VII "5. They are bound on their oaths to make investigation of CHAP heresy, and for that cause alone Standish was summoned before them. "6. That the demanding of such a question as this, 'An exemptio clericorum sit de jure divino, an non,' affirms neither one nor the other, and cannot therefore be contrary to the King's laws. "7. In conclusion, they beseech the King, as they have ever been loyal subjects, nor impeached nor intended to impeach his prerogative, not to credit any sinister information against them, but suffer them to keep their Convocation as his predecessors have done.", After further argument, in which Dr. Voysey1 took part with Standish, it is alleged that the King wound up the discussion with the following short oration : speech of A.D. 1516 Cf. p. 246 "By the permission and ordinance of God we are King of An alleged England, and the Kings of England in times past had never Henry any superior, but God only. Therefore know you well that VIII we will maintain the right of our crown, and of our temporal jurisdiction as well in this, as in all other points, in as ample manner as any of our progenitors have done before our time. And as for your decrees, we are well assured that you of the spirituality go expressly against the words of divers of them, as hath been shewed you by some of our council; and you interpret your decrees at your pleasure, but we will not agree to them more than our progenitors have done in former times." But these royal words appear to be the rhetorical effort of an historian, though fairly enough representing what might have been said on the occasion. Long as this narrative may have seemed, it was desirable not to curtail it, as we have thus given to • Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., i 1314. It is somewhat singular that Voysey was another of Cranmer's VII CHAP us so full an illustration of the relations which existed between the clergy and the rising middle classes at the early dawn of the Reformation. The bitterness was not of a temporary or transient kind, and it is probable that it existed as strongly at any period during the next fifteen years as it is, again, clear that it did when the Church legislation of Henry's reign began in 1529. At the same time it cannot fail to be observed that much unfairness was exhibited on the part of the laity-much of that unfairness towards the clergy which the middle classes as a body have so often since shown. Middle classes ob The payment of fees and other dues to the clergy ject to fees and to the officers of ecclesiastical courts was indeed a standing grievance with the mercantile classes, and it became the first subject of legislation in that remarkable tide of law-making for the Church which set in after Wolsey's fall. A complaint of the House of Commons on this subject has been given in the fourth chapter of this volume, and also the reply of Convocation and of Archbishop Warham.* A modern historian, who has done his best to 2 The following note respecting these transactions exists as a colophon to the Journals of the House of Lords, Doctor Taylor being Clerk of the Parliament as well as Prolocutor of the Convocation. It is in his handwriting. "Dissoluta fuit hæc convocatio, xxi Decembris 1515, Johanna Taylor juris pontificii doctore prolocutore, et eodem tempore clerico parliamentorum domini Regis. In hac convocatione et parliamento periculosissima seditiones exortæ sunt inter clerum et sæcularem potestatem super libertatibus ecclesiasticis, quodam fratre minore no mine Standisch omnium malorum ministro ac stimulatore." Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., ii. 1312. For 3 In the fifteen years between 1529 and 1545, as many as 113 Statutes relating to the Church passed through Parliament. twenty years before 1529 there had only been three slight legislative references to the clergy; and in the fifty years after 1545 only ninety-six such Acts were passed, even including the numerous statutes of repeal and revival and many of a kind affecting secular interests only See pages 215, 224. exaggerate everything that would tell against the CIAP clergy, says that VII esque his tory "In six weeks, for so long only the session lasted, the Picturastonished Church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up before the Lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer; or would flow only in modest rivulets along the beds of the once abundant torrents." historical Picturesque history is seldom to be trusted, and an examination of the Statute Book will show that the "bill after bill" which were so "hurried up before the Lords," amounted in number to three, viz., one regulating the fees for proving wills, a second regulating the payment of mortuaries, and a third for checking pluralities and clerical farming. As very The trite few of the clergy received any fees for proving wills, facts and as pluralities flourished and abounded down to our own century with as much vigour as ever, and as mortuaries were only an occasional and by no means abundant "fountain of income" to the clergy; and above all, as there is no historical ground whatever for supposing the "Church authorities" to have been "astonished" at such legislation, it is evident that this historian's imagination provides a very "abundant torrent" for the supply of his history. The real facts may be shortly stated: Act 1. An Act was passed [21 Hen. VIII. cap. 5] Probate declaring "what fees ought to be taken for the pro- AD. 1530 bate of testaments." After reciting some reforms made in this matter in the reigns of Edward III. and Henry V., this statute enacts that after April 1, 1530, no fees shall be taken for administration where "Froude's History of England, i. 226. VII CHAP the property of the deceased was under the value of 100 shillings; three shillings and sixpence only for probates where the value was above that sum and under £40; and five shillings where the goods were above this latter value. As a provision is inserted permitting those bishops and their officers who had been accustomed to take smaller fees than these to continue to do so, it does not seem as if the grievance was one that bore very hardly upon the laity. Mortuaries 2. An Act was also passed [21 Hen. VIII. cap. A.D. 1530 6] declaring "where mortuaries ought to be paid, for what persons, and how much; and in what case none is due." The preamble of this Act alleges as the reason for passing it, that ambiguity and doubt had arisen as to "the order, manner, and form of demanding, receiving, and claiming of mortuaries, otherwise called corse presents," and that the greatness and value of some that had been lately taken was "thought over-excessive to the poor people and other persons of this realm." Its enacting clauses simply regulate the amounts to be paid, and declare that they shall only be claimed where the custom is already established. But after these there is a clause permitting the clergy to receive any amount of money or goods bequeathed to them by the deceased for their own use or that of the Church. It was one of those statutes which have sometimes been passed for the purpose of soothing agitation or putting an end to discord: but it may be seriously doubted from its terms whether there was really any general grievance that required it, or whether any one benefited by its addition to the Statute Book. A constitution of Archbishop precisely the same thing. See VII 3. The Pluralities Act [21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13], CHAP passed in the same session, was chiefly aimed at the dispensations for pluralities granted by the Pope. Pluralities Little attempt was made actually to put an end to Act the evil system of pluralities, for provision was made A.D. 1530 respecting the purchase of licenses from the King, which were to have precisely the same effect as those from the Pope. The exceptional cases in which such licenses might be granted amount to the number of some hundred, and royal chaplains were allowed to hold any number of benefices. These licenses provided a new source of revenue for the Crown; but, perhaps, the real object of the Act was that of preventing the Pope from conferring English benefices on non-resident foreigners. much comes of It cannot be said that any of these Statutes were These Acts of such a character as to indicate that much was did not taken from the "riches" of the clergy by means of affect intheir operation, or much added by them to the wealth clergy of the laity. What they do indicate is, that there was a large class of the latter who were hankering after Church property, as the King himself was, and that when the "great bell-wether" of the flock—as More (swimming with the tide) shamefully called his old friend and patron-was down, it was hoped that the confiscation might be safely and effectually carried on. Bishop Fisher is said to have read the signs of the times with a prescient eye, and when he complained that such attempts at spoliation showed how "the faith" was "lacking" in the country, he declared also that he believed these to be only the beginnings of a spoliation which would eventually leave the Church shorn of nearly all her possessions. The spirit of the times is also strongly illustrated |