Clement in 1529 revoked the
whole case to Rome.
Henry was an adept in finding scapegoats; and
his anger fell upon Wolsey, whose power was torn
from him ruthlessly. But matters were serious. It
was evident that Clement would not carry out Henry's
wishes, however much he might profess his desire to
do so; in spite of some plain speaking by Stephen
Gardiner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, who
hinted, not obscurely, that if the pope could not see his
way, England might cease to recognise the necessity
for a pope.
Here then the turning-point was reached. Hitherto
the utmost that had been contemplated by any large

A TENDER CONSCIENCE 41
or influential body of opinion had been some sort of
moral reformation, an attempt to elevate the tone of
the clergy, and to suppress obviously corrupt and
corrupting usages. Hitherto there had been no
desire for a definite breach with Rome, or assertion of
independence, but only for a constitutional limitation
of her supremacy. Now the king was realising that
nothing short of independence was likely to bring him
the satisfaction of his desires on which he had set
his heart ; a large section of the clergy, including such
men as Gardiner, were ready to go with him. Among
laymen, hostility to the clerical organisation was
on the increase, and Lutheran doctrines were being
regarded with diminishing suspicion. As a great
ecclesiastic, Wolsey's unpopularity had intensified
anti-clerical feeling ; and his downfall was the signal
for a new and pronounced policy to be set in motion.

CHAPTER V
The King's Instruments
It was at this stage that greatness began to be thrust
upon Thomas Cranmer.
Hitherto the future archbishop's life had been
essentially academic in character. Born in 1487, the
son of a Nottinghamshire gentleman of no great
estate, he went up to Jesus College, Cambridge —
a recent foundation — at the age of fourteen, after a
school career which he recalled with little satisfaction.
The schoolmaster, we gather, was a bully, and may
very well have intensified the boy's natural timidity.
At Cambridge, Cranmer took to his books, and in course
of time achieved a Fellowship in 1511 ; in which year
Erasmus began to teach there. Hitherto the young
man had followed the usual course of studying the
works of the schoolmen; now, the arrival of the
apostle of the New Learning turned his mind to more
attractive and enlightening branches of scholarship.
There was also a brief matrimonial episode; he lost
his Fellowship by marrying a wife, who died a year
later. He was then re-elected to his Fellowship, and
took Orders not long afterwards. The publication in
1516 of the edition of the Greek Testament by
Erasmus was followed by a devotion on Cranmer's
42

THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 43
part to the study of Scripture, and from that time
onward till the fateful year 1529 his career was
studious, uneventful, and only in the most strictly
academical sense distinguished.
There, reading, lecturing, annotating, analysing,
storing up learning, living a stainless and untroubled
life, he would have remained to the end of his days,
had fate permitted. But fate did not permit. A
chance phrase in a chance conversation brought the
retiring scholar under the royal notice ; and no
monarch has ever been endowed with a keener eye or
a shrewder judgment in discovering the instruments
most perfectly adapted to his requirements. The
scholar was drawn from his cloister, plunged into the
whirl of half -understood political intrigue, and forced
to be a statesman when nature had intended him for
a college don. Almost without warning he found laid
on his shoulders the responsibility for steering the
Church through the stormiest seas. From Henry's
point of view, no better selection could have been
made; but Cranmer himself must have felt many a
time that there was a strong element of "cursed
spite" in the case.
In July 1529 the pope revoked the cause between
Henry and Catherine to Rome. The king left London
for Waltham Abbey ; having in his train Edward
Foxe, Provost of King's, and Stephen Gardiner,
Master of Trinity Hall, who had both been much
employed in his affairs, while the latter had used
strong language on his behalf to Pope Clement, as
already narrated. It so happened that these two met
Cranmer at the house where they were guests. The
divorce was, of course, the subject in all men's mouths.

44 CRANMER
The idea of appealing to the universities at large for
an opinion on the merits of the case had already been
mooted and acted upon, and Cranmer was one of the
doctors selected at Cambridge to examine the question.
Naturally it became the subject of conversation; with
the result that Cranmer propounded the momentous
suggestion that the appeal to the universities and
their answer would be an adequate ground for the
king to act upon directly.
,. Now the original idea had probably amounted only
to this: that a clear expression of opinion from the
learned experts of Europe would be very difficult for
the pope to resist. But the essence of Cranmer's
proposal was that if the decision of the learned on
the point of conscience was in his favour, Henry would
be entitled to dispense with the judgment of Rome on
the matter altogether. It was in effect a denial of
the pope's claim to authority as the ultimate court
of appeal; a virtual assertion of the supremacy of
national as against papal jurisdiction. It gave Henry
precisely the keynote he wanted. Gardiner, in Rome,
had hinted broadly enough at rebellion, but at re
bellion naked and unashamed. He did not deny the
papal authority, but threatened to ignore it. The new
position was quite different ; since it affirmed the
higher authority of the sovereign. Once the king's
own judgment was clear on the doubtful problem, he
was free to act. An appeal to the universities would
clear his judgment, — an end which he had failed to
obtain by appealing to Rome, — and then the dictation
of Rome would be worthless. Papal authority was
reduced to the level of an expert opinion ; ultimate
judgment reverted to the king.

THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 45
It was a curious piece of irony that Gardiner should
have been one of the men to bring Cranmer under the
royal notice; but so it was. The conversation was
reported to Henry, and Henry at once perceived
possibilities. The man who had thus seized "the
right sow by the ear," committing himself to a
sufficiently far-reaching doctrine of royal supremacy
as a mere matter of academic theory and in indubit
able good faith, might clearly be most useful. Cranmer,
reluctantly enough in all probability, was summoned
to the king's presence, and started on his career as the
king's mouthpiece.
Cranmer was endowed with a brain not lacking in
subtlety ; but it was the subtlety of the scholar, not
that of the man of affairs. In his dealings with men
he was habitually guileless and unsuspicious; his
natural inclination was to think well of his neighbour.
The king wanted Cranmer to believe in him, and he
laid himself out with that lordly geniality and impos
ing frankness which he could always command, to
captivate the Cambridge scholar, and convince him
of his own purity of motive and self-sacrificing con
scientiousness. Then he invited his paragon of doctors
to put his views of the situation into a book. During
the writing it was as well that the writer should dwell
in a congenial atmosphere; such an atmosphere as
might be found in the house of the Earl of Wiltshire.
The earl was the father of Anne Boleyn. Cranmer
became a warm admirer of the future queen, who for
her part continued to be his loyal friend to the last.
It is easy to see the necessary effect on a mind like
Cranmer's — essentially tender, trustful, responsive to
all kindly influences. His goodwill being enlisted on

46 CRANMER
the side to which his judgment naturally inclined, the
king knew that he had secured a supporter in whom
his confidence need never fail. With men like More
and Fisher, conscience was too independent. A
Wolsey might be too much influenced by personal
ambitions. Gardiner had too large a share of the
wisdom of the serpent. But Cranmer was not
ambitious ; he was not astute ; and although he was
not likely to go against his conscience, he was of the
type of those who take their conscience with them
into unexpected situations. The chances were that
if Cranmer found the royal conscience and his own
in opposition he would think that his own had made
a mistake. Henry was adroit in his arrangements. Between
July 1529 and the end of the year, the future arch
bishop was chiefly engaged on his treatise about the
divorce. Then a fresh embassy was despatched
to Rome ; the Earl of Wiltshire was at its head, and
Cranmer was in his train. He did not return till
September 1530; and before many months of the next
year had elapsed he was despatched on an embassy to
the Emperor, remaining abroad till, on Archbishop
Warham's death in August 1532, he was sent for to be
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, being installed
in the primacy on March 30, 1533. Thus he would
seem to have been but a few months in England
during the three years 1530, 1531, and 1532; while
throughout his sojourn abroad he was surrounded by
anti-papal influences calculated to strengthen his readi
ness to support the king in any reforming measures he
might see fit to adopt.
The year 1529 is a very important landmark. It

THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 47
was the year in which the king discovered Cranmer,
to provide his policy with an air of learning and piety ;
in which he acquired Thomas Cromwell, to scheme,
devise, execute, and bear the blame ; and in which he
summoned the Parliament which was to voice the
zealous support of a loyal nation, obediently proclaim
ing the wisdom and justice of the king's measures.
If it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of
Cranmer's character and abilities, the difficulty with
Thomas Cromwell is ten times greater. To Mr.
Froude, who was a reckless devotee of force, he is a
kind of St. Michael, leading the hosts who followed the
banner of Truth and Righteousness to shatter the
battalions of Falsehood and Vice ; a veritable soldier
of God, hating evil, smiting relentlessly and fearlessly ;
a pioneer, hewing at the roots of the Roman upas
tree. Historians of another colour liken him rather
to Lucifer, unless such a comparison is too discourteous
to the Prince of Darkness. For them, he was a usurer,
a liar, a coward, a traitor, a hypocrite. Justice and
mercy were commodities for which he had no use.
His loyalty to the fallen Cardinal was a sham, and
his policy was dictated exclusively by greed and
ambition. It may certainly be said without hesitation that
Mr. Froude's estimate is entirely incredible, and the
counter-description is highly imaginative, being arrived
at by systematically accepting every evil rumour as
proved truth. It is not possible to transform Cromwell
into an attractive personality or even an admirable
one ; but on the moral side, his courage, loyalty, and
unflinching resolution cannot in fairness be impeached,
while his intellectual forcefulness is beyond dispute.

48 CRANMER
Of his origin, nothing is known for certain. Rumour
made him the son of a blacksmith. However that may
have been, he found his way to Italy 1 at an early age,
and there became what he afterwards himself described
as a " ruffian," probably a trooper in one of the mer
cenary bands attached to one or another of the nobles
in that most unhappy land. There, morals of any kind
were at a discount and intelligence was at a premium.
In effect, it was a universally received maxim that if you
had an end in view it was contemptible to shrink from
the effective means of achieving it merely because con
science would be outraged. Fear of poison and of the
assassin's dagger were leading methods of persuasion
employed by princes and bravoes. The practices of
the Borgias, Sforzas, Medicis, and the rest were reduced
to principles, and enunciated by Niccolo Macchiavelli
in the most astonishing text-book of State-craft that
ever was penned, with the same placidly scientific
air as if they had been a series of indisputable mathe
matical propositions. What startles us in the Prince
is not the immorality and wickedness of the advice
given to the would-be ruler of men, but the entire
absence of shame, the apparent unconsciousness that
there is anything at all shocking about it. It would
seem as if the bare idea of right and wrong having
anything to do with political objects or methods had
never so much as crossed the great diplomatist's mind.
The writer does indeed remark on the practical uses
of a specious pretence of virtue in mollifying popular
1 Dr. Brewer was not satisfied with the evidence even on this point ;
but there seems to be no particular reason why the statement should
have been invented, while its truth would go far to explain Cromwell's
character and methods.

THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 49
prejudices, and would even convey that where there is
really nothing more to be gained by the immoral than
the moral course, it is perhaps better to follow the
latter. It is also true that Macchiavelli's personal
standard of action was that of a man of genuine
patriotism, courage, and honour. The significant
thing is, that such a man, a statesman of the first
rank, a man of the finest culture and of the nicest
taste, should have produced such a treatise as if there
were nothing out of the common about the principles
it laid down, and that he did so for the very good
reason that they were in fact the everyday principles
of his time and country.
This was the time and country where Cromwell
acquired his education as a man of the world; an
adventurer with his way to make, and the will and
the skill to make it. If the political and personal
atmosphere were calculated to nurture sheer unmiti
gated cynicism, the ecclesiastical atmosphere was no
better, for the corruption was deeper rooted, wider
spread, and more flagrantly palpable than anywhere
else in Europe. On the papal throne the Borgia had
been succeeded first by a soldier-pope, and then by the
Medici, whose refined paganism was hardly more
appropriate in the Vicar of Christ than had been the
blackguardism of Alexander vi. It was his visit
to Italy that first shocked Martin Luther into a full
consciousness of the reality of the general corruption.
Nothing but intensity of devotion could have saved a
young man in Cromwell's position from acquiring in
that country a supreme contempt for ecclesiastical
pretensions, and a total disbelief in ecclesiastical
morality.

5o CRANMER
Another lesson, easily learnt and laid to heart by an
adventurer of the future vicar-general's capacity, was
the supreme importance to any one with his way to
make of becoming a thorough man of business ; and
that for two very good reasons. He must acquire
wealth, and he must become important to some person
of higher importance, if he was to climb the ladder.
Wealth he wanted, not for the sake of ease or luxury
or hoarding, but as an instrument of power ; and he
acquired it without superfluous scrupulosity as to
methods. He had, it would seem, no more hesitation
in receiving than in giving a bribe; but when he
entered on his later career as the hammer of the
Church and the nobility, he distinguished. From
those who were in the way, he took no bribes to let
them stay ; but he extracted large sums as the price
of mercy from those whom he could have afforded to
ignore. In the days of his obscurity, he added money-
lending to practice in the lower branches of the
legal profession. In the course of time he obtained
a seat in Parliament, succeeded in attaching himself to
the great Cardinal's entourage, acquired his confidence,
and found remunerative employment as his agent in
the ordering of his colleges and the manipulation of his
finances. It is not suggested that he defrauded the
Cardinal himself, but he was very commonly charged
with defrauding other parties concerned in the trans
actions with which he was entrusted.
In October 1529 the Cardinal fell. Cromwell stood
by him stubbornly and publicly. His detractors to
day declare that this was due solely to his astute
perception that in this course lay the best chance of
saving his own skin ; but the game was a singularly

THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 51
audacious one to play, and at the time he was given
full credit for exceptionally meritorious loyalty. He
elected to stand by his master and face the storm — in
his own characteristic phrase, " to make or mar."
When even the gracious Thomas More, succeeding
Wolsey as Chancellor, could not, if the Chronicler Hall
is to be credited, refrain from insulting the fallen min
ister, Cromwell boldly took up the cudgels publicly in
Parliament ; while characteristically trusting in private
to the sedative influence of coin judiciously laid out.
How he obtained the king's personal favour is
uncertain. According to the most favourable view,
Henry's admiration for his loyalty won him ; but the
true explanation probably lies in the king's unfailing
perception of the best instruments for his own
purposes. He had already discovered in Cranmer
the combination of learning, pliancy, and virtue which
he wanted for some of his objects ; and in Cromwell he
perceived the servant who would be at once absolutely
faithful and absolutely unscrupulous. It is likely
enough that the secretary seized the first opportunity
of propounding to the king the plan of openly setting
the papacy at defiance; but that could hardly have
served to bring him into favour, as he had been fore
stalled in the idea by Cranmer. Whatever the reason
was, however, the early months of 1530 saw Thomas
Cromwell thoroughly installed in Henry's favour,
instead of being crushed as his many ill-wishers had
undoubtedly hoped and expected. As yet, however,
the time had not arrived for making full use either of
Cranmer or Cromwell. The moderate men were to
have their turn ; More was to initiate reform, and
Warham was to lend it his authority.

CHAPTER VI
The Supreme Head: 1529-1534
There are four aspects in which the Reformation as
carried out by Henry requires to be considered — his
attitude to the pope ; to ecclesiastical administration ;
to clerical emoluments ; and to doctrine.
In respect of the first, from 1529 we observe a rapid
advance towards the flat denial of papal authority ; in
which the king is supported with a whole heart by
Cranmer, and by the majority of the laity ; and with
some hesitation by the generality of the clergy, at
least up to the eleventh hour.
On the ecclesiastical organisation, the royal claim
to supreme control is pressed with steadily increas
ing severity, but always under protest from the
clergy, with the exception of Cranmer and some
others. On ecclesiastical emoluments, the king's clutches are
laid with merciless rigour, upon pretexts more or less
specious ; beginning with exactions by way of fine for
illegalities, and proceeding to wholesale confiscation.
Throughout, the king appears to have the moral
support of Cranmer and a very few others of the
clergy, of so many of the laity as are enriched by the
spoils, and of a section of honest but fanatical re-

THE SUPREME HEAD 53
formers ; in the later stages at least, popular sentiment,
outside Parliament, is with the victims.
In respect of doctrine, the line is clear. Accepted
catholic doctrine is maintained, only the most flagrant
vulgar distortions of it being checked. Heresies
preached by men who had been imbibing the teaching
of the German and Swiss reformers are repressed, and
the preachers subjected to the extreme penalties of the
law. Cranmer is allowed, indeed, to import a mild
Lutheran flavour even into official utterances, but the
flavour is very mild. On all leading points there is no
apparent departure from the doctrines of the old
Church. In fine, while it inevitably followed from the
measures taken that the authority of the ecclesiastical
body was undermined by its subordination to the
secular sovereign, while its wealth was appropriated
largely to secular uses, and while the papacy was set
at defiance, the whole scope and aim of the Reforma
tion as contemplated by Henry and his instruments
was not doctrinal but political, and incidentally in
some degree social. It was a part of that larger
scheme which had absolutism for its goal ; and in that
scheme, the function of Cromwell was active achieve
ment, that of Cranmer passive acceptance.
The challenge to the papal authority takes form
primarily in the continuation of the story of the
divorce, and secondarily in the enactments resisting
specific papal claims in respect of church government
and ecclesiastical emoluments ; merging finally in the
claim of Royal Supremacy.
The divorce was, in fact, the real end the king had
in view ; he had personally, as far as we can judge, no

54 CRANMER
desire for a severance from Rome if that specific object
could be attained without it. Among the clergy,
however, including many of those who were most
emphatically catholic and orthodox, there was a
strong antagonism to the domination of the pope,
creating a large party favourable to the divorce as a
crucial point in the contest ; while Cromwell was
probably much more definitely resolved than his
master on getting rid of the papal claim in order to
assert the royal claim the more decisively. Fisher of
Rochester from the beginning, and Sir Thomas More
in a very short time, realised and dreaded the com
pleteness of the coming breach, and the secular inten
tion of its promoters ; but the very men whose names
in later years were most intimately associated with
the Romanist reaction were at this period prominent
and even violent supporters of the king's policy.
As being the most decisive factor in breaking off
the Roman connection, we may deal first with the
divorce proceedings. The principle at stake having
been explained, their progress does not require to he
followed in great detail. The judgments of the uni
versities were obtained during the early months of
1530 ; they were indecisive ; they were very far from
unanimous ; and it is by no means easy to affirm that
they were on the whole more favourable to one party
than to the other. It was, moreover, notorious that
every available kind of outside pressure was brought
to bear on both sides, and that the judgments delivered
were largely influenced by issues which, judicially
speaking, had nothing to do with the real point. The
king's party, however, declared that the justice of his
cause was now conclusively demonstrated. But no

THE SUPREME HEAD 55
results followed. Cranmer at the papal court could
get nothing tangible. Sent abroad again in 1531, he
spent a year for the most part among the German
Lutherans, and some emphatic expressions of opinion
were obtained from German and Swiss reformers ; but
the pope would do nothing, and Catherine stoutly
refused to acknowledge any adverse judgment but the
pope's own. In August 1532 Archbishop Warham died ;
the king fixed on Cranmer as his successor, and also
made up his own mind to a decisive step. He married
Anne privately, probably in November. Cranmer after
long delay returned in January, and was installed in
the archbishopric at the end of March (1533).
This marks a decisive stage. Papal Bulls for Cran
mer's appointment had been duly obtained ; but, as a
preliminary to installation, he took an unprecedented
course. The king had recently discovered that all
bishops owned a divided allegiance, in view of the
separate vows they had to take of loyalty to the pope
and loyalty to the Crown. Cranmer seized the oppor
tunity to declare for the Crown ; prefacing his oath to
the pope with a declaration that he would only hold it
binding so far as it did not clash with his oath to the
king. The installation was immediately followed by the
passing of the great Act in Restraint of Appeals, which
was in fact a national abjuration of papal jurisdiction.
That it was passed with a direct personal object, as a
sort of royal relief bill, does not alter the fact that it
was in itself a dignified and constitutional declaration
of an independence which in theory had never been
wholly relinquished, though in practice it had been in
habitual abeyance. The Act affirmed the final char-

56 CRANMER
acter of the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts within
the realm of England, forbidding appeals from them
to Rome. It expressed directly the position which
Cranmer had himself propounded when he was still
no more than a Cambridge scholar.
It remained only to add the finishing touch. The
new archbishop proceeded at once to ask leave to
hold a court to settle the king's matter ; and leave was
given in terms which conveyed with sufficient emphasis
the subordinate position which the primate had accepted.
While the arrangements were going forward, Convoca
tion was called upon to deliver its opinion on the val
idity of the dispensation ; and gave its verdict in the
king's favour. Cranmer called his court; the queen
refused to attend, and was declared contumacious ; on
May 23 judgment was given voiding the marriage.
Five days later, Cranmer proceeded to declare the
marriage with Anne Boleyn lawful and valid, and her
public coronation followed immediately.
The protest of Rome was met by both king and
archbishop appealing from the pope to the higher
authority of the next General Council ; the strongest
opponents of the divorce among the bishops admitting
that the principle of doing so was valid. Nevertheless.,
for the space of another year there still seemed to be a
possibility of reconciliation ; since there was a party
at Rome which dreaded the effects of a complete sever
ance from England. On the other hand, the Emperor's
party was urgent, and its urgency carried the day.
The king might recede from the directly anti-papal
enactments of his Parliament ; his friends at the papal
court were hopeful of obtaining a secure promise that
if he submitted his case to the papal court he should

THE SUPREME HEAD 57
have a decision entirely in his favour. The Imperial
ists, realising the danger of the scale being turned
against them if delays were prolonged, hurried matters
forward ; and the door of reconciliation, such as it was,
was finally closed by the definite pronouncement in
March 1534, that the marriage with Catherine was
good and valid, and the marriage with Anne illegal.
In England, in the meantime, the anti-papal and anti-
ecclesiastical policies had been at work side by side.
In the former category there had as yet been only
one important Act, besides the decisive one in Restraint
of Appeals; and this, the first Act in Restraint of
Annates, had emanated directly from the clergy
themselves. It had been the custom for Rome to
demand annates, otherwise first - fruits or the first
year's income, from every bishop or archbishop on
appointment; and this impost was a very cruel one,
especially of course in cases where a See was vacated
by death or for other reasons soon after occupation.
Gardiner, recently appointed to Winchester, had been
obliged to borrow heavily to meet the papal claims.
An Act was accordingly passed (April 1532), allowing
only a tax of 5 per cent. ; and further laying down
that even if the pope refused the Bulls, the consecra
tions should proceed and be held valid.
The Act was in form one for the relief of the clergy
from a papal impost ; but the king had no great
interest in relieving the clergy — as he proved not long
afterwards by having the annates diverted by Act of
Parliament to his own use. At the time, however, he
seems to have intended the Act chiefly as a weapon to
be held in reserve and launched against the pope at'
his discretion. The pope himself was only allowed to

58 CRANMER
know that there was something brewing; what pre
cisely the something was he could not discover till
after the divorce was completed.
But between the close of 1529 and the final rupture
with Rome, the attack on clerical abuses, clerical
privileges, clerical emoluments, and clerical authority
was carried on with increasing vigour.
It began with the opening of Parliament in
November 1529. Three bills were brought in, which
did in fact deal with real abuses, but were recognised
by Bishop Fisher at the outset as being specious
precursors of an attack on the Church, at least in the
case of the Probate and Mortuaries Acts, which were in
restraint of the excessive fees enforced by the clerical
courts. The third, an Act against Pluralities and Non-
residence, was in part a blow at papal nominees, and
would have been generally admitted to be a really sound
reform, but for the schedule of exceptions, which was
too conveniently favourable to the promoters of the bill.
In the following year (1530) Cranmer was abroad
on the embassy to the pope, and the business of
obtaining the opinion of the universities was in
active operation. Cromwell, now in the king's personal
service, was rising in influence; but Henry was
ostensibly occupied a good deal with the process of
heresy-hunting and suppressing the literature inspired
by the Reformers, who were issuing it from German
printing presses.
At the close of the year, however, almost im
mediately on the death of Wolsey, he announced that
the clergy and the Commons had brought themselves
into a parlous position under the Statute of Praemunire,
by accepting the legatine authority of the late

THE SUPREME HEAD 59
Cardinal. The mere fact that he had himself been
responsible did not weigh with the monarch; who
impressed upon the clergy the advisability of their
making haste to purchase pardon lest they should be
subjected to a more stringent process of forfeiture.
Convocation, meeting in January (1531), recognised
the wisdom of submission, and offered above a
hundred thousand pounds — an enormous sum in those
days. This, however, did not satisfy the king. He
proceeded — and here perhaps the hand of Cromwell
may be detected — to demand also a formal recognition
of his own authority in matters ecclesiastical, includ
ing the acknowledgment that the "king is the only
Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and
clergy of England." It was indeed implied that no
new claim was being put forward ; that there was
here nothing beyond the formal statement of the
authority which had been asserted and implicitly
acknowledged for many generations. Nevertheless, it
was not without grave misgivings that the demand was
received ; nay, in its primary form it was rejected.
The aged Archbishop Warham, however, found a door of
escape for his flock from what had seemed a dangerous
impasse, by introducing the saving clause, " so far as the
laws of Christ permit." In this form the declaration
was put to the Upper House of Convocation. No one
spoke. "Silence," the archbishop warned them, "is
assent " ; a voice replied, " Then are we all silent " — and
so the declaration was passed. One point, however, must
have remained obvious — that it would be exceedingly
difficult to argue that any claim the king might put for
ward on the strength of the general declaration could
be held void on the strength of the saving clause.

60 CRANMER
What may have been the precise object of the king
and his advisers in requiring this declaration, it is
difficult to say ; since the notion that it contained any
new claim was expressly repudiated. Apparently it
was put forward merely as a feeler, for a very much
more serious move was to follow ere long.
In January 1532 a direct attack was opened by the
Commons, who presented a " Supplication " against
the " Ordinaries." It began by attributing the alarm
ing spread of heretical opinions and literature to the
unsatisfactory methods of the ecclesiastical courts,
and from this it worked up to the position that the
Church framed and put in force canons and regulations
contrary to royal authority, good government, and
justice; further petitioning that no canons should
have force until they had received the royal assent.
Incidentally great stress was laid on the abuses in the
ecclesiastical courts, although the advocates of the
clergy inclined to maintain that these were, at the worst,
no whit more scandalous than those of the lay courts.
Convocation was actively engaged in preparing new
canons and regulations for discipline and the removal
of abuses when the thunderbolt fell. Some delay had
been caused by a quarrel between the king and the
Commons over the " Bill of Wards," intended to
legalise sundry exactions on the part of the Lords.
The Commons, touched at their tender point — their
pockets — refused the Wards Bill; being no more
minded to submit to the exactions of the Lords than
to those of the clergy ; a position which seems to be
logical, but is apt to be contemned as proving that
sordid motives alone weighed seriously with them. It
would, however, appear that to have submitted in the

THE SUPREME HEAD 61
one case, while clamouring for redress in the other, would
have been both illogical and pusillanimous. However,
the effect was that the " Supplication against the Ordin
aries " was not presented in Convocation till April ;
when it was accompanied by a demand for an answer.
The answer given, generally attributed to Gardiner
(now Bishop of Winchester), was lacking neither in
dignity nor in astuteness. It maintained that the
accusations made were general, not specific, so that it
was impossible to set about disproving them. In
respect of the principle, it was affirmed that the
Church was bound to make laws which could not be
submitted to lay authority ; and that the laws of the
land and the laws of the Church were both derived from
the same source, namely, the Word of God, and could
not really conflict ; while the king was entreated with
the customary compliments to prove himself once
more, as he had so signally done in the past, the
Protector of the Church.
Which answer the king condemned as " slender/' and
demanded something more solid. Also he signified his
displeasure with Gardiner for the part he had taken.
The bishop's reply was an effective though diplomatic
argument ad hominem, appealing to the king's own
book against Luther as the locus classicus in which
the case for the Church was presented convincingly,
and implying that he could not help remaining con
vinced thereby until His Majesty should bring to light
the new data by which he had been induced to change
his mind. It does not seem at all impossible that
Gardiner's display of independence at this juncture was
responsible some months later for the selection in his
place of Cranmer to succeed Warham in the primacy.

