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The Submission of the Clergy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Michael Kelly
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Extract

The concessions presented by Archbishop Warham and representatives of Convocation to Henry VIII on 16 May 1532 have been the subject of endless controversy, while the background and circumstances of the enactment have received remarkably uniform treatment from later generations. Despite the proliferation of Reformation and Convocation histories since the eighteenth century, historians have, by and large, been content to repeat or elaborate an outline of the event first found in Wake's The State of the Church (1703). According to this interpretation, the King and Cromwell employed the Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries presented in March 1532 to compel the clergy's approval of the articles of 16 May.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 15 , December 1965 , pp. 97 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1965

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References

1 The prominence given to Cromwell was developed in the nineteenth century with the discovery of his hand on several recensions of the Supplication in the State Papers. The summary given above no doubt minimizes discrepancies and differences in emphasis between the various narratives, but it does justice to the terms in which discussion of the Submission has been conducted

1 CfHighfield's, J. R. L.warning against generalizations concerning ‘curialist” bishops for an earlier period, ‘The English Hierarchy in the Reign of Edward III”, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, Fifth Sen, vi (1956), pp. 115–16.Google Scholar

2 See the extracts from the acta convocationis in [Wilkins, D.], Concilia [Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae] (London, 1737), iii, pp. 717, 724–26, 746–47, and the extracts in [Oxford], C[hrist] C[hurch], MS. 306, pp. 27–49, and identical copy, Lambeth Pal., MS. 751, pp. 46–93. F. Atterbury prints another similar extract in his Rights [ … of an English Convocation] (London, 1701), pp. 543–49.Google Scholar

1 The titles of surviving statutes correspond to the titles of constitutions mentioned in Heylyn's transcripts of the acta convocationis published in Concilia, iii, pp. 746–47. Promulgation of constitutions in the medieval province of Canterbury was never carefully delineated. Formal recitation apparently sufficed to make canons binding and they were often revised or re-enacted in subsequent assemblies (Cheney, C., ‘The Legislation of the Medieval Church’, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1 (1935), pp. 203, 209). The three drafts of the liber are: (A). [Public Record Office], S.P.6/1/6, fos 20–35v (B). S.P.1/57, fos 112–135v (C). [British Museum, Cotton MS.], Cleopatra F. ii, fos 54 ff., printed in Concilia, iii, pp. 717–24. The Cleopatra draft is the formal book incorporating the text and corrections made in draft (B). Draft (A) lacks a statute surviving in (B) and (C), ‘de otio vitando et de honesta conversatione clericorum’, and includes a statute missing from (B) and (C), ‘de idoneitate admittendorum ad beneficia’. It is also incomplete, omitting the last three statutes printed in Concilia, iii, pp. 723–24. Apart from these differences, draft (B) is an almost exact copy of the draft (A) statutes with the addition of interlined corrections to be discussed later. All three drafts in clude the prologue of the book.Google Scholar

2 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 39, 40, 42. In this respect the group of canons bears resemblance to continental provincial legislation of the time. See Hefele, C. J., Hist, des conciles (Paris, 1907-1952), viii (2), pp. 1067–81.Google Scholar

1 See, for example, Decretum, dist. 23, c. 5. The liber specifically cites Decretum, dist. 38, c. 5, Edmund's, ArchbishopSi Rector [Lyndwood, Provinciate (Oxford, 1679), pp. 250–51] and Clem., III. Io, c. 1.Google Scholar

2 Statutes are mentioned in the Heylyn transcripts for 1532 which are not in the completed book, but correspond to the titles of statutes in two fragments in a contemporary clerkly hand like that of draft (B): S.P.6/7/19 and S.P.6/12/11. These fragments also include canons with titles corresponding to statutes mentioned in the Heylyn transcripts for 1531.

