Some years earlier, in 1515, a celebrated case had shaken the Church in England. A London merchant tailor, Richard Hunne, had stood out against Church fees, and the dispute had expanded into a bold challenge to ecclesiastical authority. As a result Hunne was arrested, and imprisoned by the clergy in the Lollards’ Tower, where he was subsequently found hanged. Was it suicide or murder? Opposition in Parliament and the City grew in volume, and reached up to the Bishop of London himself. But these early rumblings of a Reformation had been silenced by the then immovable power of Wolsey. Now the Commons eagerly resumed their interrupted task. A committee was formed of all the lawyers in the House, and they drafted the necessary Bills in record time. The House of Lords, where the bishops and abbots still had more votes than the lay peers, agreed to the Bills reforming sanctuaries and abolishing mortuary fees, which affected the lower clergy only, but when the Probate Bill came up to the Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury “in especial”, and all the other bishops in general, both frowned and grunted. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a representative of the old school, warned the Lords that religious innovation would bring social revolution in its train. He pointed to the national Czech revolt led by John Huss.
“My lords,” he said, “you see daily what Bills come here from the Commons house, and all is for the destruction of the Church. For God’s sake see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was; and when the Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but down with the Church, and all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only.”
The Commons soon heard of this bold speech, and Members pointed out the implication of the last words—that laws the Commons made were laws made by pagans and heathen people and not worthy to be kept. They formed a deputation of thirty leading Members, headed by the Speaker, and went off to complain to the King. Henry summoned the offending bishops and asked Fisher to explain. Fisher shuffled. He had only meant, he declared, that the Bohemians lacked faith, not the Commons. With this interpretation the other bishops agreed. “But this bland excuse”, we are told, “pleased the Commons nothing at all.” Sharp exchanges took place before the Probate Bill could be forced through the Lords, and rancour grew. Thus from the outset the Reformation House of Commons acquired a corporate spirit, and during its long life, longer than any previous Parliament, eagerly pursued any measure which promised revenge against the bishops for what it deemed their evasion and duplicity over the Probate Bill. Hostility to the Episcopate smouldered, and marked the Commons for more than a hundred years.
The King was already delighted with what they had done, and went about telling everybody, including the Imperial Ambassador. “We have issued orders,” he said, “for the reform of the clergy in our kingdom. We have already clipped their claws considerably by taking away from them several taxes imposed by their own excessive authority on our subjects. We are now about to undertake the Annates [the first year’s income which the bishops paid to Rome on consecration] and prevent ecclesiastics from holding more than one benefice.” But he made it clear at once that he remained fully orthodox in matters of doctrine, that he was merely adhering to the principle of Colet and other leading divines whom he had known in his youth, that men could be Catholic though critical of Papal institutions. “If Luther”, he declared, “had confined himself to denouncing the vices, abuses, and errors of the clergy, instead of attacking the sacraments of the Church and other divine institutions, we should all have followed him and written in his favour.” After this blunt though reasoned statement the negotiations in Rome for annulling the King’s marriage encountered even greater obstacles. But Henry all his life was only spurred by opposition, and he determined to show he was in earnest.
During December 1530 the Attorney-General charged the whole body of the clergy with breaking the fourteenth-century Statutes of Præmunire and Provisors which had been passed to limit the powers of the Pope. This they had done by acquiescing in Wolsey’s many high-handed actions in his rôle as Papal Legate. Henry, after defeating the bishops in the matter of probate by enlisting the support of Parliament, knew that Convocation would not defy him. When the Papal Nuncio intervened to stiffen them against the King all the clergy present were astonished and scandalised. Without allowing him even to open his mouth they begged him to leave them in peace, since they had not the King’s leave to speak with him. In return for a pardon for contravening Præmunire and Provisors the King extracted large sums from Convocation, £100,000 from the province of Canterbury and £19,000 from York, which was much more than at first they were prepared to pay. After further negotiation he also obtained a new title. On February 7, 1531, the clergy acknowledged that the King was “their especial Protector, one and supreme lord, and, as far as the law of Christ allows, even supreme head”.
Parliament, which had been prorogued from month to month since the great doings about probate in 1529, was now recalled to hear and disseminate the royal view on the divorce. Lord Chancellor More came down to the House and said, “There are some who say that the King is pursuing a divorce out of love for some lady, and not out of any scruple of conscience; but this is not true,” and he read out the opinions of twelve foreign universities and showed a hundred “books” drawn up by doctors of strange regions, all agreeing that the King’s marriage was unlawful. Then the Lord Chancellor said, “Now you of this Commons house may report in your counties what you have seen and heard, and then all men shall openly perceive that the King hath not attempted this matter of will or pleasure, as some strangers report, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his realm.”
Throughout these proceedings Queen Catherine remained at Court. The King, although he rode and talked openly with Anne, left Catherine in charge of his personal wardrobe, including supervision of the laundry and the making of his linen. When he required clothes he continued to apply to Catherine, not Anne. Anne was furiously jealous, but for months the King refused to abandon his old routine. A new attempt was then made by the Boleyn party to persuade Catherine to renounce her rights. On June 1, 1531, she was waited on by Norfolk, Suffolk, and Gardiner, Anne’s father, now Earl of Wiltshire, Northumberland, and several others. As before she refused to renounce anything. Finally, about the middle of July, Anne took the King on a long hunting expedition, away from Windsor Castle, longer than any they had ever made together. Catherine waited, day after day, until a month had gone by, but still there was no news of the King’s return. At last the messenger came: the King would come back. But his Majesty did not wish to see the Queen; she was commanded to retire instantly to Wolsey’s former palace at Moor, in Hertfordshire. Henceforward she and her daughter Mary were banished from Court.
The winter of 1531–2 was marked by the tensest crisis of Henry’s reign. A form of excommunication, or even interdict, had been drafted in Rome, ordering the King to cast off his concubine Anne within fifteen days, only the penalties being left blank. The shadow of Papal wrath hung over England. At Court Christmas was kept with great solemnity. “All men”, states a chronicler, “said there was no music in that Christmas, because the Queen and ladies were absent.” But, as in the dark days in the early part of the reign, after the failure of the Bordeaux expedition, the King pursued his inflexible course to the end. Opposition merely confirmed him in his plans. The Annates Bill of which he had boasted to the Imperial Ambassador was drafted as a fighting measure, in case the worst occurred. It armed the King for a greater struggle with the Papacy than had preceded Magna Carta. If the Court of Rome, its preamble ran, endeavoured to wield excommunication, interdict,