62 CRANMER
Convocation returned a second answer, in which
they expressed their readiness that, in consideration of
the king's extraordinary learning and wisdom, no
future regulations they might make should be enforced
on the laity, unless the royal assent had been given ;
and that in respect of existing canons, any which
were suspected of being against the laws of the realm
should be examined and modified. Finally, however,
they were forced to assent to the two articles which
constituted what was known as the " Submission of the
Clergy " ; promising to enact no new constitutions or
canons except with the royal assent, and to submit to
a Commission consisting of the king with sixteen of
the clergy and sixteen laymen such of the existing
canons as were held to be prejudicial. The remaining
canons to continue in force.
This Submission of the clergy was a real act of
surrender. There never had been, indeed, any practi
cal power of promulgating constitutions which could
override the ordinary law; but short of that the
Church had claimed and exercised the right of enforc
ing her spiritual or quasi-spiritual legislation without
submitting it to the approbation of any temporal
authority. That right was now wiped out. At the
same time it is possible to acquire the erroneous
impression that the right of spiritual legislation was
transferred to the State ; whereas in form a right of
veto only was conceded to the Crown. Whatever the
practical effect might be when the crown happened to
be worn by a Henry viii., there was here no recogni
tion, expressed or implied, of parliamentary control.
Nevertheless, it was felt that the ecclesiastical
organisation had suffered a very serious blow. Thomas

THE SUPREME HEAD 63
More, most loyal of lay Churchmen, felt that his posi
tion as Chancellor, irlcsome from the beginning, was
now impossible, and he resigned. Warham, already
so far enfeebled with age that Stokesley, Bishop of
London, had of late generally acted for him, appears
to have been quite broken down, and died some four
months later, leaving as his last public utterance a
protest against all the measures which had been aimed
against the authority of the pope or the privileges of
the Church. The selection of Cranmer to succeed him
showed that independence of spirit was not a charac
teristic which the king desired in his primate.
This attack on the hitherto acknowledged con
stitutional rights of Convocation and the authority of
the spiritual courts was accompanied by two measures
directed against what were for the most part genuine
abuses. The first of these dealt with the curious
institution known as " benefit of clergy," under which
all "clerks" charged with offences against the law
could have their cases withdrawn from the lay courts,
and dealt with by the " Ordinaries." Originally this
had amounted to something very like substituting
trial by jury for trial by ordeal; but in course of
time it had come to mean that anyone who could
road or write escaped the hand of the king's law by
claiming benefit of clergy, and very commonly got off
with very inadequate penalties. Considering the
extravagant barbarity of some of the punishments
for minor offences then in vogue, it may well be
doubted whether crime was really encouraged by
ecclesiastical leniency; but the double system was
clearly improper. For the time all that was done
was to limit the benefit to the ordained clergy. The

64 CRANMER
second Act was a kind of appendix to the existing
Statutes of Mortmain, being intended as a check on
the transfer of property to the Church, and a counter-
move to the ingenious devices by which the Mortmain
Statutes had been evaded.
Down to the close of 1533 the " Reformation," as
here described, was a process of clearing the ground.
The Act in Restraint of Appeals was a formal renuncia
tion of papal allegiance ; the marriage with Anne
Boleyn, and the judgments on "the king's matter,"
delivered by the new archbishop, were practical
demonstrations of the same principle, which the
Annates Act had carried into the field of finance, or
papal demands on the clergy. But while the Church's
independence of the pope was being asserted, her
dependence on the king was being emphasised and
increased by the declaration of the royal supremacy,
and by the submission of the clergy ; and at the same
time a series of Acts, which it was as yet reasonable to
describe as being "in restraint of abuses," had been
aimed at the authority and the emoluments of the
ecclesiastical organisation. The whole was but the
prelude to an assertion of the complete subordination
of the Church to the Crown, of the Spirituality to the
Temporal power, which amounted to a revolution ; and
to an application of the powers thus asserted, after a
fashion wholly tyrannical, by methods grossly immoral.
Abuses and corruptions there were, grave and plentiful
enough ; even for confiscations within reasonable limits
strong arguments could be adduced. But for whole
sale spoliation and humiliation, such as Henry and
Cromwell enforced and Cranmer accepted, it is not
possible in the records to find any adequate excuse;

THE SUPREME HEAD 65
except by the simple process of swallowing all the
evidence on one side, however tainted, and ignoring all
the evidence on the other, however independent.
The gain both to Church and State of once for all
asserting complete independence of Rome, few will be
found to dispute. The political need of abolishing
anything like an imperium in imperio, of asserting
the control of the nation in its temporal capacity as a
State over the nation in its spiritual capacity as a
Church, may be freely recognised. The justice of
diverting a part of the vast wealth of a great organ
isation, accumulated on hypotheses largely ignored in
its use, may be challenged, but may also be frankly
defended. But the first was achieved by sacrificing
an innocent and defenceless woman; the third was
carried past all bounds, on the strength of evidence
acquired by corruption and violence; and as to the
second, it was carried through, in part at least, by
threats of confiscation, and by calling into play retro
spectively a law which the authorities, including the
king himself, had deliberately set on one side. As to
Cranmer's own share in the matter, he upheld the
principle, but was not responsible for the method.
Nevertheless, no predecessor of his in the Metropolitan
See would have thus deliberately ranged himself on
the side of the State against his Order. There is no
sort of reason to doubt that in so doing he acted
honestly according to his convictions ; but it is scarcely
surprising that the whole-hearted advocates of the
claims of his Order find it difficult to speak of him
otherwise than as a traitor to it. Still, to find in
his action a demonstration of servility is certainly
unreasonable, though it may not be unnatural.
5

CHAPTER VII
The Hand of Cromwell: 1534-1540
The parliamentary measures of 1534 were chiefly
devoted to confirming previous declarations with in
creased vigour. The Submission of the Clergy and
the Restraint of Appeals were combined in one Act.
Moreover, according to the form of the Act, the
enforcement of the existing canons and constitutions
was to be carried out at the peril of the clergy;
inasmuch as it was left to them to prove that such
ordinances were not contrary to the prerogative and
the public good, whereas the intention of the original
"submission" clearly was that each one should he
held valid until it should be challenged specifically.
The Annates Act was renewed, accompanied by a
formal appropriation to the king of the right to make
all appointments to bishoprics, abbeys, etc., under the
form of a conge d'elire ; and all remaining pecuniary
claims of Rome not wiped out thereby were abolished
by the Act against " Peter Pence." The spring session
concluded with the Act of Succession, excluding Mary,
and fixing the succession on the offspring of Anne
Boleyn ; Elizabeth being by this time some six months
old. This Act was to be used to strike at two of the first

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 67
men in the country — More, whose European reputa-
tioji^anked_jjbgye that _of__any other Englishman
living, and Fisher of Rochester^ whose fame for
character and learning rendered him incomparably
t£e most admirable representative of tdie~ clergy r~~He,
like Warham, had misliked Henry's marriage with
Catherine, but had still more misliked the divorce.
His was the voice which had been most boldly raised
in defence of the ancient privileges of the Church.
Almost, though not wholly, alone among the bishops,
he had maintained the authority of Rome, as More
also maintained it.
And now the whole country was required to swear
to the Act of Succession; but the form of the oath
prescribed, after the Act was passed, involved also a
preamble abjuring Rome and affirming the Royal
Supremacy. It might well be maintained that the
main part of the oath was a necessity, to put all
possible dispute out of question in the future; and
even those who would uphold Mary's claim in theory
might be required and expected to pledge themselves
in act to Elizabeth ; but it was obvious that to uphold
papal authority in the Church, or to deny the possi
bility of recognising a layman as her head, could
not reasonably be perverted into treason, or even
into disloyalty.
Now it is one thing to demand of all subjects of the
realm that they shall obey the law, and another to
compel them on pain of being held guilty of treason
to swear that they agree with the principle on which
the law is based. It is not possible to suppose
that the oath was constructed with any other object
than the creation of an excuse for the humiliation or

68 CRANMER
destruction of all who questioned the Royal Supremacy.
More and Fisher were both ready to swear to the suc
cession, but not to the Supremacy; and so were the
monks of the London Charterhouse, the Observants of
Greenwich, and the Brigittines of Brentford. Cranmer
was innocent enough to try to persuade the king to be
content without insisting on the preamble — he had
not realised that the object in view was to get the
oath refused, not to get it accepted. The recalci
trants were imprisoned. Of the monks who protested,
some gave way. In November the Act was renewed,
this time including the form of the oath, retrospectively,
to give some colour of law to the penalty heretofore
illegally enforced. An Act was passed declaring the
king to be Supreme Head (which as yet had only been
affirmed by Convocation); a new Annates Bill was
passed, appropriating to the Crown the first-fruits
which had been withdrawn by the previous Acts
from Rome ; and a new Treasons Act was passed, by
which the expression of opinion, or even the refusal
to express an opinion, was converted into high treason,
hitherto confined, by the Act of Edward iil, to specific
actions against the king.
More and Fisher remained stubborn; some of the
monks also recanted their submission ; and the result
was a series of quasi-judicial murders which shocked
Christendom not a little, but at the same time testi
fied conclusively to the complete ruthlessness of the
methods the king was resolved to adopt.
There is no doubt that this ruthlessness was by no
means to Cranmer's liking. Himself of a gentle and
forgiving disposition, he never relinquished an amiable
belief that he could persuade recalcitrants of all sorts

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 69
to see the error of their ways, and an amiable desire to
persuade the king to grant pardon on terms of sub
mission. Unhappily his amiability was coupled with
an entire lack of self-reliance, which to more virile
minds assumes the aspect of a slavish obsequiousness
to the ruling powers. Yet the man was no self-seeking
hypocrite, no adventurer like Cromwell, no intriguer
like half the courtiers of the day. But to all appear
ance, whenever he was brought into contact with a
really masterful personality, such as Henry's or Crom
well's, he lost the power of independent judgment, and
found himself impelled to surrender to the dominating
force. Endowed with a singularly subtle intellect, he
could maintain a thesis against any of his clerical
brethren — academically; but he almost lost belief in
any thesis which was flatly against the king's opinion.
Within a year of the execution of More and Fisher,
this pitiful weakness in the primate was to exhibit a
melancholy exemplification. Catherine was hardly in
her grave when her successor on the throne was struck
down to make way for a new queen. The truth of
that cruel tragedy no man knows. There are only two
positive facts ascertainable — that Anne's husband had
chosen her successor before he struck at her ; and that
the charge against her came as a cruel shock to the
archbishop. But the king professed himself convinced
of her guilt, on what evidence we do not know ; and
Cranmer pronounced against her, on what evidence we
do not know ; not only declaring her guilty, but pro
nouncing the very marriage to have been invalid. On
the theory of Cranmer's character just laid down, it
may be doubted whether he held the evidence itself to
be convincing, but it is likely that he believed the

70 CRANMER
king's opinion to be honest, and assumed, according to
his wont, that the king must be in the right.
An identical spirit was shown four years later by
Cranmer when Cromwell's day of retribution arrived
The archbishop could not bring himself to believe that
one whom he had held in such regard and esteem had
been guilty of the enormities laid to his charge ; yet
he could not stake his opinion against the king's
infallibility. Henry could not be unjust; the guilt
must be real. The frame of mind is not at all
incredible. There are vast numbers of people who
will reckon any evidence, short of ocular demonstra
tion, as of a feather's weight when the authority they
recognise declares against it. Henry had an extra
ordinary power of fascinating nearly everyone with
whom he came in contact ; Cranmer he seems to have
entirely magnetised.
The deaths of Anne and of Cromwell were both
merely casual incidents of the Reformation — illus
trations of the temper of Henry, Cranmer, and others,
but without serious influence on the course of events.
The queen had ceased to be important after the validity
of her marriage was recognised ; the secretary had
accomplished the work for which he was needed,
before his master dispensed with his services. It was
in 1535, with his appointment as Vicar-General, and
vicegerent of the king in matters ecclesiastical, that
those services were called into full play. The
" Treasons " Act of the previous year had already
enabled him to initiate a reign of terror by flooding
the country with spies and informers, whose reports
acquired a dangerous significance from the Act. Now
he was enabled to open a campaign of spoliation.

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 71
Monastic institutions under any circumstances are
open to grave objections, though it would be absurd to
speak of them as altogether bad. Given a band of
enthusiasts, bound to resist the allurements of the
world and the flesh for themselves, and to do battle
with the devil for others : some misapprehensions as
to legitimate pleasures, some errors as to the method
of conducting the war with evil, do not destroy the
value of a self-denying example. But the system is
by its nature peculiarly liable to abuse. If moral
enthusiasm fades, principles and practice soon find
themselves in contradiction, and the corrupting influ
ence of misconduct is intensified. Vows taken before
the novice realises what is involved in them become a
burden too great to be borne, and the flavour of stolen
fruit is proverbial. From the earliest times monks have
been anathematised for abusing their profession ; the
tongue of scandal at all times loved to dwell upon
their misdeeds ; and there is a tolerably strong pre
sumption that the tongue of scandal was not without
excuse. The legal " benefit of clergy " protecting them
from the penalties suffered by the lay criminal had a
moral counterpart or complement in the abuse of
sacerdotal authority, providing both the opportunity
for ill -doing, and comparative immunity from its
results. It is inconceivable that communities which
enriched their exchequer by the exhibition of sham
relics and the concoction of fraudulent miracles should
have escaped a serious blunting of the moral sense ;
and though the tale of such miracles and relics was no
doubt exaggerated, at least so far as concerned wilful
deception, their general prevalence is beyond dispute.
The inducement to what may euphemistically be called

72 CRANMER
lack of discipline must have been immense throughout
the whole class of " exempt " monasteries — houses,
that is, which were exempt from episcopal visitation,
and were practically left to themselves. Comfortable
doctrines on the subject of absolution and penance,
however illegitimate and contrary to the true teaching
as understood by the learned and the pious, made vice
easy and attractive wherever authority was lax ; and
wherever abbots or priors were easy-going or worse,
the moral tone of the entire house inevitably sank to
the lowest point. These things are not questions of
evidence ; they are obvious inherent tendencies of the
system. A house which was well ruled would be an
admirable landlord, a generous dispenser of charity, a
beacon of piety : ill-ruled, it became corrupt itself, and
a source of corruption and superstition.
What the real condition of the average monastery or
convent was at this time, the evidence does not show
at all conclusively ; nor is it here possible to set that
evidence forth. There is no practical alternative
between detailed treatment which demands volumes
and summary treatment which forbids details. To
select fragments as examples and base a conclusion
upon them, must mean only that the historian, having
formed his judgment, selects for report the details
which square with it most obviously. A summary
expression of opinion is all that is here possible.
We have, then, the general proposition that except
at periods when a passionate wave of spiritual emotion
was sweeping large numbers of enthusiasts into the
life of self-denial, the inevitable tendency of the system
was to laxity of discipline, producing widespread cor
ruption of practice and abuse of privilege. Hence

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 73
there is a preliminary presumption that in the early
half of the sixteenth century the general tone and
standard of the religious houses was low. That many
of them played deliberately upon popular credulity for
their own enrichment is certain. The probability that
any large proportion of the inmates were greatly
occupied with industry, good works, or the pursuit of
learning, is exceedingly small. In some cases it can
hardly be doubted that so-called rehgious houses had
degenerated into hotbeds of vice. On the other hand,
the fate of the Observants and the Carthusians of the
London Charterhouse proves that many a monk was
no less ready to face martyrdom than the stoutest of
Protestants ; that there were houses where the monastic
ideal was devoutly and nobly upheld.
Now, if the foregoing paragraphs give a correct
account, it is tolerably clear that, whatever the con
dition of the monasteries at the time, the system was
a bad one, and its destruction was desirable in the
interest of rehgion and of the State. But the justifi
cation of the manner of the suppression depends
entirely on the strength of the case against the con
dition of the monasteries at that particular time.
In the reign of Henry vii., Cardinal Morton had
found occasion to use strong language with regard to
particular religious houses and their heads. Later,
when Wolsey was in power, he, too, had spoken words
of warning; more, he had commenced a process of
suppression, abolishing several houses, and appropri
ating their incomes to educational uses, as, for instance,
for the foundation of Cardinal College (Christ Church)
at Oxford. When Tudor ministers pronounced words
of warning, they were not infrequently intended as

74 CRANMER
forcible hints that penalties might be commuted for
cash, rather than as expressions of judicial opinion;
and guilt which was utilised to provide funds for the
minister's schemes or his master's coffers may have
been rather less guilty than it was called. Moreover,
for centuries the secular clergy had been jealous of the
" regulars," and had nourished a genuine grievance
against them — partly because of an assumption of
superiority which was galling, and partly because of
an absorption of ecclesiastical property which was
more than galling — so that the diversion of monastic
funds to other ecclesiastical purposes had not been
regarded with general disfavour : the bias was towards
finding the excuses for such diversion adequate.
Cromwell's scheme, however, was no development of
Wolsey's. He proposed to divert the wealth of the
monasteries into the royal exchequer. According to
one theory of his aim, he perceived that they were
dens of iniquity, instituted an inquiry which more
than justified his worst anticipations, crushed the evil
thing for the public good, and restored to the State
the revenues which had been so grossly abused by its
trustees. According to the other extreme theory, the
whole business was a piece of sheer robbery utterly
without excuse. The fact appears to be that there
was a really strong case for the abolition of the
system, and ample ground for confiscation in indi
vidual cases ; but that the evidence on which whole
sale spoliation was said to be justified was never
made public, and had been gathered by methods which
would in any case have deprived it of real weight;
while the use to which the spoils were put was wholly
iniquitous.

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 75
The process was simple. The king as Supreme
Head delegated to Cromwell as his Vicar-General full
powers to act and appoint commissioners at his
pleasure ; on the basis of interpreting the Supremacy
as an unqualified autocracy. The Vicar-General in
stituted a visitation by creatures of his own — Leigh,
Layton, Ap Rice, Petre, London — who bullied the
monks, accepted confessions and informations from
discontented inmates, treated refusals to answer
the most insulting questions as admissions of guilt,
and succeeded generally in collecting a vast amount
of unsifted scandal. So much is absolutely certain
from the letters of the commissioners. According to
tradition, their reports, accompanied by written con
fessions, were put together; a "black book" of the
damning proofs was laid before a horror-stricken
Parliament; the monasteries were wiped out, to a
chorus of stern applause from all right-thinking men ;
and the reactionists in Mary's reign seized the brief
moment of their triumph to make away with the
record of enormities. In fact, however, while no one
will dispute that to many — perhaps to most — honest
men, the monasteries in bulk were anathema, the rest
of the story is unconvincing. Hugh Latimer declared
that when the tale of iniquity was told in Parliament
(in February 1536) it was received with a universal
" Down with them," which is probably true enough,
though on the other side we are told that the House
took much stirring before it would pass the attendant
Act. The records, however, go to show that what
was laid before the House was, not the evidence which
had stopped short with the king and Cromwell, but
broad allegations as to which His Majesty declared

76 CRANMER
that he had found them fully proved. Such an
announcement was sufficient for that Parliament. As
for the "black book," no explicit account of it is
known till Elizabeth was on the throne ; the descrip
tion of its character is suspected of being mythical;
of the lost reports and confessions nothing remains
but some MS. summaries known as the Comperta;
and the existing data make it hardly less likely that
it was the Protestants who destroyed the reports
because of the inadequacy of the evidence they con
tained, than that the Romanists did so because of
what they revealed.
The course of suppression was as follows. On 2nd
October (1535) Leigh and Layton started on their
visitation; precisely four months later the results of
their investigations were laid before Parliament as
above narrated. Admittedly their condemnation did
not even approach being universal ; and the shortness
of the time is sufficient proof that it would be absurd
to call the inquiry thorough. A bill was passed,
giving all the monasteries with less than £200 a year
to the king, on the general hypothesis that a small
house must be a bad house ; and the process of seizure,
and of dispersion of the inmates, was at once com
menced. Meantime, Cromwell's commissioners laid
upon the religious communities new rules and regula
tions, grievous to be borne, with what can only
be regarded as the set intention of making the
monastic life insupportable.
The popular mind, however, did not share the
authoritative view as to purging the land of the
unclean thing, and a slight rising in Lincolnshire in
the autumn was followed by a decidedly dangerous

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 77
movement in the North, known as the " Pilgrimage of
Grace." This was emphatically popular in character,
and was directed against the suppression of mon
asteries and other appropriations of ecclesiastical
property. The leader, a lawyer named Aske, was
cozened by fair words and promises ; and the gathering
dispersed. The promises were not kept, but on the
first sign of renewed disturbance the sternest measures
were put in force, several examples were made in
towns and villages, and the late leaders were put
to death. But the whole story is significant of
the popular attitude in the north country towards
religious innovations, and of the unscrupulous if time-
honoured methods adopted in quelling opposition to
the king's designs.
The pilgrimage served as a ready excuse for a
fresh visitation of the North, resulting in extensive
suppressions on the plea of complicity in the rising ;
for two years more the process was continued of
worrying monasteries into voluntary self-extinction,
or extracting confessions of varying veracity which
warranted suppression ; till finally in May 1539 an
Act was passed giving all monastic property to the
king. A great deal of what was thus seized the king kept
for himself ; much he gave away, with an acute per
ception of benefits accruing. How the buildings fared
for the most part, the ruins of some survive to tell.
Yet a remnant was set aside for spiritual purposes.
A scheme for establishing new Sees, to fill the place
the "regulars" had occupied, was prepared; some
new bishoprics were actually founded; monastic
establishments attached to some of the cathedrals,

78 CRANMER
as Canterbury and Durham, were really transformed
into chapters ; and some doubt was incidentally
thrown on the sincerity of the reproaches hurled at
these places when the chief officers, presumably the
worst offenders, were themselves converted into deans
and canons. A good many of the disbanded monks
received pensions. But taken altogether, with in
significant exceptions, the lands and revenues which
had been, in however misdirected a manner, for
centuries set apart for religious ends, were not turned
to fresh religious channels, not devoted to education,
not even appropriated to the use of the State, but
absorbed to meet the too lavish expenditure of an
extravagant monarch, the financial requirements of a
minister whose clientele was exacting, and the greed
of a rapacious nobility. Much that was evil, much
that was corrupting, much that tended to foster
demoralising superstitions, was wiped out when the
monastic system was crushed ; but the appropriation
of the revenue to the satisfaction of private avarice
was a robbery not so much of the Church as of the
nation. The spoliation was rounded off by the generous
Parliament of 1545-46, which bestowed upon the king —
whose exchequer was ever in need of replenishment —
the endowments of chantries, hospitals, and other
similar foundations not already involved in the dis
solution of the monasteries.
Before turning to the remaining question, Henry's
attitude in matters of doctrine other than that of
papal authority, we must take note of two further
innovations in the exercise of the Supremacy. One
was the claim asserted by Leigh and Layton, as

THE HAND OF CROMWELL 79
Cromwell's commissioners, to suspend the bishops'
right of visitation ; the other was the invention of
"tuning the pulpits," that is to say, of forbidding
anyone to preach without a licence, — which was of
course equivalent to ensuring that the licensee would
refrain from inconvenient doctrine, — and of explicitly
ordering the circulation from the pulpits of specific
views as to Supremacy, papal authority, and other
matters, and inflicting punishment for neglect of such
orders. Cromwell had completed the revolution. The same
year, 1539, saw the coping stone placed on the edifice
of absolutism by the declaration of Parliament that
a Royal Proclamation had the force of an Act of
Parliament. But he was not content. He had
resolved on cementing an alliance with the Lutheran
princes, and the resolve proved his ruin. He trapped
his master, whose third wife was now dead, into a
marriage with Anne of Cleves ; and when it was too
late to draw back, the king found he had been tricked
as to the lady's charms. For such a matrimonial
expert as Henry, this was too much. The marriage
took place in January 1540; in June the terrible
minister's head fell beneath the executioner's axe.

