Chapter III

REFORMS.
(END OF 1529.)

[Sidenote: Indignation At The Reply.]

The answer of the bishops was criticised in the royal residence, in the House of Commons, at the meetings of the burgesses, in the streets of the capital, and in the provinces, everywhere exciting a lively indignation. “What!” said they, “the bishops accuse the most pious and active Christians of England,—men like Bilney, Fryth, Tyndale, and Latimer,—of that idleness and irregularity of which their monks and priests are continually showing us examples. To no purpose have the Commons indisputably proved their grievances, if the bishops reply to notorious facts by putting forward their scholastic system. We condemn their practice, and they take shelter behind their theories; as if the reproach laid against them was not precisely that their lives are in opposition to their laws. ‘The fault is not in the Church,’ they say. But it is its ministers that we accuse.”

The indignant parliament boldly took up the axe, attacked the tree, and cut off the withered and rotten branches. One bill followed another, irritating the clergy, but filling the people with joy. When the legacy dues were under discussion, one of the members drew a touching picture of the avarice and cruelty of the priests. “They have no compassion,” he said. “The children of the dead should all die of hunger and go begging, rather than they would of charity give to them the silly cow which the dead man owed, if he had only one.” There was a movement of indignation in the house, and they forbade the clergy to take any mortuary fees when the effects were small.

“And that is not all,” said another. “The clergy monopolize large tracts of land, and the poor are compelled to pay an extravagant price for whatever they buy. They are everything in the world but preachers of God’s Word and shepherds of souls. They buy and sell wool, cloth, and other merchandise; they keep tanneries and breweries.... How can they attend to their spiritual duties in the midst of such occupations?”[18] The clergy were consequently prohibited from holding large estates or carrying on the business of merchant, tanner, brewer, etc. At the same time plurality of benefices (some ignorant priests holding as many as ten or twelve) was forbidden, and residence was enforced. The Commons further enacted that any one seeking a dispensation for non-residence (even were the application made to the pope himself) should be liable to a heavy fine.

The clergy saw at last that they must reform. They forbade priests from keeping shops and taverns, playing at dice or other games of chance, passing through towns and villages with hawks and hounds, being present at unbecoming entertainments, and spending the night in suspected houses.[19] Convocation proceeded to enact severe penalties against these disorders, doubling them for adultery, and tripling them for incest. The laity asked how it was that the Church had waited so long before coming to this resolution, and whether these scandals had become criminal only because the Commons condemned them?

[Sidenote: Bishops Accuse The Commons.]

But the bishops who reformed the lower clergy did not intend to resign their own privileges. One day, when a bill relating to wills was laid before the upper house, the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the other prelates frowned, murmured, and looked uneasily around them.[20] They exclaimed that the Commons were heretics and schismatics, and almost called them infidels and atheists. In all places good men required that morality should again be united with religion, and that piety should not be made to consist merely in certain ceremonies, but in the awakening of the conscience, a lively faith, and holy conduct. The bishops, not discerning that God’s work was then being accomplished in the world, determined to maintain the ancient order of things at all risks.

Their efforts had some chance of success, for the House of Lords was essentially conservative. The Bishop of Rochester, a sincere but narrow-minded man, presuming on the respect inspired by his age and character, boldly came forward as the defender of the Church. “My lords,” he said, “these bills have no other object than the destruction of the Church; and, if the Church goes down, all the glory of the kingdom will fall with it. Remember what happened to the Bohemians. Like them our Commons cry out,—‘Down with the Church!’ Whence cometh that cry? Simply from lack of faith.... My lords, save the country, save the Church.”

This speech made the Commons very indignant. Some members thought the bishop denied that they were Christians. They sent thirty of their leading men to the king. “Sire,” said the Speaker, “it is an attaint upon the honor of your Majesty to calumniate before the upper house those whom your subjects have elected. They are accused of lack of faith, that is to say, they are no better than Turks, Saracens, and heathens. Be pleased to call before you the bishop who has insulted your Commons.”

