Brexit and the English Reformation

Brexit is in the news again as the government of Great Britain and the European Union try to reach an agreement about how the U.K. leaves the E.U., so once again comparisons between Brexit and the English Reformation are being posted. Like this one, which has an interesting twist on the reason for Henry VIII to break away from the Papacy and the Catholic Church. It seems to almost suggest an anti-Catholic argument amongst Brexiteers--the E.U. is as bad as the R.C.C.:

Most of the arguments in favor of Brexit assume a traditional conception of sovereignty, and are grounded in English – rather than British – history. Brexiteers look back fondly at King John’s defiance of Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century. And they are even more smitten with the Tudor era, when Henry VIII wrested the Church of England from the yoke of papal authority. To this day, the Tudors enjoy a near-ubiquitous presence in British textbooks, media, films, and the popular imagination.

The defining moment of the Henrician Reformation came in April 1533, when the Parliament of England passed the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act, giving Henry the final word on all legal and religious questions. The point of the law was to free England from the authority of a papacy that answered to Charles I of Spain – that is, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. As long as Charles called the shots in Rome, Henry would not be able to divorce Charles’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon.

Contained in the Appeals Act is the first clear legislative definition of sovereignty. “This realm of England,” the law states, “is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King…” But as is always the case, the measures that launched the revolution were incomplete. The laws that Parliament adopted in the 1530s did not replace Catholicism with Protestantism. But they did pave the way for religious reformers to carry the revolution into its next phase.

The use of the word divorce is so ridiculous. The Catholic Church has never issued divorces. Henry VIII was seeking a decree of nullity to say that no marriage had ever occurred. Divorce is a civil matter; nullity can be too, but in that period marriage was more a religious, sacramental state than a civil one. And the religious legislation of the 1530's went a long way to undoing traditional Catholicism in England, if not establishing a thoroughly Protestant church.

Please read the rest there. 

Image Credit: Henry VIII with Charles V (right) and Pope Leo X (centre), c. 1520

Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar and Bishop: John Stokesley

John Stokesley, Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar, was born and died on the same day, September 8 (around 1475 to 1539). According to A. F. Pollard, Stokesley was deeply involved in helping Henry VIII get his first marriage declared null:

In 1529 Stokesley was sent with George Boleyn (afterwards Viscount Rochford) [q. v.] as ambassador to France in place of Sir Francis Bryan [q. v.] He was instructed to prevent Albany's return to Scotland and the formation of a league between France and Scotland. But the more important part of his mission was to induce Francis I to join Henry in preventing the assembling of a general council ‘considering the influence the emperor has over the pope,’ and to collect opinions from foreign universities in favour of Henry's divorce. He had already become a prominent advocate of this measure, and before his embassy had, with Edward Fox [q. v.], bishop of Hereford, and Nicholas de Burgo [see Nicholas], composed in Latin a book on the subject, which was translated into English with additions and alterations by Cranmer. It was published as ‘The Determinations of the most famous and most excellent Universities …,’ London, 1531, 8vo (Letters and Papers, viii. 1054). In pursuance of this object Stokesley proceeded in 1530 to Italy, spending the spring and summer in attempts to win over the universities of Bologna, Padua, Venice, and others. More than a hundred references to Stokesley in vol. iv. pt. iii. of the ‘Letters and Papers’ testify to his activity in this matter, and according to his own boast he ‘recovered’ the king's cause ‘when it had slipped through the ambassador's fingers and was despaired of’ (ib. vii. 15). His efforts satisfied Henry, and on the translation of Cuthbert Tunstal [q. v.] to Durham, Stokesley was during his absence nominated bishop of London in July 1530. He returned in October, and was consecrated on 27 Nov.

As bishop of London Stokesley shared in the further measures for the completion of the divorce, and concurred in the various enactments which abolished the papal authority in England. He was with Cranmer at Dunstable when the sentence of divorce was pronounced against Catherine, and on 10 Sept. 1533 he christened at the Greyfriars Church, Greenwich, Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth. He took part in the dissolution of monasteries at Reading, Godstow, and others in Lincolnshire (Cotton MS. Cleopatra E. iv. ff. 223, 225, 235–7; Arundel MS. 249 ff. 82–4), and he induced the Carthusians of London to submit to Henry. Conjointly with Tunstal he wrote in 1537 a remonstrance to Pole on his book, ‘Pro Unitatis Ecclesiæ Defensione,’ and on his acceptance of the cardinalate; it is printed in Bernard Garter's ‘New Year's Gift,’ 1571.

