In the appointment of Cranmer as his successor, the king knew that he
had secured a subservient tool who desired nothing better than to see the
papal authority overthrown. Anne Boleyn was then enceinte, and the
king, relying, no doubt, on what Cranmer when consecrated would be
ready to do for him, went through a form of marriage with her on 25
January, 1533. On 15 April Cranmer received consecration. On 23 May,
Parliament having meanwhile forbidden all appeals to Rome, Cranmer
pronounced Henry’s former marriage invalid. On 28 May he declared the
marriage with Anne valid. On 1 June Anne was crowned, and on 7
September she gave birth to a daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth.
Clement, who had previously sent to Henry more than one monition upon
his desertion of Catherine, issued a Bull of excommunication on 11 July,
declaring, also, his divorce and remarriage null. In England Catherine was
deprived of her title of Queen, and Mary her daughter was treated as a
bastard. Much sympathy was aroused among the populace, to meet
which severe measures were taken against the more conspicuous of the
disaffected, particularly the “Nun of Kent”, who claimed to have had
revelations of God’s displeasure at the recent course of events.
In the course of the next year the breach with Rome was completed.
Parliament did all that was required of it. Annates, Peter’s Pence, and
other payments to Rome were finally abolished. An Act of Succession
entailed the crown on the children of Anne Boleyn, and an oath was
drawn up to be exacted of every person of lawful age. It was the refusal
to take this oath, the preamble of which declared Henry’s marriage with
Catherine null from the beginning, which sent More and Fisher to the
Tower, and eventually to the block. A certain number of Carthusian
monks, Brigittines, and Observant Franciscans imitated their firmness and
shared their fate. All these have been beatified in modern times by Pope
Leo XIII. There were, however, but a handful who were thus true to their
convictions. Declarations were obtained from the clergy in both provinces
“that the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him
by God in this kingdom of England than any other foreign bishop”, while
Parliament, in November, declared the king “Supreme Head of the
Church of England”, and shortly afterwards Cromwell, a layman, was
appointed vicar-general to rule the English Church in the king’s name.
Though the people were cowed, these measures were not carried out
without much disaffection, and, to stamp out any overt expression of this,
Cromwell and his master now embarked upon a veritable reign of terror.
The martyrs already referred to were most of them brought to the
scaffold in the course of 1535, but fourteen Dutch Anabaptists also
suffered death by burning in the same year. There followed a visitation of
the monasteries, unscrupulous instruments like Layton, Legh, and Price
being appointed for the purpose. They played, of course, into the king’s
hand and compiled comperta abounding in charges of disgraceful
immorality, which have been shown to be at least grossly exaggerated. In
pursuance of the same policy Parliament, in February, 1536, acting under
great pressure, voted to the king the property of all religious houses with
less than 200 pounds a year of annual income, recommending that the
inmates should be transferred to the larger houses where “religion happily
was right well observed.” The dissolution, when carried out, produced
much popular resentment, especially in Lincolnshire and the northern
counties. Eventually, in the autumn of 1536, the people banded together
in a very formidable insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The
insurgents rallied under the device of the Five Wounds, and they were
only induced to disperse by the deceitful promises of Henry’s
representative, the Duke of Norfolk. The suppression of the larger
monasteries rapidly followed, and with these were swept away
numberless shrines, statues, and objects of pious veneration, on the
pretext that these were purely superstitious. It is easy to see that the lust
of plunder was the motive which prompted this wholesale confiscation.
(See SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES.)
Meanwhile, Henry, though taking advantage of the spirit of religious
innovation now rife among the people whenever it suited his purpose,
remained still attached to the sacramental system in which he had been
brought up. In 1539 the Statute of the Six Articles enforced, under the
severest penalties, such doctrines as transubstantiation, Communion
under one kind, auricular confession, and the celibacy of the clergy.
Under this act offenders were sent to the stake for their Protestantism just
as ruthlessly as the aged Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was attainted
by Parliament and eventually beheaded, simply because Henry was
irritated by the denunciations of her son Cardinal Pole. Neither was the
king less cruel towards those who were nearest to him. Anne Boleyn and
Catherine Howard, his second and fifth wives, perished on the scaffold,
but their whilom lord only paraded his indifference regarding the fate to
which he had condemned them. On 30 July, 1540, of six victims who
were dragged to Smithfield, three were Reformers burnt for heretical
doctrine, and the other three Catholics, hanged and quartered for denying
the king’s supremacy. Of all the numerous miserable beings whom Henry
sent to execution, Cromwell, perhaps, is the only one who fully deserved
his fate. Looking at the last fifteen years of Henry’s life, it is hard to find
one single feature which does not evoke repulsion, and the attempts made
by some writers to whitewash his misdeeds only give proof of the
extraordinary prejudice with which they approach the subject. Henry’s
cruelties continued to the last, and so likewise did his inconsistencies. One
of the last measures of confiscation of his reign was an act of suppression
of chantries, but Henry by his last will and testament established what
were practically chantries to have Masses said for his own sou