The king made a gracious reply, and immediately sent one of his officers to invite the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, and six other prelates to appear before him. They came, quite uneasy as to what the prince might have to say to them. They knew that, like all the Plantagenets, Henry VIII. would not suffer his clergy to resist him. Immediately the king informed them of the complaint made by the Commons, their hearts sank, and they lost courage. They thought only how to escape the prince’s anger, and the most venerated among them, Fisher, having recourse to falsehood, asserted that, when speaking about “lack of faith,” he had not thought of the Commons of England, but of the Bohemians only. The other prelates confirmed this inadmissible interpretation. This was a graver fault than the fault itself, and the unbecoming evasion was a defeat to the clerical party from which they never recovered. The king allowed the excuse; but he afterwards made the bishops feel the little esteem he entertained for them. As for the House of Commons, it loudly expressed the disdain aroused in them by the bishops’ subterfuge.

One chance of safety still remained to them. Mixed committees of the two houses examined the resolutions of the Commons. The peers, especially the ecclesiastical peers, opposed the reform by appealing to usage. “Usage!” ironically observed a Gray’s-inn lawyer; “the usage hath ever been of thieves to rob on Shooter’s hill, _ergo_ it is lawful, and ought to be kept up!” This remark sorely irritated the prelates: “What! our acts are compared to robberies!” But the lawyer, addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury, seriously endeavored to prove to him that the exactions of the clergy, in the matter of probates and mortuaries, were open robbery. The temporal lords gradually adopted the opinions of the Commons.

In the midst of these debates, the king did not lose sight of his own interests. Six years before, he had raised a loan among his subjects; he thought parliament ought to relieve him of this debt. This demand was opposed by the members most devoted to the principle of the Reformation; John Petit, in particular, the friend of Bilney and Tyndale, said, in parliament,—“I give the king all I lent him; but I cannot give him what others have lent him.” Henry was not, however, discouraged, and finally obtained the act required.

[Sidenote: Pluralism Abolished.]

The king soon showed that he was pleased with the Commons. Two bills met with a stern opposition from the Lords; they were those abolishing pluralism and non-residence. These two customs were so convenient and advantageous that the clergy determined not to give them up. Henry, seeing that the two houses would never agree, resolved to cut the difficulty. At his desire eight members from each met one afternoon in the Star Chamber. There was an animated discussion; but the lay lords, who were in the conference, taking part with the commons, the bishops were forced to yield. The two bills passed the Lords the next day, and received the king’s assent. After this triumph the king adjourned parliament in the middle of December.

The different reforms that had been carried through were important, but they were not the Reformation. Many abuses were corrected, but the doctrines remained unaltered; the power of the clergy was restricted, but the authority of Christ was not increased; the dry branches of the tree had been lopped off, but a scion calculated to bear good fruit had not been grafted on the wild stock. Had matters stopped here, we might perhaps have obtained a Church with morals less repulsive, but not with a holy doctrine and a new life. But the Reformation was not contented with more decorous forms, it required a second creation.

At the same time parliament had taken a great stride towards the revolution that was to transform the Church. A new power had taken its place in the world: the laity had triumphed over the clergy. No doubt there were upright catholics who gave their assent to the laws passed in 1529; but these laws were nevertheless a product of the Reformation. This it was that had inspired the laity with that new energy, parliament with that bold action, and given the liberties of the nation that impulse which they had wanted hitherto. The joy was great throughout the kingdom; and, while the king removed to Greenwich to keep Christmas there “with great plenty of viands, and disguisings, and interludes,” the members of the Commons were welcomed in the towns and villages with public rejoicings.[21] In the people’s eyes their representatives were like soldiers who had just gained a brilliant victory. The clergy alone, in all England, were downcast and exasperated. On returning to their residences the bishops could not conceal their anguish at the danger of the Church.[22] The priests, who had been the first victims offered up on the altar of reform, bent their heads. But if the clergy foresaw days of mourning, the laity hailed with joy the glorious era of the liberties of the people, and of the greatness of England. The friends of the Reformation went farther still; they believed that the Gospel would work a complete change in the world, and talked, as Tyndale informs us, “as though the golden age would come again.”[23]

Footnote 18:

Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 611.

Footnote 19:

“Quod non pernoctent in locis suspectis. Mulierum colloquia suspecta
nullatenus habeant.”—Wilkins, _Concilia_, iii. pp. 717, 722, &c.

Footnote 20:

“The Archbishop of Canterbury and all the bishops began to frown and
grunt.”—Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 612.

Footnote 21:

Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 614.

Footnote 22:

“The great displeasure of spiritual persons.”—Ibid.

Footnote 23:

Tyndale’s _Works_, i. p. 421.