Author Andrew A. Chibi wrote Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce, Royal Supremacy and Doctrinal Reform, first published in 1997. In a review published in Moreana, Kevin Eastell notes that Stokesley framed and promoted the Levitical argument for the King's annulment:

By elevating the Levitical prohibitions to the status of both natural and moral law, Stokesley argued that the Deuteronomic requirement was technically judicial law limited by time, place and context. Chibi identifies problems within Stokesley's exegesis. For example, contrary to the Levitical curse, Henry's marriage to Catherine had been fruitful in the birth of Mary. Stokesley was undeterred by this detail and, in order better to reflect the original Hebrew, replaced the plural absque liberis erunt, "they will be without children", with the singular absque filiis erit, "he will be without heirs." This modification considerably enhanced the King's claim that a transgression of affinity had been committed. The Church traditionally had been the determiner of affinity and the efforts of the Stokesley coterie inevitably reduced the conflict to a questioning of the boundaries between royal, papal and Biblical authority.

These were the crucial passages:

Leviticus 18:16 "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness." Leviticus 20: 21 "If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity. He has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless."

Deuteronomy 25: 5-10:“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. ⁶ And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷ And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.’ ⁸ Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ ⁹ then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.’ ¹⁰ And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.’

Nevertheless, as Pollard describes him, Stokesley was otherwise not in favor of "Protestant" reforms in Henry VIII's Church of England:

Stokesley, however, was strenuously opposed to all doctrinal changes; even the royal supremacy he accepted only with a proviso safeguarding ‘the laws of the church of Christ,’ and he became a strenuous persecutor of gospellers. On 3 July 1533 he reported to Henry that he had condemned John Frith [q. v.] for heresy, and handed him over for execution to the lord mayor (Letters and Papers, vi. 761; Foxe, v. 16). He attacked Alexander Alesius [q. v.] in the convocation of 1537, and argued against John Lambert (d. 1538) [q. v.] According to Foxe he boasted on his deathbed of having been the means of executing over thirty heretics (Foxe, iii. 104; cf. Laurentius Humfredus, Vita Juelli, p. 268). Similarly he refused to revise the translation of the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ which Cranmer had entrusted to him when preparing an English version of the Bible, declaring that reading it in English infected the people with heresy (Narr. of the Reformation, Camden Soc. pp. 277–278). He also resisted Cranmer's metropolitical visitation of his diocese, and joined with Tunstal in giving as catholic a colour as possible to the ‘Institution of a Christian Man,’ 1537.

This attitude laid Stokesley open to Cromwell's hostility, and he was subjected to various vexatious proceedings. In 1535 he was required to send the king a written copy of a certain sermon he had preached; he excused himself by saying that he never wrote out his sermons. ‘If I were to write my sermons, I could not deliver them as they are written, for much would come to me without premeditation much better than what was premeditated’ (Letters and Papers, viii. 1054). On 29 May 1538 the attorney-general, Sir John Baker [q. v.], instituted proceedings against Stokesley on the king's behalf, accusing him of infringing statutes 16 Richard II and 28 Henry VIII by executing a bull of Martin V. The bishop, who was brought into court in the marshal's custody, confessed his offence and was admitted to bail; when called upon to receive judgment he produced a pardon from Henry VIII (ib. xiii. i. 1095). He also complained bitterly of the way in which the king assumed the right of presenting to prebends in his diocese, and declared that he could have no learned men about him because he had no means of providing for them.

Stokesley died on the anniversary of his birthday, on 8 Sept. 1539, and was buried in St. George's Chapel, St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 14th.

