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II. The Pardon of the Clergy, 1531

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

J. Scarisbrick
J. Scarisbrick
Affiliation:
Assistant Lecturer in History at Queen Mary College, University of London
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Extract

The story of the Pardon of the Clergy in 1531 and all that it entailed has long been familiar to historians of the English Reformation; and despite the several gaps, not to say incongruities, in the accepted narrative, no writer has found difficulty in repeating the inherited version. Indeed, this most important episode in the story of Henry's overthrow of the medieval church has been distinguished by the unquestioning and brief, even peremptory, treatment which it has usually received. In the course of time, minor accretions have added to the first statement of events contained in the Chronicles. But perhaps because the Calendars are disappointingly reticent about public affairs during the winter of 1530–1, no author has seriously questioned that statement, however uneasy he may have felt about it on a priori grounds. The earliest version, therefore, compounded from Hall and Wilkins, still stands. According to it, shortly after Wolsey's death at the end of November 1530, the whole of the English clergy were indicted on a praemunire charge in the King's Bench by the Attorney General for having submitted themselves to the late cardinal's legacy. To escape from their dilemma, the two Convocations made a cash payment to Henry allowing him at the same time a new, if guarded, title of overlordship that was to prove full of consequence. Whatever the significance of the celebrated ‘saving clause’ and despite the reluctance of the clergy to concede any ground, the fact remained that Henry had won the first round with comparative ease and it was only a matter of time before he would proceed with confidence and equal success to the second.

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Articles
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , 1956 , pp. 22 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1956

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References

1 E.g., among modern authors, Gairdner, The English Church in the 16th Century (1912), p. 107Google Scholar; Fisher, Political History of England (1906), v, p. 307Google Scholar; Hughes, [The] Reformation [in England] (1950), 1, pp. 226–8.Google Scholar

2 Hall, Chronicle (1809), p. 774; Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae (1737), III, pp. 725 f. Text of grant, pp. 742f.

3 There is considerable disparity between the explanations of the praemunire charge given by older historians. Foxe, Acts and Monuments etc. (ed. 1837–1841), v, p. 368Google Scholar, states that it was based on two offences: (a) clerical oaths of fealty to the pope incompatible with their loyalty to the king; (b) acknowledging Burnet, Wolsey., History of the Reformation etc. ed. Pocock, (Oxford, 1855), 1, p. 181Google Scholar and Grand, Le, L'Histoire du Divorce etc. (Paris, 1688), 1, p. 212Google Scholar, suggest that the offence had consisted in using the legate's courts (Le Grand, loc. cit. ‘qui s'estoient adresés à la cour du Legat'.) The remainder describe the offence as ‘recognising Wolsey as legate’ or similarly, and this vague statement is the one most in vogue today.

4 Chronicle, p. 774.

5 E.g. Fisher, loc. cit.

6 Constant, The Reformation in England (1934), I, p. 94Google Scholar n. goes so far as to give 31 Dec. as the exact date and refers to Holinshed, Chronicles (1807), p. 766.Google Scholar But the latter, copying Hall, gives no specific date.

7 Search among the following court records in the Public Record Office has revealed no reference to the case: controlment rolls, K.B. 29/162 and 163 (Pas. 22 Henry VIII—Trin. 23 Henry VIII); ancient indictments, K.B. 9/512–15; coram rege rolls, K.B. 27/1075–80—both covering the same period. Unless otherwise noted, manuscript references henceforward will relate to MSS. in the Public Record Office.

8 The admission of guilt, like the other concessions, was made parenthetically. Though the motive for the grant is made to appear the clergy's gratitude for royal attacks on heresy, the impression is also given that the former were consciously and publicly buying pardon. Anyway, Constant's words (op. cit. I, p. 94) that the clergy ‘purposely refrained from mentioning the reason for this extortion, viz. the infringement of the Praemunire Statute’ are hardly accurate.

9 See below, p. 25.

10 Statutes of the Realm, III, p. 334.

11 Ibid. p. 335. It is interesting to note that Convocation's grant buys pardon for ‘omnibus et singulis praelatis, clericis et religiosis in sacris ordinibus constitutis, omnibus abbatissis.. Cantuariensis provinciae, atque quibusvis judicibis, advocatis, registrariis et scribis, procuratoribus adjudicia constitutis ac apparitoribus, caeterisque, qui infra Cantuariensem provinciam potestatem aut jurisdictionem, ut judices eorumve deputati in aliquibus curiis spiritualibus exercuerunt aut ejusdem jurisdictionis exercitio vel executioni, sicut advocati, registrarii, scribae, procuratores ad judicia, et apparitores ministri fuere’ (my italics). Wilkins, op. cit. III, p. 743.

