Part 16

Cranmer, like a good many other people, was thoroughly convinced that, though the marriage with Katharine had been effected in perfect good faith, it was invalid in the nature of things, and could not be made valid by any sort of ecclesiastical sanction, Papal or other. The king set him to work to formulate a plea for nullity, and placed him under the immediate influence of the Boleyn household, where the simple man very readily learnt to form the highest opinion of the lady whom the king had determined to make a queen. Then he was sent with Anne’s father on a futile embassy to Bologna; and not long after his return he was again despatched as an enemy to Germany, where he made many friends but did not succeed in gaining many converts to his view on the divorce question. There also he took the extremely uncanonical step of marrying; but it must be remembered that while such marriages among the secular clergy were not recognised by the law, they were not regarded as offences against morality, and were by no means infrequent; while in Germany itself they had become, or were becoming, the rule rather than the exception. Cranmer was still in Germany when he received the unexpected and most unwelcome summons to return to England and take upon himself the ungrateful honour of the archbishopric.

In the meantime Henry’s “Reformation” parliament had been at work; the campaign against the Pope and the clerical organisation was in full swing: and Convocation, under the aged Warham, had been compelled to affirm the royal supremacy. The “submission of the clergy” had become an accomplished fact in Cranmer’s absence, and before he held any position of high authority. The most stubborn of the bishops were unable to resist the pressure of the Crown. They bowed to the logic of facts, under protest and against their convictions, without being condemned as subservient. Cranmer is called subservient mainly because his convictions were on the king’s side.

It was always more agreeable to Henry to employ on any job he had in hand men to whom that particular job was not distasteful. Thus, knowing Sir Thomas More’s sentiments as to the divorce, he had given the new Chancellor no business in connexion with it. It is not likely that any of the bishops at this time, with the exception of Fisher, would have felt strongly as to a breach with Rome--Gardiner and Stokesly were both advocates of the divorce. But it was more convenient to have an archbishop as to whose sentiments there was no manner of doubt. It is not impossible that Gardiner, not Cranmer, would have been chosen, if his attitude in regard to the “Supplication against the Ordinaries” and the “Submission” of Convocation had not made Henry scent in him a possible Becket. The Bishop of Winchester’s services had been of considerable value; and if Cranmer’s appointment stirred his jealousy, he can hardly be blamed. But it is scarcely to be doubted that a personal antagonism to the rival, for whose first preferment to Henry’s notice he had himself been in part responsible and by whom he now found himself superseded, exercised a marked influence on Gardiner’s attitude from this time.

Cranmer, summoned home, delayed on the way as much as he dared--in the hope, it is said, that the king might be persuaded to change his mind and make another selection. However, he arrived in January; Henry--for his own ends--put pressure on the Pope to hasten the necessary bulls, and the new Archbishop was consecrated on March 30 (1533). An oath of obedience to the Pope was a necessary part of the ceremony. Such oaths are commonly regarded as mere formalities, binding precisely so long as it is convenient to recognise them. Cranmer, however, being very well aware that whosoever became archbishop would very soon find it necessary to ignore the oath or else to defy the king, was at pains to announce beforehand that he only intended to respect the oath so far as it consorted with obedience to the king--a declaration which has been rather oddly condemned as hypocritical. Oaths and promises[D] made purely _pro forma_ are a not very excusable institution, but the open profession that they are made _pro forma_ only makes such hypocrisy as is involved less, not greater.

[D] How many godparents or brides, for instance, regard the formal promises they make in the face of the congregation as imposing a real and literal obligation?

IV

HENRY’S PRIMATE

The first business before Cranmer was to finish off the affair of the divorce. Henry had already--whether in the previous November or January--been privately married to Anne Boleyn. On the theory that the marriage with Katharine was void _ab initio_, there was never any bar to another marriage, though it was hardly possible to announce one until the nullity had been formally declared: so that any further delay was certain to cause a public scandal--since it was now April, and Elizabeth was born in the following September. Convocation had already pronounced in favour of Henry’s view; and if Cranmer was somewhat anxious to evade possible obstructions, it was only because the decision of the court was by this time a foregone conclusion.

For the destruction of More and Fisher (1534-1535) Cranmer was in no sort of way responsible. He was on the Commission which had to administer the Oath of Supremacy, which the two recalcitrants declined, but it was not he who prescribed the form of the oath, nor had he anything to say to the penalties. All he did do was to urge the king to accept as sufficient a form of the oath to which Fisher and More were both prepared to subscribe.