3 S.P.6/12/11, fo. 167; S.P.6/7/19, fo. 87 identical with S.P.6/1/6, fo. 23; S.P.6/7/19, fo. 9iv.

1 S.P.6/l2/lI, fo. 168.

2 S.P.6/7/19, fos 90, 93.

1 Hughes, P., The Reformation in England (New York, 1951), i, p. 83.Google Scholar

2 Five sessions of Convocation were held before 15 Feb., and three after that date, of which one appears to have been summarily prorogued (C.C., MS. 306, pp. 42–43). Dr Elton's arguments for the late introduction of anticlerical legislation (‘The Commons Supplication of 1532 …’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxvi (1951), pp. 512–13) are not convincing. The debate in Parliament must have been well advanced by 24 Feb., the date of Warham's protest.Google Scholar

3 Statutes 23 Henry VIII, cc. 1,9, 10, 11, 22; Cal. S\tate\ P[apers\, Spanish, iv (2), no. 922; S.P.1/74, fo. 146, quoted in Cooper, J. P., ‘The Supplication against the Ordinaries Reconsidered’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxii (1957), P. 634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Concilia, iii, p. 746Google Scholar

1 L[etters and] P[apers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII], v, no. 831. Warham mentioned Norfolk as his closest friend in his will made in 1531.

2 C.C., MS. 306, p. 44; Concilia, iii, p. 747; Cal.Google Scholar S[tate] P[apers …], Venice, iv, no. 754.Google Scholar

3 No record of the action against Warham survives in the archives of King's Bench. The incomplete defence Warham prepared (S.P.1/70, fos 245–58, printed in the Dublin Review, cxiv (1894), pp. 401–14) suggests he was arguing or preparing to argue his cause before the council. Warham states in this defence that the Clarendon disputes occurred 369 years pre viously. The 369th year began in Jan. 1532 and Warham's executors were pardoned of offences against the statute of provisors in Mar. 1533 (L.P., vi, nos. 248, 301(18)). Although the praemunire charge was almost certainly aired in 1532, no purpose could be served by indictment after the May Sub mission, for the archbishop displayed unique subservience to royal wishes on 15 May. The aggressiveness of Warham's defence accords well with his known attitudes in Mar.-Apr. 1532.Google Scholar

1 Dr G. R. Elton has been the most persuasive advocate of this view. Although Dr Elton is convincing in dating the origins of the Supplication to 1529, some of his diplomatic and procedural arguments for Cromwell's in tentions based on Audley's memoranda and position have been neutralized by Mr Cooper, J. P. (Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxii, pp. 628–30). It should, however, be said that it is impossible to prove definitely that Cromwell did not en visage Submission before the beginning of the 1532 parliamentary session: the evidence is too tentative and circumstantial to lend conclusiveness to any analysis of this session. Nevertheless, the rather chaotic conclusion of Parlia ment and Convocation in 1532 suggests that Cromwell was not at this time in a position of effective political control, and that no ‘plan’ for Submission was effected, if it was intended.Google Scholar

2 L.P., v, nos 1171–74, 1321, 1324, 1364, 1493, 1545 etc.

3 Steele, R. R., Tudor and Stuart Proclamations (Oxford, 1910), i, p. 124.Google Scholar

1 For the text of the Supplication see Ogle, A., The Tragedy of the Lollards Tower (Oxford, 1949), pp. 324–30.Google Scholar

2 If this Submission bill (S.P.2/P, fos I7-I9;and copy, S.P.2/ Lfos 78–80) to be discussed below was conceived prior to presentation of the Supplication, the charge in the preliminary Answer of the Ordinaries that the Supplication I contained unjust bills which failed in Parliament is perhaps more under- standable. Cromwell's ‘Submission’ intentions would thus be clear, and his failure in fulfilling them, conspicuous.

