accepted Wolsey as papal legate. Henry was in this matter the chief offender himself, but he acquitted the clergy upon their paying a sum equivalent to about £2,000,000 of our present money. Nor was he appeased by this act of humiliation. His reply to a request of Convocation to protect it in the discharge of its spiritual offices was a demand that it should surrender its power of making canons without the royal licence. In May 1532 Convocation signed the document which is known in history as the "Submission of the Clergy." The same month Henry sent for the Speaker and twelve Members

1

1 The Submission of the Clergy, A.D. 1532.

"We, your most humble subjects, daily orators and bedesmen of your clergy of England, having our special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely goodness and fervent zeal to the promotion of God's honour and Christian religion, and also in your learning, far exceeding, in our judgment, the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of, and doubting nothing but that the same shall still continue and daily increase in your majesty

"First, do offer and promise, in verbo sacerdotii, here unto your Highness, submitting ourselves most humbly to the same, that we will never henceforth enact, put in ure, promulge, or execute, any new canons or constitutions provincial, or any other new ordinance, provincial or synodal, in our Convocation or synod in time coming, which Convocation is, always has been, and must be, assembled only by your highness' commandment of writ, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to assemble our Convocation, and to make, promulge, and execute such constitutions and ordinances as shall be made in the same; and thereto give your royal assent and authority.

"Secondly, that whereas divers of the constitutions, ordinances, and canons, provincial or synodal, which have been heretofore enacted, be thought to be not only much prejudicial to your prerogative royal, but also overmuch onerous to your highness' subjects, your clergy aforesaid is contented, if it may stand so with your highness' pleasure, that it be committed to the examination and judgment of your grace, and of thirty-two persons, whereof sixteen to be of the upper and nether house of the temporalty, and other sixteen of the clergy, all to be chosen and appointed of your noble grace. So that, finally, whichsoever of the said constitutions, ordinances, or canons, provincial or synodal, shall be thought and determined by your grace and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons not to stand with God's laws and the laws of your realm, the same to be abrogated and taken away by your grace and the clergy; and such of them as shall be

of the House of Commons, and complained that the clergy were only half his subjects, thus: "Well-beloved subjects, we thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects. For all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope clean contrary to the oath they make to us, so that they seem his subjects and not

ours."

In 1532, the same year, the payment of annates, or firstfruits-i. e. one year's profit of spiritual livings— to the Pope was conditionally restrained. By the act of Parliament power was given to the King to delay the confirmation of the act, and this power he used with good effect over the Pope in terrorem.1 The King confirmed the act on July 9, 1532, and the firstfruits were annually paid to the Crown until they were restored to the Church under Queen Anne's Bounty in 1703. A still more drastic and important measure of independence was passed in February 1533, forbidding all appeals of whatever kind from the English Courts to Rome.2 The principle of the act was that the English Church had always claimed to determine in the King's Courts temporal or spiritual all causes by spiritual jurisdiction, notwithstanding that appeals had been made delaying

seen by your grace, and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons, to stand with God's laws and the laws of your realm, to stand in full strength and power, your grace's most royal assent and authority once impetrate and fully given to the same.”. Documents illustrative of English Church History, by Gee and Hardy.

1 The act states that "our said sovereign the King and all his natural subjects as well spiritual as temporal be as obedient devout catholic and humble children of God and Holy Church as any people be within any realm christened yet the said exactions of annates or firstfruits be so intolerable and importable to this realm that it is considered and declared . . that the King's highness before Almighty God is bound as by the duty of a good Christian prince. to do all that in him is to obviate repress and redress the said abuses and exactions of annates and firstfruits (23 Henry VIII, c. 20).

2 Appeals to Rome

in all cases whatsoever prohibited (24 Henry VIII, c. 12). See Gibson's Codex, vol. i., p. 96.

justice and causing great inconvenience and expense. All appeals henceforth were to be tried within the realm in the Courts of the Bishops and Archbishops, and anything touching the King was to be laid before the House of Convocation for final determination. I desire you to note that all these things happened during the episcopate of Archbishop Warham,1 and when Cranmer the greater part of the time was abroad on embassies in Italy and Germany. The last act restraining appeals was passed after his death and before Cranmer became Archbishop. It is necessary to remember these things in view of the constant assertion by Roman Catholic writers that everything against Rome was done under Cranmer and at his instigation, and that Warham was the last Archbishop who was faithful to Rome. We now come to the beginning of Cranmer's tenure of Canterbury.

Cranmer as Archbishop under Henry VIII.