CHAPTER VIII
Fidei Defensor: 1529-1547
The movement which goes by the name of the
Reformation, so far as we have examined it, has very
little to do with what we are accustomed to regard
as the great legacy of the Reformers — freedom of
conscience. It has appeared, in fact, as a three-
cornered contest between king, pope, and English
clergy for the control of ecclesiastical legislation,
revenues, and appointments. The result under Henry
was that the pope was driven from the field, and the
clergy submitted to the king. The submission was
for the most part a palpable yielding to the stronger
arm. But in the particular case of Cranmer, who
accepted the change without reserve, and in such
instances as his oath on consecration went spon
taneously beyond what had ever been demanded, there
is no fair ground for doubting that he was acting on
honest conviction : on a theory of the relations of
Church and State which was essentially modern, and
flatly opposed to that not only of the great ecclesiastics
of the past, but also to that of at least the Swiss
section of the Reformers. The great prelates of the
past had claimed always as the Church's right the
ordering of all things spiritual, and the full control
80

FIDEI DEFENSOR 81
of such temporalities as they could acquire; they
had not asserted the right to control secular matters
in virtue of their divine office. The Calvinistic
school of Reformers, who dominated the movement in
Scotland, avowedly aimed at a theocracy, demanding
for the ministry a dominant voice in the counsels of
the State and even of the battlefield, specifically on
the ground of their office ; differing from the Roman
theory as claiming the functions of the Hebrew prophets
rather than those of a priesthood. But Cranmer, though
his doctrines changed as time passed, though in
practical affairs he was weak and vacillating, was
yet in this one thing entirely consistent throughout
his career; until that last terrible month, when the
pressing fear of imminent death drove him to the
pitiful recantation which in the last hour of all he
purged in martyrdom. Whatever his policy might
be, its justification lay in the root-idea that the Church
is subordinate to the State, that her officials are the
officers of the sovereign, that her revenues are admin
istered subject to the sovereign's control and by his
favour, and that to him absolute obedience is due.
The sovereign, to Cranmer, meant the king, and by
implication anyone acting by royal authority; whether
Parliament, or a vicar-general, or an archbishop. By
royal assent, even papal authority could be restored ;
by the royal will it might be again cast off. Obviously,
to all who believed in the inherent independence of
the Church, he seemed a traitor, and his unfailing
submission sheer cowardice ; but if once his theory is
admitted in the abstract, Cranmer's career becomes con
sistent, intelligible, and distinctly more logical than that
of the later adherents of the theory of " Non-resistance."
6

82 CRANMER
But none of the three theories had anything to do
with freedom of conscience. The Puritan divines
were no less insistent on conformity to their standards
than was Rome; and the Cranmerian theory was
equally insistent on conformity to law. Cranmer's
personal influence, and that of many other reformers,
was exerted in the direction of latitude, but as a
matter of grace, not of right ; and it was a necessary
corollary of the whole theory that conformity of
conduct should be taken as implying conformity of
opinion. But that any man had a right to form his
own opinion according to the dictates of his con
science — d fortiori, that he had a right to preach or
maintain such opinion — was a notion very far removed
from any doctrine of the day, however much the
temper of the English people might tend to encourage
— as it has habitually done — a certain official obtuse-
ness of hearing and vision in the guardians of the
law. Now, in point of doctrine Henry had always been
careful to proclaim himself strictly orthodox. He had
taken up the cudgels against Luther ; he had won the
title of Defender of the Faith ; he had no sympathy at
all with heresy. For, however ready he might be to
question authority which ran counter to his personal
convenience, the authority which centred in his own
person was by no means to be called in question. In
most minds the challenge to authority is apt to take
the form of asserting my right of private judgment
while denying yours — unless yours and mine happen
to coincide. The force of circumstances would have
made it necessary for Henry to declare for the absolute
nature of legitimate authority while justifying his

FIDEI DEFENSOR 83
revolt from Rome as a shaking off of usurped authority.
So far as the Reformation is to be looked on as an
appeal from authority to conscience and reason, the
whole trend of Henry's mind was absolutely opposed
to it. The essence of his theory was the concentration
of authority in himself.
From these considerations, it followed that the
Reformation under Henry was constitutional, struc
tural, and financial; also, by the suppression of the
monasteries with their charitable or educational con
comitants, it was rendered social. But it was not
religious. Nevertheless in certain respects it did pave the way
for a religious reformation, that is to say, for a new
attitude of the mind towards religious questions.
The least important movement was towards checking t
the extravagance of rites which were in the view of
all educated people superstitious, such as the idolatrous
worship of shrines, images, or relics— worship, that is,
in which the material thing tended to assume a sacred
character, degenerating from a symbol into a fetish.
The exposure of sham relics, the stripping of shrines,
and the destruction of images, which accompanied the
dissolution of the monasteries, prepared the way for a
fiercer iconoclasm, a more sweeping hatred of the sub
stitution of things visible for things of the spirit.
More important was the tendency, which did not
begin to develop until after Cranmer's installation, to
construct new formulas of the faith. Although these
formulas never departed appreciably from orthodox
Roman doctrine, they implied the recognition of un
certainties, and of distinctions between what is of faith
and what is of human devising in the ordinances of

84 CRANMER
the Church. They admitted the existence of open
questions; and each restatement of catholic doctrine
carried with it a hint of possible modification.
And most important was the inclination, wavering
in intensity and in the opposition rendered to it by
the Old Catholics, to bring within general reach the
Scriptures on which the faith was based. For it was
certain that the reading of the Bible would set the
minds of men upon new trains of thought; would
awaken them to the differences between the scriptural
foundations and the ecclesiastical superstructure; would
suggest that the relative importance of various ordin
ances had become surprisingly distorted ; and that the
difficulty of reconciling sundry ecclesiastical assump
tions with the words of Scripture would inevitably
induce the challenging of the former.
On the other side, we have more or less spasmodic
persecution of heresy, in which it does not appear that
the bishops displayed any greater energy than the
king's temper for the time being demanded. It must,
however, be observed that prior to the "Six Articles
Act" of 1539, there were two classes of heresy pro
secutions: those which were strictly theological, and
those in which heresy was identified at best with
extravagant libels and at worst with something verg
ing on anarchism, to which the great peasant revolt
in Germany — which Luther himself vigorously con
demned — had given a very ominous colour. When it
is remembered that so enlightened and gentle-hearted
a man as Sir Thomas More, the very reverse of a
fanatic, and one of the prime movers for reform, was
nevertheless active in his suppression of heresy during
the years of his chancellorship, we are forced to feel

FIDEI DEFENSOR 85
that something besides mere bigotry and bloodthirsti-
ness were at the bottom of the persecution. It seems, \
in fact, as if the course of events in Germany affected
More and others, much as the French Revolution
affected Burke two and a half centuries later. In
each case we find a man far in front of most of his
contemporaries in political imagination and reasoning
power, not less conspicuously honest than intellectually
brilliant, a dangerously liberal thinker and writer,
driven into the reaction by the extravagances of a
popular outburst which found its original motive in
the very principles which he had previously main
tained. It was, in fact, in few cases that the extreme rigour
of the law was enforced. The holders of the new
opinions for the most part fled or remained abroad,
issuing from thence their diatribes against false doc
trines and false pastors. The disseminators of their
pamphlets or active preachers of heretical views far
more often than not abjured and escaped with penance.
Only those who refused to abjure, or after abjuring
relapsed, suffered death ; and when these belonged to
the sect of Anabaptists, whose theological dogmas were
associated with communistic or antinomian social
theories, the victims found little sympathy even from
such advanced reformers as Latimer. Among all the
earlier martyrs, however, one stands pre-eminent —
.Frith, who died not for a dogma but for a principle.
ISA young man, a scholar, once a pupil of Gardiner's,
later imbued with Lutheran teachings, he actively
disseminated those new views of the Eucharist, of
Purgatory, and other prevalent doctrines, which were
still held to be heretical. But when he was arraigned,

86 CRANMER
he dared to enunciate the great principle that whether
his opinion were right or wrong on these matters, it
could not be that a right opinion was a condition of
salvation. His' judges, it would seem, would fain have
saved him ; but while he refused to yield, they had no
power to pardon ; and Frith in England heads the
noble roll of those who died for liberty of conscience.
With him perished a loyal disciple, whose answer to
questionings and persuasions was simply that as Frith
thought so did he. \
The return to the study of the text of Scripture as
the source and fountainhead of true doctrine had been
initiated by Colet, and taught as a cardinal tenet by
the disciples of Erasmus at the universities. The
edition of the New Testament by Erasmus had prob
ably done more than any other work to set scholars
at least clearing their minds of scholastic accretions.
But at this time England was not to the fore in
rendering the Bible in the vulgar tongue. Wiclif in
the past had made a translation ; but a score of
German versions had been made before there was
another in English. At length Tyndale, moved per
haps by the example of Luther, produced in 1526 a
version of the New Testament, on which our later
renderings have been based. His book, however, was
accompanied by annotations of a violently polemical
order, which caused it to be generally suppressed as
heretical. There is, however, no appearance of any serious
opposition to the view that the publication of a good
translation was desirable, though it may be ques
tioned whether the ecclesiastical authorities in general
viewed the project with enthusiasm. There was a

FIDEI DEFENSOR 87
suspicion too widespread that the danger of ignorant
misinterpretations was too great. Stokesley's an
tagonism was open and pronounced. But it was the
darling scheme of Cranmer, whether he owed it to his
sojourn in Germany or not ; for the Bible of Luther
was well fitted to inspire emulation. The suppression
of Tyndale's Bible in 1530 had been accompanied by a
half -promise of an authorised version; but no move
was made until Cranmer had become archbishop. The
first Convocation in which he presided — 1534 — peti
tioned for a trustworthy committee of translators, at
the same time that they petitioned for the suppression
of heretical books ; and although the king did nothing,
he allowed Cranmer to form a committee for the
purpose, in which Gardiner took his share, while
Stokesley left his untouched.
The project in that form was shelved in 1536 by
the appearance of Coverdale's Bible, and an injunction
from the Vicar-General that every Church was to be
provided with a Bible in Latin and English. Cover-
dale's version, however, was in many respects unsatis
factory ; but a new edition of Tyndale's — known as
Matthew's — freed from some of the objectionable
features, was hailed a year later with delight by
Cranmer, who succeeded in getting it licensed by
Cromwell ; and in 1538, again, a new edition of
Matthew's, revised by Coverdale, supervised by Bonner,
with a preface by the archbishop and Cromwell's
licence, was published under the name of the Great
Bible — by reason of its actual size — and ordered in
1539 to be set up in the Churches.
Although the Great Bible failed to give general
satisfaction, no other translation was issued in Henry's

88 CRANMER
reign. There was too much in it that gave an oppor
tunity to heretical exponents. In 1542 Convocation
declared that a revision was needed to prevent scandal.
A committee was again formed for the purpose, when
the king put a stop to it by saying that he was going
to entrust the work to the universities — which he
omitted to do. What the real reasons were is un
known. Gardiner had proposed to restore much of
the Latin terminology, involving stereotyped ecclesias
tical interpretations of which it was comparatively
easy to divest the vernacular expressions ; and Cran
mer is often charged with having incited Henry to
quash the revision in consequence. This, however, is
a mere surmise, though not without plausibility, since
Cranmer was admittedly in advance of all but a few
of his clerical brethren in his desire to enlarge the
scope within which private judgment should be allowed
free play ; and he may have preferred the version as
it stood, to one revised in a reactionary sense.
Cranmer, however, was not content with an English
Bible. It was also his desire that the people should
worship in a tongue which they understood ; but this
could only be effected by a very gradual process. The
noble language of the English Liturgy, as Cranmer
shaped it, would be a sufficient monument for any
man ; to him in chief is due the marvellous charm
of its cadences. During Henry's reign, however, no
very advanced stage was reached, though a most
important first step was taken. The English Litany
was constructed and first authorised to be sung in
parish churches in 1544.
Cranmer is fairly entitled to the chief credit for
introducing both an English liturgy and the open

FIDEI DEFENSOR 89
Bible; all the other powers being at best half-hearted,
though Cromwell was entirely friendly. But in the
matter of propagating new formulas of the faith, the
king himself seems to have been the moving spirit.
Henry conceived himself to be no mean theologian ;
and when Rome was cast off, it seemed necessary to
take some definite steps so as to have it thoroughly
understood that the schism involved no disloyalty to
catholic doctrine.
The first of these new statements of doctrine was the
Ten Articles " to stablish Christian quietness," in 1536.
It is not known who actually drew them up. There is
in them no departure from accepted catholic doctrine,
but the hand of Cranmer is apparent in the distinction
laid down between ordinances having the sanction of
divine authority and those having the sanction of
human authority only. All alike are treated as bind
ing, but the distinction itself implicitly conveys the
suggestion that the latter are not necessarily immut
able. The " necessary " articles are — acceptance of the
Bible and the three Creeds as the rule of faith; the
sacraments of Baptism, Penance, and the Altar; and
justification. In the explanation of the Eucharist,
the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ is
affirmed, but neither is the word Transubstantiation
used nor the mode of the Presence set forth. It is also
noteworthy that the other four so-called sacraments
are omitted, their sacramental character being neither
denied nor affirmed. The second part deals with
images, the honour due to saints, prayers to saints,
rites and ceremonies, and purgatory, all of which are'
to be accepted but not to be abused.
., The whole may be taken as an enlightened but

90 CRANMER
not an exhaustive statement of educated opinion, to
which, so far as it went, the most orthodox op
ponents of Luther and Zwingli would have raised no
objection. The Articles were very promptly brought into use
by way of demonstrating the loyalty of the king to
the old faith, when the Pilgrimage of Grace made its
protest against innovations.
It was apparent, however, that various controversial
matters were left unsettled in the Ten Articles: they
required to be supplemented. Accordingly, in the
following year, a new committee was formed on the
archbishop's motion, to draw up a further statement,
under the title of the Institution of a Christian Man ;
which came to be generally known, when published, as
the " Bishops' Book." In covering the same ground
as the Ten Articles, no appreciable variation was made;
but the validity of the other four sacraments (though
as of somewhat less authority) was now definitely
asserted. The book did not receive the royal authority in the
same way as the Articles, nor was it brought before
Convocation. But permission to publish it was given,
the king remarking that he had not had time to over
look it. Cranmer, and Foxe, Bishop of Hereford, are
said to have done most of the work, in which, however,
both conservative prelates like Stokesley and Gardiner,
and those of the newer school like Latimer, Shaxton,
and Barlow had their share, giving it their joint and
individual approval.
The archbishop's personal opinions were no doubt
somewhat in advance of those of most of his colleagues,
and he was probably sanguine of inducing Henry to

FIDEI DEFENSOR 91
move with him. But though Henry preserved an
unvarying affection for his primate, and from begin
ning to end would never listen to a word in his dis
favour, Cranmer's influence never seems to have stirred
him a hair's-breadth from any course which he pro
posed to himself. A deputation from the Protestant
League of Germany came to England in 1538, and,
unfortunately for their sympathisers in this country,
they succeeded in annoying the king by lack of
diplomatic artifice. The result was a reactionary
move. In the following year the Act of the Six
Articles was introduced.
So far as the existing formularies — the Ten Articles
and the Institution — went, there was nothing in the
new Act which contravened them. But the doctrine
of the Real Presence was now set forth explicitly in
terms of Transubstantiation ; and at the very moment
when the last of the monasteries were to be extin
guished, the permanence of all vows of celibacy and
the general law of clerical celibacy were confirmed
with stringency. On both points opposition to the
German point of view was accentuated.
Now the canon law had forbidden the secular clergy
to marry, but they had taken no specific vow ; unions
appear to have been very generally sanctioned in an
informal way by custom, and of late years marriages
had been common. Cranmer himself had married a
German spouse, the daughter of the Lutheran Osiander,
not long before his appointment to the archbishopric,
and such marriages had been accounted morally valid
without being technically recognised; while the con
tinental reformers had boldly set aside the whole
tteory of celibacy. Thus, while it was impossible to

92 CRANMER
say that the new law contradicted any existing
pronouncement, it withdrew the latitude which was in
effect allowed on certain points by these pronounce
ments, and reaffirmed what was at any rate tending
to become a dead letter; and it applied new and
savage penalties to transgressors. Cranmer, though
true to his principle of obedience when the Act was
once passed, did honestly and openly oppose its
passage with a vigour which would have cost anyone
else the royal favour.
The last of the formularies of Henry's reign may be
described as a modification of the Bishops' Book in
accordance with the Six Articles. A committee to
take it in hand was summoned, just before Cromwell's
fall, but it was not till 1543 that the result of their de
liberations was issued in the form of the Erudition of a
Christian Man, otherwise known as " the King's Book."
In relation to the Six Articles, it was neither advance
nor retrogression ; which was in some degree a victory
for Cranmer, inasmuch as he was left almost alone in
resisting the reactionary party who had fairly gained
the upper hand. Latimer was not the only reforming
bishop who had been driven from his See after the
Six Articles. In effect, the Erudition affirmed all
that had been laid down in the Institution, and
added thereto Transubstantiation and the celibacy of
the priesthood.
Cranmer was strongly urged to give way to the
reactionaries, and warned of Henry's probable dis
pleasure ; but either he knew his man better than the
rest did, or he had a sounder courage than he is usually
credited with. In the result, the king, perceiving that
there was a cabal against the archbishop, promptly

FIDEI DEFENSOR <,.
took his side, of course without withdrawing from the
position he had previously taken up. The book was
issued by his express authority, and received also the
vmprirfMtur of Convocation, which the InstitvJ/Lon
had lacked.
The preliminary discussions had brought out one
point of veiy considerable interest. The method of
setting to work had been that a series of questions had
been drawn up, mainly by the primate, and submitted
to each member of the committee for him to answer
according to his own judgment. A curious diversity
had prevailed on the matter of sacraments, which
showed conclusively that any or every ordinance
might or might not be called a sacrament very much
according to fancy, until a precise definition of that
term could be formulated ; while, as before, the general
view was that there are at any rate seven sacraments,
of which three — Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist —
have a higher sanction than the rest. A stronger
interest, however, of a personal kind, attaches to the
discussion on Orders; for both Cranmer and Barlow
declared that, in their judgment, although the episco
pate had always been conferred by laying on of hands,
and the ceremony of ordination under existing con
ditions was to be insisted on, yet this was due to the
fact that in the primitive days there were no Christian
princes ; that Christian princes could and might appoint
bishops and pastors just as they might appoint any
other officers of State, without such ceremony, and
without any deflection of Grace. In short, they
affirmed the validity of the apostolic succession,
without admitting its necessity. Cranmer's words on
the subject appear to be conclusive proof of the pro-

%\ CRANMER
position already laid down, that his conception of *
clergy as officers of the sovereign is the keynote of
entire policy. He was not, and did not pretend\*
be, the guardian of the spiritual Order against the^
encroachments of the temporal, but the spiritual
counsellor and minister of the Supreme Head. Decrees
of the Supreme Head, according to this view, were
taken out of the field of public disputation, comment,
or opposition, although it might be good that they
should be held open to discussion and examination by
competent and learned persons.
At the same time with the Erudition there was
prepared a Rationale of the services of the Church,
rites and ceremonies, which did not receive the royal
authority. It is not clear whether this had been
drawn up by a second committee under Cromwell's
instructions issued at the same time as those for the
preparation of the Erudition. On the face of it, how
ever, the Rationale contained much that was opposed
to Cranmer's own views, and it does not seem unlikely
that his influence with the king was exerted against
its being sanctioned.
The year 1543 may be taken as marking the limits
of the Reformation contemplated by Henry. He had
asserted the supremacy of the Crown in unmistakable
terms. With equal clearness he had abjured the
authority of the pope. He had sanctioned the open
Bible, and the introduction of the vernacular instead
of Latin in the liturgy. Beyond recognising a dis
tinction between what is of faith and what is con
venient, he had allowed of no retreat from Roman
doctrine. But he had abolished the institution of
monasticism and laid hands on the monastic estates,

FIDEI DEFENSOR 95
diverting them to entirely personal purposes. And so
matters stood, without further modification, till death
laid its hand upon him.
Henry is perhaps most commonly looked upon as a
mere ruffian, save by those who regard opposition to
the papacy as a certificate of character ; in whose eyes
he assumes heroic proportions. He was, in fact, as it
would seem, curiously composite. Entirely selfish, he
yet had aspirations and a conception of the kingly
office which kept him from degenerating into a
Charles II. ; Europe could never afford to treat him as
either a negligeable or a purchasable quantity. He
was perfectly unscrupulous, yet constantly appealed to
conscience ; he was thoroughly tyrannical, yet claimed
to act strictly constitutionally. Intellectually, he was
a sophist ; morally, he was a ruffian ; but he under
stood men, knew his own mind, and was the absolute
master of every minister he employed. Wolsey was
the ablest statesman of his time, and Cromwell the
most masterful ; but there was no moment when the
king could not have shattered either with a word.
His government was remarkable neither for justice
nor for far-sightedness ; but it had the unfailing
merit of stability. His matrimonial record speaks
for itself. To the claims of loyal service and
the dictates of generosity he was entirely deaf; the
favourite or the trusty counsellor of one day were
the victims of the next. To one man, and to one
only as it would seem, he was unswervingly loyal;
and that was Thomas Cranmer. It was not that
he needed the archbishop; after the Submission of
the Clergy and the fall of the monasteries there was
no power of resistance left to the clergy. But by a

96 CRANMER
strange freak of fancy, the masterful and merciless
tyrant developed a sincere, almost a tender, affection
for the timid and guileless scholar, who responded
with a devotion no less genuine, wholly emotional and
unreasoning.

CHAPTER IX
Affairs on the Continent: 1530-1563
In an earlier chapter, the story of the Reformation
movement on the Continent was brought down to the
Protest of Spires in 1529 — the year in which the
English campaign of Reformation was ostensibly
opened. It was remarked that for some two years
from that time there was serious danger of such a rup
ture as would have involved a great religious war
between the German Protestants and the Emperor.
The aggression of the Turkish Power, however,
compelled the postponement of hostilities; and the
progress of Lutheranism was not challenged by
force of arms till the death of Luther himself,
which took place less than a year before that of
Henry viii.
Had a great war of religion broken out on the
Continent, it is scarcely possible that the attitude of
England towards the Lutherans could have been
maintained. Active support to the Protestants would
have entailed a more rapid approximation to their
doctrinal position, an earlier recognition of the hope
lessness of a reconciliation with Rome. On the other
hand, opposition to them would have involved a
reconsideration of the political breach with Rome;
7

98 CRANMER
while it is probable that Henry would have found that
he could not afford to remain neutral.
The actual effect was that Henry avoided joining a
Lutheran League while he carried out his own policy
of emphasising the national character of the Church
in England and the personal profits to the sovereign
derivable from such a national institution. Cranmer
dreamed perpetually of a united Protestant Church;
Cromwell dreamed of an anti-papal and anti-imperial
league, with England at its head. Henry dreamed of
neither the one nor the other. His theological vanity
prevented him from leaning towards Lutheran heresies,
and his political theory did not incline him to become
a member of a confederation which would certainly
endeavour to control instead of being controlled by
him. Thus when the Lutherans sent over a deputation in
the hope of persuading Henry and Cranmer in effect
to accept the Augsburg Confession, the king treated
them with very scant courtesy, and expressed his
anti-Lutheran sentiments next year in the Six Articles
Act. Cromwell, whose schemes had to do more with
princes than with divines, offered no opposition, but
was sufficiently enamoured of his political project to
negotiate the Cleves marriage, entirely with a view to
consolidating a Protestant alliance. The project cost
him his head, and did not ultimately assist the
alliance. In fact, events on the Continent between 1530 and
1560 influenced the course of affairs in England for
the most part negatively or indirectly, not positively
or directly. Yet the whole process of change was one
intellectual movement, and affairs in Europe cannot

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 99
be ignored without introducing erroneous ideas into
the history of the isolated country.
The intricacy of the proceedings of which Charles v.
is the central figure is due largely to the fact that
successive popes oscillated perpetually between the
desire to suppress Lutheranism and the fear of Charles
becoming too powerful. Whenever the Emperor was
leaving the Protestant States in peace, the pope wanted
them crushed. A moment came when they seemed on
the verge of being crushed, and the pope hastened to
display an antagonism which caused Charles to patch
up some sort of reconciliation with them again. The
French kings, both Francis and his successor Henry 11. ,
were intolerant of heresy within their own dominions,
but perfectly ready to make common cause with heret
ical enemies of the Emperor. Within the Empire there
was not an effective general toleration throughout, but
a geographical division into two hostile theological
camps, rehgion going by principalities; so that the
state arrived at was one, not of unity, but of hostilities
perpetually imminent and perpetually deferred.
During the decade of Cromwell's predominance in
England, the Protestant League was strengthened by
the accession of Brandenburg and the Dukedom of
Saxony. Between the Saxon Electoral house, which
supported Luther from the first, and the Ducal house,
there was cousinship, and there was jealousy. Duke
George was one of Luther's most zealous foes. But
his brother Henry, on succeeding to the dukedom, went
with the other party ; and Henry's son Maurice, who
followed him in 1541, when he was but twenty, played
a varied and generally a startling part in the events
of the next twelve years.

100 CRANMER
Before this decade (1540-1550) was half through,
Charles had come to the conclusion that the Schmal-
kaldic League required suppression. Luther, who had
always exerted his influence to prevent the League from
precipitating a struggle, died in February 1546; and
in the summer Charles, who had kept his designs
concealed, attacked the Protestants, being joined by
the Protestant Maurice of Saxony, whose intent was
the acquisition of the dominions of the Electoral
branch. The Imperial arms were entirely successful,
and the heads of the League were captured. The
decisive battle took place at Muhlberg in April 1547.
But the Pope Paul in., who had succeeded Clement in
1534, now severed himself from the Emperor; who in
high indignation made a temporary settlement of
German religious affairs after a fashion of his own,
establishing a curious and wholly unsatisfactory
modus vivendi by the measure known as the
Augsburg Interim (1548). This in effect surrendered
the orthodox position while purporting to maintain it;
with the natural result of satisfying neither party.
The proceedings narrated above bore on the political
position of the Protestants of the Empire, and show
how it was that the spread of Lutheran teaching and
the elaboration of Protestant doctrine continued with
out practical check. Two great factors in the later
stages of the Reformation were being developed during
these years — the Jesuit Society and- the Calvinist
School at Geneva — to which we shall revert. A third
series of events claims immediate attention, being
partly political and partly religious in character —
namely, the three-handed game of battledore and
shuttlecock, played with the demand for a General

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 101
Council of the Church, between the popes, the
Lutherans, and the Emperor.
Even before the issuing of the Bull which Luther
burned, the great leader of the Reformation had
appealed to a General Council as the only authorita
tive court which could decide the questions at issue.
Henry viii. and Cranmer some years later made the
same appeal to a General Council as having higher
authority than a pope, with the approval of all the
doctors of the Church. At the Diet of 1530 the
Emperor expressed himself in favour of a General
Council to decide all the questions in dispute. On
the other hand, to Pope Clement the proposal was
objectionable on the personal ground that it weakened
his own authority. To have a papal judgment over
ridden by a Council might have most embarrass
ing results. From Luther's point of view the appeal
was in some degree a negation of any ultimate
authority, since part of his doctrine had already been
condemned by the Council of Constance; and if one
Council could revoke the decisions of another, finality
vanished. Charles, whose views were controlled by
political rather than religious ideas, wished to end the
division of the German States, and regarded a Council
as the only means by which a working agreement
could be achieved.
Clement's successor, Paul in., differed from him in
one vital particular, being not unwilling to have a
Council, provided that he could rely on its maintain
ing his authority ; but then, mutatis mutandis, the
Imperial view might have been expressed in similar
terms. Now, while Clement lived, it is unnecessary to go

102 CRANMER
beyond the primary fact that he was determined to
evade a Council at any price, though he was equally
compelled to declare that he was most anxious to hold
one. But when Paul in. followed him on the papal
throne, the situation was changed. Each of the three
principal parties was anxious for a Council on its
own terms. Each was equally determined to resist —
or repudiate — a council held on any other terms than
their own. Consequently all three declared that a
Council was the one thing they desired, but that one
or both of the other parties showed plainly that they
would not allow it to be of any avail. In addition, a
formal peace between the princes of Christendom was
a necessity, and the pope's schemes for Councils in
1537 and 1538 were both upset by war between
Charles and Francis.
There was a time when it appeared that a basis
might be arrived at which all three would accept,
and which the French king also would not repudiate.
The fundamental difference between Lutherans and
pope was that the former required that certain
questions should be treated as open which in the
papal view were already decided. A conference was
actually brought about at Ratisbon from which great
things were hoped by the sanguine. The pope's
selection of cardinals after his election had marked
a conciliatory tendency on his part ; the appointment
now of Contarini as legate seemed to ratify that
promise. On the great question of justification by
faith, the views of Contarini, Pole, and some others
were hardly distinguishable from those of the
Lutherans. For the German reformers, the chief
representative was the learned and conciliatory

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 103
Melanchthon. Luther distrusted the whole affair,
and refused to attend ; but the absence of so polemical
a leader seemed rather favourable to peace than other
wise. Under the tactful management of Contarini,
all seemed to go wondrous well ; a real basis of agree
ment seemed to be emerging. But the moderates who
were present could not control the partisans who were
absent. The pope would not confirm the concessions
of Contarini; Luther would not swallow the sops.
The fair hopes melted. Incidentally it was observed
that Francis had deliberately sought to prevent the
impending reconciliation.
This conference of Ratisbon (1541) was the last of
a series of similar attempts to arrive at some under
standing, due to the Emperor's initiative. He can
hardly have hoped thereby to render a Council un
necessary ; but while they were in progress, any
attempt to call one was necessarily deferred.
The failure forced Charles back on either a Council
or a national synod. The pope, recognising and dread
ing the latter alternative, became urgent that a Council
should be held ; and the determination issued in the con
vocation of the Council of Trent. Although this took
place in 1542, the Council was not formally opened
till December 1545.
The conditions under which it was called definitely
mark off the established fact that Western Christen
dom was already divided with a permanent division
into Protestant and Roman Catholic. Those con
ditions implied in themselves the validity of the
papal authority and the prejudgment condemning
Protestant opinions. Protestants who still asserted
themselves to be members of the Catholic Church,

