another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however, and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the circulation of a written document, in which the old doctrines were stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism, Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the other four -those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme Unctionwere passed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed of the mediæval Church. 8. The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536. The same tendency to appeal to educated intelligence showed itself in the sanction given by the king and Cromwell in 1536 to a translation of the Bible which had been completed in 1535 by Miles Coverdale, whose version of the New Testament was founded on an earlier one by Tyndale. It is probable that Henry, in authorising the circulation of this version, thought of the support which he might derive from the silence of the Bible on the Papal claims. The circulation of the Bible was, however, likely to work in a direction very different from that of the Ten Articles. The Ten Articles were intended to promote unity of belief. The Bible, once placed in the hands of everyone who could read, was likely to promote diversity. It would be the storehouse in which Lutherans, Zwinglians, and every divergent sect would find weapons to support their own special ideas. It would help on the growth of those individual opinions which were springing up side by side with the steady forward progress of the clergy of the Renascence. The men who attempted to make the old creed intellectually acceptable and the men who proclaimed a new one, under the belief that they were recurring to one still older, were together laying the foundations of English Protestantism. 9. The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537.-Slight as these changes were, they were sufficient to rouse suspicion that further change was impending. The masses who could neither read nor write were stirred by the greed and violence with which the disso 1536-1538 THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 397 lution of the smaller monasteries was carried on, and by the cessation of the kindly relief which these monasteries had afforded to the wants of the poor. A rumour spread that when Cromwell had despoiled the monasteries he would proceed to despoil the parish churches. In the autumn of 1536 there was a rising in Lincolnshire, which was easily suppressed, but was followed by a more formidable rising in Yorkshire. The insurgents, headed by Robert Aske, called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and bore a banner embroidered with the five wounds of Christ. They asked among other things for the restoration of the monasteries, the punishment of Cromwell and his chief supporters, the deprivation of the reforming bishops, the extirpation of heresy, and the restoration of the Papal authority in a modified form. Their force grew so large that the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent to disperse it, did not venture to make the attempt, and the king found himself obliged to issue a general pardon and to promise that a Parliament should meet in the North for the redress of grievances. On this the insurgents returned home. Early in 1537 Henry, who had no intention of keeping his word, took advantage of some new troubles in the North to declare that his engagement was no longer binding, and seized and executed, not merely the leaders, but many of the lesser supporters of the insurrection. Of the Parliament in the North nothing more was heard, but a Council of the North was established to keep the people of those parts in order, and to execute justice in the king's name. 10. Birth of a Prince. 1537. In 1537 Jane Seymour gave birth to a boy, who was afterwards Edward VI. Henry had at last a male heir of undoubted legitimacy, but in a few days his wife died. II. The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries. 1537-1538. The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace brought in fresh booty to Henry. Abbots and priors who had taken part in it, or were accused of doing so, were hanged, and their monasteries confiscated. Where nothing could be proved against the greater monasteries, which had been declared by Parliament to be free from vice, their heads were terrified into an appearance of voluntary submission. Cromwell had his spies and informers everywhere, and it was as easy for them to lie as to speak the truth. In 1537 and 1538 many abbots bowed before the storm, and, confessing that they and their monks had been guilty of the most degrading sins, asked to be allowed to surrender their monasteries to the king. Cromwell's commissioners then took possession, sold the bells, the lead on the roof, and every article which had its price, and left the walls to serve as a quarry for the neighbourhood. The lands went to the king. It not unfrequently happened that Henry promoted to ecclesiastical benefices those monks who had been most ready to confess themselves sinners beyond other men. There is no doubt that the confessions were prepared beforehand to deceive contemporaries, and there is therefore no reason why they should deceive posterity. 12. Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538. The attack on the monasteries was accompanied by an attack on relics and such images as attracted more than ordinary reverence. The explanation of the zeal with which they were hunted down is in many cases to be found in the gold and jewels with which they were adorned. Some of them were credited with miraculous powers. The figure of the Saviour on the rood at Boxley, in Kent, moved its head and eyes. A phial at Hales, in Worcestershire, contained a substance which had been brought from Germany in the thirteenth century, and was said to be the blood of the Saviour. Pilgrims thronged in numbers to adore, and their offerings brought in no small profit to the monks who owned such treasures. What was fondly believed by the common people was derided by critical spirits, and Henry was well pleased to destroy all reverence for anything which brought credit to the monks. The rood of Boxley was exhibited in London, where the Bishop of Rochester pulled the wires which caused its motions, and the blood in the phial of Hales was declared to be no more than a coloured gum. An ancient wooden figure, worshipped in Wales under the name of Darvel Gathern, served to make a fire which burned Friar Forest, who maintained that in spiritual things obedience was due to the Pope and not to the king. Instead of hanging him under the Treason Act (see p. 392) Henry had him burnt as a heretic. It was the first and only time when the denial of the royal supremacy was held to be heresy. When war was made against superstition, the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury could hardly be allowed to escape. Thomas was a saint who had bearded a king, and his shrine, which had attracted such crowds of pilgrims that the marks which they left as they shuffled forward on their knees towards it are still to be seen on the stone floor, was smashed, and the bones of the saint burnt. Shrines were usually covered with gold and jewels, and all shrines shared the fate of that of St. Thomas.1 The images in parish churches, 1 Shrines were receptacles above ground of the bodies of saints. That of Edward the Confessor at Westminster was rebuilt by queen Mary, and that of St. Alban at St. Albans in recent times. These two are the only shrines now to be seen in England. 1538-1539 SUPPRESSIon of reSISTANCE 399 not being attractive to the covetous, and being valued by the people for ordinary purposes of devotion, were still left untouched. 13. The Trial of Lambert. 1538.-Henry's violence against monasticism and superstition made him extremely anxious to show his orthodoxy. The opinion held by Zwingli, the reformer of Zürich, that the Body and Blood of Christ were in no way present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was now spreading in England, and those who held it were known as Sacramentaries. One of these, John Lambert, was tried before Henry himself. Henry told Lambert scornfully that the words of Christ, 'This is My Body,' settled the whole question, and Lambert was condemned and burnt. 14. The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538.-Amongst the descendants of the Duke of Clarence was Reginald Pole.' He had been scandalised by the divorce, had left England, had been made a Cardinal in 1536, and had poured out a torrent of invective against the wickedness of Henry. In the end of 1538 Henry, having been informed that some of Pole's kinsfolk had been muttering dissatisfaction, sent them to execution together with his own cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, the son of his mother's sister. 15. The Six Articles. 1539.-Cruel and unscrupulous as Henry was, he was in many respects a representative Englishman, sympathising with the popular disgust at the spread of ideas hitherto unheard of. In a new Parliament which met in 1539 he obtained the willing consent of both Houses to the statute of the Six Articles. This statute declared in favour of: (1) the real presence of 'the natural Body and Blood of Christ' in the Lord's Supper; (2) the sufficiency of communion in one kind ; (3) clerical celibacy; (4) the perpetual obligation of vows of chastity; (5) private masses; and (6) auricular confession. Whoever spoke against the first was to be burnt; whoever spoke against the other five was to suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offence, and to be hanged for the second. By those who suffered from the Act it was known as 'The Whip with Six Strings.' Cranmer, who was a married archbishop, was forced to dismiss his wife. Bishops Latimer and Shaxton, whose opinions had gradually advanced beyond the line at which Henry's orthodoxy ended, were driven from their sees; but the number of those put to death under the new Act was not great. 16. Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries. 1539 -1540. So completely was the statute of the Six Articles in accordance with public opinion, that Henry had no difficulty in obtaining the consent of Parliament to an Act giving to his proclamations the force of law, and to another Act securing to him the whole of the monasteries whether they had been already suppressed or not. Before the end of 1540 not a single monastery was left. Three abbots, those of Glastonbury, Colchester, and Reading, had been hanged the year before after the mere semblance of a trial. The disappearance of the abbots from the House of Lords made the lay peers, for the first time, more numerous than the ecclesiastical members of the House. The lay peers, on the other hand, were reinforced by new creations from amongst Henry's favourites, whom he had enriched by grants of abbey lands. The new peers and the more numerous country gentlemen who had shared in the spoil were interested in maintaining the independence of the English Church, lest the Pope, if his jurisdiction were restored, should insist on their disgorging their prey. Of that which fell into the hands of the king, a small portion was spent on the foundation of five new bishoprics, whilst part of the rest was employed on shipbuilding and the erection of fortifications on the coast, part in meeting the general expenditure of the Crown. 17. Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540.In all that had been done Cromwell had been the leading spirit. It had been his plan to erect an absolute despotism, and thereby to secure his own high position and to enrich himself as well as his master. He was naturally hated by the old nobility and by all who suffered from his extortions and cruelty. In the summer of 1539 he was eager for an alliance with the German Protestants against the Emperor Charles V., and suggested to Henry a fourth marriage with a German princess, Anne of Cleves. Holbein, a great German painter settled in England, was sent to take a portrait of the lady, and Henry was so pleased with it that he sent for her to make her his wife. When she arrived he found her anything but good-looking. In 1540 he went through the marriage ceremony |