VII. a vic But CHAP Clement VII. was Pope, and the official duplicity of V the transactions carried on in his name were a prinClement cipal reason why the papal office was treated with tim of his so little respect by Wolsey and Henry VIII. predeces his personal character was very different from that of his immediate predecessors, and his adversities, like those of many other well-meaning rulers, were brought upon him chiefly as the result of their iniquities and worldliness. sors Nor may we leave out the condition of Rome and the Roman Church, when enumerating the causes which led Englishmen to despise the papacy. The The profli- Italy of that day was sunk in the very deeps of Rome and profligacy, and the clergy had been dragged down gacy of Italy into the mire. There were, doubtless, many exceptions, but they are not conspicuous in history. The many who are conspicuous exhibit themselves as secular, intriguing, and even criminal; for what else can be said of a clerical community which could so readily provide assassins and conspirators? Luther spent a fortnight at Rome in 1510, and the recollection of what he saw and heard used to make him shudder. Among other things that he records, is the conversation of priests about the mysteries of religion, and this is so awfully profane, that one can come to no other conclusion than this, that Rome then abounded with profligate infidels even among Luther's its clergy." "I would not have missed seeing Rome," specting it he used to say, "for a thousand florins. At Rome, one may be anything save a good man.' And Luther was very far from being the only one who saying re 7 The very celebration of the Eucharist was vitiated by a parody of the words of consecration. Wors. ley's Life of Luther, i 61. looked with horror and contempt on the condition of CHAP the great centre of Christendom. V siastical Thus the moral weight of the papacy was reduced to its lowest point. The character of these popes was well known to the two generations during which they lived; and we may venture firmly to say that such a character had no parallel among English bishops, No ecclesuch as might have led to its being excused or parallel in leniently thought of. Ambassadors, moreover, lay England and clerical, were continually being sent from England to Rome; they saw the corruptions of the Roman court and the Roman Church, and they came home despising the clergy both as courtiers and as priests. The consequence was, that when the imperious will of Henry VIII. was set against the court of Rome, no one cared to apologize for or defend it: and when the principle of papal jurisdiction came to be called in question, there was no voice raised to plead that if the principle was bad, the lives and rule of the popes were such as to claim respect even for an usurped office. power over away And thus the jurisdiction of the papal see over the Papal Church of England was already rotting away before England Henry VIII. laid the axe to its roots and it was rotting moral rottenness which made its destruction so comparatively easy. It is far from improbable that the spirit thus growing up would have led to entire alienation before long, even without the momentu1n given to events by Henry's pride and passion 3. Such an idea was evidently in the mind of Sir Thomas More; and, no doubt, in that of the still more astute and far-seeing Wolsey. When More was about to be sent to the Tower, he was examined before Cranmer, Cromwell, and Lord Chancellor V CHAP Audley; and among other accusations which were brought against him was that of having put a sword into the King's "enemy, the Pope's hands, by inducing the King to make a book for the maintenance of the Pope's authority and the seven sacraments.' More replies that when the King showed him the MS. after it was completed, he found "the Pope's More fore- authority highly advanced, and with many good between reasons mightily defended," and that he offered a and Henry remonstrance on the subject. "I must put your VIII Grace in mind of one thing,"" he reports himself to sees quarrel the Pope early view premacy have said, "and that is this, the Pope, as your Grace knoweth, is a great prince as you are. It may hereafter fall out that your Grace and he may vary on some points, whereupon may grow breach of amity and war between you both. I think it therefore best, in my simple judgment, that this place be mended, and his authority more slenderly touched.' The King's Nay (quoth his grace), that shall not be. We and of papalsu. all Christians are so much bound to the See of Rome that we cannot do it too much honour.' Then I put him in mind of a statute of pramunire, made in the time of Richard the Second, by which a part of the Pope's pastoral cure here in England was pared away. To that his Highness answered, 'Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth, for our parts, his authority to the utmost as it deserved; for from that See we first received our faith, and after our imperial crown and sceptre,' which, till his Grace with his own mouth More's sar- told me," adds More sarcastically, "I never heard of specting it before." It is amusing to find what a change thirteen years had made in the King's opinions 8 Wordsw. Eccl. Biog., ii. 169. casm re "8 V rejection tion the respecting his relations with the Pope; but it is also CHAP instructive to find that his new opinions were those which wiser men had long entertained. In fact it may be said that when Henry finally established his independence of the Court of Rome, he was but giving the last effective stroke to a policy which had been maintained-as far as it could be without royal support for many years of Wolsey's administration. Final We may even go further back, and say with a once of Papal zealous writer of the English Church, who in later jurisdic life became titular archbishop of the Roman sect in climax of a standing England, that Henry's act was but the finishing contest stroke to a work that had been going on for centuries.o "If any man will look down along the line of early English history, he will see a standing contest between the rulers of this land and the bishops of Rome. The Crown and Church of England, with a steady opposition, resisted the entrance and encroachment of the secularized ecclesiastical power of the Pope in England. The last rejection of it was no more than a successful effort after many a failure in struggles of the like kind." at last by After the advocation of the divorce cause to Provoked Rome, it became clear that this long-threatened divorce separation of England from the jurisdiction of the business popes was now becoming imminent and looking back on the steps taken by Clement and the King, we may say that no such outrageous provocation having ever been offered before to an independent In 1512 there had been a movement in France for throwing off the papal jurisdiction and in 1525 Francis I. proposed a Patriarchate of France and England to Wolsey. [Ellis' Orig. Lett., III. 1 Manning on the Unity of the CHAP Sovereign, it was met in the first instance very temperately. V A. D. 1530 In 1530 Dr. Benet was endeavouring to obtain a commission for three English bishops, or for Convocation, to take up and decide the cause; and a long despatch exists which he wrote on October 27th of that year, giving the King an account of his interviews with the Pope. Against Clement's advocaEnglish tion of the cause to Rome, the envoys alleged the leged custom of the realm of England, which forbad any against pa- Englishman being called out of the country to plead ment of the before a foreign tribunal; and that for this reason customs al pal judg cause appeals made to Rome were always sent back to England. This custom the Pope questioned, and the ambassador began to retort, by hinting some doubts as to the grounds of the Papal authority itself. "Then we said, that if his Holiness would examine this custom so exquisitely, and seek the reason of it, which hath been used by time out of mind, and now is certain, he should not do well. For his Holiness should consider how dangerous it is to search for the reason of such things as hath been used long, and so taken for certain, lest those things which are Hint as to taken now for certain should be subverted: and also how weak ten ure of papal grievously he would take it if a man should ask of him the reajurisdiction son why, he being Bishop of Rome, should have jurisdiction in all other churches and bishops. To that he answered and said, It was evidently not without reason that Sir John |