Bishop Robert Sherborne, RIP

Robert Sherborne or Shirbun, later the Bishop of Chichester, was born in around 1440 and rose quickly through the clerical ranks and in royal service after his education at Winchester College and Oxford:

On 1 May 1488 he received the prebend of Langford Manor in Lincoln Cathedral, which he exchanged for Milton Manor in the same cathedral on 27 Nov. 1493, but again exchanged to Langford on 29 Aug. 1494. On 26 Aug. 1489 he was given the prebend of Wildland in St. Paul's Cathedral, and he also held a canonry at Wells, which he resigned in 1493. On 2 Nov. in that year he was made prebendary of Holywell or Finsbury in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1496 he became archdeacon of Buckinghamshire (13 Feb.), of Huntingdon and of Taunton (16 Dec.). In July of the same year he was sent as envoy to the pope with the intimation of Henry VII's willingness to join the holy league, which aimed at keeping the French out of Italy (Rymer, xii. 639); in his letter to the Duke of Milan requesting a free passage for Sherborne, Henry describes him as his secretary (Cal. Venetian State Papers, i. 691, 712, 722). In 1498 he was appointed to levy fines on those of the clergy who had abetted Perkin Warbeck, and in the following year he was made dean of St. Paul's. In August 1500 he was employed in examining adherents of Warbeck (ib. xii. 766). 

Sherborne was involved with the future Henry VIII's marital affairs from the beginning:

He was apparently ambassador at Rome in 1502, and while there was instructed to go to the pope with the Spanish ambassador, announce Prince Arthur's death, and request a dispensation for the marriage of Prince Henry with Catherine of Aragon (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv. 5467). On 4 May 1503 he was appointed commissioner to treat with Scotland concerning Margaret's dowry, and in 1504 was sent to Julius II to congratulate him on his election as pope.

Then he got a little too ambitious:

Early in 1505 Sherborne was made bishop of St. David's by a papal bull which he himself forged (Letters and Papers of Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, i. 246, ii. 169, 335, 337); the temporalities were restored on 12 April, and when the forgery was discovered Henry VII wrote to the Pope asking that Sherborne might be leniently treated (ib.). He does not seem to have been punished, and on 18 Sept. 1508 he was papally provided to the see of Chichester, the temporalities being restored on 13 Dec. On 23 July 1518 he met Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio [q. v.] at Deal on his arrival in England to urge Henry VIII to join in a crusade against the Turks. In May 1522 he accompanied Thomas Grey, second marquis of Dorset [q. v.], to Calais to meet Charles V and conduct him to London. In April 1525 he was commissioned by Wolsey to visit the Premonstratensian monastery at Bigham and examine into the scandals there. In the same year he sent Wolsey books for his new college at Oxford, of which he was in other ways a benefactor (Letters and Papers, iv. 1708, 2340).

Then he worked on Henry VIII's Great Matter:

In September 1528 he again met Campeggio on his arrival to try the divorce of Catherine of Aragon. He acquiesced in the Reformation, but probably with secret reluctance. He signed the letter of the lords spiritual and temporal to Clement VII on 13 July 1530 begging him to grant Henry's desire for a divorce, and pointing out the evils of delay. In 1532 accusations against him were laid before Cromwell, but he was able to clear himself, and on 26 Feb. 1534–5 he renounced the jurisdiction of the pope. On Sunday 13 June following he preached ‘the Word of God’ in his cathedral, promulgating the king's commands as to his supremacy of the church, but asked to be relieved of further proceedings in the matter, owing to age and feeble health. 

Sherborne seems to have been a good company man and I can't find any reason for the author of his biography to have thought there was any reluctance, even secret reluctance. But something must have triggered those accusations to Cromwell. Perhaps he commented once that it was rather strange that Henry VIII wanted to undo what his father Henry VII had done working with the Pope. Here's an interesting overview of how the Catholic bishops of England renounced their loyalty to the universal Church and the Papacy.

Maybe he said something about protecting the shrine of St. Richard of Chichester?

One of Thomas Cromwell's officials visited Sherborne:

He was examined by Richard Layton [q. v.], the visitor of the monasteries, on 1 Oct. 1535; and early in June 1536 resigned his bishopric, to which Henry wished to appoint Richard Sampson [q. v.] He died in the following August. His will, dated 2 Aug., was proved on 24 Nov. At Chichester he kept a state second only in magnificence to that of Henry and Wolsey, and he left property worth nearly 1,500l. He founded the prebends of Bursalis, Exceit, Bargham, and Wyndham, to be held by alumni of New College or Winchester College (cf. Laud, Works, v. 485–6). He also founded about 1520 a grammar school at Rolleston, Staffordshire (Shaw, Staffordshire, i. 34).