It is idle to speak of Cranmer as an obscure or unworthy person at the time he became Archbishop. He was a distinguished Cambridge Doctor, a Royal Chaplain, Archdeacon of Taunton, and Pope's Penitentiary in England. For the last four years he had been employed in high office at home and abroad, and had displayed great powers of statesmanship. The Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner) was bitterly disappointed at being passed over, and his hostility to Cranmer dates from this time. Cranmer's long delay in returning to England for consecration and his reluctance to accept office are well known, but the King left him no choice between obedience and perpetual exile. Henry VIII laid his plans carefully and kept his own counsel. He nominated the Archbishop himself, and secured the consent of the Prior and Canons of Christ Church, Canterbury, but, with a view to what was coming, he would have nothing omitted which gave papal sanction to

1 Warham issued a proclamation in 1531 against all the acts passed in the Parliament to the prejudice of the Church. (Burnet's Collection of Records, books i., ii., iii.)

Cranmer. He asked Clement VII for the usual papal confirmation, and obtained it. Eight Bulls were sent confirming and assenting to everything done. Cranmer surrendered his to the King, because he would not own the Pope as the giver of his ecclesiastical dignity.

Thus Cranmer ascended the throne of Canterbury, nominated by his King, consented to by Christ Church, Canterbury, consecrated by English bishops, and confirmed by the Pope and created Legatus Natus for England. The consecration took place at S. Stephen's, Westminster, on March 30, 1553.1 Clement VII was under no delusion in what he did, and only bowed to what was inevitable. Cranmer, in taking the papal oath, "declared that he intended not by the oath that he was to take, to bind himself to do anything contrary to the laws of God, the King's prerogative or to the Commonwealth and Statutes of the Kingdom." He prefaced this papal oath by a protestation, before a notary and witnesses, that he held it to be more a form than a reality. The oath was accepted on these terms, and the circumstances must have been reported to the Pope.

In the previous year, 1532, Henry VIII wrote to the Pope that he separated his marriage cause from the authority of the See Apostolic.2 Having clothed the Primate of England with the combined authority of the

1 The consecrating bishops were the Bishop of Lincoln, Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of S. Asaph. See Episcopal Succession in England, by Bishop Stubbs, p. 76.

2 See Henry VIII's last letter to Clement VII: "We do separate from our cause the authority of the See Apostolic which we do perceive to be destitute of that learning whereby it should be directed and because Your Holiness doth ever profess your ignorance and is wont to speak of other men's mouths, we do confer the sayings of those with the sayings of them that be of the contrary opinion: for to confer the reasons it were too long. But now the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford in our realms, Paris, Orleans, Biturisen, Andegavon in France and Bonony in Italy by one consent; and also divers other of the most famous and learned men being freed from all affection and only moved in respect of verity, partly in Italy and partly in France, do affirm the marriage of the brother with the brother's wife to be contrary to the law of God and nature; and also do pronounce that no dispensation can be lawful or available to any Christian man in that behalf."-Burnet's Collection of Records.

English Church and the Papal See, Henry VIII brought the controversy of years to an end.1

On May 23, 1533, Cranmer, under a commission in which the Bishops of Winchester (Gardiner), London (Stokesley), Bath (Clerk) and Lincoln (Longland) were associated with him, declared the marriage with Catherine to be null and void. Five days later he pronounced the King's marriage with Anne Boleyn valid.2 On June 1 (Whit-Sunday) Cranmer crowned "our dearest wife the Lady Anne our Queen" with great magnificence at Westminster. Courtiers echoed the stories of her beauty, but the chaste womanhood of England, thinking of the wronged wife at Dunstable, was filled with suppressed indignation. Queen Anne's triumph was short-lived. Largely by her influence, Fisher and More were sent to the block in 1535. Queen Catherine died in January 1536, and upon receipt of the news both Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn showed unseemly joy. On May 17 Cranmer declared the marriage with Anne invalid and her daughter Elizabeth illegitimate. The records of the trial have been destroyed, but she who for ten or twelve years had held the King under the spell of her fascination was judged unfaithful, and ended her unparalleled career on Tower Hill on May 19, 1536.3 I shall say no more about Henry VIII's matrimonial affairs. Jane Seymour bore him his only

1 Mason's Cranmer, p. 31.

2 This marriage had taken place in private on January 25 (as is supposed). Burnet, arguing from the date of Elizabeth's birth, September 7, 1533, says it must have taken place in December, 1532. This is special pleading. It is certain that Cranmer did not perform the marriage ceremony, and he declares that he did not know of the marriage until a fortnight after it had taken place. Dr. Mason (Life of Thomas Cranmer, 1898) suggests as early as November 14, 1532, but supports this with no adequate evidence.

3 Cranmer was shocked at the accusations and pleaded with the King, but to no avail. The Queen wrote from prison a very able and pathetic letter protesting her innocence, but from what we know of her literary gifts she must have had assistance in writing it. (Burnet's Collection of Records.) Dr. Matthew Parker, her chaplain, was with her about the time it was sent, and it is supposed to be from his pen.