Something more is usually made of the Archbishop’s conduct at the time of Anne Boleyn’s fall, as an instance of the subserviency which is imputed to him. It is argued that officially at Henry’s bidding he condemned the unhappy lady, while personally convinced of her innocence. The whole story is enveloped in an obscurity which makes that impression a natural one; nevertheless, the most probable explanation of the circumstances is one which fairly exonerates the Archbishop.

Henry had sought to have the nullity of the marriage with Katharine established ostensibly for two main reasons. The first was the fruit of conscience, that the union, though sanctioned by the Pope, was against the moral law. The second was a reason of State, that a male heir to the throne with an indisputable title was a necessity, and therefore the king must be provided with another wife than Katharine. The other wife he had chosen was Anne Boleyn, but she had failed to do what was expected of her. Like her predecessor, she had borne a daughter, and had two miscarriages Henry was tired of her, and was attracted to another lady whose virtue was impregnable; therefore he wanted to be rid of her in turn. Charges of treason on the ground of post-nuptial immorality were brought against her, and on these she was condemned by a court of peers composed in great part of those who would have been readiest to welcome her acquittal. Here, we have nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the allegations; Cranmer was not one of the judges, and had nothing whatever to do with the trial. But Anne had from the first shown him the best side of her character, and he had a perfect conviction that she was a good woman. He could not influence the court; he had nothing which could be called evidence in her favour to bring forward. The king’s wishes were obvious. Yet Cranmer took the somewhat bold step of addressing the king, pleading earnestly and even passionately on her behalf--though vainly.

But, for reasons best known to himself, Henry was not satisfied with a condemnation for treason: he also required a divorce--or, to express it more correctly, a declaration that the marriage, like that with Katharine, had been void from the beginning. How could Cranmer, who had officially declared it valid, now make any such pronouncement? The answer is, that the technical ground on which it was voided had not previously been taken into account. The story of a pre-contract with Northumberland need not count for much, though for the avoidance of scandal it was put in the forefront. The charges on which Anne was condemned to death, while effective for proper divorce proceedings, were irrelevant to the question of nullity. The real ground was that at an earlier stage Henry had illicit relations with Anne’s elder sister, Mary, thereby technically creating affinity with Anne, and rendering the marriage with her void by canon law. How far Cranmer knew or suspected this unofficially, when he declared the marriage valid, is a matter of doubt--which is not set at rest by his pamphlet in favour of the divorce. But, being now officially informed of it, he could not maintain the technical validity of the marriage any longer. His view of the importance of merely canonical prohibitions is illustrated by his own uncanonical marriage. Even if he knew of the “affinity” he would probably have accounted it no moral bar to a union. But, knowing it, he could not deny that it made the marriage technically invalid. It is, perhaps, worth noting that his plea for Anne’s life contains a reference to Henry’s own morals, which may very well have been a reminder that it was the king’s sin, not Anne’s, which had placed her in a false position. As for her actual guilt or innocence under the other accusations, the Primate could not protest against the king or the judges being persuaded by the evidence, but he could, and did, declare that, not having the evidence before him, he could not bring himself to believe that the charges were true: but that did not touch the question of nullity. Whoever deserved blame over the affair, Cranmer did not.

Some years later Thomas Cromwell was struck down by his master. His government had been in many respects a reign of terror. The populace had no affection for him; the nobles hated him: the new men, even those he had made, feared him; the king’s wrath was kindled against him. The downfall of Wolsey had not been more universally acceptable. But there was one man who lifted up his voice to plead for the fallen minister--Thomas Cranmer, the time-server. As in the case of Anne Boleyn, it was impossible for him to take up the cudgels in defence of the man who had been less dangerous, perhaps, to him than to most others--dangerous he was to every one, for he spared neither friend nor foe--but who else would have dared, or ever did dare, to appeal to Henry in the day of his wrath?

It was not Cranmer who directed the course of the Reformation under Henry. The breach with Rome in all its completeness was devised and carried out without aid from him, unless the suggestion of taking the opinion of the Universities on the divorce is to be counted as aid. Before the king had ever heard of Cranmer, Gardiner had told Clement in plain terms that if he refused to entertain the English king’s wishes England would repudiate his jurisdiction altogether. The great majority of the bishops were no friends to the Papal claims, though some of them would have taken a different line if they had not been too late in discovering that the king meant to impose his own yoke instead of the Pope’s: and the same thing might be said of Convocation generally. Gardiner and Stokesley, the most persistent of Cranmer’s antagonists, had been foremost in supporting the king against the Pope. The clergy had writhed and resisted when the attack was turned against themselves by the “Supplication against the Ordinaries,” but they had been forced to surrender and make their “Submission” while Warham was still Archbishop and Cranmer was engaged in other matters. Even after he became Primate Cranmer had no actual hand or voice in the great despoiling measures which accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries; while the downfall of the monastic system in itself was probably not unwelcome to the bulk of the secular clergy, between whom and the regulars there was constant friction and jealousy.