Among his interesting legacies are the Lambert Barnard panels in Chichester Cathedral:

Lambert Barnard (1485 - 1567) was a local, early Tudor painter whose close twenty year collaboration with his patron Bishop Sherburne resulted in the creation of an exceptional and unique group of Tudor paintings.

The paintings are built in panels (14ft x 32ft) which are made from individual vertical oak panels being joined together with hessian and chalk glue. Due to their size and rarity they are among the most important surviving examples of Tudor painting in the Country.

The paintings represent an extraordinary piece of political theatre and propaganda. They offer us a rare opportunity to imagine how Henry VIII may have been seen by the ordinary people. . . .

More detail here.

Image credit: Bishop Sherborne's tomb in Chichester Cathedral.

Image credit: Panel painting by Lambert Barnard for Chichester Cathedral; depicts the event in 686 when King Cædwalla issued a charter confirming the rights and territories previously given to Wilfrid by King Aethelwealh and the estate of the Hundred of Pagham. Note: the man in white looking over the left shoulder of the king is believed to be a self-portrait of Barnard.

Suppression of the Observant Friars, 1534

The Observant Friars of Greenwich were the parish priests for Henry VIII's family: their church was the site of his baptism (perhaps), his wedding to Catherine of Aragon in 1509, and both Mary and Elizabeth were baptized there. Before his Great Matter dominated their relationship, Henry VIII admired the Observant Franciscans of Greenwich. According to British History Online:

Henry VIII, in 1513, wrote from his palace of Greenwich to Leo X that he could not sufficiently commend the Observant Friars' strict adherence to poverty, their sincerity, charity and devotion. No Order battled more assiduously against vice, and none were more active in keeping Christ's fold.

From the beginning, however, the Friars sided with Catherine of Aragon in opposing Henry VIII's attempts to have his marriage to her declared null. They were vocal in their opposition, using the pulpit at Sunday Mass, even, to descry Henry's marital ambitions to replace their queen (who might have been a third order Franciscan) with Anne Boleyn. In 1534, things came to a head:

Henry probably hoped to bend the friars to his will at this time. He gave them an alms of 10 marks; (fn. 47) the Princess Elizabeth was christened in the church with great pomp 10 September, (fn. 48) and the minister, warden, and friars of Greenwich begged for the king's pardon 21 December. [1533](fn. 49) But on 13 April, 1534, a royal commission was issued to the provincial priors of the Austin and Black Friars to visit all the friars' houses and bind every friar by oath to acknowledge the king as supreme head of the church and repudiate the pope's authority. (fn. 50) On 14 June Roland Lee and Thomas Bedyll, acting on instructions from the commissioners, visited Richmond, and induced the friars there to entrust their case to four ' discreets' or representatives, who should attend the visitors the next day at Greenwich. On 15 June the visitors tried to induce the Greenwich friars to adopt the same procedure, 'specially to the intent that if the discreets should refuse to consent, it were better after our minds to strain a few than a multitude.' The friars, however, 'stiffly affirmed that where the matter concerned particularly every one of their souls, they would answer particularly every man for himself.' After further discussion, the visitors were compelled to examine each friar separately, and each refused to accept the articles, especially that which denied the papal authority. In answer to all the arguments of the visitors they declared that 'they had professed St. Francis' religion, and in the observance thereof they would live and die.' (fn. 51)