3 CfElton, G. R., ‘The Political Creed of Thomas Cromwell’, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, Fifth Ser., vi (1956), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

4 See below, pp. 114–15.

5 Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxii, p. 633.Google Scholar

1 Cf. ibid., p. 638.

2 Concilia, iii, pp. 752–54.Google Scholar Henry stated, for example: ‘Nam quid faciet rex, aut praelatus, si neque legem potest ponere, neque positam exsequi, sed populus absque lege, velut navis absque gubernaculo fluctuet?’… ‘Si multa statuebant apostoli, praeter speciale praeceptum Domini, super Christianum populum, cur non idem propter populi commodum faciant hi, qui suc- cesserunt in apostolorum locum?’ (Assertio (New York, 1908), pp. 313, 315).Google Scholar

3 Printed by Wilkins from the acts of convocation (Concilia, iii, pp. 750–52).Google Scholar

4 More, Thomas, The Apologye (Early English Text Soc, 1903), pp. 162–164.Google Scholar

5 See St Germain's ‘A Treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spiritualtie and temporaltie' published about this time. For the use of generalis sententia see Du Boulay, F. R. H., Registrum Thome Bourgchier (Oxford, 1948–1950), p. xxxii.Google Scholar For the Council of Oxford proclamation, see Concilia, i, p. 585, ii, p. 25; Lyndwood, Provinciate, p. 355.Google Scholar

1 The original version of this first article of the Supplication, conceived probably in 1529, was re-drafted, chiefly by Cromwell; but the gist of the 1529 charges, the praemunire-like offences of clerical law-making—remained in the lengthier and more elaborate version of 1532 (S.P.2/L, fo. 203; S.P.6/7/21, fo. 211; S.P.2/L, fo. 194; S.P.6/1/22).

2 A contemporary copy of ecclesiastical statutes entitled ‘Consilium Bonifacii apud Westminster’ is S.P.6/2/23. These are the articles proposed at Merton in 1258, eventually re-enacted at Lambeth in 1261 (Concilia, i, pp.736–40,746–55).Google ScholarThey are surely the most anti-lay utterances in thewhole of the Canterbury legislation. See Cheney, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1, pp. 402–6. L.P., iv, no. 6043 (3), a list of bills remaining from the 1529 session, in cludes statutes of Lambeth. These are the second recension of the Merton articles.Google Scholar

3 Concilia, i, p. 753;Google Scholar P.R.O., K.B.29/164, rot. 48. These indictments are discussed at length in DrScarisbrick's, J. J. ‘The Conservative Episcopate in England, 1529–1535’ (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1956), pp. 193–214.Google Scholar

4 S.P.6/1/7 is the introduction to the book written in a formal hand. This is printed in Dunham, and Pargellis, , Complaint and Reform in England (New York, 1938), pp. 125–29. Other fragments are S.P.6/11/15, 16, 17 and (in Latin) Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 4274, fo. 197.Google Scholar

1 P.R.O., Anc. Corr. (S.C.i). vol. 64, no. 83.Google Scholar

2 Cleopatra F. ii, fo. 240; S.P.1/70, fos 257–58 (Dublin Review, cxiv, p. 412).Google Scholar See Scarisbrick, J. J., ‘The Pardon of the Clergy, 1531’, Camb\ridge\ Historical] Journ[al\, xii (1956), pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

3 S.P.6/3/5, fos 70–71. This treatise, incorrectly calendared in L.P., v, no. 1012, must, by reason of references to the Lateran Council and discussion of clerical liberty, belong to 1515.

1 For the praemunire actions during the summer of 1530 see Scarisbrick, , Comb. Hist. Journ., xii, pp. 25–26;Google Scholar the suits in Trinity term, 1531, against clergy who opposed the Supremacy declaration are recorded in K.B.29/164, rot. 25–30. See also Waugh, W. T., ‘The Great Statute of Praemunire’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxxvii (1922), pp. 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 C.C., MS. 306, p. 45.

1 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 45–46; Cal. SpanishS.P., S.P.,, iv (2), pp. 427–28; Cal.Google ScholarVenice, S.P., iv, p. 332;Google ScholarL.P., v, nos 941, 266 (S.P.1/66, fo. 31); Knowles, M. D., The Religious Orders in England, iii (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 207–8.Google Scholar

2 Hall, Chronicle, p. 788.

3 Gee, H. and Hardy, W. J., Documents [Illustrative of English Church History] (London, 1896), pp. 154–76.Google Scholar Warham's article complaining of the citations bill was exceptional for its brusque tone and statement of his willingness to reform the causes of complaint (ibid., pp. 166–68).