In this connexion, however, while Cranmer, like Gardiner and the rest, neither aided nor hindered Cromwell’s work, it ought to stand to his eternal credit that he was almost alone in protesting, not against the spoliation itself--practically no one seems to have ventured to do that--but against the misuse of the wealth which thus changed hands. He wrote to Cromwell emphatically expressing his grief and disappointment that those funds were not appropriated to education--still accounted one of the primary functions of the Church. Had the course which he urged been followed there would have been little possibility of saying that the Church was robbed. But Cromwell and his master had other uses for the spoils. It is remarkable, too, that when educational establishments were endowed Cranmer made a vigorous stand on behalf of humble scholars against those who would have confined their benefits to the sons of the well-to-do.

So far, however, as concerned matters of doctrine and practice the Archbishop exercised some influence. His sojourn in Germany had not made him a Lutheran, but it had inclined him to give favourable consideration to the opinions of sober reformers on the Continent. Viewing the Papacy as the enemy, he was always sanguine of the possibility that a common standard of doctrine might be formulated in consultation with the Protestant leaders; and such an agreement was a pet project of his, the theological counterpart of Cromwell’s political league with the Lutherans. Henry, however, looked askance on both schemes, and the Archbishop’s efforts were doomed to disappointment.

Anxious as Cranmer was for a union of the opponents of Papacy, there were many disputable points on which his own judgment had not crystallised. In the matter, however, on which he really laid most stress he got his way. An English Bible which all men might read was the desire of his heart, and that was the one innovation of first-rate importance to which Henry acceded. The first Convocation over which he presided petitioned for a commission to prepare such a volume, and the petition was granted. The Commission itself was ineffective enough; some of the members, like Stokesley, desired only to obstruct the work as far as in them lay. But the principle was conceded, and the Commission was made superfluous by the appearance of Coverdale’s and “Matthew’s” versions. There is no doubt at all that the main credit is due to Cranmer, though his efforts would have been vain enough without the powerful support of Cromwell. A kindred concession to Cranmer’s enthusiasm for the English language was the authorisation, in Henry’s later years, of an English Litany.

When John Frith affirmed the proposition that a correct belief on the subject of the Eucharist could not be essential to salvation, there were few, if any, of his contemporaries who did not regard him as an anarchist in religion. But the subject of the Eucharist was only one among many as to which men were in a state of great uncertainty concerning the belief which should be regarded as correct. A standard was wanted; it might be rigid, or it might be elastic. Given a standard fixed by authority, no one was prepared as yet to admit that the individual was at liberty to set up a different standard for himself: no one doubted that the lack of an authoritative standard was an evil. Hence arose the efforts in Henry’s reign to evolve acceptable formularies, which should define what must be acknowledged as true doctrines.

In the devising of these Cranmer, as well as many others, had his share. They did not express the views of any one man--unless it were the king--or any one party. They were three in number: first, the “Ten Articles” for “establishing Christian quietness”; then the “Institution of a Christian Man,” commonly called the _Bishop’s Book_; and some years later the “Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man,” known as the _King’s Book_. Between the first and the last there is no definite change of doctrinal attitude. None of the three breaks away from received opinion; they differ mainly in the precision with which certain points are insisted upon. Thus, in the first, the doctrine of the Real Presence is affirmed, but not explicitly in the form of Transubstantiation. The movement is rather towards rigidity. Cranmer and some of his colleagues made tentative suggestions in favour of admitting more advanced views, which were not approved, and in the case of the King’s Book, it is clear that the opposing party hoped to get something of a much more decisively reactionary character.

Cranmer was a long way from being an Anselm, a Becket, or a Langton. But on the whole, taking together the history of those three formularies, and adding that of the Six Articles Act, which intervened, the surprising thing about him is not his subserviency, but the persistency with which he defended his own views. The “Whip with Six Strings” was a tightening of the bonds which came upon the advanced party with a startling shock. Cranmer fought the Bill in Parliament, and he fought some of its positions in convocation after the king’s mind was very well known. By the king’s desire, he put his argument down in black-and-white for the royal perusal after the Act had become law--a manifestly dangerous step. When the “King’s Book” was in hand, he again fought, though unsuccessfully, for the admission of views which the Act condemned; and he told Henry with perfect candour that, although he obeyed the law as in duty bound, his opinion remained unaltered. Throughout all the discussions he criticised the royal suggestions and comments with an admirable frankness which none of his colleagues ventured to display.