104 CRANMER
and denied that their views were heretical, could not
accept it as oecumenical. They could not attend it,
nor acknowledge its decisions. It was explicitly a
council of a party in the Church which claimed for itself
the monopoly of catholicity, and by its constitution it
affirmed the heretical character of doctrines which
the excluded ones declared to be catholic. Anglicans,
Lutherans, and Calvinists were alike precluded in
effect from any share in it.
In brief, then, the Council of Trent was the corporate
effort of the Roman Catholic body to effect a reforma
tion within its own boundaries; a reformation in
which a leading part was to be played by two very
important bodies : the Oratorians, founded later by St.
Philip Neri, and the Society of Jesus, known as the
Jesuits, already founded by the Spaniard Inigo Lopez
de Recalde, commonly called Ignatius Loyola.
The English Reformation is not practically con
cerned with the Oratorians ; nor did the Jesuits
influence it before the reign of Elizabeth. But their
great and protracted campaign against that monarch
vitally affected the national sentiment in her reign,
intensifying and crystallising the anti-Roman feeling
which the Marian persecution had already aroused.
It will therefore not be out of place to give some
attention to those early days of the Order that were
contemporaneous with the main events with which we
have to deal.
Unlike most important movements, the one which
took form in the Society of Jesus was not, as the
phrase goes, "in the air"; it was conceived in the
brain of a single man, Ignatius Loyola. Reform was
in the air; but the method adopted was Loyola's

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 105
own creation. A young knight full of martial ardour,
he was struck down in battle ; when he rose from his
sickbed, it was with a resolution to exchange earthly
for heavenly warfare. There had been soldiers of the
Cross before, but* they had fought with the arm of
flesh. The new idea was, to introduce military
organisation into the warfare of the spirit. The utter
obedience of the soldier to his superior officers is the
principle that makes armies invincible ; it was the
beginning and the middle and the end of the associa
tion that Loyola conceived. Obedience to the right
rule of life is enjoined upon all men; obedience to
the rules of an order is enjoined upon members of the
order ; not only obedience to these, but submission
absolute, unquestioning, unhesitating to every injunc
tion from a superior officer was to be the fundamental
law of the society.
Even in Loyola's own mind the idea did not take
immediate and final shape. For years he gave himself
up to a personal training which should fit him for the
end he had in view ; prayer and fasting, study and
travel, the subjugation of the flesh, the education of
the brain, the purification of the spirit, to these he
devoted himself. Towards 1530 he met, and so to
speak absorbed, the kindred spirit, Francois Xavier;
in 1534 they and five others at Montmartre solemnly
formed themselves into a company, the nucleus of one
of the mightiest organisations for good or for evil
that the world has known. They preached, they
taught, they inspired, they became a power : in those
early days, a power with a single eye to the service,
as they understood it, of the Saviour. Mystics and
enthusiasts, endowed with every advantage of birth

106 CRANMER
and breeding, of education and of ability, they gathered
followers and disciples; till in 1543 the Order was
recognised and confirmed by Paul in., a year after
the revival of the Inquisition in Rome.
Education, indeed, was a primary object with not a
few of the Reformers of all schools ; with none was it
carried to such a pitch as with the Jesuits. They
established colleges everywhere; they trained their
pupils' brains up to their highest capacity ; they in
stilled also an absolute discipline ; and a machine was
thereby constructed which answered to the will of the
engineer with an unparalleled perfection. The devo
tion of the members of the organisation was unfailing.
But the system carried with it, as of its essence, without
which it could not exist, one quality fatal from the
ethical point of view ; it killed the individual's sense
of personal moral responsibility when it converted
him into an exquisitely finished cog in a con
summately constructed machine. The moral law
was absorbed in obedience. The Jesuit schools sent
forth many heroes and many martyrs ; but wherever
their influence obtained it inevitably and deliber
ately strangled freedom of conscience, which is the
condition of moral responsibility and of robust spir
itual life.
It was in the second year after the vow at Mont-
martre that a new portent appeared in the theological
firmament, when Calvin published his Institutes. In
the way of coincidences and contrasts, it is curious
to note that Loyola, who was to exercise a supreme
influence on the Roman Catholic world, was born in
the birth-year of Henry viii. ; while Calvin, who was
to exercise in his turn a supreme influence on the

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 107
Protestant world, was born in the year of his accession
to the throne.
A native of Picardy, he was driven out of France
by the persecution which Francis carried out in his
own dominions even while he was intriguing with the
Protestant princes. At the age of twenty-seven he
issued the work which shaped with a remorseless logic
the conclusions implicit in the leading doctrines of the
Swiss reformers. No whit less precise and rigid in
its dogmatism than was the Roman Catholic religion
after it emerged from the Council of Trent ; far more
hostile to Catholicism than was Luther or even
Zwingli; conceiving of the world as having been
created by the Almighty in order to the salvation of
the few elect and the damnation of the vast majority
of His creatures; demanding for the ministry the
right and the duty to punish with the sternest
penalties not merely offences against social order but
deflections from the moral and disciplinary standard
laid down ; claiming assured salvation for the elect,
but neither asking nor granting mercy for the
" reprobate " : the stark and grim religion of Calvin
laid its hand upon the Protestant Reformation. The
Huguenots of France, the Netherlanders, the Scots,
the English, chiefly of the eastern counties, who
later gave to America her Pilgrim Fathers, fell under
its dominion. These, too, have their glorious muster-
roll of heroes and martyrs ; the merciless rigour of
their theory failing to crush entirely a certain illogical
human tenderness of heart which redeemed Puritanism
in its own despite.
Calvin at first proved too harsh even for the
Switzers, and he was banished from Geneva, but his

108 CRANMER
personality was far too vigorous for repression. Three
years later— in 1541— he was recalled and established
as a kind of religious dictator in a nominal common
wealth. So, within a very few months of Henry's death, the
stage reached by the Reformation on the Continent
may be thus summarised.
The German modus vivendi, which had lasted till
Luther's death, was disturbed by the Schmalkaldic
war; but since the termination of that war syn
chronised with a quarrel between Emperor and pope,
and the transference of the Council from the Imperial
Trent to the Italian Bologna, the defeat of the
Lutherans was not pressed to extremities.
In the meantime, however, such prospects as there
ever had been of a reconciliation between the Pro
testants and the Holy See had practically vanished.
The attempt to find common ground had failed with
the Diet of Ratisbon, and the Roman Church had
started on a process of internal reform (known as the
counter-reformation), officially opened with the open
ing of the Council of Trent in December 1545, but
actually initiated by the formation of the Jesuit
Order. Among the Protestants, on the other hand,
the differences of the Lutherans and the Zwinglians
had crystallised into the more rigid division of
Lutherans and Calvinists, while the Reformers in
England remained separate from both, though hitherto
with some leanings towards a Lutheran compromise.
From this time, however, the foreign influences in
England became less Lutheran than Calvinistic, or
Zwinglian at the least.
The Augsburg Interim, which took effect the year

AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 109
after Henry's death, was not, as we have observed,
satisfactory to the Protestants. Some of them found
it advisable to withdraw to the shelter of England,
which under a new regime had become more congenial.
In Germanjr the Interim was enforced with varying
rigour, Maurice of Saxony ostensibly siding with the
Emperor. But that daring and brilliant prince had
other schemes in view. He was approaching his
thirtieth year, and it may be that he was developing
a more soberly patriotic spirit with the years. At
any rate he was making up his mind to stand for
German unity, and deliverance from the Spanish
character of Charles's rule; and to that end he de
signed to place himself at the head of the Protestants,
being himself a professed Lutheran in spite of his
attack on the Schmalkaldic League.
Charles seems to have had no suspicion of clangers
ahead. At the end of 1549 Paul in. died; he was
succeeded by Julius in., who favoured the Emperor.
Julius at once notified that the Council was to renew
its sessions at Trent. Charles was well pleased, and
in return it was announced at the Imperial Diet that
the decisions of the Council would be enforced. The
meaning of that could only be that the toleration of
Lutheranism was to end. But Charles had reckoned
without his host ; the unexpected Maurice made a
sudden swoop, scattered his troops, all but captured
his person, incidentally stopped the proceedings of
the council, and drove the Emperor to make the peace
of Passau, which again secured the Protestants their
liberties. The next year saw the death of Maurice, and also of
Edward vi. P<y its close, negotiations had been opened

no CRANMER
for the union of the new Queen Mary to the Emperor's
son Philip; in the following summer (1554) the
marriage was celebrated. A few months later, England
was formally reconciled to Rome.
In February 1555 the Imperial Diet met at Augsburg,
and, under the presidency of the Emperor's brother
Ferdinand, ratified the toleration of Passau by the
peace of Augsburg. The settlement then arrived at
prevailed for half a century, and such hopes as
Charles may have hitherto maintained of passing on
the Imperial crown to Philip disappeared. It was
clear that Germany would not endure a Spanish
domination. The star of Charles was not in the ascendant.
Julius was succeeded in this same year by the Cardinal
Caraffa (Paul iv), a fiery and austere zealot, whose
personal animosity to the Hapsburgs was increased
by the Augsburg success of the Protestants. In
February of the following year Charles resigned the
crown of Spain to Philip, retired from active political
life, and died in the year which saw Elizabeth ascend
the English throne.
The final stage of the Council of Trent was not
reached till 1563, when yet another pope was reigning,
who had followed Paul iv. in 1559. Whereby there
came about that union of Spain, Rome, and the Jesuits
which forced England to consolidate herself once more
into the Power which was to grapple with Spain in
the new world, and to shatter the Invincible Armada.

CHAPTER X
Josiah: 1547-1549
Although Henry to the last refused to make any
distinct movement in the direction of doctrinal refor
mation, the men who stood highest in his favour in
the latter days were known to be in favour of the new
ideas. The dying king was permitted to lay down
the rule for succession according to his own choice ;
and the orders he left behind him provided for a
Council of Regency to conduct the affairs of the
country during the minority of Edward, son of Jane
Seymour, who succeeded to the throne. In default of
issue he was to be followed by Mary and then by
Elizabeth ; though the marriages with their respective
mothers had been pronounced void. In the meantime
it was evidently contemplated that Cranmer should
hold a chief place in the council, which was intended
to be a sort of round table. The leading spirits in it,
however, had no sort of intention of being controlled
by the dead hand of which they had hitherto stood in
such awe. They are, indeed, even suspected of having
falsified the list of the councillors which was actually
produced. A very remarkable feature therein was the ex
clusion of Gardiner, who was without question the

112 CRANMER
second ecclesiastic in the country. The one certain
fact is that there was within that council a cabal
who had already formed their plans for capturing the
control. There may or may not have been trickery
even in its formation; there can be no doubt at all
that it began operations by a reconstruction which the
dead monarch had not contemplated. The Earl of
Hertford, uncle of the boy-king Edward, was forthwith
made Protector of the realm, and Duke of Somerset.
His brother, the Lord High Admiral, became Lord
Seymour of Sudeley, and made haste to marry the
consort who had succeeded in surviving Henry. Lord
Lisle became Earl of Warwick, and the unscrupulous
Rich took Wriothesly's place as chancellor. The
cabal had captured the machinery of government,
and a very curious group they formed.
The cleverest of them was probably Paget, and the
vilest was Rich ; but the chief was the Lord Protector.
For every one of them the consideration of primary
importance was personal aggrandisement ; all had
profited largely by the spoliation of the recent reign.
How far any of them possessed religious convictions
may be doubted, but their professed opinions were for
the most part on the side of the new theories. Somerset
himself, though greedy and selfish and overflowing
with vanity, appears not to have been entirely lacking
in sincerity; and while incapable of conducting a
vigorous administration — and consequently alternat
ing between habitual weakness and occasional violence
- — he had a curious penchant for passing as a friend of
the people, and a curious success in achieving popu
larity with the crowd.
It was a business of the first importance to

JOSIAH 113
thoroughly fetter the one man on the other side
whose political ability was of a commanding order —
Bishop Gardiner. Tunstall of Durham was able, but
no fighter; Bonner was truculent, but without in
fluence; Gardiner was the last of the old school of
political ecclesiastics of which Wolsey had been the con
summation. But he had no chance against the forces
arrayed to overthrow him. He was indeed permitted
to take the principal part in the obsequies of Henry,
which were celebrated with all the pomp and all the
ceremonial of the Old Church; but it was Cranmer
who officiated at the coronation of the young king;
and in doing so he struck the note of warning, in a
discourse which likened Edward to the boy-king
Josiah, who destroyed images and otherwise purified
the religion of the kingdom, of Judah — with obvious
inferences as to what the new Josiah was to be
expected to do.
Gardiner felt that he must either take up the chal
lenge or follow the archbishop's lead. The time for som
bre acquiescence was past, and he declared against any
innovations or changes until the boy-monarch should
be of age. At the first outset it appears that Cranmer
would have been willing to take the same line ; but he
was always susceptible to the influence of his sur
roundings, and it did not take many days to persuade
him that the de facto Government had the same
authority as a full-grown king — more especially as his
personal inclination had long been towards a very
marked advance in the direction of at least liturgical
and ceremonial reform ; and as more than once, while
Henry was yet living, he had been disappointed in
his pet project of formulating a body of doctrine in

114 CRANMER
conjunction with the leading spirits of German Pro
testantism. In Henry's reign the Reformation had been
sufficiently vigorous, but the field in which the
Defender of the Faith had allowed it scope was
limited. He had dealt with the pope, the clergy, and
the temporalities; the phase of reformation which
commenced after his death was a revision of religious
doctrine and practice.
The central subject of controversy between Ortho
dox Catholicism and the various schools of reformers
was indubitably the theory of the Mass, Communion,
or Lord's Supper : frequently referred to as the Sacra
ment of the Altar. Nor has there ever been a subject
on which it is less possible to discover the actual
views held by half the controversialists.
At one end was the doctrine vulgarly propounded
and understood as orthodox ; that the act of consecra
tion by the priest changed the material particles of
bread into material particles of flesh, and the material
particles of wine into material particles of blood, while
by an illusion to the eye, the touch, and the taste, no
change was apparent.
This doctrine had its esoteric or scholastic rendering,
intelligible to the learned, but wholly meaningless to
the unlearned. The philosophers had discovered a dis
tinction between the Thing and its Attributes ; between
Substance and Accidents ; between the Real and the
Material ; between the Noumenal and the Phenomenal.
In each case it was the second term which applied to
what is subject to the laws of matter. Size, colour, form
are Accidents ; the Substance is without magnitude. The
Material is extended in space, cannot be in two places

JOSIAH 115
at once, is hard, soft, light, heavy, and so on ; the Real
has nothing to do with space except so far as it is
associated with matter. One substance then may be
associated with matter in more than one place, and
with accidents usually associated with a different sub
stance. Therefore the substance of bread and wine
may be changed into the substance of flesh and blood
without any change in the material or attributes,
the phenomenal aspect. This was the nature of the
change effected by the act of consecration. Such was
the scholastic doctrine of Transubstantiation, intelli
gible only to the trained metaphysician.
At the opposite extreme stood the Zwinglian
doctrine, that Christ's words, " This is My Body,"
" This is My Blood," were entirely metaphorical ; that
no change whatever took place; that the sacrament
was a purely commemorative ordinance.
The Calvinistic position was not greatly removed
from this, but went so far further as to affirm that
in the act of participation the communicant metaphoric
ally received Christ into his heart ; did actually receive
a gift of Grace. This was the reward of participating
in the commemorative ceremony, and was in no way
dependent on the act of consecration.
Between these extremes it is possible to formulate a
series of hypotheses, each of which professes to be the
statement of a doctrine of the Real Presence. One at
least is generally intelligible: that just as Jehovah,
present throughout the world, might yet be specially
localised on Sinai, in the Burning Bush, in the Holy
of Holies, so Christ reigning in heaven might yet be
present in the sacred elements, in a special sense.
Another is the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation,

n6 CRANMER
declared by so subtle an intellect as that of the late
Canon Aubrey Moore to be unintelligible, which
affirms the simultaneous presence of the substance
(whether in the literal or the scholastic sense) of
Christ's Body and Blood with the substance of bread
and wine. Again, it is propounded that the Glorified
Body is not a Natural Body, but exempt from the
laws of matter; though here it seems to be for
gotten that the sacrament was instituted before the
Resurrection. Or again, it seems to be intended
that the Presence is purely spiritual, although the
literal correctness of the terms " Body and Blood " is
insisted on while everything connoted by those terms
is rejected : the difficulty involved being defended on
the unanswerable plea that it is a " mystery." In every
one of these interpretations it is of course obviously
possible to maintain that the Presence is conditional
on the faith of the participant, or is involved by
the act of consecration, or is independent of the act of
consecration, or is continuous after that act, or is
confined to the moment of participation.
Amid such a maze of hypotheses it is scarcely
surprising that considerable doubt prevails as to the
precise hypothesis favoured at any given time — in a
period when opinions were in a state of general flux —
by Cranmer, Ridley, and others who were prominent
in the controversy of the time.
In the regions of abstract discussion, Justification
by Faith was a subject hardly less prominent, but
involving far less bitterness. For, while Luther laid
it down as a cardinal tenet, there were not a few
among the avowed Romanists who were ready to
accept it — such as Cardinals Pole and Contarini. If

b

JOSIAH 117
it be admitted that charity is the necessary fruit of
faith, the question whether justification is to be
attributed to the faith alone, or to faith and charity
together, becomes a purely academic one. It is only
from the amazing antinomian theory that faith
absolves from charity that danger can be appre
hended. Other subjects of controversy, however, were of a
much more practical character. The abuse, under the
Romish system, of the doctrines of penance and pur
gatory had developed the idea that sin could be
weighed in a balance against penalties and purged by
them, independently of repentance. The real doctrine
underlying both ideas is, that sin is purged by repent
ance, but that justice demands also the penalty,
which again the true penitent knows to be deserved.
The travesty of this doctrine, involved in the idea that
penalties could be bought off, led by no means logically
to a rejection of the whole theory of purgatory — which
total rejection, however, was never affirmed by the
English formularies. The moral effect of the extreme
attitude, practically involving a belief that the soul
passes straight from the body to eternal bliss or ever
lasting torment, was by no means inconsiderable.
The theory of a celibate clergy/again, was of practical
moment, because it not only affected their individual
lives, but marked off the whole ecclesiastical body as
separate from other men, and living under a different
law. The abolition of the rule was a long step towards
accepting a view of the sacerdotal office at least greatly
modified from that heretofore prevalent.
None of these questions, however, appealed to the
popular mind so strongly as the contests over images

118 CRANMER
and ceremonies, the customs and observances which in
the eyes of the new school either were positively
idolatrous or tended to idolatry — to the worship of the
work of men's hands. This struggle, however, did to
some extent involve the most abstract of all the sub
jects of contention, the theory of the Presence in the
Sacrament, on account of the question whether the
consecrated elements had by the act of consecration
been rendered an object of worship.
Iconoclasm, celibacy, ceremonial were all matters
that could be dealt with after a comparatively summary
manner ; on the more abstract points of doctrine, a
somewhat more deliberate method was necessary. The
new government could hardly execute a right-about-
face and forthwith deny formally the positions which
the most advanced of the bishops had been content to
accept up to Henry's death. But the penal statutes
could be repealed, the Henrician professions could be
treated as open, and pulpits and professorial chairs
could be gradually packed with upholders of the new
views, so as to pave the way for their formal adoption
or admission within the scope of the formularies, while
the literature on the same side could be systematically
encouraged. As yet the question of the form of Church
government, which at a later date issued in Dissent,
had not acquired grave importance.
The campaign of Reformation, suspended by the late
king when his own immediate ends had been achieved,
may be said to have opened with the archbishop's
coronation discourse, which was a virtual declaration
of war against images. This was followed up by ob
taining the royal authority for the Book of Homilies,
and the Paraphrase of Erasmus in English,

JOSIAH 119
Neither Parliament nor Convocation had a voice in
these matters. Throughout the year 1547 the Pro
tector's Government relied on that Act of the past
reign which gave the force of law to the Royal Pro
clamations. The Book of Homilies, referred to as the " First
Book of Homilies " in the Thirty-Nine Articles of a
later date, had been compiled by Cranmer during
Henry's lifetime, and he had made abortive attempts
to procure their sanction from king and Convocation :
no doubt in the hope that they would in effect take
the place of the King's Book as an exposition of
orthodox doctrine. On the positive side they did not
greatly depart from the lines laid down in that
volume ; yet by implication, and by omissions, they
did constitute a material departure, inasmuch as they
said little of any of the sacraments, and nothing
at all of the Sacrament of the Altar. By the process
of limiting the parochial clergy to reading the homilies
instead of preaching sermons, these were now in effect
restrained from instructing their flocks in these high
mysteries, and the clear impression was conveyed that
the Church deliberately abstained from authoritative
pronouncement with regard to them.
The Paraphrase of Erasmus was at once more in
sidious and more actively propagandist. The great
scholar's Paraphrase of the New Testament was con
structed from the point of view of a reformer, and
suggested endless parallelisms between the Jewish
priesthood and the clergy, the antagonism of Christ's
teaching to ecclesiastical injunctions, the opposition
between the spirit and the letter.
A visitation was ordered and a Commission ap-

120 CRANMER
pointed for the purpose, on the analogy of Cromwell's
proceedings. It was the business of this Commission
to take order for the further destruction of " abused "
images — images, that is, which tended to encourage
superstition and to attract popular worship to them
selves — for distributing the Paraphrase, and for
enforcing the reading of the homilies. The interpre
tation of what brought images under the " abused "
category was so extremely liberal as to cover painted
windows illustrating miracles, and led generally to
much breaking of glass, whitewashing of frescoes,
and demolishment of carving generally. The injunc
tions which the Commissioners enforced are known as
the Injunctions of Edward vx In part they were
virtually a repetition of those issued by Cromwell, the
general purpose of the visitation being to see that the
clergy were duly performing their duties ; but besides
the additions above named, it was enjoined in them
that the lessons should be read in English, that the
litany in English should be used, and that processions
should cease.
The visitation did not commence till the summer
was well advanced. Gardiner had been prompt
enough in declaring his position. Cranmer tried to
win his adherence to the Book of Homilies, but was
vigorously rebuffed, and distinctly had the worst of
the encounter. Gardiner took his stand on the King's
Book and the adequacy of the Henrician reformation,
wanting to know what Cranmer meant by seeking to
uproot that accepted and authoritative exposition.
The archbishop could only reply that Henry had been
seduced into the late settlement ; a proposition scarcely
consistent with the attitude he had himself main-

JOSIAH 121
tained, as Gardiner promptly pointed out, not without
sarcasm. No steps disturbing that settlement could,
in the Bishop of Winchester's opinion, be taken, except
by tho personal authority of Henry's successor; nor
could Edward properly exercise that authority while
still a minor. And when it came to the visitation, he
remarked with considerable force that it was a sus
pension of and contrary to the law ; and that it was
dangerous to urge that a royal proclamation could
override tho law, as ho had himself seen the clergy
brought under I Yasrnunire, and heads rolling on tho
scaffold, for obeying a royal order which was against
the law. The example of resistance was followed by
Bonner, Bishop of London, and both prelates were
removed to confinement in the Fleet, muzzled but not
entirely silenced.
In November, botli Convocation and Parliament
met ; and the Six Articles and Treasons Acts were
repealed, with the general approbation of clergy and
people. Both assemblies demanded tho restoration of
the Communion in botli kinds, and Convocation asked
for, but did not till a year later obtain, relief from the
laws enjoining clerical celibacy. Parliament, on the
other hand, confirmed the last act of spoliation in
Henry's reign by bestowing the surviving chantries on
the king; a measure less outrageously abused than
others of a like kind, since, in part at least, the funds
wens utilised for tho endowment of schools. The
credit which Edward has gained for his liberality in
the cause oL' education is considerably exaggerated when
the resources of his generosity are brought to mind; still,
some praise is doubtless due, since the funds were not
merely appropriated to the satisfaction of private greed.

122 CRANMER
Convocation on its own part endeavoured to recover
some of the ground lost by the " Submission of the
Clergy." They petitioned that the spectral Commis
sion of thirty-two, which was to have examined the
canons of the Church, might be materialised, and also
that the clergy themselves should sit in Parliament, or
that at least their assent should be necessary to statutes
and ordinances dealing with religion. The attempt
was a complete failure, but remains on record as a
formal protest against their forcible deprivation of
what they held to be constitutional rights.
During the next year, 1548, the war against images
was carried a stage further, the distinction of " abused "
images being abolished and all alike being condemned ;
and orders were issued suppressing various minor
practices which were falling into a comparatively
general condemnation as superstitions, such as creep
ing to the Cross. The iconoclastic fervour of the
reformers, however popular it may have been locally
in places where foreign refugees and English disciples
of German or Swiss teachers congregated, was by no
means to the mind of the rural population ; sundry
riots took place, and in Cornwall there was something
of a rising. The important features of the year's
movement, however, were the appointment of the
Windsor Commission, primarily to compose an Order
of Communion in English, the preparation of the First
Prayer-Book of Edward vi., and the stringent measures
taken for the regulation, almost the suppression, of
preaching. The practice of licensing preachers was an old one,
originally instituted for the relief of the parochial
clergy. The hypothesis that a curate is ex officio

JOSIAH 123
capable of composing and delivering an unlimited
number of discourses to the edification of his par
ishioners, was considered doubtful ; and while bishops
had licence to preach in any diocese, and parish priests
to preach in their own parishes, licences were issued to
enable members of the various orders to occupy parish
pulpits. Henry, however, had found it convenient,
when special doctrines required to be emphasised, to
suspend the normal licences, and restrict the right of
preaching to a comparatively select number of licensees ;
the rest of the clergy being only allowed to deliver
authorised discourses or homilies. Now, however, the
power of issuing licences was restricted to the king,
the protector, and the primate ; and an extremely
rigorous selection being exercised, it is obvious that
the whole power of pulpit rhetoric was necessarily
made to tell in favour of the advanced party. But
even so, it was found that the selection was inadequate ;
that preachers were too violently controversial ; and
at last preaching was altogether suspended, pending
the publication of the new Prayer-Book, which it was
hoped would secure something like uniformity. The
plain fact, no doubt, was that men who could be at all
relied upon to refrain from inflammatory utterances
were hardly to be found.
The new Order of Communion was issued shortly
before Easter. The doctrine of the Sacrament of the
Altar had not as yet been admitted into the field of
open controversy ; the ecclesiastical conservatives were
not unrepresented on the Commission, though neither
Gardiner nor Tunstall were among their number ; and
the innovations, though important, did not involve
grave points of doctrine. Although the greater part

124 CRANMER
of the service was in English, there were still portions
for which Latin was retained ; and the administration
of the Communion in both kinds had already received
the definite support of the clergy.
From this revision of the Order of Communion the
Commission proceeded to the preparation of a Prayer-
Book which should take the place of the varying
breviaries and " Uses " prevailing in different dioceses,
— a scheme for which there was ample precedent, and
which was not by any means revolutionary. Cardinal
Quignon had prepared a revised Roman breviary,
which however had not met with sufficient approval at
Rome to receive papal authority, and the Elector-
Archbishop of Cologne had prepared a liturgy with
the assistance of Luther, both of which the Commission
had before them ; while the " Use of Sarum " was the
particular form adopted as the general basis for the
new book. Cranmer, however, had devoted an infinity
of study to existing liturgies, Eastern as well as
Western, and the accumulated stores of his learning were
frequently utilised in amending,amplifying,and improv
ing the common material upon which his less erudite
colleagues were employed. The idea of simplification
and uniformity was an old one ; such a reform belong
ing to that large category of things which, by general
consent, ought to be done, but continue under official
consideration from generation to generation.
The scheme, then, was not revolutionary, nor could
that term be applied to the compilation itself. Its
primary characteristic was the full and final substitu
tion of the vernacular for Latin throughout. It main
tained the Communion in both kinds, and it laid down
that auricular confession was not actually necessary.