On 17 June two cart-loads of friars drove through London to the Tower, (fn. 52) and it is possible that some of the Greenwich Observants were among them. On or before 11 August the friars were expelled from their convent (fn. 53) (though they seem to have made some kind of submission (fn. 54) ) and distributed in different places, generally in houses of the Grey Friars, where, wrote Chapuys to Charles V, 'they were locked up in chains and treated worse than they could be in prison.' (fn. 55) Some, such as John Forest, were actually in prison in London. (fn. 56) Two of them, inclosed in a poor lodging at the Grey Friars, Stamford, and treated as prisoners, were 'in meetly good case as the world at this time requireth,' and sent to London for their little belongings, including a new Psalter, a pair of socks, a penner and inkhorn. (fn. 57) But the severity of their treatment is shown by the fact that out of 140 Observant Friars thirty-one soon died, (fn. 58) and this does not account for all the deaths. Thomas Bourchier, who was a member of the Greenwich friary in the reign of Mary, gives details of several martyrdoms which probably belong to this time, though the writer assigns them to 1537. (fn. 59) On 19 July Anthony Brookby, formerly of Magdalen College, Oxford, a distinguished scholar, who had been imprisoned and tortured to such an extent that ' for twenty-five days he could not turn in bed or lift his hands to his mouth,' was strangled with his own cord. (fn. 60) On 27 July Thomas Cortt, who had been imprisoned for a sermon against the king in the church of St. Lawrence, London, died in Newgate. (fn. 61) On 3 August Thomas Belchiam, a young priest, who had composed a book against the king, one copy of which he left in the hands of his brethren at Greenwich, died of starvation in Newgate. (fn. 62) No mention of these three friars occurs in extant contemporary authorities, but Bourchier's account representing the tradition of the Order is probably substantially correct, though the names may be misspelt.

It's always sad to read about the religious orders acting against each other--those who were willing to take the oaths and conform to Henry VIII's demands were willing to do his bidding against those were ready to stand against him.--and then it's ironic when you recognize that their compliance did nothing to save their orders in England after 1536. More about the Franciscans in England here.

Bishop Nicholas West, RIP

Nicholas West, the Bishop of Ely, died on April 28, 1533. He might be counted fortunate to have died that year, because if he had remained true to his defense of Katherine of Aragon, he might have joined John Cardinal Fisher on the scaffold on Tower Hill.

It all depends on the way you look at it: he could have been a martyred canonized saint!

According to Isaac Saunders Leadam in the Dictionary of National Biography, he divided his time as the Bishop of Ely between diplomatic missions for Henry VIII and taking care of his diocese, cathedral, and churches:

The reward of West's mission in France was his nomination to the see of Ely through Wolsey's influence (ib. 295, 298, 299, 305). The temporalities of the see were granted to him on 18 May 1515 as from the death of his predecessor (Rymer, Fœdera, xiii. 510). He was consecrated on 7 Oct. (Le Neve, Fasti, i. 341) at Lambeth by Warham. On 12 Nov. he took his seat in the House of Lords (Letters and Papers, ii. 1131), and officiated at the ceremonies attending the reception by Wolsey of the cardinal's hat three days later (ib. 1153).

In the following spring (1516) West began his episcopal visitation. The bishop wrote to Wolsey on 4 April that he ‘found such disorder at Ely that but for this visit it could not have been continued a monastery four years’ (ib. p. 1733). He appointed a new prior and other officers. On 30 May 1516 West was appointed to settle the terms of a treaty with Scotland, having Lord Dacre once more for his colleague, Thomas Magnus [q. v.], archdeacon of the East Riding, being the third commissioner (ib. 1957). Notwithstanding his activity, West's health was infirm (ib. ii. 2413). On 28 May 1517 he was nominated at the head of the commission to inquire into inclosures and imparkations of land, contrary to the statute of 4 Henry VII, c 19 (‘agaynst pullyng doun of Tounes’), in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Hertfordshire. On 1 Oct. 1517 he was nominated a member of a commission, presided over by the Duke of Norfolk, to arrange a league with France and Leo X, and settle the terms of the long-deferred restitution of Tournai (Letters and Papers, ii. 4467). This resulted in a treaty of universal peace (Rymer, xiii. 624), dated 2 Oct. 1518 (Letters and Papers, ii. 4469). He signed two days later another treaty for a marriage between the Princess Mary [see Mary I] and the dauphin (ib. 4475), and on 8 Oct. a third treaty (ib. 4483) arranging a personal interview between the two kings. On 9 Nov. 1518 West was nominated one of four ambassadors to France (Rymer, Fœdera, xiii. 664). In this, as in his former embassy to France, the main conduct of negotiations appears to have devolved on West (Letters and Papers, iii. 9, 15, 22, &c.). To him also Wolsey had secretly entrusted the delicate discussion of the compensation he was to receive from Francis for the resignation of his bishopric of Tournai (ib. ii. 4664), and of the pension to be paid him (ib. iii. 9). On 21 Dec. West was, with the other ambassadors, a witness to the formal ratification by Francis of the treaty of marriage of Mary to the dauphin (ib. ii. 4669), and of other articles of treaty (ib.) In the summer of 1521 Wolsey summoned West to Calais to assist him in his arbitration upon the issues between Francis I and Charles V. On 27 Nov., however, Wolsey, in despair of bringing the negotiations to a successful issue, returned to England, accompanied by West (Chron. of Calais, pp. 30, 31). On 14 Aug. 1525, in conjunction with Sir Thomas More, West settled the articles of a truce between England and France (Letters and Papers, iv. 1570). The formal treaty, called the ‘Treaty at the More,’ was ratified after frequent conferences (ib. 1738) on 30 Aug., West being one of the signatories (ib. 1600 (4), 1601, cf. 1617) and principal negotiator (ib. 1738).

