CHAP II Wolsey offenders With this ostentatious pageant of orthodoxy, Wolsey staved off more severe measures for the present, in the hope that they could be avoided altogether. Burning books was not a very serious matter, and he did not object to make the most of any advantage that might be gained by conceding so much to the King's party. But burning men protected was of much more importance, and although Longland suggested pursuing the heretics "ad ignem," Wolsey preferred dealing with them in his own way, marking their errors but sparing their persons. He adopted a similar humane policy when he was forced to deal with such conceited and self-opiniated men individually. Bilney and Barnes were both brought before him, and examined by him personally, and both were suffered to go free during his life-time, notwithstanding the reckless and abusive tone which Barnes, at least, adopted towards him." 7 Foxe gives a not unamusing account of an examination to which Barnes was subjected before the Cardinal, who was, it must be renembered, the reformer of the order of Augustines, of whose house in Cambridge this fanatic monk was prior. "What, Master Doctor," said the Cardinal, "had you not a sufficient scope in the Scriptures to teach the people, but that my golden shoes, my pole-axes, my pillars, my golden cushions, my crosses, did so offend you that you must make us 'ridiculum caput' amongst the people? We were jollily that day laughed to scorn. Verily, it was a sermon more fit to be preached on a stage than in a pulpit for at the last you said I did wear a pair of red gloves ('I should say bloody gloves,' quoth you) that I should not be cold in the midst of my ceremonies." Barnes alleged that all this was according to the Scriptures, and that he would stand by what he had said; on which the Cardinal told him he would ask him one question, "Whether do you think it more necessary that I should have all this royalty, because I represent the King's majesty's person in all the high courts of this realm . . or to be as simple as you would have us, to sell all these aforesaid things, and to give it to the poor, who shortly will cast it against the walis, and to pull away this majesty of a princely dignity which is a terror to all the wicked?" Barnes' reply shows the stupid unpracticableness of such fanatics: "I think it necessary to be sold and given to the poor. For this is not comely for your calling, nor is the King's majesty maintained by your pomp and II afterwards But both these, and many others, were sent to the CHAP stake afterwards, when his forbearance and merciful policy were superseded by the iron hand of the King himself, whose savagery was restrained neither by Cromwell nor Cranmer. Wolsey caused them to carry a faggot to the fire, or made them go about who were the world wearing one embroidered on the coat- again sleeve: Henry placed them in the midst of actual taken and faggots, which he kindled without scruple. Indeed, one important clause of the indictment against Wolsey was, that he had been "the impeacher and disturber of due and direct correction of heresies, being highly to the danger and peril of the whole body, and good Christian people of this realm." executed attempts pro tione" Meanwhile Wolsey endeavoured to use the autho- Wolscy rity and influence given him by his office as legate, to hold a for the purpose of effecting a reformation among the synod clergy and laity. The Convocation of Canterbury Reforma. was summoned to meet on April 20, 1523, in the A.D. 1523 usual manner, at St. Paul's. Wolsey, as Archbishop of York, summoned the Northern Convocation to Westminster, and he endeavoured to do what has been so often wished for since by many, to unite the two Convocations in one synod, by ordering that of Canterbury to join his own on April 22. This, he by uniting thought, might be done without difficulty under exist- Convocaing circumstances, by calling on the members of tions Convocation to sit in a legatine synod, a course which would have preserved their identity as pro pole-axes: but, by God, who saith 'Per Me reges regnant,' 'kings and their majesties reign and stand by Me.'" [Ibid., 417.] 