JOSIAH 125
Otherwise it was in effect only by omission that
practices prevalent in the past reign were departed
from ; and it remains to this day a disputed point
whether omission implied prohibition in respect of
ceremonial observances. Forms at the same time
were so far modified as not to involve explicitly the
doctrine of Transubstantiation. But, on the whole,
it may be said that it was possible to reconcile accept
ance of the King's Book with acceptance of the Prayer-
Book, and also to reconcile acceptance of the latter
with a very considerable deviation from the former.
For the noble language of the English rendering which
has made the Prayer-Book a masterpiece of literature,
Cranmer himself is known to be mainly responsible ;
and for this, at least, he is entitled to ungrudging
praise. The evidence, on the whole, does not show that the
book received the imprimatur of Convocation; but it
was authorised by Parliament in January 1549.
Amongst the most important measures of that session
was the passing of the first Act of Uniformity enjoin
ing the universal use of the Prayer-Book on the clergy
under severe penalties. On the precise interpretation
of the legal effects of this Act depend largely the
questions of legitimate ceremonial observances which
have recently agitated so severely the minds of
Churchmen — and others.
In the same session was passed an Act legalising the
marriage of clergj*.
Up to this point, although the Reformation had
arrived at an aggressive phase in respect of images
and ceremonies, it had conceded nothing to the dis
tinctively Swiss school. The English reformers cannot

126 CRANMER
be said to have followed Luther, but the lines of the
movement were generally in much the same direction
as his. Hitherto, however, Cranmer's personal longing
to act in direct conjunction with German Protestantism
had been continuously balked ; and a great influx of
foreigners which set in during 1548, supported by the
rising influence of English disciples of the religious
dictator of Geneva, rendered the remaining years of
Edward's reign at once more violent, more revolu
tionary, and theologically more Calvinistic.

CHAPTER XI
The Puritan Eddy: 1549-1553
The conditions under which the doctrines and practices
of a reformed Church made their way in England were
very materially affected by the anarchy into which
civil government had fallen. In Henry's days there
had been no absence of method, no uncertainty about
the ends in view, and, whatever the iniquities of the
king or his ministers, the reformation movement was
systematic. But in Edward's reign there was never
either a strong head or a strong hand in control. A
Government which remains rigidly inert till the effect
ive moment arrives and then seizes its opportunity is
bound to accomplish a good deal ; but one which only
moves spasmodically is tolerably certain to effect such
good as it does accomplish in the worst possible way.
The reign of Elizabeth was a triumph of opportunism
— of a consummate perception of exactly how far it was
safe to go at a given time, the outcome of a penetrating
measurement of the forces at work. But in Edward's
day, Cecil, the arch-opportunist, was only biding his
time — applying the principles of opportunism to his
personal career, achieving such distinction as might
help him in the future without a too dangerous present
eminence ; while the political chiefs had no definite
127

128 CRANMER
policy except self - aggrandisement. The economic
revolution produced by the fall of the monasteries
caused much suffering among the poorer classes; the
funds which had formerly in great part been expended
in the relief of distress were diverted into the pockets
of the wealthy; and a generation of particularly
grasping landlords robbed the agricultural population
with no less alacrity than they had displayed in
absorbing the spoils of the Church. There was none
to restrain the spoilers, for it was they themselves who
sat in the high places.
Now the Government, associated by its very com
position with the policy of plunder, was by consequence
necessarily anti-clerical. Hence a popular inference
associated Reformers as such with the policy of
plunder. In many respects the association was gro
tesquely misplaced. But it was a notable result of the
prevalence of this idea that, whereas in the past revolts
of the peasantry had been anti - clerical, and the
Lollards had been suppressed more for their economic
than for their ecclesiastical heresies; and whereas in
Germany the great peasant revolt was associated with
anabaptism ; in Edward's reign the important and
bloody rising in the West was anti-Protestant. In the
eastern counties, where Protestant opinions were in
advance of Government, Ket's rising was not religious
in its object, but social; the ideas were dissociated;
there the Puritan movement had begun with the
people. In the West, Puritan ideas had not penetrated
to the people when the Government imposed its ecclesi
astical reforms.
Thus it was that when the new Prayer-Book was
forced upon the west country, it was fiercely resisted;

THE PURITAN EDDY 129
the people cried out against its innovations. The
complaint that its modified ceremonial was " like a
Christmas play " is not easy of interpretation ; perhaps
it meant that what was felt to be solemn and magnifi
cent, in association with rites that were mysterious
and awe-inspiring when veiled in a foreign language,
became paltry and tawdry as the adjunct of a service
in the vernacular. At any rate, the men of Devon and
Cornwall declared themselves with no uncertain voice
to be opposed to all innovations ; they even called for
the revival of the Six Articles; but they also very
significantly demanded the restoration to the Church
of at least one-half of the abbey and chantry lands
howsoever and by whomsoever acquired. The rising
was extremely serious, the insurgents being able even
to lay siege to Exeter ; and it was put down with no
little difficulty by the employment of large bodies
of mercenaries. The archbishop's reply to the petition
of the insurgents shows somewhat unusual marks of
temper on his part. The notable feature of the rising,
however, is that in this one case religion was put in
the forefront as the cause. Disturbances occurred
in many other parts of the country, but they in
nearly every case were openly social in their origin,
and there is considerable ground for supposing that
opposition to the religious innovations would never
have amounted to a sufficiently exciting cause for
revolt, except when they were regarded as signs of the
generally oppressive policy of the new nobility.
Thus in the eastern counties, Robert Ket gathered
round him in the neighbourhood of Norwich a force
of 16,000 men, who demanded the redress of griev
ances ; but the English service was read twice daily in
9

130 CRANMER
his camp. It has become so much the fashion of late
to find it pretty broadly hinted that the English
Reformation was a purely political affair — in a sort of
reaction against the school which was wont to describe
it as the work of a nation enthusiastically Protestant —
that it is worth while dwelling a little on points which
emphasise the widespread existence of strong religious
feeling. It need not be denied that until they were
forced to take sides, the people generally did not very
greatly care about the points in dispute between the
old and new schools; but unless the religious senti
ment had been active in the minds of the humbler
classes, neither the religious purpose of the Western
rising nor the religious tone of Ket's would have been
possible. Vacillation, violence, and bad faith characterised the
suppression of both risings, as might have been ex
pected from such a Government. Already the Lord
Protector's brother had been executed unheard, on the
ground that he was plotting to overthrow the Govern
ment — a charge in all probability true. But the
flagrant injustice of the sentence under such circum
stances is made only a deeper proof of the evil days
upon which the country had fallen, when we know
that it was endorsed both by Cranmer and Latimer.
Somerset's own doom was approaching, and in October
he in turn was supplanted by Warwick, and sent to
the Tower ; his supplanter sharing his qualities of greed
and selfishness, but excelling him in artfulness, while
lacking that curious good-nature which mysteriously
endeared the fallen Protector to the Commons.
Hitherto Cranmer's personal leanings had been
rather to the German than the Swiss reformers ; but

THE PURITAN EDDY 131
it is evident that about this time he was beginning1 to feel
the influence of those more advanced foreigners who
had recently been finding their way into England.
When the Prayer-Book was in preparation, the con
cessions made to Calvin's views had been slight, and
the disciples of Zurich and Geneva shook their heads
over the slothfulness of Thomas of Canterbury. But
in the parliamentary debates of January (1549) he
obtained their applause, possibly from some mis
apprehension as to his real position on the doctrine
of the sacraments. At this time it is clear that he
did not hold the view known as sacramentarian, which
treated those rites as purely symbolical and com
memorative. But the influence of such men as Peter
Martyr was increasing. An ex-friar, who had passed
on to the Lutheran stage, Martyr progressed towards
a more definite Calvinism, and his appointment to the
Chair of Divinity at Oxford led to the open and public
debating of such high mysteries as the Sacrament of
the Altar in a style which tended to a painful irrever
ence ; pleasing no doubt to the mere controversialists,
and to fanatics of both parties, but hardly helpful to
the cause of religion.
A much more moderate man was Bucer, a Lutheran
from Strasburg, who became Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge, and whose judgment probably carried
more real weight both with Cranmer himself and
with Nicholas Ridley, who appears to have drawn the
primate in his train while his own opinions grew more
pronounced. For some time chaplain to the arch
bishop, Ridley was made Bishop of Rochester soon
after Edward's accession, and Bishop of London in
Bonner's place in 1550. A learned, resolute, and

132 CRANMER
advanced reformer, he appears to have been much
less extravagant in his methods than many of his
colleagues, and in spite of his activity in what is
called the " altar war " — the substitution of com
munion tables for the sacrificial altar — his influence
among the reforming leaders was rather restraining
than otherwise, his enthusiasms keeping pace with
his intelligence. However his views changed, the
change was steady and not vacillating ; whereas
Cranmer was ever alternating between intellectual
convictions which he trembled to avow, and avowals
which went beyond his convictions. Both men form
a strong contrast to the third of the most famous
martyrs of Mary's reign, Hugh Latimer ; who never
had any pretensions to the title of theologian or
philosopher, but was a great orator and a great
moralist with a strong tinge of quixotism.
The influx of foreign Protestants was the cause of a
very curious innovation — the formation by authority
of a sort of ecclesiastical body of foreigners under
the supervision of a Polish Protestant of noble birth
known as Laski or Alasco, who was also intimate and
influential with the advanced Anglican divines. Cer
tain heretical opinions continued to be severely dealt
with, more particularly those tainted with Socinian-
ism ; but not a few of the heresies of the late reign
were by this time admitted into the recognised field
of debate. The purpose, however, of the institution of
Alasco's Church was less the protection of the foreign
Protestants than their restraint from falling into the
dangerous ways of Anabaptism.
Two other men exercised a powerful influence in
the direction of Puritanism — John Knox and Hooper.

THE PURITAN EDDY 133
Knox, of the straitest sect of the Calvinists, was des
tined to set the dour stamp of his arrogant austerity
on an entire nation ; but before he took up his task in
Scotland he helped to mould the Puritan material in
the southern country, in the character of a licensed
preacher. Hooper was a disciple of Zurich, who be
came chaplain to Somerset, and rapidly achieved the
position of a leader of the advanced school.
A considerable time elapsed before Cranmer and
Hooper found themselves in accord. The burning
questions between the reformers had now been re
solved into two groups — the controversies concerning
the Sacrament of the Altar, and those about ceremonies
and vestments.
Until Henry's death, authority in England had
maintained the doctrine of Transubstantiation; but
authority hardly waited for the repeal of the Six
Articles Act to modify that position, which was cer
tainly not asserted in the First Prayer-Book, though
it may have been compatible therewith. It would
seem, on the whole, that Cranmer, Ridley, and gener
ally those of the reformers who had not gone direct
to Zurich or Geneva for their inspiration, continued in
some form or other to uphold the doctrine of the Real
Presence; but then, as now, their critics could not
agree in interpreting their views. Cranmer published
a work on the subject which provoked the imprisoned
Gardiner, as some say, to castigate him in a reply — as
others say, to invite his own castigation in the archi-
episcopal rejoinder. Cranmer's learning was more
extensive than Gardiner's, and the latter certainly
committed himself to repudiating as fictions of his
antagonist explanations of the catholic doctrines

134 CRANMER
which had been formulated by the most revered
doctors of the Church. There are, however, some
points which can be arrived at without much dubi-
tation. Cranmer definitely rejected the theory that
any material change took place in the bread and
wine; but, on the other hand, he also denied that
the participation was a merely symbolical act. Less
definitely he seems to have held that the Presence is
not in the elements, but is imparted to the partaker in
the act of participation. Gardiner affirmed the Pres
ence to be called into the bread and wine by the act of
consecration, but failed to provide any intelligible
account of what he meant by that Presence. To less
subtle intellects it would appear that the ultimate
distinction between the two points of view is, that on
Gardiner's the elements become themselves an object of
worship by consecration, and on Cranmer's they do
not. The Lutheran view, on the other hand, attempts
to specify the manner of the Presence in a way rejected
alike by the Roman doctors and by the Anglicans. As
Ridley himself put it : the Romans affirmed that after
the consecration there is one substance, the body and
blood of Christ ; he and Cranmer affirmed that there
is one substance, bread and wine ; but the Lutherans
affirmed that there are two. But it has never been
shown that either Cranmer or Ridley questioned that
the actual Presence of Christ is actually imparted to
the recipient in the act of participation ; wherein they
differed completely and effectively from the whole of
the Swiss school.
But to the vulgar mind, the issue which appeared
important was whether or no the elements were an object
of worship. It was an instance of the crucial idea of

THE PURITAN EDDY 135
the Reformation, or of one of the two crucial ideas.
The Reformation claimed to be a restoration of the
pure doctrine always held by the Church, but corrupted
and abused by pontiffs and doctors. It struck at prac
tices which might be commendable in themselves, but
opened the door to abuses. It suspected doctrines of
which such practices were a natural corollary. It
found the due reverence born of association degenerat
ing in practice into actual idolatry of material things.
It found the splendour of ceremonial translated into a
subordination of the truth signified to the symbol. It
found the aids to human frailty elevated into condi
tions of grace. It set about remedying these things
often with an appalling crudity and violence generating
an irreverence no more commendable than the idolatry
which it displaced. Idolatry and irreverence alike
were a degeneration from the pure worship which it
was sought to restore. The irreverence, however, was
not inherent in the Reformation ; it was an accident of
the convulsive conditions under which it took place.
But just as an exaggerated importance attached to
ceremonial observances, an exaggerated importance
attached to their abrogation ; and in the latter half of
Edward's reign it seemed as though before long the
extremists would carry matters with a high hand.
The party of resistance were held in check ; Gardiner
and Bonner were already in prison, and thither Tun
stall of Durham followed them. Heath and Day were
turned out of their bishoprics. The moderate men,
like Cranmer and Ridley, still managed to maintain a
preponderating influence in the councils of the Church,
and formularies and public pronouncements continued
to be possible of acceptance except by extreme re-

136 CRANMER
actionaries ; nevertheless, it was more and more evi
dent that the revolutionaries were making way.
Most notable of these was Hooper, who has been
called the father of Nonconformity — a term which has
come to be curiously misused. Nonconformity implied
nothing in the shape of dissent or separatism, but was
a protest against regulations imposed by the Act of
Uniformity. Its aim was not schism, but revision.
In its initial stages, it was concerned mainly with the
enforcement of rules about vestments and the like,
which lacked scriptural authority. In 1550 Hooper,
already highly distinguished as a preacher, was offered
a bishopric. He declined, because he objected to the
rules about vestments in the ordination service. A
considerable quarrel arose over the matter, and both
Peter Martyr and Bucer endeavoured to bring Hooper
round, but he remained obstinate. It was not till
March of the following year that he gave way. Nor
did he after his appointment and consecration with
draw from his general attitude ; in which it need
hardly be said that he had the vigorous support of
John Knox.
In 1551 a serious attempt was at last made to deal
with the old-standing problem of harmonising the
canon law with the civil law, a business for which
it had been arranged repeatedly at recurring intervals
that a commission of thirty-two should be chosen ;
which, however, never seems to have got itself
appointed till now, when it promptly delegated its
duties to a committee of eight. The attempt was
seriously made, but the result was abortive as far as
legislation was concerned.
The scheme which the committee evolved is known

THE PURITAN EDDY 137
as the " Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum," and
was not so much a revision of the canon law as an
attempt to construct a constitution for the Church on
abstract principles. It was never made law ; it was
never submitted to Convocation; it had no practical
influence whatever on the course of the Reformation ;
but it illustrates the attitude of Cranmer, who seems
beyond question to have been the guiding spirit in its
construction. It does not appear to have entered into
his scheme that there should be any curtailment of the
old jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The most
remarkable feature, on the whole, appears to be the
active revival of the old diocesan synods, in which the
bishop should meet his clergy for discussion ; whereas
(though here the intention is open to doubt) the pro
vincial Convocations were to be reduced to assemblies
of the bishops of the two provinces, called by the
archbishop " for grave cause " with the king's assent.
More important, however, in fact, were the measures
of 1552 — the Second Act of Uniformity, and the Second
Prayer-Book ; and in 1553 the publication of the
" Forty-Two Articles," of which the later Thirty-Nine
were but a slight modification.
This Second Act of Uniformity, passed early in the
year, for the first time applied penalties for disobedi
ence to the laity. In its first shape the purport of
the bill was to reaffirm the authority of the First
Prayer-Book, leaving spiritual censure as the only
punishment for lay recusancy. It was, however,
transformed into a measure authorising a revised
Prayer-Book not yet published, while explicitly stating
that such changes as should therein appear would not
imply defect in the book as already authorised, but

138 CRANMER
were to be made in order to guard against misunder
standing. Further, not only were the clergy who
conducted services other than those authorised liable
to heavy penalties as under the First Act of Uni
formity, but any of the laity who attended such
services were made liable to imprisonment. The new
Act, however, was not to come into operation till the
close of the year.
Whether the First Prayer-Book had been submitted
to Convocation is a question on which the evidence is
inconclusive. The volume of 1552 was not so sub
mitted ; explicitly, its authority was that of the king
and Parliament. The revision appears to have been
the work of the same committee which drew up the
" Reformatio Legum," and to have been due partly to
the criticisms of Martyr and Bucer, partly to the
attitude of the Nonconformists, to whom a greater
latitude was given than by any other enactment. In
this connection it is important to note that the revisers,
in opposition to this group, and notably to Knox and
Hooper, inserted a rubric enjoining the posture of
kneeling at the time of receiving the sacrament. A
determined effort was made at the last moment to have
this rubric rejected, but Cranmer stood firm, and,
instead of that change, the " black rubric " was added,
explaining or purporting to explain what that posture
was not to be taken to imply. Extensive as the
changes were in many respects, their total effect was
to extend greater latitude to the advanced school,
without drawing closer the restrictions on the oppo
site party ; portions of the service were modified so as
to admit of, without insisting on, a Calvinistic inter
pretation; while no mention was made of sundry

\ THE PURITAN EDDY 139
ornaments and ceremonial details which had been
expressly enjoined in the previous book.
A few words should be added with regard to the
Ordinal or Ordination Service — which had been issued
as an addendum to the Prayer-Book in 1550, and now
took a slightly amended form — as bearing on one of
the vexed questions of ecclesiastical controversialists,
the apostolic succession, denied by the Romanists to
the Anglican clergy. One ceremony only, that of
handing the chalice and the paten, is therein omitted
which has been held necessary to the validity of ordin
ation ; nor is it possible to prove that this was in use
earlier than the tenth century. A second question,
however, arises as to whether it was the intention of
the service to convey the apostolic succession. We
have seen that in Henry's reign Cranmer himself had
given it as his opinion that the prince could appoint
clergy without the recognised rites ; but that in those
rites the succession had been maintained, and that it
was seemly and desirable that this should continue.
The archbishop's view, however, was then overruled
by the majority of his colleagues, and the necessity of
maintaining the succession was upheld. There is no
reason to suppose that Cranmer's views on this head
had undergone a change; in which case, evidently,
not only the more conservative authorities, but those
who thought with him, did intend that the succession
should be preserved. Moreover, that formal intention
is explicitly set forth in the preface. Hence, to
invalidate the position, it would be necessary to show
either that the Anglican Church as a body has at
some time formally repudiated that intention ; or that
bishops have been consecrated with the omission of

140 CRANMER
fundamental circumstances in the service, so invali
dating all ordinations at their hands ; or else to fall
back on the contention that failure of intention', pn the
part of any individual bishop would invalidate his
ordinations. The final attempt of the reign at an exposition of
religious principles, which should compass the great
end of Uniformity, was the issuing of the Forty-Two
Articles. These also were the work of the Prayer-
Book revisers ; like that volume, they were not sub
mitted to Convocation, and were indeed published by
order of the Council. They had been in preparation
for some time, and underwent considerable modifi
cations after their first draft, partly in consequence of
the Nonconformist criticisms, which had been invited.
In principle they do not greatly differ from the Thirty-
Nine which finally took their place, being manifestly,
like the. Prayer-Book itself, characterised by the desire
of extending the utmost possible latitude, and making
conformity possible even to the Days and Heaths on
the one hand, and the Knoxes and Hoopers on the
other. But now the reign of Josiah was drawing to a close :
the hand of Death was heavy upon him. It cannot be
said that that reign presents a pleasing picture ; rarely,
indeed, has there been a more consistently inefficient
and unprincipled Government than that of the Sey
mours and the Dudleys. That Government favoured
the Reformation, and it was a practically inevitable
corollary that there was much of what can only at the
best be called grave unseemliness in the methods by
which the movement was carried on. Those who
resisted it were treated with a tyrannical harshness:

THE PURITAN EDDY 141
it was utilised by the civil authorities for the purpose
of private enrichment; and of what was taken from
the Church only a scandalously small proportion was
devoted to charitable and educational objects; though
doubtless that small proportion, mainly in the form of
grammar schools and hospitals, has proved fruitful of
great good to the country. The destruction of altars
and of images was carried out with indecent and
lamentable violence and bigotry ; the public disputa
tions, as at Oxford, were conducted with a shocking
disregard of good taste and dignity.
Nevertheless, although the powers at work were too
turbulent to be held restrained by any hand less firm
and skilful than that of an Elizabeth, it is remarkable
to observe what moderation was imported into the
ends achieved. That primary feature of the English
Reformation, the substitution of English for Latin in
the services of the Church as in the Bible, was an
indisputable good, save in the eyes of those who be
lieve that all knowledge should be carefully withheld
from the great mass of their fellows. Something of
splendour, something of awe, was removed from the
ceremonial, but far less than if the Puritans had had
their full way. The Scriptures were restored to their
place as the final authority ; but the voice of tradition
was not allowed to be silenced. A comprehensive
breadth was achieved, such as no other ecclesiastical
organisation has compassed. The Church refused to
pronounce dogmatically where reason and Scripture
are inconclusive, or to affirm an infallible interpre
tation of ambiguous dicta. For those who held that
the only alternative to the infallibility of Rome was
the infallibility of Geneva, such an outcome was un-

142 CRANMER
satisfactory ; but the effect was, to include within the
fold the great bulk of those who were not prepared to
accept a pope at either extreme.
Nor does it seem possible to question that for this
great result Cranmer, stiffened by Ridley, may claim
the chief, almost the entire credit. But for him, the
Church would inevitably have been severed into the
two camps, and the Reformation would either have
been overturned or have taken the lines which it
followed under Knox's leadership in Scotland. But
Cranmer showed that there was a more excellent way.
The hand that steered the barque was none too firm,
yet it kept a true course through stormy seas. He
did not, indeed, achieve such a harmony but that
factions have ever since arisen periodically, crying
that they alone have a right to march under the
Church's banner, and bringing on themselves the
retort that they have no business under that banner
at all. But that is the inevitable result of compre
hension, and has been known to occur when a far
more rigid agreement was enforced. If comprehension,
coupled with historic continuity, are qualities to be
desired, Cranmer's distinction is as honourable as it
is unique ; since, but for him, one or other of the two
would assuredly have been lost to the Anglican Church.
As it was, he preserved them both, and after the Marian
cataclysm the Elizabethans established the structure
which Cranmer had framed.