12 Statutes of the Realm, III, p. 335.

13 Ibid. p. 337.

14 Ibid.

15 K.B. 29/162 ro. 12a and b. Adam Travers's name does not occur on this list until the case had grown older (see K.B. 27/1077 ro. 27). But his omission from the original entry in the controlment roll was clearly due to a clerical lapsus calami.

16 The indictments, by rare chance, are still extant. K.B. 9/513 (unnumbered).

17 S.P. 1/50 fo. 20; S.P. 1/53 fo. 241; S.P. 1/54 fo. 24; S.P. 1/19 fo. 168.

18 B[ritish] M[useum], Add. 24,317, fos. 33, 64, 69, 70f.

19 Cit. Pollard, Wolsey (1929), p. 197.

20 Ibid. pp. 195 f.; ‘Registrum Caroli Bothe’ in Canterbury and York Society, XXVIII (1921), p. 189.Google Scholar

21 Justificatory references for this statement would exceed the limits of a footnote. I hope to examine the attitude of the bench of bishops to the divorce elsewhere at a later date.

22 L[etters and] P[apers … of Henry VIII], ed. Brewer, Gairdner and Brodie, IV, 2331.

23 Pocock, Records of the Reformation (Oxford, 1870), II, p. 458.Google Scholar

24 L.P. v, 314, 319.

25 Herbert, Life and Reign of King Henry the eighth (1663), pp. 331 ff. for text; p. 334 for signatures.

26 K.B. 27/1077, ros. 27f.

27 K.B. 29/162, ro. 12.

28 The unfinished condition of the indictments (starting off ‘Memorandum quod — die —’) shows that they were never presented in court and that therefore, presumably, the cases never properly opened.

29 Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (Oxford, 1902), 1, p. 334.Google Scholar It is dated 21 Oct., L P. IV, 6699.

30 L P. V, 62. Cal[endar of State Papers,] Sp[anish], IV, II, 615. Latter text quoted here. This of course is powerful corroboration of Hall. But whether the two together outweigh the words of the Pardon is still very doubtful. The situation was undoubtedly confused and so much was going on at the time that (a) wild rumours would certainly have been abroad—see e.g. L.P. V, 63; (b) government policy may well have changed frequently.

31 The Earliest English Life of St John Fisher, ed. Hughes (1935), pp. 115 ff. gives a different version. It declares that in the newly-met Commons ‘orators of the King's faction’ lodged the demand that the clergy should contribute to the costs incurred by the king in the course of his divorce negotiations at Rome and in the Universities etc., which, it was said, amounted to £100,000 and more. The move failed and was replaced by the praemunire charge in the King's Bench for acknowledging Wolsey.

The value of this information may not be high, but it clearly confirms Chapuys's statement that the general attack on the clergy began in Parliament. The author also makes the interesting point that the discussion lasted only a while in Parliament and was then transferred: he says to the King's Bench (under Hall's influence?); I suggest to Convocation.

32 Wilkins, op. cit. III, p. 725.

33 L.P. V, 70; Cal. Sp. IV, ii, 619.

34 E.g. by Hughes, Reformation, I, pp. 226 f.

35 L.P. V, 224.

36 It must be admitted that if no formal process was necessary for accusing the clergy on these grounds none was necessary for charging them with illegally acknowledging Wolsey. All that the silence of the K.B. suggests is that if Hall was wrong in saying that an indictment of the whole clergy was filed there, he may also have been wrong about the details of the charge.

37 Scarpellino reported the events of this Convocation. He tells of the praemunire charge but makes no reference to Wolsey. Cal[endar of State Papers,] Ven[etian], IV, 656.

38 Chapuys to Charles V, 14 Feb. L P V, 105, and Cal. Sp. IV, II, 635. Constant, op. cit. p. 94 n. refers to L.P. VI, 1381 (3) to show that the grant was intended to pay for any war the divorce might occasion. But this document belongs to a later date—c. 1533.