In November and December 1527 he sat in the chapter-house of Westminster with Wolsey and five other bishops, and received the submission of Thomas Bilney [q. v.] and Thomas Arthur (d. 1532) [q. v.], accused of heresy, of both of whom he was diocesan (ib. 3639; Foxe, Actes and Monuments). Upon the hearing of the divorce in July 1529 West filed an affidavit in behalf of the queen, whose chaplain he was. On 6 April 1533 Cromwell wrote that the king desired West to attend the council next term; ‘his grace had often lamented his absence and his infirmity’ (Letters and Papers, vi. 312). On 28 April 1533 West died. His will, executed at Downham, is of the same date (ib. 393). An inventory of the bishop's goods survives in the record office.

As one of Katherine of Aragon's chaplains, he had defended her rights to be considered Henry VIII's lawful and legitimate wife and queen. If like her other chaplains, Blesseds Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell, he had remained true to her and had continued to defend the sacramental marriage of Henry and Katherine, and had contested with Henry VIII in the Convocation of Bishops, etc., he might not have died in his bed if he had been alive in late April 1534. What a difference a year makes: he might have been among those brought to Lambeth Palace with Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, refused to take the Oath of Succession, and been taken to the Tower of London by April 17, 1534. 

Upon matters of doctrine, as his admission to the Friars Observant indicates (see Roy's satire on Wolsey, Harl. Misc. ix. 45 foll.), West belonged to the older school of ecclesiastical conservatism. Pits speaks of him as ‘in defendenda catholica fide valde strenuus.’ Despite the exorbitant demands of the crown, he maintained a sumptuous state. A hundred servants were in his pay. He is said by Godwin to have fed two hundred poor daily with cooked victuals, and to have distributed large sums of money when corn was dear. According to Fuller he was a donor of plate to his college of King's at Cambridge. He was so far a patron of literature that Alexander Barclay's ‘Life of St. George,’ printed by Pinson, was dedicated to him as bishop of Ely, where Barclay was a monk. He had a cultivated architectural taste, and built a chapel of great beauty in the later Perpendicular style, with fan tracery, at the end of the south aisle of Putney parish church.

He also built a chantry chapel for himself in Ely Cathedral with the  inscription: "Of your charitie pray for the soule of Nicholas West, sometyme Bishop of this See, and for all Christian soules; in the whych prayer he hath graunted to every person so doing 40 days of pardon for every time they shall so pray." That inscription--urging prayer for the dead and promising indulgences (lessening of periods of penitence)--and the statues in the niches at the entry to the chapel were removed by his successor as bishop, Thomas Goodrich.

Nicholas West is also remembered as one of the founders of The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, commonly called Jesus College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford.

On "Kresta in the Afternoon"

In the celebration of Holy Week and the Triduum last week, and in the midst of preparing for an Easter week vacation in the Ozarks, I forgot to tell you about my interview on Kresta in the Afternoon! Al and I talked about the issues and characters involved in "The King's Great Matter", Henry VIII's desire to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the mother of his children and his anointed and crowned Queen because they had not had a son who survived infancy.

(This was the reason that I had done some research on Eleanor of Aquitaine's annulment last month!)

It is always so fun to talk with Mr. Kresta: he is so knowledgeable himself about Church History and yet wants to hear what his guest has to say!