CHAPTER XII
Reaction and Counter-Reaction : 1553-1559
Edward was dying. By the will of Henry viii. his
sister Mary had been named successor to the throne.
Mary had continued throughout the reign to adhere
stubbornly to the Mass ; the prospects of the reformers
under her sway looked extremely doubtful, and there
were members of the Council who anticipated from it
their own ruin.
Northumberland — such was the title Warwick had
taken to himself — was both ambitious and un
scrupulous. The line of succession was already dis
putable. The marriages of the mothers of Mary and
Elizabeth had both been pronounced void. If they
could be set aside, the next heir would be the grand
child of Henry's elder sister Margaret, who had married
the king of Scots; and next, the grandchild of his
younger sister Mary, who had married the Duke of
Suffolk. Northumberland married his own son to the
last, the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, proposing that Mary,
Elizabeth, and Mary of Scotland should all be passed
over, and that the king should set aside his father's
will, but should act on that precedent and name the
Lady Jane as his successor.
The king was very well pleased ; one member only
143

144 CRANMER
of the Council, Hales, absolutely declined assent ; one
other, Cranmer, held out, even to tears, against the
legality of the scheme, but finally yielded to the
entreaties of Edward and the authority of the law
officers on the technical point. But the plan was so
utterly shameless that it defeated its own object.
When Edward died, the attempt to supplant Mary
proved hopelessly abortive, and she was hailed as
sovereign with a heartiness which would probably
have been altogether wanting if she had ascended the
throne without opposition.
That some reversal of ecclesiastical policy would
follow was obvious. The bulk of the population had
not accepted the new arrangements with enthusiasm.
It was the turn of the party who had been held in
subjection for the last six years; and the restitution
of the deprived prelates, with the immediate restoration
of the Mass, were matter of course. That a restrain
ing hand should be laid on those who had abetted the
abortive treason of Northumberland, and on those who
had been most actively hostile to Gardiner and Bonner
and to the Mass itself, was absolutely reasonable. It
was perhaps curious that while the Act of Uniformity
was still the law of the land, the queen should by
her own example practically assure immunity to those
who set it at defiance ; but the anomaly was inevitable.
Certainly, at the opening of Mary's reign, no one had
cause to complain of undue severity on her part, of
undue haste to take advantage of her party's return to
power, or of her acting less generously or less toler
antly than her opponents had done. Northumberland
was executed, and his principal associates were placed
in confinement; the foreign Protestants who did not

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 145
make haste to withdraw themselves were warned to
disperse; and within a couple of months, Latimer,
Hooper, Coverdale, and several others besides Cranmer
and Ridley were imprisoned; but with no harsher
treatment than had been shown to the deprived
prelates in the preceding reign.
Both Ridley and Cranmer had been markedly
identified with the treason of the Dudleys; but it
would seem as if Cranmer's plea in defence, that he
had only given way under almost irresistible pressure,
would have sufficed for his deliverance, but for one of
those courageous avowals on his part which counter
balanced his strange submissions. It was rumoured
that he had himself set up the Mass again, and his
denial of the charge was so uncompromising and so
defiant that he was sent to the Tower.
The king had died on 6th July ; Mary was crowned
on 1st October, and Parliament met on the 5th. The
practical business before it was to annul the ecclesias
tical legislation of Edward's reign, and to restore the
position as Henry viii. had left it, except that the Six
Articles Act was not revived and the appropriated
Church property was not restored. Further than this
it hardly went for the time being. Convocation,
sitting at the same period, showed an immediate
inclination to welcome the reaction, but not without
hot debates, in which some of the reformers showed
the courage of their opinions.
Hardly, however, had the year closed, when matters
assumed a much more threatening aspect. Such hope
ful possibilities as Mary's accession had offered were
wrecked over the Spanish marriage. A union between
her and Philip, the prince of Spain, son of the

146 CRANMER
Emperor, was in course of negotiation ; and in the
eyes of the whole British nation the plan was
anathema. Gardiner, now at the head of the Council,
would have been well enough pleased to avoid it
altogether ; as it was, he could only insist upon such
conditions as might decently safeguard the realm from
foreign domination. But nothing could remove the
suspicion that the ultimate effect of the marriage
would be to convert England into an appanage of
Spain. The general sentiment found vent in Sir
Thomas Wyatt's rising. For a brief moment, as the
insurgents approached London, it seemed as if Mary's
throne was tottering. Her royal display of courage,
her bold appeal to the citizens of London, saved her.
The rising was a failure. But it had the direct effect
of ending the policy of clemency. Lady Jane, most
innocent of traitors, was led to the block ; many more
were executed. There was still nothing savage or
abnormal in the severity exercised. Throughout the
year 1554 the attitude of the queen and her
advisers presents itself as that of a Government which
knew that one main feature of its policy was intensely
unpopular, that there existed many miscellaneous
grounds of discontent, and that it was necessary to
make a display of the armed hand. It was no longer
safe to be magnanimous ; more than that, there was a
plausible excuse for retaliatory harshness even where
milder counsels could involve no risk.
Thus the year had hardly begun, Wyatt had hardly
fallen, when the reforming clergy began to feel the
force of the return to the nominal conditions of
Henry's last years. Seven bishops were deprived, on
the ground of marriage or of false Hews on the

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 147
sacrament, or both. Many of the parish clergy were
deprived in like manner for having married. The
number who so suffered is sometimes stated in very
startling figures; on the whole, there is much to be
said for the estimate that one in every five of the
whole body was so deprived. In the argument, how
ever, which disputes a larger proportion, one point
seems to have been left out of count. It is remarked
that, apart from the numbers who personally held
to celibacy as a point of conscience, it is scarcely
likely that so large a body would have taken to them
selves wives in so short a time. It should, however, be
remembered that during a great part of Henry's reign
marriage of the secular clergy had been not unusual —
as, for instance, Cranmer himself was married. These
men had been compelled under the Six Articles to part
from their wives, who had returned to them as soon
as that Act was repealed. It is not as though the
whole of the clergy had been actually celibate until
the legitimation of such contracts in Edward's second
year. However, when all possible allowance is made for
exaggeration, to penalise so large a body of persons who
had acted not only with the authority of Parliament
and Crown, but also in accord with the formal senti
ment of Convocation, was a step of excessive harsh
ness; and harshness was now the order of the day.
That severity had the support of Parliament; but
Parliaments were still, as they had been since Crom
well applied them to the purpose of giving a consti
tutional aspect to the royal mandates, composed in
such manner that they might confirm the policy of
the Government. There was a limit to their sub-

148 CRANMER
servience, which was always reached when their purses
were threatened; but otherwise, the mutterings of
parliamentary resistance were ominous of a storm of
indignation outside. So now, if the question of restor
ing Church property was mooted, Parliament gave an
emphatic negative, while cheerfully endorsing the
reversal of the general policy of the last seven
years. In July the Spanish marriage was celebrated, just
twelve months after Edward's death; and from that
time forward that great portion of the people which
was, broadly speaking, indifferent to religious reforms
as such, is found regarding the Government with
steadily increasing suspicion and dislike. The reaction
had reached the limit of approval ; it was soon to pass
the bounds of even a moderately willing acquiescence.
In fact, the Spanish marriage was perhaps accidentally
something of a turning-point with the queen's own
policy. Hitherto, there had been a show of maintain
ing Henry's attitude, the attitude in which he had
always had Gardiner's support, of Supreme Head of a
Church which had rejected the papal yoke without
change of doctrine. Now, however, it seemed clear
that there was to be a restoration of papal authority.
A papal legate was again to be seen in England;
there were ominous hints of revived penalties for the
heretics, who were understood to include the reformers
in general. In early days Gardiner had stood for the
nation against Roman dominion — now he seems to
have fallen back on the belief that the Roman
dominion was a condition of suppressing the revolution
which he accounted the greater evil. Nor is it hard
to find excuse for him. The revolution had insulted

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 149
him, silenced him, treated him as an enemy. Gardiner
was no saint. He was not bloodthirsty or par
ticularly revengeful ; but neither was he particularly
forgiving or naturally tender-hearted. His instincts
were just, but his justice was always tempered by
policy. Now he had been warped by the injustice he
had himself suffered, and was ready to play the part
of an embittered reactionary. Reconciliation with
Rome involved a somewhat startling change of front
in the man who had virtually told Clement vn. that
unless he agreed to annul the marriage of Henry with
Mary's mother, England would discard his authority.
But Mary herself was responsible for the policy of her
reign. As with her father before her and her sister
after her, her will was supreme. And her heart was
set on the reconciliation, and on the purging of heresy.
Reconciliation to be effected through the medium of her
cousin Cardinal Pole had been under discussion ever
since her brother's death ; and now his arrival as papal
legate was preceded by an ominous activity on the
part of the reactionary bishops — notably Bonner — in
the visitation of their dioceses.
November saw the arrival of Pole with great honour,
and the assembly of Paliament. The Houses presented
a supplication to the king and queen, promising to revoke
all laws and ordinances which had been made against
the papal authority, and entreating to be received again
as repentant children into the bosom of the Church.
The reconciliation was completed with much ceremoni
ous jubilation ; and on the following Sunday Gardiner
recanted from the pulpit the principle of which he had
for so many years been one of the foremost champions.
Parliament then forthwith proceeded to renew the old

150 CRANMER
Lollard heresy laws, and to revoke all Henry's
ecclesiastical legislation subsequent to his twentieth
year — in other words, the whole legislative Reforma
tion ; with one exception, since all holders of what had
been Church lands were confirmed in their possession.
Restitution was not included in the pious intent of
Rome's repentant children.
So ended, for the time, the breach with Rome ; so
was ushered in the day of purging, with hymns of
triumph for the return of the lost sheep to the fold.
From prison, however, came the voice of the reformers
— the voice of stubborn challenge — challenge which
was to take a very practical shape. Gardiner had
stood in the pulpit of St. Paul's to declare that his
whole career under Henry had been an error ; but he
could not undo the work in which he had taken so
large a part. How far he was responsible for the
terrible chapter of history now to open, it is hard to tell.
Hitherto it was due to him in no small degree that
there had remained at least traces of statesmanship in
the conduct of affairs. It was he who had so fenced
round the marriage treaty as to minimise Philip's
power of interference with the English realm. His
opposition to the Spanish interests may have still
prevented him from acquiring his queen's complete
confidence. Whether he ever attempted to check the
torrent of the impending persecution is doubtful;
certainly it raged with sufficient severity while he was
yet living ; yet it did not develop its most frenzied
recklessness till he was gone. He, at any rate, was not
its chief promoter.
The terrible, tragic figure which occupied the English
throne and dominated the drama was cast in a different

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 151
mould. With a woman's heart, passionate and tender,
she had learnt in suffering to steel herself against
pity for herself or for others. A zealot with a mission
to perform, she accounted the urgency of her own
natural magnanimity as the Tempter's whisper.
Scorned by the husband to whom she was devoted,
she would fain have won the love of her people, yet
for her people's good, as she deemed it, she chose rather
to be clothed in their hate. Not hers was the callous
tyranny of her father, the cold-blooded policy of a
Thomas Cromwell, the lust of cruelty of an Alva.
Not hers even the grim triumph with which the
Puritan Fathers gave the sons and daughters of Belial
to the flames as an acceptable sacrifice to the Lord of
hosts. But hers it was to smite, relentless and unspar
ing, rending her own heart with every stroke ; losing,
in the performance of the ghastly duty she had con
ceived for herself, love and honour and name and
fame ; and bringing on the cause, for which she had
wrought the awful sacrifice, destruction more over
whelming than its bitterest enemies could have
effected. ^The heresy laws came into force on January 20,
1555. The first victim was Rogers, who probably was
the author of Matthew's Bible. He was burned at
the stake on February 4. From that time forth the
persecution continued, never slackening, but rather
increasing in fury as the reign went on. During less
than four years the number who perished in the flames
was little if at all short of three hundred. In the first
year there was something of discrimination. Many of
the leaders of the Reformation were in prison already,
and it was natural that they should be among the first

152 CRANMER
struck down. Hooper and Ferrar, Latimer and
Ridley, all perished in this year; Cranmer in the
following March ; Rogers, Taylor of Hadleigh,
Saunders, Bradford were all prominent men; but
with them died not a few undistinguished but
stubborn followers of the new ways, here one and
there another. By the end of the year, the men
of mark as teachers and preachers, saving Cranmer,
had either borne their witness, or placed themselves
out of reach in Switzerland or Germany. But the tale
of the burnings did not diminish ; as the individuals
were less conspicuous, the effect was made up by
martyrdoms of five, ten, twenty at a time, till the
country was seething with disgust. ^
I It is singular to find that there is no possibility of
attaching the responsibility to any group of persons.
The Spaniards or the bishops, or both, along with
Mary, are generally held accountable. Bonner, of
London, acquired the same unenviable epithet as his
royal mistress. Yet the Spaniards do not really seem
to have encouraged the extreme of persecution;
Philip and Philip's father were politic enough to have
some appreciation of the English temper. Pole
obviously wished every available loophole to be left
open for the evasion of enforcing the law. In
Gardiner's own diocese of Winchester there was no
execution for heresy while he lived. Bonner, on whose
doings the martyrologists exercise their most lurid
powers, left no stone unturned to enable those who
were haled before him to preserve their liberty by
recantation. In fact, if the apologists could be alto
gether credited, we should have to believe that it was
the Commons who egged the queen on against the

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 153
restraining influences of all those whom Protestant
fanatics have preferred to reproach.
It is reasonable and intelligible to believe that the
moving spirit in the persecution was the queen her
self. For her, it was not a question of policy or
popularity or personal vengeance; it was a terrible
conviction of a fearful duty, to save the souls of her
people, purging the nation by fire. But, in fact,
Parliament, bishops, and Spaniards, as well as Pole,
were all consenting parties, though not eager. The
effect of setting the heresy laws in motion was
probably not realised. They had been there in
Henry's time — they had been reinforced by the Six
Articles ; but very few people had been put to death
under them. The crack of the "whip with six
strings" had usually sufficed to make its actual
application superfluous. It is reasonable to suppose
that Parliament and bishops alike anticipated a
similar result now. On the other hand, the reformers
had made for themselves not a few bitter enemies, who
were not averse to seeing them individually suffer.
Philip may have had a politic objection to the applica
tion in England of methods which he did not hesitate
to enforce against the equally obstinate Dutch ; but it
may be suspected that he cared little, and that the
mild protests of the Spaniards were more for the sake
of show, of diverting unpopularity, than anything
else. As for Pole, his conscience was of the type
which would have agreed with Mary, while his
instincts were mild and gentle, so that he was unable
to restrain while anxious to evade.
Broadly speaking, it would appear that Mary,
logically enough from her point of view, desired that

154 CRANMER
the laws should be rigorously enforced for the utter
rooting out of heresy ; Gardiner and Bonner and the
rest would have been satisfied with silencing the
heretics. Unfortunately for the policy, the heretics
declined to be silenced, and with unprecedented
stubbornness preferred martyrdom to recantation.
Where laws of this class have been placed on the
statute-book, their effective application notoriously
depends very greatly on the attitude of the officers
who have to administer them, and a dozen informa
tions will be laid before one court for one that will be
laid before another. So while it seems thoroughly
unjust to accuse Bonner of a thirst for blood, his
manner and methods encouraged the heresy-hunters,
while those of others among his brethren tended to
check them. This, coupled with the fact that London
was always a hotbed of advanced opinions, sufficiently
explains the very large proportion of martyrs who
were put to death under Bonner's jurisdiction.
Nor is it altogether fair to forget that recalcitrants
who did happen to be brought before either Gardiner
or Bonner were apt to take up their parable against
those prelates personally with a freedom which Nathan
or Micaiah might have envied, and which was hardly
an incentive to leniency on the part of a choleric
judge. Anyone who reads with an impartial mind
the trial of Christian's comrade Faithful at Vanity
Fair cannot help recognising that no judge could have
shown mercy to the prisoner unless his temper had
been superhuman; and the Puritan martyrs were no
less vigorous than Faithful.
However the blame is to be distributed for those
four years of terror, the attempt to bring the Marian

REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 155
persecution into comparison with any other in the
course of English history is futile. Rome had her
martyrs under Elizabeth ; but half of them were, past
question, actually mixed up with treasonous plots ; nor
were there more of them in the aggregate during her
five-and-forty years than in the four of the Marian
persecution. The Scottish Covenanters experienced
persecution, but in the eyes of their persecutors they
were often active rebels. Under Mary, the issue was
the plain and direct one of conscience. Here and
there the offence was aggravated by a charge of
having disputed the sovereign's legitimacy ; but there
was no pretence that the penalties were incurred for
anything but heresy, and no question that much which
was now called heresy had in the late reign been
enjoined as orthodox. Political sects have been per
secuted in the name of religion, like the Lollards ;
religious profession has been treated as a mark of poli
tical malevolence, as with the Jesuits ; but the martyrs
of Mary's reign were burned uncompromisingly for
religion and nothing else. Nor was the onslaught
made upon extravagant doctrinaires. The crucial
question habitually was whether the natural body and
blood of Christ are in the sacrament. Nothing short
of the unqualified doctrine of Transubstantiation was
accepted, with submission to the authority of the pope.
It was not an attack on Anabaptists or Calvinists or
Puritans, but on the whole Reformation ; a campaign
of the reactionary party in the Anglican Church
against the reforming party in the Anglican Church ;
an onslaught upon the position to which all but a few
of the clergy had in fact conformed, though with vary
ing willingness or reluctance. The effect was to unite

156 CRANMER
the Mass and the Roman dominion inextricably in
the popular mind, making it impossible ever to revert
to the position of Henry. The heroic bearing of the
martyrs themselves called forth a passion of horrified
sympathy which a more commonplace harshness and
a more commonplaco suffering would never have
evoked ; the doom of the primate of England, his
waverings and his final triumphant humiliation, hail
an incalculable dramatic force which struck homo as
mere logic could never do.
Honco the extraordinary effect of that persecution
on the people at large. It may be doubted very much
whether half of them had more than tho vaguest
glimmerings of perception of the theological difference
between tho Mass and tho Communion service; but
they connected the Mass witli the persecuting faction,
and everything associated with the Mass had the reek
of Mary's fires clinging to it. Antagonism to Spain
did the rest. Whothcr men called themselves Pro
testants or Catholics, whatever English people recog
nise as "popory" has been from that day to the great
bulk of them un accursed thin*.

/

CHAPTER XIII
The Least of the Martyrs: 1529-1556
It has been said that the stout bearing of the martyrs,
and the sympathy they won thereby, were of no little
avail in turning the hearts of their countrymen from
apathetic indifference, or even apathetic hostility, to
warm partisanship. In all tho years of the Reforma
tion, until 1555, there had been excitement, violence,
zealotry on both sides, but not any general deep-
rooted intensity of feeling. That was brought into
being by the moral shock of tho persecution, the force
of which was indefinitely multiplied by the admiration
its victims inspired.
/ For the appeal of manifest heroism is well-nigh
irresistible, and the martyrs, one after the other, stood
revealed as heroes. In the stress of controversy, they
had shown, it may be, baser qualities. Ridley could be
harsh. Hooper narrow and pragmatical, Latimer inso
lent, as all men might know; and the lesser folk had
their normal failings. But now what all men saw or
heard of was the unflinching courage, the unfaltering
loyalty to truth, the unfailing dignity in the face of
torture, temptation, and insult, wliieh wiped out the
memory, if any there- were, of unheroic traits. They
saw the wife of Rogers, surrounded by their eleven
157

158 CRANMER
children, bidding her husband God-speed with words
of encouragement. They saw Rowland Taylor take his
daughter Mary in his arms, and kneel down with his
wife to say the Lord's Prayer, while " the sheriff wept
apace, and so did divers others of the company."
They heard the jubilant words of Latimer to Ridley,
triumphantly prophetic. They marked the same spirit
again and again declaring itself as fresh victims were
brought to the stake ; and they knew that those victims
were martyrs and heroes in very deed. ,
But — Cranmer ?
We know what happens when a regiment that has
won good repute and credit is smitten on some fatal
day with that inexplicable madness called panic, and
in one short hour tramples its honour in the dust:
how many deeds of desperate daring it must accom
plish before it can wipe out that one blot on its fair
fame. So was it with Cranmer. Of all men in the country,
for him recantation was most morally inconceivable.
It was he who step by step had seemed to guide the
Reformation; who had justified each step with the
authority of his great place; who avowed himself to
have passed from error to truth, leading hosts in his
train; who, when his enemies recovered power, had
faced them and outreasoned them with a resolution
that Latimer himself had not exceeded. That he
should fail at the last ; that he should faint and turn
back from the fiery trial that so many lesser men
had faced without blenching — this was a thing not to
be forgiven, and by men forgiveness is denied him,
or such scant pardon is granted as may be joined
with only half-repressed scorn. The brand of the

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 159
craven is upon him ; nor have the flames of Oxford
erased it.
Thus it is that among the men who worked for the
Reformation the ill-fated archbishop has the fewest
friends. Henry and Cromwell have their apologists —
rather, to avoid possible misapprehension, let us say
their zealous champions ; as on the other side, Gardiner
and Bonner have their defenders. Even their enemies
have words of reluctant praise for Latimer and Ridley,
and for Hooper himself. Elizabeth and her ministers
are judged by a frankly political standard, and receive
the applause, if not always the esteem, of the historian.
The Puritans have their partisans no less uncom
promising than their foes. But those who speak
Cranmer's name, if they do not accompany it with
positive railing, for the most part pronounce it with a
significant shrug of the shoulders.
For, to the extreme " Catholic " party, he is the man
who betrayed the Church to Erastianism ; to the
Puritans, he is a Mr. Facing-both-ways ; and to those
who join neither extreme, he is the guide whose shame
they cannot deny. Despite that great rallying of his
courage, when he retracted his recantation and faced
his doom, steadfast in self-abasement, every deed of
his career is coloured by the one pitiful failure.
Yet if he had died with Latimer a few months
earlier — nay, if he had been peacefully released from
the burden of life before Mary laid her hand upon the
reformers — the judgment passed on him would have
been far different. None indeed would have ranked
him among those strong spirits of iron will who, like a
Luther, stand out as giants, dwarfing those who are set
beside them ; rather his name might have been coupled

1 60 CRANMER
with Melanchthon — of the type that are made to be
not leaders, but counsellors. For, be it observed, the
primary business of a leader is to make up his own
mind; the primary business of the counsellor is to
provide the data which shall enable the leader to
make up his mind wisely — to influence, not to control.
Throughout Henry's reign, Cranmer, like everyone
else, was the king's servant. The king took his
advice or not, as it pleased him. With the exception
of More and Fisher, there was no politician and no
ecclesiastical dignitary who ventured on open resist
ance to the tyrant; not Gardiner nor Stokesley nor
Tunstall, not even Wolsey or Cromwell. Once, at
least, in his opposition to the Six Articles, Cranmer
went further than the rest ever ventured ; and in the
matter of the King's Book he displayed undeniable
courage. Cranmer's whole career postulates his belief that the
national sovereign is at the head of the ecclesiastical
no less than of the civil polity. The theory may be
right or wrong; but to hold it and act on it cannot
with any show of justice be called a sign of pliancy
or subserviency. He approved the abolition of the
monastic system, and therein is certainly no cause
of reproach. As for the methods by which it was
carried out, it is possible that a stronger man in his
place might have fought Cromwell ; but no one gave
sign of such independence of spirit. And he did, as
many another did not, use his powers of persuasion
for the diversion of the property seized into sound
educational channels. He, like his neighbours, adminis
tered the laws against heresy of the extreme type ; so
did Latimer, so did More. None of them were suffi-

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 161
ciently in advance of their day to have grasped the
conception of more than a limited toleration. But he
openly opposed the passing of statutes for increasing
and multiplying penalties for religious offences. If he
urged the dissemination of the translated Scriptures,
the introduction of English services, the admission of
modified doctrines, the suppression of some practices
which the German Protestants had long before
denounced without sparing; yet in all this there is
nothing to which anyone who to-day claims to belong
to the Anglican communion can possibly raise objec
tion. Cranmer's offence against Rome is obvious ; but
against the most extreme section of the Anglican body
it cannot be shown during Henry's reign to have
amounted to more than this — that he did not stand up
alone against the spoliation, and that he made the
theory of secular supremacy his own.
For not resisting the spoliation, it is unwarrantable
to reproach him, save as sharing in a universal con
demnation. He would have stood alone had he done
so, and have lost such chance as he had of exercising a
practical influence. For the Royal supremacy, Fisher
and More rejected it on principle, and gave their lives
in witness; the rest who rejected it on principle sub
mitted to it in fact. Cranmer, so far from rejecting it,
held it as a cardinal principle. Ought he then, like
Becket, to have changed his principles when he donned
the pallium ? On no other ground can he be blamed
for maintaining them. Those Churchmen who hold
that the Church is above the State, and that its
subordination is a bondage sanctioned by physical
force only, are justified in counting Cranmer among
the enemy, but an open and avowed enemy on the

1 62 CRANMER
plain ground of conscientious conviction. Throughout
Henry's reign, from the hour when Cranmer became
archbishop, no prominent ecclesiastic, with the single
exception of Fisher, is less open than Cranmer to the
charge of having subordinated his genuine convictions
to his personal advantage in supporting Henry's line of
action. Nor from the reformer's point of view can Cranmer
fairly be blamed. The movement of his mind was
very gradual. It was of that academic cast which
weighs and deliberates, and seeks for new lights and
fresh data, and for ever finds an infinite deal to be said
on both sides ; which perceives that a vast number of
questions cannot be despatched with swift and uncom
promising security. More and more, no doubt, he found
the balance weighing in favour of the progressive as
against the established views, and endeavoured to
persuade the king to allow them a hearing. But he
was not convinced that the established views were
wrong. He did not affirm one doctrine in public while
believing another in private ; though he did not
challenge destruction as the champion of toleration.
He was content to let opinions mature into convictions
before insisting on them, or committing himself to them
irredeemably. He did not, in short, display the
conspicuous courage which would have demanded
universal acclamation, but he did not carry submission
beyond the logical claims of his postulate concerning
Sovereignty. When his master died, and was succeeded on the
throne by a boy, Cranmer's position was altered. He
could not now escape assuming the functions of a
leader. His duty was no longer ended when he had

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 163
counselled his sovereign; actual initiative was forced
upon him, and the task was one for which he was not
naturally fitted. Nevertheless, his achievement was
remarkable. It was due to his guidance that the
Anglican Church neither broke with the past as did
the Calvinistic and in a less degree the Lutheran
bodies, nor rejected the new criticism like the reaction
aries, but so moulded its reformation — the formularies,
the Prayer-Book, the practices enjoined or permitted
— as to remain sufficiently acceptable if not actually
satisfactory to moderate men of all parties. If the
intention to maintain the Church as a comprehensive
body was a right one — if it was right that she should
rather meet the needs of the bulk of those who call
themselves Christians than the desires of a lesser
body — he deserves the highest praise for holding fast
to it, in the face of increasing pressure driving him
to a rejection either of Protestantism or of Catholicity.
He succeeded in evolving a Church which was at once
Catholic and Protestant. But for Cranmer and Ridley,
the Hoopers, the Knoxes, and the Peter Martyrs would
have dominated the reforming party altogether, and the
moderate men would have been reabsorbed by the party
of reaction. No small praise is due to the man who,
forced by circumstances into a field of action for which
he was ill-adapted, was yet so successful in the actual
results of his work.
But if we turn to his personal record, the record of
the man, not the statesman, how would he have stood
in our estimation if he had never been brought to the
last crucial test ? Did he in the service of his master
demean himself in unbecoming fashion ?
Cranmer was conspicuously deficient in one quality

1 64 CRANMER
which is absolutely essential to a great career — self-
reliance. When once he had been brought into contact
with Henry, the king both fascinated and dominated
him. There were men who did the king's bidding
because he was a tyrant whom it was safer to obey ;
there were others whose downright loyalty to him
would have made them commit treason against their
country or their own consciences, and to their own
destruction, if he might profit thereby. Cranmer
appears to have been neither a time-server nor a
devotee of the latter type, but to have been, as it were,
mesmerised. It is not altogether rare to find people in
private life whose will and conscience become the
reflexion of someone else's will and conscience; here
and there, too, a great statesman seems to produce
such an effect on some of his followers ; but the sub
mission of an intellect so subtle and a conscience so
delicate as Cranmer's affords a somewhat pathetic
psychological study. The extreme point appears to
have been reached on the occasions of the condemna
tion of Anne Boleyn and of Thomas Cromwell. For
both of these Cranmer undoubtedly had a warm
personal friendship, and in them, as in the king, he
inspired in turn a genuine affection. But when the king
declared them guilty, Cranmer could only admit with
tears and travail of soul, though unconvinced by evi
dence, that guilty they must be. The archbishop's
weakness is neither admirable nor edifying ; but it is
not born of fear, nor is it the politician's preference
for expediency over right. It is the weakness of a
man who never trusts his own judgment if it is
opposed by that of another in whom he has learned
to place implicit reliance. The whole tone of his

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 165
dissertations on the religious questions of the time
is in accord. There is no English ecclesiastic of the
day with whom he fears an engagement ; but he
cannot maintain an opinion against the king's decisive
judgment. When the immediate domination of Henry's mind is
withdrawn, Cranmer's doubts of the accepted positions
immediately recover force. No fresh personality re
places that of the dead monarch, but Ridley is at hand
to confirm and establish the expansion which Henry
had repressed ; for Cranmer must needs have someone
to lean on. He is in nowise one of the Titans,
accumulating responsibilities on their own shoulders,
hewing their way through dangers and difficulties,
inspiring their followers with courage and enthusiasm ;
but he is the captain of a band composed of most in
harmonious and incongruous elements which he does
succeed in holding together over a decidedly arduous
journey ; though he himself would have found his truer
sphere in a college cloister.
So when it came to the unhappy moment when
Cranmer went with the rest of the Council and
assented to Edward's will altering the succession,
he acted as a man who cannot rely on his own judg
ment when he stands alone. He was not appealed to
till the whole of the rest of the Council, with the excep
tion of Hales, had been brought into professed agree
ment; and Ridley, whose courage has never been
impugned, afforded him no support. A man of strong
self-reliance would not have given way ; to do so was
weak, but it was neither dishonest nor cowardly on the
face of it.
No one indeed would venture to claim for Cranmer

1 66 CRANMER
that his conduct while he was archbishop ever verged
on the heroic. Yet more than once he had taken no
small risk in attempting to dissuade Henry from some
course on which he was bent; and twice at least, in
the matters of the Six Articles and the King's Book,
his enemies prematurely rejoiced in the belief that
his boldness had wrought his destruction. They were
wrong. Henry was too fond of him to be angry.
But it argues a considerable moral courage in a man
naturally timid and hesitating that he should have run
such a risk ; and once again, at least, there is no gain
saying his courage when he was charged on Mary's
accession with having set up the Mass again at Canter
bury. He could not indeed without shame have
avowed such a step ; yet he had the opportunity
of quitting the country, an opportunity which many
others seized without hint of reproach, and he deliber
ately elected to stand by his principles and face the
danger rather than fly. Nor did he fail or show sign
of yielding till he had been for more than two years a
prisoner, and the fires of the persecution had been
raging for close on a twelvemonth.
That declaration against the Mass opens the last act
in Cranmer's tragedy ; immediately after it he was
committed to the Tower, and remained a prisoner till
his life's end. True to his theory that the appoint
ment of bishops to their Sees lay with the sovereign,
he had required new licences to be issued when Edward's
reign commenced ; and he took for granted now that
some other would take his place at Canterbury, though
it was not till his death that the appointment was
officially given to Pole. He was attainted for his
share in the Dudley plot, but seems to have had some

