Foundations of the Anglian Church XLVII

An Anglican Bishop attired for a

session in the House of Lords.

When we look at Henry’s separation of the English Church from the Roman Communion we how it was done for the most part not by royal decree but by act of Parliament.  Henry—unconsciously for sure—created a revolution in government by his strategy, a revolution of which we Americans are heirs.   Henry was unsure of the authority of the Crown—the Tudors had not been wearing it long enough to act with the impunity of absolute monarchs—and so bolstered it with the authority of having Parliament behind him.  To get what he wanted—the annulment, the legitimacy of his heirs, and the separation from Rome—he bargained away his sovereignty.   He gave Parliament, and the House of Commons in particular, a taste for power which they were never willing to yield after that.  He could have acted absolutely as King by decree.  He probably would have gotten away with it.  He was a stronger monarch than he seems to have realized.  But by bringing his legislation all to parliament for their consent he set a precedent that the King rules with the consent of Parliament. 
In his turning to Parliament Henry needed to depend on the House of Commons.  The House of Lords was not as friendly to his projects as were the Commons.  The Lords was top heavy with Bishops and Abbots and they were bound to resist Henry’s wishes, especially in regard to separation from Rome.   (Cranmer, along with Gardiner and perhaps one or two others was the exception among the Bishops.)  The Peers, for the most part, were not anxious to play into Henry’s hands—they preferred a weaker monarch so that their power was unchallenged.  Moreover, while the Duke of Norfolk supported the marriage to Anne—who was his niece—Queen Katherine had many friends among the Peers and they were not anxious to see her replaced.  Thus Henry needed the Commons. 
Henry would eventually throw the Abbots out of the Lords and appoint Bishops friendly to his cause.  He also would flood the peerage with new members and get his majorities.  But in the meantime his strategy was to give the Commons more and more power in return for their support. 
The Commons, for their part, were mostly self-made men.  They were business men, merchants, who represented the towns and boroughs.  They were not interested in questions of theology.  As men of business they resented the immense sums being drained from England by the papacy and thought the money could be better spent in England—increasing the navy to protect trade, opening schools and colleges to educate the sons of their constituents, sending explorers out to find new sources of raw materials and new markets as Spain, Portugal, and France were doing.  In fact, over the next century it would be these men of business who would increasingly set the course of religion in England.
The rise of the Commons gave the Englishman a sense that he had the right to be heard in government, whether in regard to matters political or matters spiritual.  Democracy and religion became tied in the English mind.  This would have drastic implications a century later for the English and two and a half-centuries later for the Americans.  But all things in time. 
Some historians rank Henry as the greatest of English monarchs for “The Tudor Revolution” and the emergence of the democratic tradition.  As Henry had no intention of causing this “revolution” the credit is misplaced.  But the fact remains that for various reasons, and the emergence of the House of Commons in the government not least among them, Henry was a great monarch and perhaps second only to one—his daughter, Elizabeth.  But all that must come later as well. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXXIII

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

I think we need to take a look at Henry’s psycho-spiritual development during this first half of his reign to understand what is going to happen and to his kingdom, to the Church, and to his own personal life and why it is going to happen.  I mentioned in an earlier posting that while his elder brother, Arthur, was alive, Henry was being prepared for a career in the Church as Archbishop of York.  This would not have been a good plan—to have a prince of the blood as one of the English primates—as it would have tied the Church too closely to the royal house, but it did given Henry an excellent early education in Latin, Philosophy, and Theology.  Of course Henry was still quite young—only ten—when Arthur died and he became the heir apparent.  It seems strange to us that a child as young as eight or nine would be educated in Latin much less in Theology or Philosophy, but the education of princes began early and was intense.  And not only for princes--indeed the sons of gentry and rich merchant went off to Oxford and Cambridge at fourteen or fifteen years of age.   All their basic education in grammar (Latin), logic, mathematics,  music, astronomy and the other liberal arts was already behind them.  Henry was an extraordinarily bright young man and while his change of career plans meant now he had to study military arts, politics, diplomacy and other subjects needed by a king, he did not give up his interest in classical education.  He had the best tutors working under the supervision of the saintly John Fisher who was Chancellor of Cambridge University.  Henry was well versed in theology and philosophy and in 1521 wrote a refutation of the doctrines of Martin Luther entitled In Defense of the Seven Sacraments.  In addition to being theologically astute, Henry was particularly devout, hearing three Masses each morning.  Of course these were normally “Low Masses,” read, not sung, and probably together took about an hour.  It would have been a time that Henry did his morning devotions, reading from his “Book of Hours,” a prayer book based somewhat loosely on the Divine Office as adapted to the pious laity.  On occasion, though, as a mark of his devotion, Henry would “serve” the Mass—humbly taking the role of the acolyte assisting the priest at the altar. 
Just as the young Henry was a pious Catholic and a good and loving husband to his Queen Katherine, so too he was a conscientious king.  He had been ill prepared for kingship.  His father, Henry VII had not shared many royal duties with him, but assuming the throne Henry was determined to learn the art of kingship and was very involved in strengthening the new nation both politically and militarily.  While his father, Henry VII, was the king who actually began the English Navy, it is Henry VIII who is called “The Father of the English Navy” as developing a strong fleet was one of his chief priorities.  England’s ally at the time was—due to the marriage with Katherine—Spain and their chief enemy was France.  That would shift later in Henry’s reign but Henry was anxious to preserve the one remaining foothold England held in French territory—the port of Calais—and wanted a navy for both defensive and aggressive action with France.   He was politically astute as well and knew that he needed to curb the power of the old noble families if the Crown was to be strong enough to unite England into a modern nation state.  Two centuries of war—the first in France in the Hundred Years War and the second in England with the Wars of the Roses had left the old nobility depleted with many families having been extinguished by death in battle and Henry wanted to take talented men from among the gentry and raise them into the nobility both to replenish the peerage and to be a force in Parliament against the old nobility who wanted to preserve their power from the Crown.   In addition to expanding the peerage Henry realized he could use the gentry and the townspeople as a political force to balance out the staid old families and he often turned to the House of Commons, giving them increased power.   
At this point we need to look at a rising star. The Church was a fertile field of talented men from the middle classes who could perform royal service in addition to their ecclesiastical duties.  Most of the ministers of his father, Henry VII, were bishops.   Thomas Wolsey came from a prosperous family in Ipswich.  His enemies circulated the story that his father had been a butcher but the family seems to have been—like the Boleyns—a wealthy merchant family just below the nobility.  Indeed some sources indicate that Robert Wolsey, Thomas’ father, had fought and died in the battle of Bosworth Field where Henry Tudor—father to Henry VIII—had defeated Richard III and seized the crown for the new dynasty.  Wolsey had had a distinguished career at Cambridge before becoming chaplain to Archbishop Deane of Canterbury and later to a wealthy knightly family, the Nanfans.  