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! Alleluia!

The Conscience of the King: November 8, 1528

The Tudor Society reminds us that on November 8, 1528:

Henry VIII made a public oration to “the nobility, judges and councillors and divers other persons” at Bridewell Palace to explain his troubled conscience regarding the lawfulness of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In this speech, the King explained that due to his worry that Mary was not his lawful daughter and that Catherine was not his lawful wife, he had sent for a legate “to know the truth and to settle my conscience.”

The issue of Henry VIII's conscience, like St. Thomas More's, is central to our views of the English Reformation and can even be a crucial element in our evaluation of Henry VIII's character. Was he really so troubled by his conscience regarding his marriage to Katherine of Aragon? Was he just citing his conscience and his concern about the admonitions in Leviticus as an excuse? Why wasn't his concern answered by the contrary admonitions in Deuteronomy and the fact that his father had obtained a dispensation from any possible affinity from the Pope?

Henry Ansgar Kelly's The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII was first published by Stanford University Press in 1976 and is now published by Wipf and Stock. He analyses Henry's conscience and notes that we will never really know "Henry's mind". Kelly says that Henry is neither a Machiavellian nor a great Protestant hero (defying the Pope) in this matter, but that the truth is somewhere in between these extremes: Henry was "partly hypocritical and partly conscientious". Kelly says that Henry VIII had to justify himself before God and did believe that his marriage to Katherine was sinful, but also that he "possessed massive powers of rationalization, and was prepared to resort to cant and skulduggery to attain ends that he believed were fundamentally righteous."

Cant means "hypocritical and sanctimonious talk" and skulduggery is "underhanded or unscrupulous behavior; trickery".
I have not read Kelly's book and think it would be low on my reading list, though it does look interesting and well written.

If we compare what a semi-apologist for Henry VIII says and what an enemy of Thomas More says, however, I think you readers would agree that even his enemy would never say that Thomas More, in citing his conscience in the matter of Henry VIII's supremacy, was "partly hypocritical", that he "possessed massive powers of rationalization" or was "prepared to resort to cant and skulduggery" in defense of his unstated position against Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church in England. The opposite would be true; he could have rationalized away his objections to the monarch, the representative of the State taking over the spiritual authority of the Church; evidently many Englishmen did.

Thomas More made no public statement and maintained silence, merely refusing personally, in the name of conscience, to swear the oaths Henry VIII wanted enforced. Therefore, there was no cant to speak of and no skulduggery at all, since More never did anything tricky or underhanded.

Some Fiery Preaching on Easter Sunday--and a Fiery Result

From the Anne Boleyn Files blog:

On Easter Sunday 1532, 31st March, Princess Mary’s confessor, Friar William Peto, preached a rather controversial sermon in the King’s presence at Greenwich’s Franciscan chapel.

Instead of focusing on the Easter story and Christ’s resurrection, Peto, who supported Catherine of Aragon, spoke on 1 Kings 22, in which Micaiah shares his prophecies with King Ahab, but Ahab ignores them and imprisons Micaiah. Ahab then died from wounds inflicted during the battle:

“So the King died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried him there. They washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared.”

Peto compared Henry VIII to Ahab, drawing comparisons between Anne Boleyn and Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, who had replaced God’s prophets with pagan priests, as Anne was promoting men of the New Religion. Peto concluded by warning the King that if he carried on the way he was, he would end up like Ahab, and dogs would lick up his blood, too. Peto wanted to set Henry VIII on the right path. He wanted him to abandon Anne Boleyn, with her heretical views, and return to Catherine of Aragon. Henry, however, believed his marriage to Catherine to be invalid, and tried to persuade Peto of that.

Father Peto was an Observant Franciscan and served as the provincial of the Greenwich Franciscans. There was a backlash, of course, as British History Online reports:

The king dissembled his ill-will, but on the provincial's departure for a chapter, he caused one of his chaplains, Dr. Curwen, to preach in the friars' church, contrary to the custom of the convent and the will of the warden. The chaplain's sermon roused the warden, Henry Elston, to expostulate; in the king's presence he gave the chaplain the lie. Henry was very angry, and bade the provincial on his return depose the warden. This he refused to do, and the king had them both arrested (fn. 32) Elston was confined at the Grey Friars of Bedford, (fn. 33) but some months later he and Peto were at Antwerp carrying on the campaign against the king. (fn. 34) . . .