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 167
hope that he would after all be allowed to retire into
private life. For he asked leave to " open his mind on
matters of religion " to the queen, that so he might feel
himself discharged of his own duty, and free from any
further call to interfere in public affairs, inasmuch
as submission in act to the direct mandate of the
sovereign was part and parcel of his theory of the
Supremacy. Leave, however, was not given.
For some time he and Ridley were associated in the
Tower; later Latimer and Bradford shared their
chamber. There was no fluctuation in any of them.
In April 1554 the three bishops were transferred to
Oxford, where they were called on to enter on a
disputation, separately, with a body of delegates.
They maintained their position, with no more hint
of wavering on Cranmer's part than on that of his
colleagues, though his demeanour was marked by ex
treme patience and no little dignity, while the other
two adopted a somewhat more defiant tone. As a
result, all three were found guilty of heresy.
Almost with the new year the great persecution
opened : Rogers, Hooper, and Taylor being the earliest
victims. The three at Oxford had been formally con
demned as heretics, after the disputation in 1554, but
their condemnation was set aside, as having been prior
to the reconciliation between the Church of England
and Rome. Rome was to take them in hand. It was
not till September that Cranmer, the first of them, was
called to appear before the pope at Rome, the pontiff
delegating the conduct of the trial to a Court to be
held at Oxford, where he was represented by the
Bishop of Gloucester.
Cranmer appeared, but refused to acknowledge the

1 68 CRANMER
papal jurisdiction, giving his answers as a public pro
fession, not as admitting the Court's right to demand
them. He refused to allow that in seceding from
Rome he was acting as a schismatic. There was
plenty of evidence that he had discarded the Roman
authority, that he had maintained doctrines now called
heretical, and that he had a wife; none of which
points Cranmer disputed, but justified all of them.
There was practically no support of the further charge
that he had compelled subscription to articles, though
the dividing line between persuasion and compulsion
is not always easy to draw.
The Court was not to adjudicate ; it was to lay the
results of the trial before the pope himself ; it was the
pope himself who condemned Cranmer, and handed
him over to the secular arm. The spectacle of the
Bishop of Rome passing judgment on the Metropolitan
of England, papa alterius orbis, was impressive; its
effect on Nationalist sentiments, already seriously
stirred by the Spanish match, must have been tre
mendous. The claim of absolute submission to Rome
had never before been put forward in a shape so
uncompromising and so tangible.
Ridley and Latimer met their fate before the pope
had pronounced his condemnation of Cranmer. For
dealing with them, legatine authority was sufficient.
They were condemned, and burned on October 16.
Cranmer is said to have witnessed their end from the
roof of his prison.
Until this time there had been no hint of failure on
Cranmer's part. Even at the time of his trial he wrote
to the queen in terms which amounted to a reproof for
subjecting the English Crown to Rome. But when

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 169
December came, there were signs of wavering. He
asked to be allowed to confer with Tunstall, who, un
able to travel, remarked that Cranmer would have
been more likely to shake him than he Cranmer. Pole
was no more willing to face discussion. A Spaniard
named Soto was sent to him, ineffectually ; then
another, Garcia. It has been said, and seems con
sonant with Cranmer's character, that while he re
jected the arguments of these divines, he broke down
under his need of personal affection and moral sup
port ; for it had always been characteristic of him that
he should enjoy the warmest affection from his inti
mates and from those of his own household. Now his
isolation told on his emotional nature : not torture, but
mere unkindness, overthrew him.
At any rate, about the end of January he wrote a
submission. It did not take him far, hardly, indeed,
beyond the conclusion deducible from his theory of the
Royal Supremacy. In virtue of the Royal command, he
would admit the papal supremacy so far as the laws of
God and the realm permit. A few days later came a
second submission, without the qualification ; and it is
said that he began to attend Mass. The only result,
however, was his public degradation; a performance
carried through with much unhappiness by Thirlby,
and much open and coarse satisfaction by Bonner,
Thirlby's colleague. On this occasion Cranmer claimed
the right of appeal to a General Council, and once
more declared that he would never say Mass.
The appeal he had already had prepared, expressing
his principle that what was laid down in Scripture
and by the Fathers of the Church was of authority,
but that the doctrines he had rejected, now called

170 CRANMER
heretical, were modern innovations. The appeal was,
of course, disallowed, or rather ignored.
Two more " submissions " followed. In the first he
again accepted the Royal mandate, but appealed to a
General Council to decide the questions of doctrine.
The second was a declaration that he held the Catholic
Faith as it had been from the beginning. The ground
taken in the first submission and in the long-prepared
appeal was maintained. Until this time, in fact —
February 16 — the utmost concession extracted from
him, the utmost deviation from his past attitude, was
the admission that papal supremacy might be estab
lished by Royal authority.
The reply was a writ to the mayor and bailiffs of
Oxford to burn Cranmer, issued on February 24.
Within four weeks Cranmer met his doom, and the
events of that brief period are extremely puzzling.
He was removed from the prison to the deanery at
Christ Church. The foreign friars at Oxford sur
rounded him and plied him with persuasion and argu
ment ; with the seductive prospect of release, and the
terror of the death which might be escaped by a
full and complete recantation. If the Court was
responsible, its perfidy is unspeakable ; but it is more
likely that the friars persuaded themselves that they
really might save Cranmer's life by getting the re
cantation, and must at any rate further the cause
thereby. Whatever the motive, Cranmer was now at last
overcome. A sweeping recantation of his " heresies,"
including an unqualified admission of the papal su
premacy, was submitted to him, signed by him, and
printed for publication. The issue was promptly sup-

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 171
pressed, for reasons which can only be guessed at. The
theory that it was a sheer forgery is not tenable ;
perhaps the most plausible explanation suggested is
that the public was thought likely to regard it as a
forgery, because it was attested only by the friar
Garcia and one Sidall, who was an obscure person.
In place of this recantation, however, a new docu
ment was now submitted to the hapless prisoner ; no
mere retractation of opinions, but full of self-denuncia
tion, humiliation, self-condemnation of the most abject
kind. This Cranmer wrote out and signed with his own
hand. The thing is almost inconceivable. There have
been men who have committed great crimes, and in
the overwhelming passion of remorse and self-loathing
have denounced themselves in such unmeasured terms ;
but since the days of Peter's denial, it may be doubted
if anyone has in such abject terms renounced principles
which he had maintained and still believed in through
good report and evil report ; unless it may be actually
in the torture chamber, or under such awful stress of
physical terror as at times may unhinge the reason, or
from that sheer cynicism which holds conscience and
self-respect as a feather's weight in the balance against
physical ease. It seems as though in that hour of
utter shame the mere degree of degradation ceased to
be of any moment. Had Cranmer won his release
thereby, had he held by that most pitiful act, his
portion would have been shame for ever.
But, broken as he was, fallen as he seemed beyond
redemption, redemption yet was his. That recanta
tion demonstrates past question, not the character of
the man, but the collapse of his nerve, the natural

172 CRANMER
infirmity with which he was born, the physical terror
of suffering, which is the curse of many sensitive
natures ; the mastery whereof is the moral quality of
courage. A great thing is the courage of those who
do not know what fear is, a happy endowment rightly
held in honour ; but greater in the moral scale is the
courage of those who defy and conquer the fear that is
griping at their heart. That fearfulness was Cran
mer's ; and in those sad March days, he, who had for
so many years held his infirmity under resolute control,
for a brief space gave way utterly ; but it was not for
long. He was yet to rise again and grapple with it,
and be victor in the last great hour.
What passed in the few days between the recanta
tion and the day of doom none knows with certainty.
On the 18th he signed ; on the 21st he was taken from
his prison, that he might make his recantation in public
and pass to the stake. He had given no sign; it is
only clear that in whatever passed he did not disturb
the impression that all was what his executioners called
well with him. We need not ask whether this was
because his resolution was framed only when he had
lost the last shred of hope, or because he desired only
to ensure the opportunity of giving it effect. It would
seem that no precise notification was given him either
of the hopelessness of pardon or of the time of his
doom. On the third morrow after the final fall, a
mournful procession passed under frowning skies
through driving rain from the prison to St. Mary's
Church ; the stricken prelate walking with a Spanish
friar on either side. There was spoken over him,
while often the tears rolled down his face as down the
face of a child, the oration which should justify his

THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 173
doom to men. When it was over, he was bidden to
speak that all might know the reality of his con
version and his repentance. So he arose, and his
repentance was manifest to all. The cry of the
penitent sinner falling before the Throne of Mercy
was a voice of sublime humiliation : the exhortation
which followed was in all things fitting. Then came
the confession of faith, at first in general terms. And
now the time was come when he should confirm his
renunciation of the heresies he had taught, and furnish
the final triumph of his enemies. But his penitence
was not for those "heresies," but for his denial of
them. For a moment the meaning did not reach his
hearers as he declared that what most of all troubled
him was those writings which he had put forth
contrary to the truth. The sudden shock of amaze
ment came when he pronounced those writings to be
the "bills" to which he had set his hand since his
degradation " for fear of death, and to save my life if
it might be." Without faltering, without palliation,
he made full confession of the enormity of his sin,
proclaiming that sign by which all men should know
for ever that it was of this in very deed that he
repented. " As my hand offended in writing contrary
to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished.
For if I may come to the fire it shall first be burned."
A few more words rejecting the pope and all his false
doctrines, affirming once more that doctrine of the
sacrament which he had put forth in his book, and
the authorities hastily silenced him and hurried him
from the pulpit. So quickly did he move towards the
place of execution that the friars had much ado to
keep up with him, struggling vainly to extract word

174 CRANMER
or sign by which the tremendous revulsion of his con
fession might be counteracted. Now, at least, his
resolution was absolutely fast. He would pretend no
excuse or palliation for the sin of his recantation : he
would withdraw no syllable of its cancelment. They
bound him to the stake, and he shook hands with
many of the bystanders. The fire was kindled.
Cranmer thrust his right hand into the flame, crying
with a loud voice, " This hand hath offended," and so
held it, withdrawing it only once, to wipe his brow;
and all men might see it burning before the flame
touched any other part of him. So he stood, lapped in
fire, and neither spoke nor stirred again.
Thus died Thomas Cranmer, whose elegy sounds
through the ages in the music of the English liturgy ;
highest of all the martyrs in station, accounted lowest
of all in honour. For many that are first shall be last,
and the last first.

CHAPTER XIV
Epilogue: The Reformation in England
The death of Mary was followed on the next day
by that of Pole. The Romanist regime was over.
Elizabeth set herself to the task of pacification with
infinite tact and policy. Virtually she took Cranmer's
scheme, and with slight modification made it her own.
The Reformation, uncertain in its course before, stayed
but rendered inevitable by Mary, became an accom
plished fact. It only remained for Rome to widen the
chasm — to confirm the hostility of the revolted nation ;
which, largely by the instrumentality of Douay, she
very effectually did. Neither the details of the formal
settlement nor its subsequent developments are within
the scope of this volume ; but it remains to state some
general conclusions.
In England, more than elsewhere, the Reformation
means two different things according to the point of
view: the Reformation official and the Reformation
popular. The official Reformation is concerned with the
Anglican body, with political and constitutional
questions affecting its governing authority, its
organisation, its control of temporalities, its dogmatic
and ceremonial limitations. 175

176 CRANMER
The popular Reformation regards these things as in
varying degrees accidents. Its essence lies in the
application to religion of the peculiarly British
doctrine of Liberty, which may be expressed in the
formula, " I have a right to judge for myself and to
insist on your agreeing with me" ; with a corollary,
that no foreigner has any business to interfere. This
process results in a general horror, not of any logical
system, but of two vague ideas labelled " Popery '' and
"Priestcraft"; so that whatsoever falls under either
category stands ipso forto condemned.
Officially, then, the Reformation was in its primary
stage political; it started from the rejection, by and
on behalf of both the clergy and the temporal State,
of any and every claim to authority in England put
forward by the papal power.
In its constitutional aspect it dealt with the
relations of Church and State : and here the funda
mental characteristic of the Reformation is the un
qualified assertion by the State of its right to control
every branch of the ecclesiastical organisation. That
the claim was made in great part on behalf of the
Crown rather than of the State at large was due to
the general political predominance of the Crown at the
time. Hence, the sovereign claimed and enforced the
power of controlling and appropriating ecclesiastical
revenues, of nominating the bishops, of authorising
formularies, of constituting ecclesiastical courts, of
disallowing the proceeding- of Convocation, of abolish
ing benefit of clergy. Some of these things were done
by direct Royal authority, some by process of Parlia
ment ; all were effective expressions of the subordina
tion of the ecclesiastical organisation to the temporal

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 177
Sovereign. How far these things had the assent of
the clergy is another matter, and one which the State
was free to ignore. From the point of view of the
State, they were all merely the application in practice
of theoretical rights always inherent in the Sovereign,
though not always exercised and occasionally dis
puted. In this theory of the supremacy of the temporal
power the clergy were forced to acquiesce, however
reluctantly. The real change which had come about
was that the State had finally and decisively proved
itself the stronger power. Hitherto the clergy had
been able to do battle with the secular claims more or
less successfully. The spiritual armoury of excom
munication and penance had been matched against
material weapons. Now, princes, nobles, and commons
were ready to brave the ecclesiastical anathemas.
However unwilling to admit the justice or the fitness
of the new order, the clergy had no choice but sub
mission to the accomplished fact. The secular was
master of the spiritual.
But while this change was probably inevitable, it
had been facilitated by the unwonted attitude of the
foremost ecclesiastic in the country. No small share
of the animosity to Cranmer so often displayed by
that party in the Church which likes to label itself
Catholic, is due to the sense that he was a traitor to
his Order ; that it was his prime duty to maintain its
traditional rights; that he did in fact deliberately
guide it to surrender.
Nearly four centuries before, another Henry was
seated on the English throne. At his right hand was a
devoted, even an unscrupulous follower, as active in

178 CRANMER
the king's support against the clergy as against the
barons. Him the king made primate; and straight
way Thomas of Canterbury became the champion of
the Order, the most uncompromising claimant for its
rights that it had ever known. The later Henry
made no such blunder. He chose no militant aspirant
to martyrdom ; it may indeed be doubted whether
such a man was to be found. Those who at a later
date espoused the cause of Rome, now all supported
Henry. At the time, Fisher was almost the only
prelate with the convictions, the courage, and the
ability for the part of a Becket ; which was absolutely
the last for which the new Thomas of Canterbury was
fitted. His mind was of the strictly academic type, his
temper of the most peaceable, his self-reliance greatly
lacking. It never occurred to him to regard himself as
the captain of a spiritual host, struggling for its rights
against the encroachments of the secular power ; before
he was made primate, the Church was to him simply a
branch of the State Service, and his view was rather
confirmed than altered by his promotion. It is easier
to forgive a Latimer, a free lance with a strong vein
of Quixotism, or a Hooper who might almost be called
a frank mutineer; but, unhappily for Cranmer, his
interest lay on the side which he espoused, and his
credit — very unfairly as it would seem — has suffered
gravely in consequence.
This conception of the relation between the
Sovereign and the ecclesiastical body was not Cranmer's
creation ; but it controlled his entire policy. As arch
bishop, he accounted himself the chief counsellor of
the Crown in matters ecclesiastical; but he took for
granted that the Crown was free to accept or reject

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 179
his advice and require him to obey its decisions.
Sometimes the Crown was graciously pleased to yield
to his representations, as in the publication of the open
Bible and the increasing use of the vernacular in the
Church services. Sometimes it gave him practically a
free hand, as in the compilation of the reformed liturgy.
Sometimes it trampled on his advice, as in the case
of the Six Articles. But this was an episode. The
significant fact is that the ultimate reconstruction
shaped in accordance with Cranmer's ideas much more
than with those of any other individual. How far his
personal views on dogma developed in the direction of
Geneva is a more or less open question ; what he
clearly did hold was, the legitimacy of divers contra
dictory opinions, the large range of the unessential. The
comprehensiveness which was a political necessity in
the eyes of Elizabeth and her secular counsellors had
been but a just latitude in the eyes of Cranmer; yet
there were few other Churchmen who would not have
curtailed it if they could. However much this or that
adviser or coadjutor dominated him on individual
points, the whole outcome was and is to this day the
expression of Cranmer's mind ; far more than that of
any other individual, school, or party in the Church.
There were old doctrines which he would not exclude
though he himself had shaken them off; there were
new doctrines which he would not exclude though he
was not himself persuaded of their truth. Such a man
will never have the praise of partisans ; but if he had
not pointed the way, it is not easy to doubt that the
Church would officially either have reverted to Rome
or have become frankly Calvinist. As it was, it
became deliberately comprehensive,

1 80 CRANMER
It is, indeed, obvious that there were numbers of the
clergy who had no liking for this official form of
Reformation; which might be summed up as reject
ing papal authority, asserting secular supremacy, and,
in questions of dogma and ritual, demanding only on
one side the decisive negation of certain specified
Roman doctrines and practices, and on the other the
positive affirmation of very little more than is con
tained in the Apostles' Creed. As to papal authority,
no doubt there was small room for question. As to
secular supremacy, it could always be maintained that
the clergy had never admitted the principle but only
submitted to the material fact, and reserved the
right to challenge any and every application of the
State's claim to control. As to dogmas and ritual, there
was plenty of opportunity for very one-sided interpre
tations. It was clear enough that any party becoming
dominant would be able to pose for the time as the only
truly representative group. To arrive at anything like
an accurate apportionment of the distribution of the
clergy among the varying schools under the Elizabethan
settlement is not possible. That a few were resolute
adherents of the old order is undeniable ; and that a
few were equally resolute adherents of the most
advanced reformed type. But it can hardly be
doubted that the bulk — at least until the pope chose to
challenge the legitimacy of Elizabeth's government —
had no very strong convictions beyond what was ground
of common agreement ; except a preference for whatever
magnified their office on the one hand, and a repudiation
of the rule of celibacy on the other. For the rest, they
leaned to this side or that, according as their mental
bias was conservative or advanced, until the ultra-

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 181
reformers were gradually drawn off by the rise of
definite dissenting sects.
Perhaps the most curious feature of the method by
which comprehensiveness was attained was ingenious
ambiguity. The formularies do not commonly assert
that either of two doctrines may be legitimately held,
but they propound a doctrine in terms which may be
translated in either of two or more ways. A theory
has been invented that the true test of the interpre
tation is the supposed belief of the framer. Yet there
can hardly be a question that the formularies were
authorised precisely on account of their ambiguity.
And here again we recognise the Cranmerian note.
To take a specific instance — though the wording is not
Cranmer's — everyone is agreed that the archbishop
held that "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily
and indeed taken and received by the faithful at the
Lord's Supper " — but the critics are entirely disagreed
as to the mode of the Presence as he recognised it. At
one end of the scale is a crudely thaumaturgic inter
pretation ; at the other, a frankly rationalistic one :
neither being acceptable, the alternative is some
mystical one, which to a few minds conveys a definite
meaning, but to most is a satisfying method of con
cealing from themselves that they themselves do not
know what they mean. Cranmer, on this and on
many other points, adopting himself a mystical inter
pretation, recognised that this could not be necessary
since it could not be really grasped by the average
intelligence: and preferred ambiguity to expressions
involving the acceptance of either universally in
telligible extreme.
In the rejection of the papal authority, the moving

1 82 CRANMER
force was Henry vm., backed by the approval of the
great bulk of his subjects, whether lay or cleric. In
the assertion of the secular supremacy, the moving
force was Thomas Cromwell, backed by the king, the
bulk of the laity, and a few of the clergy headed by
Cranmer. In the comprehensive character of the
dogma and ritual of the reformed Church, Cranmer
was the moving spirit; and his work, overthrown
for a brief interval, was confirmed by the political
necessities of Elizabeth's government. The circum
stances of her birth made reconciliation with Rome
a practical impossibility; while for many years the
country could not venture to espouse the cause of
militant Protestantism. Elizabeth herself needed to
retain the loyalty to her own person both of the old
Catholics and of the democratic Puritans. Each could
find, not indeed complete satisfaction, but a reasonably
acceptable compromise within the four corners of the
Cranmerian formularies. The uniformity resulting
was sufficient to meet the public convenience ; its
boundaries were marked enough to show that even
comprehensiveness drew a line somewhere ; while there
was prima facie ground for holding suspect anyone
who stood stubbornly outside. Political requirements
coinciding with the martyred archbishop's religious
theory, the reformed Church was established on a
working basis.
What change it was that actually befell the Church
at the Reformation is the subject of a wonderful
amount of misrepresentation. Half a century ago,
it was possible for a responsible historian to write as
if one Church was abolished and another established
in its place. To-day it is perhaps more common to

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 183
find it suggested that the Anglican Church has been
one and unchanged from the earliest times ; that the
Reformation was merely her repudiation of foreign
doctrines which Rome had endeavoured to thrust
upon her.
The fact is that the pre-Reformation Church was
an institution absolutely unique in history. There
are no analogies ; there is nothing similar to argue
from. The theory of the relation between the
ecclesiastical organisation and the State was never
worked out. The conditions under which that organ
isation held and administered property were never
examined. Her relation to other religious bodies was
never in question, because no separate religious bodies
were allowed to exist.
The official political theory underlying the Reforma
tion was, that the Church was essentially national ;
that in any country professing Christianity and ruled
by a Christian prince, the Church was the nation itself
in its spiritual aspect, as the State is the nation in its
secular aspect. The clergy were the duly appointed
ministers of the Church, as civil functionaries are the
duly appointed ministers of the State. To them, in
the natural course, belonged the administration of
lands and revenues consecrated to religion ; but these
were the actual property of the whole of the nation
qua Church, not of the clergy. Now, inasmuch as
there cannot exist in one nation two co-ordinate
dominions, but one must ultimately have authority
over the other, either the State must have ultimate
control of the Church, or the Church of the State : a
dilemma in practice admitting of only one answer. It
follows then that the clergy can claim to direct and

1 84 CRANMER
administer the Church only so far as the State thinks
right to permit. It follows also that changes in the
religious judgments of the nation, or in the conditions
of admission to the ministry of the Church, do not
affect the continuity either of the Church or of the
ministerial body. It follows also that the State
can either recognise or reject the necessity of a
particular ceremony — such as the laying on of hands —
in the appointment of ministers. By insistence on the
practice, the " apostolic succession " has in fact been
maintained ; yet — according to the hypothesis — the
continuity of the ministry would not have been inter
fered with by its rejection.
Now this theory of the Unity of the Church and
the nation — teres atque rotundus from an academic
point of view — could never have appealed to practical
sentiment. " The Church " meant, and to this day
means in common parlance, the clergy. The man who
handed over broad acres to the Church had in his
mind no idea of endowing the nation. Apart from
gifts which were in reality merely ingenious evasions
of feudal imposts, he intended, as a rule, to conciliate
the powers who could modify his purgatorial experi
ences ; or else he desired his wealth to be specifically
devoted to education or to charity. Systematic
education and systematic charity were entirely in the
hands of the clerical organisation. It may be assumed
that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the pious
donor would in fact have been shocked beyond words
at the idea of any but the clergy having control of his
donations, and that he intended them primarly to be
the beneficiaries. It is reasonable, however, to argue
that those who were particularly interested in an

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 185
educational or charitable disposition of their property
had only made the clergy trustees of the same because
they formed the only existing organisation for the
administration of such trusts; and also that a firm
belief in the efficacy of purchase-money as a passport
through purgatory, together with sundry other pious
opinions which the reformed Church declared to
be erroneous or superstitious, had been important
factors in directing donations. From all of these
arguments, setting aside the academic theory of
Church and State, the conclusions might be derived :
that much of the wealth in the hands of the clergy had
been procured by means of obsolete claims to influence
over the peace or otherwise of the departed ; much also
out of a piety which would have accounted many of the
reformed doctrines as heretical, not to say blasphemous ;
much because, at the time of the donations, no other
organisation existed for carrying out the intentions
of the donor. From which again would be deduced
the right of the State to intervene, and control or
supplant the ecclesiastical administration of property
so acquired.
Again, however, the point must be insisted on, that
while the State could lay down the law and demand
the official acquiescence of the clergy thereto, yet it
was always open to the latter to declare that their
rights were sacred and indefeasible; that their abdication
even if it had been voluntary was ultra vires — just
as, by way of illustration, parents cannot sign away
the right to keep their children — and that as a matter
of fact it was not voluntary but compulsory. No
precedents, no admissions, and no submissions can
apply in dealing with the proposition that the clerical

1 86 CRANMER
hierarchy is of divine appointment, subordinate to the
secular authority only in virtue of the right asserted
by might ; and that to lay secular hands on what has
been confided to the care of that hierarchy is sacrilege,
albeit the State might exhibit grounds both theoretical
and practical for its intervention.
The Reformation in its popular aspect requires
separate consideration.
The mind of the ordinary Englishman is not
interested in abstract propositions; and he contem
plates reforms with an eye strictly directed to their
practical results. He has an affection for the things
to which he is accustomed, and looks with suspicion
upon innovations. His attitude towards the Reforma
tion in its earlier stages seems to have been entirely in
accord with his usual character.
The movement, regarded as anti-papal, was sure of
popular support, on the general ground that the pope
is a foreigner. Regarded as anti-clerical, it was
received with a divided mind. Fanatics, of course,
railed at the vices of the clergy in unmeasured terms ;
but a popular gathering was quite as likely to duck
the fanatic in a horse-pond as to applaud him. The
wealth of the monastic orders might excite envy ; but
as landlords they were generally preferred to the
nobles. Clerical immunities under the law were offen
sive not as a rule to the populace so much as to jurists,
since the clergy were always disposed to strain to the
utmost the inclusiveness of their protective jurisdiction ;
and, in respect of many offences, popular sympathy
— with the Draconian punishments in vogue, as de
scribed in the introduction to Utopia — was habitually
on the side of the law-breakers. Roughly speaking,

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 187
the unpopularity of the regular clergy varied very
much with the character of the foundations in a par
ticular locality ; the attack on them was rarely received
with local enthusiasm ; and in both North and West
the risings showed clearly that the official movement
had entirely outrun the popular sentiment.
Theologically, as we have seen, even the official
attitude had scarcely undergone modification when
Edward came to the throne ; and it is obvious that
the active reformation during his reign was by no
means to the popular taste. Dialectically, its most
vigorous promoters were foreigners, such as Peter
Martyr; practically, it was enforced by an oligarchy
which showed little intelligence and less character,
whether under the leadership of Somerset or of
Warwick. In the large towns and in the eastern
counties, always in later years the strongholds of
Puritanism, the new doctrines were popular, and on
their destructive side were no doubt highly attractive
to the 'prentice element ; but in the North and West
the ancient ways continued to find favour.
To all appearance, then, on Mary's accession the
populace in general was quite prepared to return
to the old ways, and particularly to be rid of the
foreigners who had been busily engaged in admin
istering well-meant but irritating advice and rebuke.
There was a prompt exodus of these persons ; and it
seemed at the first start of the new reign that, though
of course the return to power of the Conservative
party would involve the changing of a good many
seats, clemency was to be the order of the day. But
then the face of things changed. The Germans and
Switzers had flown; but Spaniards and Italians took

1 88 CRANMER
their place. The Spanish marriage, despite all safe
guards, was ominously suggestive of a foreign domina
tion ; the royal attitude towards the papal supremacy
was opposed to popular feeling. The English Bible
had been by this time widely enough circulated to
create a formidable body of religious opinion derived
from the direct study of the Scriptures. The fires of
persecution were kindled : the highest Church digni
taries were struck down ; martyrs conspicuous for high
character, white-haired elders, raw lads and tender
women, went rejoicing to the stake. Fear, horror,
righteous rage, sprang up in the hearts of a people
ready enough to be indifferent to the subject-matter
of religious controversy ; and a hot hatred of all that
could be branded as " popery " took a deep and abiding
root. The Marian persecution made the country at
large passionately Protestant ; and the seal was set on
the Protestant Reformation of the people by the policy
of the popes and of Spain ; forcing the entire country
to take sides with the Protestant peoples and parties
on the Continent, even when abstaining from actual
hostilities. In this sense of the word, the Elizabethan clergy
were no less emphatic than the laity in claiming the
name of Protestant ; to which, however, a quite different
sense has been given in latter-day controversy. But
while the elergy, and more particularly the higher
clergy, constantly tended more and more definitely to
the Catholic party which had diverged least from
Rome — the Crown conceiving that its own dignity
and that of the prelacy were intimately bound up
together — the tendency of the Reformation among the
laity was more and more to Protestantism of the pro-

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 189
nounced Puritan type. The study of the Bible in
creased, and men, deriving their religious ideas from
it directly, found therein no prima facie sanction for
elaborate ritual, or for regarding the priest as a neces
sary intermediary between the man and his Maker.
However much attached the people might be to tradi
tional observances and customs, however much opposed
to ranters, however loyal to Church as against Dissent,
a change took place at the Reformation which may
significantly be expressed in a phrase — the Priest to
his flock had become the Parson.
Had matters rested here, it may be that no distinc
tion would ever have needed to be drawn between the
Anglican and the National Reformation; the Eliza
bethan settlement would have covered the field. But
the forces at work were not to be so easily laid to
rest. A new phase of the Reformation was in course
of evolution, a phase associated with other names ;
which developed into the struggles of sectaries under
the Stuarts, and the division of Protestants into Church
men and Dissenters. The reconciliation of Catholicism
and Puritanism could never be more than partial. The
peculiar achievement of Cranmer lay in his framing a
modus vivendi so effectively inclusive in its scope that
Laud could rule the same Church whose children in
later generations were brought up on the Pilgrim's
Progress; that Church which a few years since included
among her sons Lord Shaftsbury, Doctor Pusey, and
Dean Stanley.

