Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (8 page)

The matter of the king’s marriage was being endlessly debated at Rome. Pope Clement had pleaded ignorance of the canon law to one of Wolsey’s ambassadors, only to be told that the whole of canon law was locked in the bosom of his Holiness. ‘It may be so,’ the pope replied, ‘but, alas, God has forgotten to give me the key to open it.’ By the end of 1527, however, after much prevarication, he agreed that cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio would examine the facts and pass a verdict without possibility of appeal; Campeggio had been chosen because he was the second and inferior papal legate for English affairs. Wolsey at once wrote to him and asked him to hasten from Rome. ‘I hope,’ he told him, ‘all things shall be done according to the will of God, the desire of the king, the quiet of the kingdom, and to our honour, with a good conscience.’ He then crossed out the last four words. The cardinals of the Church always had a good conscience. The pope, still in thrall to Charles, had already commanded Campeggio to weave infinite delays so that no verdict on the king’s marriage would ever be given. The cardinal assented, and began to make plans for a very slow progress towards England.

At the beginning of 1528 Anne Boleyn wrote to Wolsey to thank him for ‘the great pains and troubles that you have taken for me both day and night’. In a second letter she stated that ‘I am most bound of all creatures, next the king’s grace, to love and serve your grace’. It is clear that she and Henry now intended her to be queen. Yet not all was what it seemed. Three months after his arrival in England Campeggio wrote to Rome that the cardinal ‘is actually not in favour of the affair’; he ‘dare not admit this openly, nor can he help to prevent it; on the contrary he has to hide his feelings and pretend to be eagerly pursuing what the king desires’.

In private conversations with Campeggio, Wolsey simply shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have to satisfy the king,’ he told him, ‘whatever the consequences. In time a remedy will be found.’ It may be that Henry was beginning to suspect Wolsey. In this period he began to show his chief minister’s letters to other members of his council, among them the father of Anne Boleyn. Wolsey was falling into a trap from which he would never be able to extricate himself. There was one occasion, in 1528, when it was recorded that the king ‘used terrible language’ to the cardinal,
leaving Wolsey unhappy and uncertain. When the cardinal named a new abbess for a certain convent, despite the protests of the king at the choice of candidate, Henry wrote him a bitter letter in reply to his excuses. ‘Ah, my lord, it is a double offence both to do ill and colour it too . . . wherefore, good my lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living who more hates it.’ The words might also be construed as a more general warning.

In the spring of 1528 the royal family spent some time together at Wolsey’s house, Tyttenhanger, near St Albans. Princess Mary described it as a happy occasion. Yet in this year it was reported that the marriage between Henry and Anne Boleyn was ‘certain’ and that the preparations for the wedding were already being made. Wolsey wrote at this time that, if the pope did not comply with the wishes and desires of the king, ‘I see ruin, infamy, and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the see apostolic’. In this, at least, he was proved to be right.

The threat to the papacy also came from other quarters. Luther’s tracts, smuggled into England after he was denounced as a heretic, were followed by William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament. Tyndale was a young cleric who had become disillusioned with the pomp and power of the Church; he was ascetic and scholarly by nature, and was instinctively attracted to the purer faith associated with the Lollards and the ‘new men’ who were even then in small conventicles proclaiming Lutheran doctrine.

He had found no employment in London, after he migrated there from Cambridge, and had travelled to Germany in quest of a more tolerant atmosphere. It was here that he translated the Scriptures from the Greek and Hebrew originals. It was said that his passage was assisted by German merchants who were already imbued with Lutheran learning.

Once he had arrived in Wittenberg, he began his task of translating the Greek into plain and dignified English, in a language that the ploughman as well as the scholar could understand. The more orthodox clerics, however, believed that the Scriptures were too sacred to be left in the hands of the laity and that any interpretation of them should only be under clerical supervision. They also believed that the key words of the Greek were in themselves holy, and would be profaned by translation.

It was here that Tyndale most transgressed, by altering the meaning of certain important concepts. ‘Congregation’ was employed instead of ‘church’, and ‘senior’ instead of ‘priest’; ‘penance’, ‘charity’, ‘grace’ and ‘confession’ were also silently removed. Tyndale later remarked that ‘I never altered one syllable of God’s word against my conscience’, but it was clear enough to the authorities that his conscience was heavily influenced by the writings of Martin Luther. In effect Tyndale was exorcizing the role of the Church in spiritual matters and placing his faith in an invisible body of the faithful known only to God. He also included a translation of Luther’s ‘Preface to the Epistle to the Romans’, and one young man, Robert Plumpton, wrote to his mother that ‘if it will please you to read the introducement, you shall see marvellous things hid in it’. The English Bible came as a sensation and a revelation; its translation was an achievement beyond all the works of ‘new’ theology and pamphlets of anti-clerical disquisition. It hit home, as if God’s truth had finally been revealed. The Bible was no longer a secret and mysterious text, from which short phrases would be muttered by priests; it was now literally an open book.

The book had been published in the free city of Worms, on the Rhine, and soon after found its way to England where it was secretly distributed. Copies were being sold for 3
s
2
d.
This was the book that the bishop of London described as ‘pestiferous and pernicious poison’ and, in the winter of 1526, it was solemnly burnt in St Paul’s Churchyard. For the first time in London the Scriptures were consigned to the fire. The prelates would have burnt Tyndale, too, if they could have caught him. The bishop of London bought and burned the entire edition on sale in Antwerp, the principal source of supply, only to discover that he had merely put money in the pockets of the printers and stimulated them to publish another edition.