8 Strype remarks that all the chief Cambridge scholars who were selected for the Cardinal's college, the two II ed for a time 86 PERSEVERES NOTWITHSTANDING OPPOSITION CHAP vincial convocations, and have superadded the supreme authority of the Legate's office. The ConA.D. 1523 vocation of Canterbury objected to this arrangement, asserting that they acted under the King's writ, and that this precluded them from acting as part of a legatine synod. Although, therefore, Wolsey had summoned the latter "Ad tractandum de Reformatione tum Laicorum, tum Ecclesiasticorum," the Is thwart two separate Convocations could only, or did only, take into consideration the subsidies which they were required to pay to the Crown. The Cardinal then summoned another synod to meet on June 8, the Octave of the Ascension, ordering the Convocation of Canterbury to come, provided with requisite but after powers, but of this no record whatever remains.1 A graphic letter of some member of the House of Commons, written to the Earl of Surrey, gives us a slight sketch of the complications that arose out of this experiment, but, unfortunately, it is dated on Ascension Day itself, and so a week before the Contem- Legatine Synod was to meet. "Also the convocaporary action among the priests," says the writer, "the first the matter day of their appearance, as soon as mass of the Holy wards suc ceeds count Ghost at Paul's was done, my Lord Cardinal acited 1 Wilkins' Concil., iii. 700. before him eight days after the Ascension. CHAP I do tremble to remember the end of all these high and new enterprises. For oftentimes it hath been A.D. 1523 seen that to a new enterprise, there followeth a new manner and strange sequel. God of His mercy send His grace unto such fashion, that it may be for the best. fore his age Many others, no doubt, both among the clergy Wolsey be and the laity, trembled to think of the reforms which Wolsey wished to effect: and the experience of later ages teaches us that those who look on "trembling," can most effectively hinder the progress of those who are prepared to advance. Men before their age, such as Wolsey, are generally confident as to "the end" of their high and "new enterprises," but they find it difficult to carry them out in their completeness when standing almost alone in their courageous onslaught upon the established order of things: and stolid resistance to a really great reformer may end in the "new manner and strange sequel" of an uprooting revolution instead of a wholesome reformation. The destruction of official records has left us in the dark as to the actual transactions of Wolsey's legatine synods for the reformation of the Church, but the above letter affords us a slight glimpse of the difficulties which he had to encounter, difficulties too great to be surmounted by constitutional methods, and only to be mowed down by the supreme tyranny of the Tudor sceptre, wielded by the hands of the less scrupulous Cromwell and the King himself. didate for Wolsey had longing visions of the great work that Is a canmight be effected if he could become pope: and it the Papal can scarcely be doubted that an English Pope, 2 Eccl. Mem., i. 77; and Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 3024. chair CHAP trained as Wolsey had been to English modes of II thought and habits of government, might, at any A.D. 1527 time during the last 400 years, have changed the face of Christendom. But England has ever been carefully excluded from the papal throne, and even Wolsey could not command quite influence enough to ensure his election, though he was a candidate on two occasions, and was supported by the Emperor, the French king, and Henry VIII. Towards the close of his career, in 1527, he occupied for a short time Becomes the post of vicar-general to the Pope, and was emGeneral to powered to exercise the papal authority to its full the Pope extent in England, while Clement VII. was im Vicar prisoned by Charles V. But the transactions connected with the divorce show that this authority was more verbal than real, and perhaps the only important result of the appointment was that referred to by Lord Herbert: it showed the King that it was possible to carry on the ecclesiastical government of England without the intervention of the Pope. A far more important movement was initiated at this time, which would have had a vast influence upon the course of the Reformation had it ever been 3 In a letter dated March 14, 1519, Sir Thomas Boleyn writes from the Court of France that Francis "promised, on the word of a king, that if Wolsey aspired to be head of the Church, he would secure him on the first opportunity the voices of fourteen cardinals, the whole company of the Ursyns at Rome, and the help of one Mark Antony di Colonna, whom he calls a valiant man, and of great reputation there." [Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., ii. 122.] Boleyn writes doubtingly as to Wolsey's acceptance of the offer, and there is not, indeed, on record, a single line of the Cardinal's to show that he would willingly have left England for Rome, or that he felt any regret at his non-election. He would rather "continue in the King's service," he said on one occasion, "than be ten popes," only he knew how much the King wished that he should be at the head of the Church. [Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 3372, 3377, 3609.] So singularly has this great man been misrepresented in popular histories. Eccl. Mem., i. 107. Life of Henry VIII., p. 209. |