INDEX

Absolution, 8.
Abuses, 8.
Abused images, 120, 122.
Acts of Parliament passed —
Annates, restraint of (a), 57, 64.
(/S), 66.
,, to Crown, 57, 68.
Appeals, restraint of, 55, 57, 64.
Appeals and Submission, 66.
Articles, Six, 84, 91, 98, 121,
129, 147.
Benefit of Clergy, 63.
Chantries, 78, 121.
Conge' cVilire, 66.
Heresy laws revived, 150.
Marriage of Clergy, 125.
Mortmain, 64.
Mortuaries, 58.
Peter Pence, 66.
Pluralities, 58.
Probate, 58.
Repeal of Edward's laws, 145.
,, Henry's laws, 150.
Revival of heresy laws, 150.
Royal Proclamations, 79, 119.
Six Articles, 84, 91, 98, 121, 129.
147.
Submission of Clergy, 66.
Succession (a), 66, 67.
(P), 68.
Suppression of Monasteries (o),
76.
Suppression of Monasteries (|3),
77.
Supremacy, 68.
Treasons, 68, 70, 121.

191

Acts of Parliament — continued.
Uniformity (a), 125.
OS), 137.
Adrian vi., 30.
Alasco, 132.
Alexander vi., 3, 49.
Altar, sacrament of. See Eucharist.
Altar war, 132.
Ambiguity, 181.
America, 17.
Anabaptists, 29, 85.
Anarchism, 19, 84.
Annates, 57.
, , Acts. See Acts of Parlia
ment.
Anne Boleyn. See Boleyn.
Anne of Cleves, 79, 98.
Antinomians, 85, 117.
Apostolic succession, 93, 139.
Appeals, restraint of. See Acts.
,, to General Councils. Sec
Councils.
Aquinas, Thomas, 14.
Arthur, Prince, 36.
Articles, Six, 84, 91, 98, 121, 129, 147.
„ Ten, 89.
,, Thirty- Nine, 137, 140.
,, Forty-Two, 137, 140.
Aske, Eobert, 77.
Augsburg, Confession, 33.
Diet ('30), 32.
,, ('48), 100, 108.
„ ('55), 110.
,, Interim of, 100, 108.
,, Peace of, 110.
Augustine, Saint, 25.

192

INDEX

Baptism, 89, 93.
Barlow, 90, 93.
Becket, 11, 177.
Beggers, Supplieacyon for the, 4, 5.
Benefit of clergy, 63, 71.
Bible. See Translations.
Bishops' Book, 90.
Bishoprics, new, 77.
Black Book, 75, 76.
Black Rubric, 138.
Boleyn, Anne, 30, 38, 45, 55, 69.
Bologna, 108.
Bonner, 87, 113, 121, 135, 144,
149, 152, 154, 169.
Borgias, 3, 48.
Bradford, 152. 167.
Breviary, 124.
Brigittines, 68.
Bucer, 131, 136, 138.
Burke and More, 85.
Calvin, John, 24, 33, 106, 107,
108.
Calvinism, 100, 107, 115, 126.
Cambridge, 20, 42, 131.
Campeggio, 40.
Canon Law, 60-62, 91, 136.
Caraffa, 110.
Cardinal College, 22, 73.
Carlstadt, 29.
Carthusians, 68, 73.
Catherine of Aragon, 30, 36, 55.
See Divorce.
Catherine Howard, 79.
Catherine Parr, 112.
Catholics, 188.
Catholicity, 163.
Cecil, 127.
Celibacy, 91, 92, 117, 147.
Ceremonies, 89, 118, 135, 139.
Chantries, 78, 121.
Chapters, 78.
Charles v. —
becomes Emperor, 26.
political attitude, 28.
Worms, 26, 28.
marriage, 30.
sack of Rome, 32.
reconciliation with Rome, 32.
compromise with League, 33.

Charles v. — continued.
the central figure, 99.
attitude on Councils, 101.
attacks the League, 100.
attacked by Maurice, 109.
abdication, 110.
miscellaneous, 152.
Charterhouse. See Carthusians.
Christian Man, Erudition of a.
See King's Book.
Christian Man, Institution of a.
See Bishops' Book.
Church. See Clergy, Ecclesiastical,
etc.
Clement vii. —
accession, 30.
anti-Imperial, 31.
sack of Rome, 32.
reconciliation with Charles, 32.
on the divorce, 40.
Divorce Commission, 40.
revokes trial to Rome, 40.
condemns divorce, 57.
objection to Council, 101.
miscellaneous, 100.
Clergy- charges against, 4 ff.
Colet's charges, 21.
on the Continent, 7.
in England, 7-11.
worldliness, 10, 21.
independence of Rome, 4, 10, 54.
taxation, 11.
endowments, 52.
anti-papal attitude, 52, 54.
under praemunire, 59.
submission of, 62, 66.
seculars and regulars, 74.
marriage of, 91, 125.
under Elizabeth, 180.
See Convocation and Ecclesias
tical.
Cleves, Anne of, 79, 98.
Colet, John —
early days, 12.
in Italy, 12, 13.
lectures, 13.
Dean of St. Paul's, 15.
address to Convocation, 21.
charges against clergy, 21.

INDEX

193

Colet, John. — continued.
attacked for heresy, 21.
St. Paul's school, 22.
death, 22.
miscellaneous, 6, 19, 85.
Cologne, Archbishop of, 124.
Columbus, 17.
Commissions. Sec Canon Law,
Communion, Prayer Book,
Visitations, Windsor.
Communion, order of, 122, 123.
Communism, 85.
Comperta, 76.
Comprehension, 141, 142, 179, 182.
Conference of Ratisbon, 102, 103.
Conge cV&ire, 66.
Conscience, freedom of, 80, 82, 176.
Constantinople, fall of, 2.
Consubstantiation, 115, 134.
Contarini, 102, 103, 116.
Continuity, 142, 183.
Convocation —
Colet and Convocation, 20 ff.
on divorce. 56.
on General Councils, 56.
subsidies, 59.
supremacy clause, 59.
answers to supplication, 61, 62.
compulsory submission, 62.
petitions for translation, 87.
, , against heretical books,
87.
,, for revision, 88.
, , for communion in both
kinds, 121.
,, for marriage, 121.
, , for representation, 122.
,, for Commission on
Ecclesiastical Laws,
122.
authorises King's Book, 93.
rejects Homilies, 119.
not consulted, 125, 138, 140.
reaction in, 145.
Council of Regency, 111.
Council of Trent. See Trent.
Councils, General, appeals to, by —
Cranmer, 56, 101 169.
Henry vin., 56, 101.
Luther, 25, 101.
*3

Councils, General, attitude towards,
of—
Charles v., 32, 101.
Clement vii., 101.
Convocation, 56.
Julius in., 109.
Luther, 27, 101, 102.
Paul in., 101, 102.
Protestants, 101, 102.
Counter-Reformation, 108.
Courage, 172.
Covenanters, 155.
Coverdale, 87, 145.
Cranmer's Career —
early years, 20, 42.
appeal to universities, 44.
brought to court, 45.
sent to Italy, 46, 55.
sent to Germany, 46, 55, 58.
marriage, 42, 91.
selected for primacy, 46.
installation, 46, 55.
oaths of obedience, 55.
pronounces divorce, 56.
appeals to General Council, 56.
pleads for More, 68.
surrenders Anne, 69, 164.
surrenders Cromwell, 70, 164.
presses for Bible. 87.
English Litany, 88.
shares in Ten Articles, 89.
shares in Bishop's Book, 90.
shares in King's Book, 92.
opposes Six Articles, 92.
coronation sermon, 113, 118.
introduces Homilies, 118, 119.
shares in First Prayer-Book, 124.
debates on Act of Uniformity,131.
book on the Sacrament, 133.
shares in Reformatio, 137.
resists Nonconformists, 138.
Edward's will, 144, 165.
repudiates the Mass, 145, 166,
169.
sent to the Tower, 145, 166.
removed to Oxford, 167.
disputation there, 167.
summoned to Rome, 167.
trial at Oxford, 167, 168.
condemnation by pope, 168.

194

INDEX

Cranmer's Career — continued.
asks to confer, 169.
first submission, 169.
second submission, 169.
appeal to General Council, 169,
170.
third submission, 170.
fourth submission, 170.
removed to Christ Church, 170.
first recantation, 170.
second recantation, 171.
in St. Mary's Church, 172.
at the stake, 174.
miscellaneous, 11, 98, 111, 114,
116, 130, 135, 152.
Cranmer's Charactei —
dominated by Henry, 69, 70, 164.
amiability, 69.
innocence, 45, 68.
lack of self-confidence, 63, 69, 164,
165.
consistency, 81.
learning, 124, 133.
breadth of view, 161.
timidity, 42.
need of affection, 169.
moral traits, 43, 45, 46, 51, 69,
96.
mental traits, 43, 45, 124, 178.
courage and weakness, 81, 92,
145, 158, 160, 162, 166, 171.
vacillation, 81, 132.
condemnatory views, 159.
Cranmer's Policy and Views —
the divorce, 44.
supremacy, 44, 65, 80, 81, 93,
160.
obedience, 65, 81, 93, 94, 167.
the open Bible, 87.
English Liturgy, 88.
apostolic succession, 93, 139.
secular control, 65, 80, 93, 161.
' conformity, 82.
images, 118.
sacraments, 131, 134.
dogmatic comprehension, 142,
179, 181.
attitude to Rome, 44, 55.
,, to the Crown, 177.
,, to Lutherans, 126, 131.

Cranmer's attitude to Calvinists
131, 179.
attitude to heresy, 160.
review of his policy, 141,142,179.
results of his policy, 182.
condemnatory views, 65, 161.
Cromwell, Thomas —
early years, 48.
Italian influences, 48, 49.
in Wolsey's service, 50.
loyalty, 50, 51.
corruption, 50.
in Henry's service, 51.
policy, 54, 74.
character, 47, 50.
vicar-general, 70.
visitation of monasteries, 75, 77.
Bible, 87, 89.
German policy, 79, 98.
fall, 70, 79.
miscellaneous, 11, 58, 59, 95, 98.
Day, 135, 140.
Deprivation of bishops, 146.
of clergy, 147.
Diets. See Augsburg, Ratisbon,
Spires, Worms.
Dissent, 118, 181, 189.
Divorce, the —
marriages, 36.
dispensation, 36.
arguments for, 36, 37.
,, against, 37.
Henry's perturbation, 38.
public attitude, 39.
papal commission, 40.
failure of proceedings, 40.
universities, 44, 54.
Cranmer, 44.
Convocation, 56.
divorce pronounced, 56.
condemned by pope, 57.
Douay, 175.
Dudley. See Warwick.
Duns, 14.
Eastern counties, 107, 128, 187.
Ecclesiastical courts, 21, 60.
,, endowments, 76, 77,
78.

INDEX

195

Ecclesiastical independence, 4, 10.
,, nationalism, 4, 183.
, , polity, theories of, 1 1 ,
81, 176, 183-186.
See Clergy and Convocation.
Economic conditions, 18, 128.
Education, 22, 121.
Edward vi. —
accession, 111.
government under, 127, 140.
will, 143.
death, 109, 144.
Elector of Saxony, 26.
Elizabeth, 111, 127, 141, 175, 182.
Endowments, 76-78.
English Bible, 86-88, 141.
services, 88, 120, 123-125, 141.
traits, 4, 186.
Erasmus —
at Oxford, 15.
in London, 16.
at Cambridge, 20, 42.
his Praise of Folly, 17.
his New Testament, 15, 19, 42,
85.
his Paraphrase, 118, 119, 120.
contrasted with Luther, 23.
advice to Frederic, 26.
miscellaneous, 11, 19, 29, 35.
Erudition of a Christian Man. See
King's Book.
Eucharist, theories of, 114 ff., 134.
Exeter, 129.
Exempt monasteries, 72.
Faith, justification by, 102, 116.
Ferdinand of Austria, 81.
Ferdinand of Spain, 36.
Ferrar, 152.
Fifteenth century, 2.
Fish, Simon, 4, 6.
Fisher, 6, 20, 22, 40, 46, 54, 67,
68, 160, 178.
Fitzjames, 20, 21.
Florence, 3, 12.
Foreigners, 126, 131, 145, 187.
Formularies. See s.v.
Forty-Two Articles, 137, 140.
Foxe, 43, 90.
Francis 1., 28, 30, 99, 102, 103, 107.

Frederic of Saxony, 26, 28, 31.
Freedom of conscience, 80, 82, 176.
Frith, 85.
Frundsberg, 32.
Froude, J. A., 47.
Garcia, 169, 171.
Gardiner —
at Rome, 40, 44.
answers the supplication, 61.
Bible, 87.
excluded from council, 111.
in opposition, 113.
challenges Cranmer, 120.
in prison, 121, 135.
on the sacrament, 133, 134.
Chancellor, 146.
Spanish marriage, 146.
reactionary, 148.
the persecution, 150, 152.
miscellaneous, 22, 46, 57, 90
123.
Geneva, 24, 100, 108.
Grace, pilgrimage of, 77, 90.
Greek, 14.
Grey, Lady Jane, 143, 146.
Grocyn, 12.
Hales, 144, 165.
Heath, 135, 140.
Henri 11., 99.
Henry n., 11, 177.
Henry v., 2.
Henry vn., 16, 35.
Henry tiii. —
accession, 16.
character, 16, 35, 95.
traits, 28, 45, 51.
scruples, 31, 38.
anti-papal policy, 31.
orthodoxy, 37, 82.
ruthlessness, 68.
affection for Cranmer, 91, 95, 166.
aim of his reformation, 53, 64,
80, 94.
will, 111, 143.
obsequies, 113.
miscellaneous, 11, 28, 123, 126.
Heresy laws revived, 150.
Heretical books, 58, 87.

196

INDEX

Heretics, attacks on, 21, 53, 84.
Hertford. See Somerset.
Homilies, Book of, 118, 119, 120.
Hooper, 133, 136, 138, 140, 145,
152, 157, 167.
Huguenots, 24, 107.
Huss, 25.
Hythloday, 19.
Iconoolasm, 83, 118, 120, 141.
Idolatry, 10, 118.
Ignatius. See Loyola.
Images, 9, 83, 117, 120, 122.
Independence. See Ecclesiastical.
Indulgences, 24.
Informers, 70.
Injunctions, 120.
Inquisition, 106.
Institutes of Calvin, 106.
Institution of a Christian Man.
See Bishops' Book.
Insurrections. See Risings.
Intention, 139.
Interim of Augsburg, 100, 108.
Irreverence, 131, 135.
Italy, 2, 14, 48.
Jesuits, order of, 100, 104, 108, 155.
founded, 105.
organisation, 106.
ethics, 106.
education, 106.
influence, 106.
Joan of Arc, 2.
Julius II., 36, 49.
Julius III., 109, 110.
Justification by faith, 102, 116.
Ket, 128, 129.
King's Book, 92, 125.
Kneeling at Communion, 138.
Knox, John, 133, 136, 138, 140,
142.
Laity and Reformation, 41, 130,
144, 186.
Langton, Stephen, 5.
Laski. See Alasco.
Latimer, 22, 75, 85, 90, 130, 132,
152, 157, 158, 167, 168.

Latitude. See Comprehension.
Layton, 75, 76, 79.
Legates, papal, 11, 58, 148, 149.
Leigh, 75, 76, 79.
Leo x., 22, 24, 29, 30, 49.
Liberty of conscience, 80, 82, 176.
Licences to bishops, 166.
Licensed preachers, 79, 122.
Linacre, 12.
Lincolnshire rising, 76.
Lisle, Lord. See Warwick.
Litany, 88, 120.
Liturgy, 88, 124, 174. See Prayer-
Book.
Lollardry, 1, 20, 128, 155.
Londoners, 154.
Louis xi., 2.
Loyola, Ignatius, 104-106.
Luther —
his personality, 23.
challenges Tetzel, 25.
appeals to General Council, 25.
appeals to nationalism, 26.
burns the pope's Bull, 26.
at Worms, 27.
after Worms, 27, 29.
opposes Peasants' War, 29, 84.
attitude to General Council, 27,
101.
attitude to Ratisbon Conference,
103.
death, 33, 97, 100.
miscellaneous, 35, 49, 107, 124.
Lutheran doctrines, 115, 116, 134.
Lutheran League. See Schmalkald.
Macchiavelli, 18, 48.
Marriage of clergy, 91, 125.
Martyr, Peter, 131, 136, 138.
Martyrdoms —
Bradford, 152.
Cranmer, 152.
Ferrar, 152.
Frith, 85.
Hooper, 152, 167.
Latimer, 152.
Ridley, 152.
Rogers, 151, 157, 167.
Saunders, 152.
Taylor, 152, 158, 167.

INDEX

197

Mary —
accession, 144.
moderation, 144.
coronation, 145.
Spanish negotiations, 146.
Wyatt's rebellion, 146.
severity, 146, 147.
marriage, 110.
religious policy, 148, 149, 153.
character, 151.
death, 174.
miscellaneous, 30, 36, 38, 111.
Mass, 114, 144, 145, 156.
Maurice of Saxony, 99, 100, 109.
Melanchthon, 33, 103, 160.
Monasteries, 6.
attacks on, 73.
visitations, 75, 77.
evidence against, 75.
suppressions, 22, 73, 76, 77.
Monasticism, 9, 71-73.
Montmartre, 105, 106.
More, Sir Thomas —
at Oxford, 12, 14.
under Henry vii. 16.
Wolsey, 51.
the Utopia, 17 ff., 186.
as reactionary, 19, 29, 84.
Chancellor, 19, 51, 84.
resignation, 63.
on supremacy, 67, 68.
imprisonment, 68.
death, 68.
miscellaneous, 15, 37, 46, 54, 85,
160.
Mortmain. See Statutes and Acts.
Morton, Cardinal, 73.
Mortuaries Act, 58.
Miihlberg, 100.
Miinzer, 29.
New Learning, 3, 12-14, 26.
Nonconformists, 138, 140.
Nonconformity, 136.
Northumberland. See Warwick.
Obsekvants, 68, 73.
Opportunism, 127.
Orders, 93.
Ordinal, 139.

Ordinaries, supplication against the,
60.
Osiander, 91.
Oxford, 13-15, 131, 141.
Paget, 112.
Pallium, 7.
Panic, 158.
Papal jurisdiction in England, 10.
Paraphrase of Erasmus, 118, 119,
120.
Parliament —
Acts of. See Acts.
Marian, 147.
Reformation, 58 IT.
Parr, Catherine, 112.
Passau, peace of, 109.
Paul in., 100, 101, 102, 103, 109.
Paul iv., 110, 167, 168.
Pavia, 30, 38.
Peasants' War (German), 19, 29,
84, 128.
Penance, 89, 93, 117.
Persecution under —
Henry, 85.
Mary, 151 ff., 154, 157.
miscellaneous, 155.
Peter Martyr, 131, 136, 138.
Peter Pence, 66.
Philip 11., 110, 149, 152.
Pilgrimage of Grace, 77, 90.
Pius iv., 110.
Plato, 14, 17.
Pluralities, 21, 58.
Pole, 102, 116, 149, 152, 153, 169,
174.
Polity, ecclesiastical. See Ecclesi
astical.
Popery, 156, 176.
Popes. See sub nomine.
Praemunire, 6, 11, 58, 121.
Praise of Folly, 17.
Prayer-Book, First, 123, 124, 125,
138.
Prayer-Book, Second, 137, 138.
Preachers, licensed, 79, 122.
,, suspension of, 123.
Presence, Real, 89, 115, 133.
Priestcraft, 176.
Priesthood, 8.

198

INDEX

Prince, the, 18, 48.
Printing, 2.
Probate Act, 58.
Proclamations Act, 79.
Protector. See Somerset.
Protest of Spires, 32, 97.
Protestant League. See Schmal
kald.
Protestantism, 32, 33, 103.
Provisors, Statute of, 11.
Pulpits, tuning the, 79.
Purgatory, 8, 89, 117.
Puritans, 24.
Puritanism, 33, 107.
Quionon's breviary, 124.
Rationale, the, 94.
Ratisbon, 102, 103.
Reaction against reform, 144 ff. ,
187.
,, against persecution, 156,
188.
Real Presence. See Presence.
Rebellions. See Risings.
Recantations, 170.
Reconciliation with Rome, 110,
150.
"Reformatio Legum," 137.
Reformation, character of —
general, 23.
counter-, 108.
Edward's, 141.
Elizabeth's, 182.
Henry's, 64, 65, 83.
Luther's, 24.
Swiss, 107.
Reformation, influence on, of —
Calvin, 24, 107, 126.
Cranmer, 142, 163, 179.
Elizabeth, 182.
Henry, 52, 53, 80.
Hooper, 138.
Jesuits, 106.
Knox, 138.
Luther, 23, 24, 126.
Mary, 151, 188.
Ridley, 142.
Spain, 152, 156, 188.
Zwingli, 24.

Regency, Council of, 111.
Relics, 9, 71, 83.
Restraint of Appeals. See Acts.
Rich, 112.
Ridley, 116, 131, 133, 134, 135, 142,
145, 152, 157, 165, 167, 168.
Risings —
Cornish, 122.
Ket's, 128, 129, 130.
Lincolnshire, 76.
Northumberland's, 144.
Peasants' (German), 19, 29, 84,
128.
Pilgrimage of Grace, 77, 90.
Western, 128, 129, 130.
Wyatt's, 146.
Rogers, 151, 152, 157, 167.
Rome, sack of, 32.
Rubric, Black, 138.
Saceamentabian, 131.
Sacraments, what are, 89, 93. See
Eucharist, etc.
Saints, invocation of, 89.
St. Paul's school, 22.
Sarum, Use of, 124.
Saunders, 152.
Savonarola, 3, 12, 13.
Saxony, Dukes of, 99.
,, Electors of, 26, 99.
Schmalkaldic League —
formation, 33.
growth, 99.
relations with England, 79, 91,
98.
war with Emperor, 100.
Miihlberg, 100.
Scholasticism, 2, 10, 13.
Schools, 121, 141.
Secular control. See Ecclesiastical
polity.
Seymour, Jane, 69, 111.
of Sudeley, 112, 130.
Shaxton, 90.
Six Articles. See Articles.
Somerset, 112, 130, 140.
Soto, 169.
Sovereignty, 81.
Spain, 110, 152, 156, 188.
Spanish alliance, 35, 37.

INDEX

199

Spanish marriage, 110, 145, 148.
Spires, Diets of (a) 31 ; (8) 32.
,, protest of, 32, 97.
Statutes —
Mortmain, 11, 64.
Praemunire, 11.
Pro visors, 11.
Stokesley, 63, 87, 90.
Submission of Clergy, 62, 66.
Submissions of Cranmer, 169, 170.
Succession, questions of, 38, 67, 111,
142.
Succession, Act of (a), 66, 67.
» (|8), 68.
,, apostolic, 93, 139.
Superstitious practices, 83, 122.
Supplicacyon for the Beggers, 4, 5.
Supplication against ordinaries, 60.
, , for reconciliation with
Rome, 149.
Supremacy, Act of, 68.
„ Clause, 59.
„ Oath of, 68.
,, theory of. See Ecclesi
astical polity.
Swiss reformers. See Calvin and
Zwingli.
Taxation of clergy, 11.
Taylor of Hadleigh, 152, 158, 167.
Temporal control. See Ecclesi
astical polity.
Ten Articles. See Articles.
Tetzel, 25.
Theocracy, 81.
Thirlby, 169.
Toleration, theory of, 19.
Translation of Bible —
Commissions for, 87, 88.
Coverdale's, 87.
Great Bible, 87.
Luther's, 86.
Matthew's, 87, 151.
Tyndale's, 86.
Wiclif's, 86.

Transubstantiation, 89, 91, 92, 114,
125, 133, 155.
Treasons Acts, 68, 70, 121.
Trent, Council of —
•convoked, 103.
opened, 103.
not oecumenical, 103.
removed, 108.
restored, 109.
suspended, 109.
concluded, 110.
Tunstall, 22, 113, 123, 135, 169.
Turks, 2, 33, 97.
Tyndale, 86.
Uniformity, First Act, 125.
,, Second Act, 137.
Universities, appeal to, 44, 54.
Use of Sarum, 124.
Utopia, the, 17-19, 186.
Visitations, 75, 77, 119, 149.
Vulgate, 14, 20.
Wards, Bill of, 60.
Warham, 6, 20, 21, 22, 40, 51, 55,
59, 63, 73.
Warwick, 112, 130, 140, 143, 144.
Western rising. See Risings.
Wiclif, 1, 25, 86.
Wiltshire, Earl of, 45, 46.
Windsor Commission, 122 ff.
Wittenberg, 25, 33.
Wolsey, 21, 22, 28, 30, 38, 39, 46,
58, 95.
Worms, Diet of, 26-28, 30.
Edict of, 28.
Wriothesly, 112.
Xavier, Francois, 105.
Zurich, 33.
Zwingli, 24, 33, 107: 115.

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