4 The later recension, for example, omitted reference to evil men in the Commons and the incorporation of rejected parliamentary bills in the Supplication (Concilia, iii, p. 750, col.Google Scholar 2) and it did not include the confident aside that ‘no laws can stand or take effect’ against the scriptures and deter mination of the Church (ibid., p. 752, col. 2).

1 Gee and Hardy, Documents, p. 175.

2 Muller, J. A., The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

3 See above, p. 91 n. 1. The corrections are in draft (B). Henry's changes were characteristic: he omitted clerical references to subditi, replacing them with inferiores; he changed a clause concerning ordinaries’ punishment of clerks convicted by laymen, ‘in carceribus vel inperpetuum retinendo, vel saltern non itafacilenec tarn cite ad purgationem admittendo’, to thestronger, ‘in carceribus vel inperpetuum retinendo vel saltern nisi ex urgentissime causa, ad purgationem admittendo’; and to the general injunction to reduce their people to the observance of mandates of God and ecclesiastical canons and constitutions, he added ‘usu et moribus huius regni legitime recep- torum et approbatorum’. The wording of his correction concerning purga tion must place his changes prior to passage of 23 Henry VIII, c. 1., the statute limiting benefit of the clergy. Henry's spikey hand was recognized by the editors of L.P. (iv, no. 6401). It is identical with other examples of his hand, for example, S.P. 1/65, fos 1–30.

4 Keilwey, R., Reports d'ascuns Cases … (London, 1688), fos 184–85.Google Scholar

1 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 46–47.

2 Cleopatra F. i, fo. 101 (Concilia, iii, pp. 753–54). This answer resembles Gardiner's personal apologia to the King; both mention the Assertio. The answer appears to owe something to Fisher's treatise ‘That the byshoppys’ in the reference to historical precedents for clerical independence. Fisher's work is perhaps the unnamed book mentioned in the answer with the King's treatise against Luther.Google Scholar

3 C.C., MS. 306, p. 47; Concilia, iii, pp. 748–49.Google Scholar

1 C.C., MS. 306, p. 48; Concilia, iii, p. 749; Atterbury, Rights, pp. 545–46.Google Scholar

2 Hall, Chronicle, p. 788.

3 S.P.2/P, fos 17–19 (L.P., vii, no. 57Google Scholar (2)), and S.P.2/L, fos 78–80 (L.P., v, no. 721 (1)).Google Scholar These identical drafts may well correspond to the ‘ordre’ commissioned on 11 May. The bill is neither lengthy nor elaborate: there seems no convincing reason it could not have been drawn up between 11 and 14 May. According to the acta, Convocation continued to discuss replies to die Supplication until 8 May; while this does not preclude the possibility of legislation before this time, it suggests the King was unlikely to demand reply if statutory remedies of the grievances were proceeding in Parliament. Chapuys in a dispatch of 13 May made what appears to be a reference to the terms of the draft statute (Cal. S.P., Spanish, iv (2), no. 951, p. 446).Google Scholar The bill includes so many ingredients of the Submission that it is probably coincidental with it. Furthermore, it includes an aside on the summoning of Convocation by the King's writ which does not appear in the articles of submission of 10 May, but which does emerge as a concession on 15 May. If this suggestion is correct, the government did not proceed deliberately to choose between a parliamentary or convocation Submission (as suggested by Dr. Elton, , Eng. Hist. Rev., lxvi, p. 514). It moved on both fronts only after 10 May, abandoning the parliamentary one on 14 May as a result of difficulties or opposition there, or the prospects of a conciliar success which the clergy's answer of 13 May seemed to promise, or the King's determination to acquire ecclesiastical sanction for his new authority.Google Scholar

1 C.C., MS. 306, p. 48; Atterbury, Rights, p. 546.

2 Cleopatra F. i, fos 101–3, printed in Atterbury, Rights, pp. 534–37.

1 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 48–49; Atterbury, Rights, pp. 546–47; S.P. 1/70, fo. 38, printed in Atterbury, Rights, pp. 537–38.

