1532 THE ANNATES ACT. 315 XII. by an elaborate manœuvre against papal finance. A bill to CHAP. abolish the annates was passed against the opposition of all the bishops and a considerable party in the lower house on March 19. In the preamble of the measure it was stated that these charges were originally levied against the infidel, but that they were now claimed for lucre against all right and conscience, that since the second year of Henry VII. £16,000 had gone out of the country for the expedition of bulls, and that as divers prelates of the nation were now in extreme old age, there was a near prospect of a considerable outflow of English money to Rome. It was therefore provided that all annates should henceforth cease, and that the consecration of archbishops and bishops should be valid without them. If the act had stopped here, it would have been tantamount to an open declaration of war against the papacy; but Henry was not yet prepared to break the bridges. He wanted to show the pope plainly that if he did not within a specified period annul the marriage, he would be deprived of his revenues from England. Accordingly the king was empowered to compound with the court of Rome to extinguish or moderate the annates, and to give or withhold his assent to the act by letters patent within a period not later than Easter, 1533, or the beginning of the next parliament. The act then was permissive. Whenever the statute is mentioned, wrote Henry to his agent in Rome, “you shall instil into their ears how incessant have been our efforts to resist the importunity of our people for passing the statute; and so secretly has the whole transaction been managed that no foreign prince should know of it or take occasion thereby to get a similar edict in his own country". As a weapon of diplomacy the statute was destined to play an important part. By this time it had become pretty clear to observers in England that, whatever the curia might decide, Henry had determined to take Anne. It was remarked that on January 1, 1532, the king for the first time omitted to send the customary new year presents to the queen and his daughter. "Anne," wrote Chapuys, on January 4, "is lodged where the queen used to be and accompanied by almost as many ladies as if she were queen.' " 2 On September 1, "the Lady" was created Marchioness of Pembroke, and in the following month XII. CHAP. accompanied Henry to Calais, arrayed in the queen's jewels to meet the King of France. Some time towards the end of January the king must have known that Anne was with child. If it was not important to save Anne's virtue, it was at least essential that her issue should be lawful. The marriage must be hastened on and the nullity of the union with Catharine declared. There was now no prospect that the pope would prove compliant, for on November 15, 1532, he had warned Henry upon pain of excommunication to reject Anne, and forbade him to divorce himself from Catharine on his own authority, or to marry Anne or any other woman. Marriage and decree of nullity must, therefore, be carried out in England and in defiance of papal censures. Somewhere about St. Paul's Day, January 25, 1533, Henry and Anne were secretly married, so secretly that nothing is known of the ceremony, that its date even cannot be fixed with precision, that about a fortnight elapsed before Cranmer knew it, that more than a month elapsed before Chapuys reported it to his master, and more than two months before it was notified to Catharine.1 Rumour subsequently affirmed that the celebrating priest was Dr. George Browne, an Augustinian friar, but even this fact was not indisputably established. The reason for these extraordinary precautions was that Henry had determined to obtain a decree of nullity from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury had not yet received his bulls from the pope. Till the bulls were obtained Henry must remain on good terms with Rome. It was well for himself and no doubt convenient for Henry that Warham should have died in the preceding August, on the eve of a revolution which he could not have approved and would probably have been compelled to sanction. Of the ecclesiastics who might have aspired to the vacant see, Gardiner had occupied the most prominent position in the councils of the crown, but he had opposed Henry in the last session of parliament, and was passed over for a younger and less prominent man. The successor of Warham was Thomas Cranmer, archdeacon of Taunton, and already noted for his zeal in the king's matter. He had suggested the plan of appealing to the universities, had written a book upon the divorce, and had been 1 Cranmer, Works, ii., 246; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII., p. 296. 1533 THOMAS CRANMER. 317 XII. employed in diplomatic missions in Italy, France, and Germany. CHAP. His intelligence was keen, his learning considerable, his temper genuine and devout, and in the prayer-book he was destined to exhibit his exquisite command of all the harmonies of the English language. He was now forty-three years of age, in the full tide of vigour, and a convinced believer in the majesty of the crown and in the desirability of abolishing the papal power in England. He had been ordained as a widower, and long afterwards, being brought into relations with Protestant circles in Germany, had gone so far as to take a second wife, the niece of Osiander. The marriage of a priest was a defiance of ecclesiastical usage deemed more dangerous to the credit of the Church than the looser connexions to which popes and cardinals had not unfrequently given the sanction of their example; and a second marriage was a special offence. But Henry wanted a man with something of the heretic in his composition, and Cranmer had enough of the rebellious leaven to serve his turn. It was essential, however, that no shadow of doubt should rest upon the lawfulness of his appointment. Cranmer must have his bulls. No technical objection must be lodged against