39 Constant, ibid, presumably quoting a rhetorical flourish (?) of Chapuys; L.P V, 105.

40 L P. V, 105; Cal. Sp. IV, II, 635. The text used here is that of the latter. Gairdner's version of the last sentence is quite different from that given in Cal. Sp.—‘and thirdly because the King declared to them the importance of the said law of praemunire to guard himself from being misunderstood’. In the context such a rendering is obviously incorrect if not nonsensical and must be set aside by Bergenroth's version. The latter's use of the term ‘volition’ however, is disconcerting. One is tempted to interpret it as ‘independence’, i.e. clerical free-will, but as such it is not distant from the idea contained in the word ‘privileges’ —from which it is apparently to be clearly distinguished. Gairdner translates it as ‘exemption from praemunire’ and perhaps this is the happiest course. Cf. Scarpellino to Sforza 19 Feb. (Cal. Ven. IV, 656) where it is said that the clergy, having offered the cash payment, have ‘entreated that the remission might be valid for the future, or that the crime might be clearly denned, since it is understood by no one or only a few’. ‘Valid for the future’ confirms Gairdner's use of the word ‘exemption’.

41 B.M. Cleo. F. ii. fo. 240a and b. It is quoted by Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (ed. Lathbury, , 1852), IX, p.117Google Scholar, and assigned to 1529, presumably on the ground that it complains of the acts (of 1529) passed ‘in the present Parliament’. But this is inconclusive evidence since all the sessions from 1529 to 1536 were the meetings of one and the same Parliament. Anyway, the petition's close conformity with the clerical ‘conditions’ mentioned by Chapuys and especially its urgent demand that the scope of the praemunire writ should be defined, argue strongly that it belongs to the time of the Pardon. Furthermore, complaints against the effects of the 1529 acts could hardly have been made in 1529 itself and demand for legislative redress (as was made) would just as probably have occurred when the next session of Parliament began or was at hand.

42 So Chapuys in the same despatch.

43 Wilkins, op. cit. III, p. 725.

44 Exchequer K.R., Miscellaneous, E. 135/8/36.

45 Wilkins, op. cit. III, p. 257.

46 Ibid, III, pp. 742 f. (My italics.)

47 Gairdner, op. cit. p. 108.

48 It is difficult to see, therefore, how Trésal (one of the few authors who has paid any attention to any of the five articles except the first) could say of the second that it was adopted sans changement notable'. Les Origines du Schisme Anglican (Paris, 1908), p. 79.Google Scholar

49 Wilkins, op. cit. III, p. 725, where it is said that the last article ‘post consultationem cum episcopis et domo inferiore habitam facile concessus fuit in sessione xxxiii (8 Feb.)’.

50 Thus Chapuys, L.P. V, 122; Cal. Sp. IV, ii, 641.

51 On 21 May, L.P. IV, 3696 and 6279; Ehses, Römische Dokumente etc., no. 81 (against which the English agents appealed), no. 82. Its successor (more temperate) appeared 4 Aug. L.P. IV, 6549. The third, though decided upon on 23 Dec. (ibid. 6770), did not come out till 5 Jan. L.P. V, 27: Ehses, op. cit. no. 98; Pocock, op. cit. II, p. 104; Le Grand, op. cit. III, pp. 531 ff.

52 L.P. IV, 6256; Ehses, op. cit. no. 76; Le Grand, op. cit. III, pp. 446 ff.

53 L.P. IV, 6155.

54 Cal. Sp.. IV, i, 446; L.P. IV, 6675, 6758.

55 So the pope's response shows: Ehses, op. cit. no. 76.

56 L.P. IV, 6324; Pocock, op. cit. II, pp. 630 ff.

57 See above p. 27 for further details on this ‘round-robin’.

58 L.P. IV, 6618; Cal. Sp. IV, i, 429—reported by Chapuys, Cal. Sp. IV, i, 433 and 445. Quotations from the last.

59 L.P. IV, 6667.

60 Cal. Sp.. IV, i, 460.

61 L.P. V, 45; Cal. Sp. IV, i, 460.

62 Cf. Henry's denial to the nuncio (in Feb. 1531) that he had set up a ‘nouvelle papalité’ (Cal. Sp. IV, ii, 641) and his most important confidential instructions to Ghinucci and others in L.P. v, 326 (Pocock, op. cit. II, pp. 283ff.) which clearly reveal his desire to retain papal goodwill despite everything.

63 L.P. V, passim, esp. 206, 326, 462, 610.