The curious thing is that Cranmer was the one man who could say what he would to the king without arousing his anger, as Cromwell remarked to him with not unkindly envy: but he could not deflect the monarch from the path he chose by a single hair’s breadth. Twice after Cromwell’s fall the reactionaries fancied that they had the Archbishop fairly in the toils; both times they were brought up with a round turn by their master and his. The combination of ruthless force with great intellectual power in both Cromwell and Henry found by contrast a strange attraction in the Primate’s guilelessness. “Oh, Lord God,” exclaimed Henry on one occasion, “what fond simplicity have you, so to permit yourself to be imprisoned that every enemy of yours may take vantage against you.” They both chose to protect him against the enemies who certainly were not guileless; and bestowed on him an affection which was half-admiring and half-pitying; an affection returned by that which is often felt by a tender and pliant nature for a rugged and imperious one. When Cranmer felt impelled to remonstrate with their proceedings, he did so with trepidation; they ignored the remonstrances, but liked him none the worse. It might be said that he was the only man or woman of whom, being brought in frequent contact, Henry never fell foul. There was always warm respect in Henry’s fondness for him; and Henry was by no means the man to feel respect for a time-server.

V

CRANMER AND SOMERSET

The death of Henry was the beginning of a new era. Hitherto his personality had completely dominated the situation; effectively, he had become the most uncontrolled autocrat in Europe, in spite of a very careful preservation of traditional forms. But his successor on the throne was a nine-year-old boy, and there was no dominating personality to take the dead king’s place. If Henry’s scheme for the continuation of the government had been framed with a view to the maintenance of the _status quo_, it was a very complete failure.

Superficially, that would seem to have been the idea. The Council of Executors in whom power was vested by Henry’s will was a body in which the progressive and stationary or reactionary parties were both represented. The strength of the latter, however, suffered serious detriment in the closing weeks of Henry’s reign by the downfall of the Howards: while their ecclesiastical leader, Gardiner, was excluded from the Council, on which their principal representative among Churchmen was Tunstal of Durham, a man as mild as Cranmer himself. Within a week, the Earl of Hertford, now become Duke of Somerset, had secured the Protectorate in his own hands, and it became immediately and abundantly clear that the whole effective power was in the hands of the progressive party.

Now at this stage there were not many points of doctrine on which the leaders of the progressive party were committed to opinions fundamentally opposed to those received. Cranmer’s chief allies had not openly rejected even the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and certainly did not dispute the Real Presence: but they definitely favoured the administration of the cup to the laity; they held that it was lawful for priests to marry; and that auricular confession was not enjoined by Scripture. Cranmer had defended each of these views at the time of the Six Articles and of the King’s Book. They had been unsatisfied by the removal of “abused images” in the last reign, and desired an extension thereof. Cranmer’s own exposition of what he considered orthodox doctrine was contained in the Book of Homilies which he had prepared but had failed to persuade Henry to authorise: while the idea of a new uniform Book of Services had long been familiar and vaguely in favour. The men of the “Old Learning” did not fear the specific innovations as particularly dangerous _per se_; what they did fear was that the innovators would go a great deal further.

We remark, then, first, that under the _régime_ of Somerset, the changes in religion were almost precisely what the Archbishop had advocated under Henry VIII. The Homilies were authorised; the destruction of “abused images” was renewed; the administration of the cup to the laity in the sacrament was enjoined, and the marriage of priests permitted--both on the petition of convocation; and the promulgation of a new Order of Service was almost of necessity attended by an “Act of Uniformity” compelling the clergy to adopt it. Equally as a matter of course, the Six Articles Act, against which Cranmer had fought at the outset, was repealed. The present writer has in the past been severely rebuked for attributing the form the Reformed Church in England took to Cranmer more than to any other single man. “He ought to know,” said the critics, “that Somerset was the man.” Yet repentance lags. Somerset was the politician who, up to a certain point, carried the Reformation through: at that point his influence on it ceased abruptly, and the business passed into Warwick’s hands. The point where this change took place coincided accurately with the completion of the series of reforms of which the Archbishop had for some years past avowedly been in favour. The inference that Somerset was guided by Cranmer is sufficiently obvious, though no doubt the hand was the Protector’s hand. The further advance after Somerset’s fall was mainly, or largely, the work of men of extreme views, whose zeal the Archbishop succeeded, to some extent, in restraining; his influence was still at work--no longer, however, as that of the artificer, but as that of the moderator.