kingdom of England is an empire provided with persons, both spiritual and temporal, well qualified to determine all controversies arising in it, without application to any foreign princes or potentates. And more particularly that part of the said body, called the spirituality, or the English church, have always been esteemed, and found upon trial, sufficiently furnished with skill and integrity to determine all such doubts, and to administer all such offices and duties," as appertain to their spiritual station.

In the early part of this year, Cranmer was consecrated to the see of Canterbury, which had been vacant since August, 1532. For this purpose Henry procured bulls from Rome; and so anxious was Cranmer to exhibit his entire approval of the course adopted towards the clergy, that he refused to accept them but from the king's own hand. Nor would he take the usual oath to the pope, without first protesting against those parts of it which he conceived might be a bar to the performance of his duty to God, the king, and his country. By this expedient, unworthy of an honourable mind, he entered on his high functions as the first archbishop of Canterbury, recognizing in spirituals the supremacy of the king. The subserviency he here displayed marked his whole carcer; on all occasions he evinced a remarkable readiness to do and to say all that could be pleasing to his royal master. He was immediately instructed to declare the marriage of Henry with Katharine null and void, in conformity with the decision of convocation, and to pronounce on the legitimacy of the king's union with Anne Boleyn, some months after the nuptials had been solemnized.1 Negotiations were kept up at Rome during the remainder of the year, until the decision of the pope (March 21st, 1534,) put an end to the entire procedure. An immediate separation from his new queen,

9 Burnet, i. 232. Collier, iv. 207.

1

Strype's Cranmer, pp. 26, 29, 8vo. edit.

and the restoration of Katharine to all her conjugal rights, were the terms of the papal decree.2

It does not appear that these proceedings at Rome at all accelerated the complete establishment of the royal supremacy; although they may have conduced to that utter exclusion of the pope from every kind of influence in the internal spiritual affairs of the kingdom, which so quickly followed the settlement of this great question by the parliament then assembled. This exclusion was owing, for the most part, to the nature of those principles on which the king's ecclesiastical authority was based, rather than to any purpose of the sovereign, the clergy, or the nation, to bring it to pass.

But while the pope was thus busily engaged at Rome, in rendering irrevocable the humiliation of his power in this country, the houses of parliament, which assembled on the 15th of January, 1534, completed the work so auspiciously begun in former sessions. The king's council had in the previous month, but after the revocation of Cranmer's sentence of divorce by the pontiff, entered on the consideration of various questions relating to the pope's "usurped power," as it was called, "within the realm;" and measures were resolved upon for the support of the royal prerogative.3

The statutes relating to heresy, were the first to be singled out by the Commons for amendment. The inquisitorial power of the bishops' courts was destroyed; all proceedings were to take place in open court, and by witnesses. Those adjudged guilty were not to suffer death until the king's writ, De heretico comburendo, had been obtained; but none were to be troubled upon any of the pope's canons or laws. They next proceeded to the submission of the clergy, who had acknowledged, "according to the truth," that their convocations

Short, Ch. Hist. p. 92.

3

Burnet, i, 270.

4 Strype, Memor. I. i. 231.

ought to assemble only by the king's writ, and had promised never to attempt the promulgation or execution of any canons without the royal assent to the same.

the monasteries The payment of

This submission the parliament enacted for a law, and thus extinguished the independent power of the clergy for ever. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and put under the jurisdiction of the crown. annates was wholly forbidden; the procuring of bulls, briefs, or palls from the see of Rome denounced; every kind of payment formerly made under the names of pensions, censes, Peter-pence, dispensations, licenses, &c. &c. interdicted; the manner of the election of bishops determined to be thereafter by a congé d'élire from the king to the dean and chapter; and, lastly, the succession to the crown was settled on the issue of queen Anne.5

In the session at the close of the year all these acts were confirmed; the separation from Rome was completed, by the full recognition of the king, "as the supreme head in earth of the church in England," and to his spiritual jurisdiction all heresies and abuses were referred. It was made treason to deny the king this title, as also the once calling him heretic, schismatic, infidel, or usurper of the crown.6

In the interval of the two sessions, commissioners were sent through the land to offer the oath of submission to the clergy, in which was included a declaration that the king was head of the church; that the bishop of Rome had no more power than any other bishop; and that in their sermons they would not pervert the scripture, but preach Christ and his gospel sincerely, according to the scripture, and the tradition of orthodox and catholic doctors. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More refused the oath, and forfeited their lives for resisting the royal power."

3 Collier, iv. 234-241.

6

Burnet, i. 288.

7 Burnet, i. 284.

Thus was consummated the abolition of the papal power in this country, and the formation of that regal prerogative in spirituals, as well as in temporals, which has continued to be an incubus upon the Anglican church to the present day. It is evident that in the procurement of this change, a sincere and profound conviction of the errors of Rome, and of the value of a scriptural faith and piety, had not the least share. The welfare of the church of Christ, the recognition of his claims as the King of saints, the emancipation of the human mind from the bondage of superstition, and the attainment of liberty of thought and freedom of conscience, formed no part of the object of the actors in this revolutionary drama.

"To this crisis the king of England had driven on...for with regard to the separation of this country from Rome, it has already been demonstrated, that Henry the Eighth had no credit whatever. At the moment he meant not so,' neither did he in his heart so intend. Could he only have moulded the pontiff to his will, no such event would have happened during his administration; and had Clement not been under the control of the emperor, Henry would have been an adherent still; as in opinion, if he had any opinions, he remained to the end of his life."8

The whole nation seems to have been content with the change. During the session of parliament in which it was effected, care was taken, that from Sunday to Sunday, at St. • Paul's Cross, the usurpation of the pope in exercising jurisdiction within the realm, should be proclaimed to be as contrary to God's laws as it was to the rights of princes.

Divines were employed to write on the king's behalf; and books on the supremacy were plentifully distributed in the land. Gardiner, Tunstal, and Bonner, made their zeal in the king's cause eminently to appear by their writings and ser

Anderson's Annals, i. 406, 407.

mons. "If you think," says the bishop of Durham to Reginald Pole, in 1536, "the hearts of the subjects of this realm, greatly offended with abolishing of the bishop of Rome's usurped authority in this realm, as if all the people, or most part of them, took the matter as ye do....I do assure you, ye be deceived. For the people perceive right well what profit cometh to the realm thereby; and that all such money as before issued that way, now is kept within the realm..... So that, if at this day the king's grace would go about to renew in his realm the said abolished authority of the bishop of Rome, I think he should find much more difficulty to bring it about in his parliament, and to induce his people to agree thereunto, than any thing that ever he purposed in his parliament, since his first reign."9

One tyranny was thus exchanged for another. A new feature, likewise hostile to true Christian liberty, becomes noticeable in the history of the church; and we now proceed to trace its characteristics as embraced and moulded by the teachers of reformation.

It was of necessity that Henry should call to his councils, Cranmer, Cromwell, and Audley; men tinged, to say the least, with the new learning. The position taken by the sovereign, could not be maintained upon any principle recognised as catholic; nay, it was a position destructive of the main pillar of Roman orthodoxy.

If the priestly order is by divine right the alone source and executive of spiritual jurisdiction, then by no proper title can it be claimed or exercised by any secular potentate; the assumption of a controlling and legislative power over the clergy, stands in direct antagonism with it.

The newly-acquired authority of Henry could find consistent supporters in the propagators of the new learning

9 Burnet, Records, III. ii. No. 52.