From there he was taken into the service of Henry VII.  At the accession of the new king, Henry VIII, Wolsey was made royal almoner and a member of the Privy Council, what today we would call the King’s “Cabinet.”   Wolsey was about eighteen years older than the young king. He was a hard worker who paid minute detail to the most miniscule of tasks and who indeed seemed to enjoy work to an unhealthy degree.  He was also politically savvy knowing just who was “in” and who was “out” and how to move the chess pieces in the royal game.  Moreover, while he had his strong opinions he tailored them to suit the King.  Little by little Henry began entrusting Wolsey with more and more responsibilities.  And all ran very well.  And the better it ran, the more Henry let Wolsey run things.  By 1520 Wolsey was the de facto ruler of England.
Wolsey was not all about serving the King—he had his own ambitions as well.  He wanted to be pope and Henry would lobby for him in the 1522 election after the death of Leo X.  In 1514 Wolsey was named Bishop of Lincoln but held the post for only several months before being named Archbishop of York, the second most important churchman in the realm.  While still holding York, he was made Prince Bishop of Durham in 1523 and then several years later Bishop of Winchester—the wealthiest diocese in England.  He held all three sees until his death.  In 1515 Henry used his influence in Rome to have Wolsey made a Cardinal.
Wolsey arranged an elaborate pageant to welcome the Cardinal’s Hat to England.  In those days, the Pope sent the Hat to the new Cardinal, the prelate ordinarily did not go to Rome to receive it.  The Hat was met with an entourage in Dover where it had come by ship and then was escorted in a State Procession to Westminster where it was place on the altar—as was the King’s Crown before his coronation—until the ceremony in which Henry, acting as a papal ablegate, placed it on the new Cardinal’s head.
Wolsey loved pomp and in particular loved the pomp of office.  He was not much given to the work of his ecclesiastical offices however and never visited any of his dioceses, entrusting their administration to vicars and suffrage bishops.  But he gave great attention to the King’s work and he found that the King’s work went more efficiently if he could keep the King out of it.  More and more he pushed Henry aside from the duties of government, encouraging him to go hunting, to make royal progresses around his kingdom, to entertain and to be entertained while he, Wolsey, attended to the work of government.  He met regularly with the King and explained everything and was assiduous in carrying out the King’s directives and preferences. He often steered the King to his own (Wolsey’s) policies but usually to the King’s credit.  When, for example, Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the widowed Queen of France, returned to England and married Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, without Henry’s permission, Henry was furious with the couple and Brandon’s life was at stake.  You need to keep in mind that marriages to princes and princesses of the blood were State matters—and had implications for foreign policy.  Brandon could have been tried for Treason for marrying the King’s sister without the King’s permission, but Wolsey smoothed it over and settled Henry’s temper, though at some considerable financial cost to the newlywed couple.
Wolsey’s assuming the day to day governance of the country freed Henry from responsibility and that was not good.  With Wolsey’s capable administration, Henry’s only task was to entertain himself.  Henry began to live for pleasure.  He became lazy and self-indulgent.  Once trim and athletic, he began to gain weight.  He also became, as slothful people often do, mercurial, temperamental, given to mood swings.  England ran just fine but the King was becoming useless and undisciplined. 
Wolsey, meanwhile, having the reins of government securely in his hands, was doing well for himself.  Holding virtually all power in England made him a man whom others courted.  Gifts and bequests came his way from people anxious to be in his good graces.  Moreover, he saw lands and titles that drew greater wealth and which he could, given his position, appropriate to himself.  As said before, he took on several dioceses as well as various abbacies and other church offices that had good salaries.  He acquired—by purchase, seizure, or gift—estates that provided handsome rents.  He built for himself handsome residences, most notably York Place and Hampton Court.  He seized various small monasteries and convents and moved their monks or nuns to larger ones, confiscating the properties with which he endowed schools and even a college—Cardinal College—at Oxford.  (It would later be renamed Christchurch.)  His administration was good for England and better for himself.  For the King, however, it was deleterious. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXXII

Anne Boleyn

I am sorry for not having given more attention to this blog as we are in the middle of our Henry VIII saga.  And there is so much that I want to comment on after World Youth Day and other recent events in the Church.  I have recently started a new job and am learning how to manage the work more effectively but a lot of balls get dropped in the juggling act.  Nevertheless, let’s go back to Henry and the English Church for a few more entries and then I want to talk about Francis’ comments on the flight back to Rome from Rio and WYD as well as the neo-traditionalists disillusionment with Francis’ Church and the attempts of neo-trads such as Judie Brown of the American Life League and Michael Voris of Church Militant TV to undermine Francis’ leadership by sabotaging the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Charities and other outreach programs that embody Francis’ vision for the Church at the service of the world.  But back to Henry. 
I mentioned that Henry began to take mistresses fairly early in his marriage to Katherine of Aragon even though that marriage was initially a happy one.  The sixteenth century was not a time noted for strict rules of moral behavior and it was not unusual for kings and noblemen—or bishops and popes—to take a mistress or a male lover according to their particular tastes.  The popes of Henry’s early years—Julius II and Leo X—were men of the world.  Julius had both male and female lovers, fathering several illegitimate children by his lady loves.  Leo was gay and had several lovers before and during his papacy.  Adrian VI who was pope briefly from 1522-1523 was noted—and somewhat despised—for his personal integrity, but his successor, to whom Henry would appeal for an annulment, Clement VII, was a man of relaxed morals and, as we shall see, valued the marital alliances of his children over the good of the Church.  But that story is a bit down the line yet.
Katherine made no objection, at least as far as we know, to Henry’s dalliances.  She did not see them as a threat to her position as his wife and Queen.  She loved Henry and was slow to recognize his falling out of love with her, but more to the point, her own royal blood kept her secure—she thought—from replacement as wife and Queen by any of the commoners Henry was indulging himself in.  Katherine realized that men of Henry’s stature commonly took mistresses and his dalliances relieved her of too frequent obligations of her “wifely duties.”  And indeed Henry’s fancy for Elizabeth Blount, his only acknowledged mistress, and his relationship with Mary Boleyn, a married woman of aristocratic but not noble birth, were no threat to Katherine’s position.
But as Henry tired of Mary Boleyn, Mary’s younger sister, Anne, came to his notice.  Anne was of a different stripe than Mary.  Mary was a practical sort and understood her duty was to relieve the King’s sexual needs.  She loved Henry but she had no illusions about the social gulf that separated them.  The Boleyn family could not exactly be held up for noble virtue.  Mary Boleyn had been a lady-in-waiting to Henry’s Sister, Mary Tudor when the princess was sent to France to marry the King, Louis XII.   Louis died not long after the marriage and the widowed princess Mary Tudor returned to England, but Mary Boleyn remained behind as a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen, Claude, wife of Francis I.  She earned a bit of a reputation, having affairs with several different men and possibly with King Francis himself.  She returned to England in 1519 and became a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon.  It was then that she was noticed by Henry.  She shortly after married William Carey, a knight in the King’s service, and her relationship with Henry commenced under the guise of her marriage and her accommodating husband. 
Just as her husband was willing to share her favors with the King in hopes of advancement at court, her father realized that his daughter’s royal intimacy could advance his position as well.  These were not highly moral people.  The father, Thomas Boleyn, was married to a woman far above his station, Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and both husband and wife were anxious, even desperate, for his advancement.  Thomas Boleyn had no noble title of his own though through his mother he had a remote hope of someday claiming the Irish title of Earl of Ormond.  Lack of a noble title does not mean that Boleyn was insignificant however.  He had served both Henry VII and Henry VIII well in diplomatic posts and had been named a Knight of the Bath by Henry VIII.  He was Henry’s ambassador to the court of Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands in 1512, as ambassador to France from 1518 to 1521, and as Henry’s ambassador to the Emperor Charles V from 1521-1523.  Indeed for a man of common birth, he held very important positions at Court. 
When Henry lost interest in Mary Boleyn around 1526, Thomas Boleyn panicked.  He saw this liaison amoureuse as his ticket to better things and he was much relieved when Henry, looking for his next fling, looked not far but to the second daughter Anne.  Anne, as a young girl, had been a  lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Austria and then, like her sister Mary, to Mary Tudor during her marriage to Louis XII of France,  to Queen Claude, the wife of Francis I, successor to Louis XII. 
Catholic polemicists in the past were quick to project on Anne the promiscuity of her sister Mary.  Indeed the court of Claude of France was not known for its high moral standards and Anne could not afford to be naïve. It would have been expected of her to be somewhat generous with her “favors” to the flirtatious young men around Queen Claude.  Yet at the court Anne became friends, and to some degree, a protégée of the King’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre.  Marguerite was a highly educated woman and much respected in humanist circles.  Like many of the humanist circle, she was anxious for religious reform and embraced the new theology coming from Germany and Switzerland where Luther, Zwingli, and others were embracing evangelical ideals.  Anne seems to have become devoutly religious though skeptical about papal Catholicism in this period.  Part of that developing anti-papalism—both for Anne and for her patron, Marguerite of Navarre—was the close ties between the papacy and the Court of the emperor Charles V.  Navarre, on the border with Charles’ Spain, was particularly vulnerable.  France was the Empire’s chief rival in Europe both for control of the Netherlands and for influence in the Italian peninsula.  That dependency of the papacy on Charles and his empire would have terrible consequences for the Church of England.
Despite the stories later circulated about her by the religious conservatives of her day and subsequent years, Anne probably retained her virginity through this period.  Virgin she may have been, but Anne was in every other way a high-spirited lady of the French Court.  She was a remarkably intelligent woman to whom languages came easily and she spoke French and read Latin.  She possibly knew some Italian as well.  She was used to the intelligent conversations of humanist circles and had a more than rudimentary knowledge of philosophy and theology.  In addition she was accomplished at dancing, cards, hunting, archery, falconry, lawn tennis, and lawn bowling.  She had very fine taste in clothing, art, and music.  The liveliness and culture of the French court had made its impression on her and when Henry met her, he was smitten.  This was no mere roll-in-the-royal-hay—Anne was entertaining to be with, a match for Henry who was himself highly gifted and inclined to be bored with most of his more mundane companions.  But Anne had noted how Henry had “loved and left” her sister and she was not to be trifled with in that same way.  Soon after Anne’s return to England from France in 1522 Henry made his suit; Anne refused him, leaving court to return to the family home at Hever Castle. 
Anne was coy.  Moreover, her father and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, knew that they could exploit the situation for their own advancement.  Anne was named a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Katherine which kept her at Court and she used her position to charm the King but at the same time to frustrate his desires.   But Henry had more matters on his mind than Anne.  He needed an heir to secure the dynasty and prevent the struggles over the throne that had led to the Wars of the Roses.  He had, of course, a daughter, Mary, his daughter with Katherine of Aragon.  But could a woman rule?  There was no good historical precedent.  Katherine was beyond the years when she could bear a new heir.  But a new Queen could bear a child.