There were little groups in Coleman Street, Hosier Lane and Honey Lane of London who eagerly took up the new translation, some among them bold enough to proclaim their beliefs. The reformers, known sometimes as ‘gospellers’, took advantage of the printing press to issue texts, pamphlets and treatises on religious reform. In his role as a royal councillor Thomas More led a raid against the Hanseatic merchants who were lodged in a building
known as the Steelyard. ‘There is no need to be alarmed at our coming here,’ he told the merchants as they were just sitting down for dinner. ‘We have been sent by the council and by his grace the lord cardinal.’ He went on to say that ‘we have received reliable news that many of your number possess books by Martin Luther’. He even accused some of importing those books. Three merchants were immediately arrested, and eight others brought before Wolsey.

In the early weeks of 1526 Robert Barnes had been accused of preaching heresy after he had openly denounced the pomp and wealth of the Church from the pulpit of St Edward’s Church in Cambridge. He was brought before the cardinal.

When he was told that the man was ‘reformable’, the cardinal promised ‘to be good unto him’. In a subsequent letter to the king, Barnes characterized himself as a ‘poor simple worm and not able to kill a cat’. Yet he also declared that ‘there are certain men like conditioned to dogs; if there be any man that is not their countryman, or that they love not, or know not, say anything against them, then cry they: an heretic, an heretic, to the fire, to the fire. These be the dogs that fear true preachers.’ Barnes did not go to the fire. He was brought to St Paul’s on 11 February, and forced to kneel in the aisle. On a platform in front of him sat the cardinal, on a throne of gold, flanked by eighteen bishops and eighteen abbots and priors. Faggots had been tied to his back, the wood as a symbol of the flames around the stake. In the autumn of that year, provoked by the wide circulation of Tyndale’s New
Testament, the bishop of London issued another formal warning against the reading of heretical books.

There is an interesting sequel to the interrogation of Barnes. He was placed under a form of ‘house arrest’ in a monastery in Northampton, where a friend devised a plan for his escape. Barnes wrote a letter to the cardinal in which he declared that he was so desperate that he was going to drown himself; he named the place, and then deposited a pile of clothes by the river bank. He also left another letter to the mayor of Northampton, asking him to search the river; he said that he had written a private letter to the cardinal that was tied with wax around his neck. The search was duly undertaken and, despite the absence of a body, the welcome news that a heretic had killed himself out of despair was published abroad. Yet Barnes had disguised himself as a ‘poor man’, travelled secretly to London, and then taken ship to the Low Countries where he composed two tracts under the name of Antonius Anglus.

The ‘known men’ were becoming of serious concern to those, like Thomas More, who were certain of the perils of their teaching. In the autumn of 1527 a Cambridge scholar, Thomas Bilney, preached against the cults surrounding certain images of the Virgin and of the saints; they were nothing but stocks and stones. Twice he was pulled from his pulpit by an irate congregation. Yet he persisted in his attacks upon what he called idolatry and ‘vain worship’. ‘Saints in heaven need no light,’ he said, ‘and the images have no eyes to see.’ He was brought before the bishop of London, and made a formal recantation. Yet that was not the end of the matter. He reverted to his earlier unorthodox beliefs, and was eventually burned in the Lollards’ Pit outside Norwich. ‘Little Bilney’, as he was called, became an early Protestant martyr.

Another presumed heretic from Cambridge, George Joye, was called before Wolsey. He was asked to attend ‘the chamber of presence’ for questioning, but he had never before heard the phrase. ‘I was half ashamed to ask after it, and went into a long entry on the left hand, and at last happened upon a door, and knocked, and opened it; and when I looked in, it was the kitchen. Then I went back into the hall and asked for the chamber of
presence: and one pointed me up a pair of stairs.’ It is trifling, perhaps, but it suggests the fear and trembling that would descend upon one not used to court or to interrogation.

Within three months of Bilney’s trial the Church began a concerted effort to discover and apprehend the heretics. The houses of suspected merchants were searched. Close inquiries were made among leather-sellers and tailors, shoemakers and printers. An Oxford scholar, Thomas Garrett, was taken for questioning by the university authorities. He told a friend that he was now ‘undone’. His principal interrogator, Dr London, was described as ‘puffing, blustering and blowing, like an hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey’. Garrett managed to escape, no one knew whither. So Dr London consulted an astrologer who told him that he had ‘fled in a tawny coat south-eastward’. In fact, when he was finally captured at Bedminster on the south bank of the Avon, he was dressed ‘in a courtier’s coat and buttoned cap’.

As a result of Garrett’s evidence the rooms of other scholars were searched and over 100 banned books discovered. Six Oxford men were imprisoned for some months in the fish cellar of Cardinal College, Wolsey’s own creation, where it is reported that three of them died. It is significant that all of these ‘new named brethren’, as More called them, came from the universities; they were a small elite fraternity, but the authorities were afraid that their questions and their opinions might filter through the general population. They were nevertheless a minority, and their beliefs might not have strayed very far beyond the walls of their colleges. It would take the catalyst of the king’s divorce, the ‘great matter’, to quicken the process of religious reform.