his competence as primate of the English Church. He must also be empowered to decide the great matrimonial issue without fear of interruption or appeal; an object only to be obtained effectually if parliament declared all appeals to Rome to be illegal. The situation was delicate. At any moment the excommunication might be fulminated from Rome, and an excommunication would increase Henry's difficulties in parliament and the country. The bulls must be obtained for Cranmer, and the appeals bill must pass the houses; and then the pope might discharge his bolts. It is here that the annates act of the previous year justified its existence as a diplomatic expedient. The college was reminded, not without the accompaniment of liberal gratuities to the cardinals, that unless the bulls were promptly sent, and that too without payment of the usual first-fruits, the king would be unlikely to suspend the act. Pope and cardinals hesitated, but eventually decided to speculate in Henry's favour, and the bulls were granted with rare expedition. On March 30 Cranmer was consecrated and swore the customary oath of obedience to the holy see. He had, however, with signal dishonesty previously XII. CHAP. committed to writing a solemn protest that he considered the oath a form and not a reality, and that he remained free to provide for the reformation of religion, the government of the Church of England, and the prerogative of the crown. Henry had won the first round in the encounter. His archbishop had satisfied all the technicalities, and was prepared to lead the rebellion against Rome. Meanwhile disquieting rumours were circulating through London. It was reported that Henry was secretly consulting Melancthon, that he would raise a regiment of horse and spoil the priests, that Cranmer was a Lutheran and that he was about to resign the temporalities of his see to the king that his fellow clergy might imitate the example. Henry, who had an important bill to steer through parliament, wished to create an atmosphere of confidence. He had long interviews with the nuncio, played with him, flattered him, dined with him, took him first into the lords, then into the commons by way of advertising his excellent relations with the holy see. As the commons feared nothing worse than a suspension of the intercourse with Flanders, it was put about by the king's ministers that Charles was favourable to the marriage with Anne, and to disarm clerical feeling they did not scruple to add that the pope also had withdrawn his objections. Nevertheless the bill for the restraint of appeals to Rome was contested with animation in the lower house, not indeed upon the ground that appeals were desirable, but from fear that the passage of the act would provoke reprisals, that the kingdom would be defamed as schismatical, and that the wool trade would be stopped. These fears were ridiculed by the advocates for the crown, who urged that if England would set the example of repudiating the pope, other princes would be eager to follow her lead; and so, while Henry was amusing the nuncio with hopes that he might be reconverted to the positions which he had defended in the book against Luther, the act in restraint of appeals passed into law.1 This statute, the first definitive infringement of the constitutional relations between the English Church and Rome, is a landmark in history. It declares the realm of England to be an empire governed by one supreme head and king; to whom 1 The fear of Cromwell doubtless eased the passage of the bill (Letters and Papers, xii., 952). 1533 THE APPEALS ACT. 319 "a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people and CHAP. " XII. divided in terms and by names of spirituality and temporality was bound to bear "next to God a natural and humble obedience". It proceeds to lay down the proposition that the English Church "is also at this hour sufficient and meet of itself, without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons to declare and determine ordinances, laws, statutes, and provisions"; and after touching upon "the great enormities, dangers, long delays, and hurts" involved in appeals to Rome, concludes that all spiritual cases shall henceforth be "finally and definitively adjudged and determined within the king's jurisdiction and authority and not elsewhere". The competence and organisation of the ecclesiastical courts in England were left untouched save in one particular. Appeals relating to the king were to go before the upper house of convocation. The ground was now prepared for action. The two houses of convocation, on the reports of two committees of theologians and canonists, added the weight of their authority to the propositions which had been affirmed in Paris, in Oxford, and in Cambridge. The theologians decided that a marriage with the childless wife of a deceased brother was against divine law. The canonists reported that the marriage of Catharine and Arthur had been consummated. Consistent and courageous, Fisher lifted up his voice in defence of Catharine's cause, and was committed to custody for his indiscretion. It was a second "submission," even less creditable than the first, and secured by means which it is difficult to defend. The case was pending in Rome, and a question naturally arose whether it was proper to debate it in England. The Bishop of London quieted the scruples of the questioners by producing a transcript of a brief issued three years before, in which the pope expressed a wish that every one should declare his opinion freely and with impunity in the case. The decision of convocation was in the hands of the king at the beginning of April. By its supreme legislative organ the English Church had irretrievably committed itself to his cause. The convent of Dunstable is some thirty miles from London, and four miles from Ampthill where Queen Catharine was residing in the spring, 1533. The spot was quiet and yet accessible; suitable to the swift expedition of unpopular business; and it |