2 Convocation was not summoned by royal writ in 1510, nor were royal writs used in Warham's attempted summons of 1518 or Wolsey's legatine councils. The King's summons was, however, customary. See Handbook of Brit. Chron., ed. Powicke, F. M. and Fryde, E. B. (Roy. Hist. Soc, 1961), pp. 545–46;Google ScholarKemp, E. W., Counsel and Consent (London, 1961), pp. 147–48.Google Scholar

3 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 48–49; Atterbury, Rights, pp. 546–47; Concilia, iii, pp. 754–55. A contemporary copy of the Submission is S.P.6/3/15, fos 62–63, and the entire instrument is recorded in Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 48012, fos 63v–64, and a later copy in S.P.1/70, fos 35–36. The Submission is collated with the earlier draft in Gee and Hardy, Documents, pp. 176–78.

1 By the early-sixteenth century the approval of the lower clergy for Convocation matters was—out of expediency or constitutional propriety— a requisite form. Strictly speaking the approbation of the lower and monastic clergy was unnecessary for conciliar enactments (see Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, iii, pp. 1268–77), but the preoccupation of later medieval Can terbury meetings with subsidies and their regular coincidence with Parlia ment tended to belie non-representational conciliar theory. However, limitation of conciliar authority to the archbishop and his suffragans makes the legality of the Submission no less suspect.Google Scholar

2 Concilia, iii, p. 749.Google Scholar

3 C.C., MS. 306, pp. 34–36; Atterbury, Rights, p. 83; L.P., iv, no. 6047.

4 C.C., MS. 306, p. 49; Atterbury, Rights, p. 547.

5 See L.P., v, no. 1132.Google Scholar

1 See L.P., v, nos 394, 396, 657, where he was fined 1000 marks for an untrue certificate of bigamy, a punishment disproportionate to the offence.Google Scholar

2 Cal. S.P., Spanish, iv (2), no. 954.Google Scholar

3 Concilia, iii, p. 749. Stokesly's was the large exception, a fact perhaps accounting for his absence on the 16th at the presentation of the Submission.Google Scholar

4 25 Henry VIII, c. 19; Dixon, R. W., History of the Church of England (London, 1884), i, pp.III–12, 189–94. Article VII, apparently added to the statute in the Lords, is similar to the reservations of Standish and Longland on 15 May.Google Scholar

5 There is no record of the Submission before the Northern Convocation (Dickens, A. G., ‘The Northern Convocation and Henry VIII’, Church Quarterly Review, cxxvii (1938), pp. 84–102).Google Scholar Wilkins (Concilia, iii, p. 770) prints a copy of the parliamentary Submission from the register of Convocation, but no evidence survives suggesting Convocation was involved in the enactment.Google Scholar

1 The English translation of provincial constitutions printed by Richard Redman in 1534 under Cromwell's auspices bore remarkably little controversial material (S.T.C. 17113) and no historian or chronicler discussed the 1532 Submission until the Convocation Controversy of the early-eighteenth century. Prior to the Act of Submission and for several years thereafter, no opposition was raised to the government's exercise of Submission powers, particularly those of summoning and proroguing convocation; cf. L.P., vi, nos 34, 108.Google Scholar

2 See Moyes, J. in Dublin Rev., cxiv, pp. 398–99,Google Scholar and Scarisbrick, J. J. in Camb. Hist. Journ., xii, pp. 22–29.Google Scholar

1 Cromwell was present as the King's representative in Convocation on a critical day during the Supremacy troubles (C.C., MS. 306, pp. 34–35; see also L.P., v, nos 224–25). Early in Mar. 1531 Convocation was discussing quendam famosum libdlum contra Clerum (C.C., MS. 306, pp. 37–38), probably an earlier recension of the Commons Supplication such as draft (Ci), discussed by Dr Elton and Mr Cooper, which was more anti-clerical in tone than the final version.Google Scholar