And then Henry VIII and Cromwell pressed the Observant Franciscans to swear an oath "to acknowledge the king as supreme head of the church and repudiate the pope's authority" and they refused:

On 15 June the visitors tried to induce the Greenwich friars to adopt the same procedure, ' specially to the intent that if the discreets should refuse to consent, it were better after our minds to strain a few than a multitude.' The friars, however, ' stiffly affirmed that where the matter concerned particularly every one of their souls, they would answer particularly every man for himself.' After further discussion, the visitors were compelled to examine each friar separately, and each refused to accept the articles, especially that which denied the papal authority. In answer to all the arguments of the visitors they declared that ' they had professed St. Francis' religion, and in the observance thereof they would live and die.' (fn. 51)

On 17 June two cart-loads of friars drove through London to the Tower, (fn. 52) and it is possible that some of the Greenwich Observants were among them. On or before 11 August the friars were expelled from their convent (fn. 53)(though they seem to have made some kind of submission (fn. 54) ) and distributed in different places, generally in houses of the Grey Friars, where, wrote Chapuys to Charles V, 'they were locked up in chains and treated worse than they could be in prison.' (fn. 55) Some, such as John Forest, were actually in prison in London. (fn. 56) Two of them, inclosed in a poor lodging at the Grey Friars, Stamford, and treated as prisoners, were ' in meetly good case as the world at this time requireth,' and sent to London for their little belongings, including a new Psalter, a pair of socks, a penner and inkhorn. (fn. 57) But the severity of their treatment is shown by the fact that out of 140 Observant Friars thirty-one soon died, (fn. 58) and this does not account for all the deaths. Thomas Bourchier, who was a member of the Greenwich friary in the reign of Mary, gives details of several martyrdoms which probably belong to this time, though the writer assigns them to 1537. (fn. 59) On 19 July Anthony Brdrbe, formerly of Magdalen College, Oxford, a distinguished scholar, who had been imprisoned and tortured to such an extent that ' for twenty-five days he could not turn in bed or lift his hands to his mouth,' was strangled with his own cord. (fn. 60) On 27 July Thomas Cortt, who had been imprisoned for a sermon against the king in the church of St. Lawrence, London, died in Newgate. (fn. 61) On 3 August Thomas Belchiam, a young priest, who had composed a book against the king, one copy of which he left in the hands of his brethren at Greenwich, died of starvation in Newgate. (fn. 62) No mention of these three friars occurs in extant contemporary authorities, but Bourchier's account representing the tradition of the Order is probably substantially correct, though the names may be misspelt.

Of course, the ultimate response to the Observant Franciscans' refusal to accept the King's Supremacy was the execution of Blessed John Forest. He was burned alive on gibbet for heresy. You may find more about Father William Peto in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

A Tea at Trianon Review

The Divorce of Henry VIII (UK title: Our Man in Rome) by Professor Catherine Fletcher of Durham University is an indispensable addition to the library of any serious scholar of Tudor history. I say "serious" scholar because, while the book is not overlong, it is not light reading. It might be challenging for some to keep track of all the various players and intertwining events unless one is already deeply immersed in the politics of the King's Great Matter. However, after glancing at the author's extensive bibliography, I must commend her for being able to concentrate so much detailed research into one volume. It includes material rarely covered by other works about Henry VIII, shedding light on the fascinating world of sixteenth century ambassadors.

The narrative centers on the adventures of the Casali family of Rome whose sons made a living by working as diplomats for various princes, both local and foreign. The complicated inner workings of Renaissance Italian politics are beyond modern imagination; compared to those Renaissance rascals most Americans do not know the meaning of intrigue. Growing up in a diplomatic and political scenario was helpful for those who wished to have a career in statecraft; it all depended on whom you knew and how well. Gregorio Casali was employed by Henry VIII to represent his case before the Pope. Now getting in to see the Pope, even for the ambassador of a king, was not always an easy matter. Bribes were usually necessary and what made the difference between a good ambassador and a sloppy one was knowing whom to bribe. . . .

Read the rest here.