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HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

From the Renaissance to the
French Revolution



CHAPTER I

RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION

Wilkins, /Concilia Magnae Britanniae/, iii., 1737. /Historia Regis
Henrici Septimi a Bernardo Andrea Thosolate/ (André of Toulouse),
edited by J. Gairdner, 1858. Capella-Sneyd, /A Relation or True
Account of the Isle of England ... under Henry VII./ (written by
Capella, the Venetian Ambassador, 1496-1502, and edited by C. A.
Sneyd, 1847). /A London Chronicle during the reigns of Henry VII.
and Henry VIII./ (Camden Miscellany, vol. iv., 1859). Sir Thomas
More's /Utopia/ (written 1516, edited by E. Arber, 1869). More's
English works, edited by William Rastell, 1557. Bridgett, /Life
and Writings of Sir Thomas More/, 1891. Busch-Todd, /England under
the Tudors/, 1892-95. Gasquet, /The Eve of the Reformation/, 1900;
/Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries/, 1888; /The Old English
Bible/, etc., 1897; /The Great Pestilence/, 1893; /Parish Life in
Mediaeval England/, 1906; /English Monastic Life/, 1904. Capes, /A
History of the English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries/, 1909. Seebohm, /Oxford Reformers/ (3rd edition), 1877.
Stone, /Reformation and Renaissance Studies/, 1904. Gairdner,
/Lollardy and the Reformation/, vol. i., 1908. Lilly, /Renaissance
Types/, 1901. Bridgett, /History of the Holy Eucharist in Great
Britain/ (new edition, 1908). Rivington, /Rome and England/, 1897.
Lingard, /History of England/, 10 vols., 1849. Hunt-Poole,
/Political History of England/, v., 1910. /Cambridge Modern
History/, vol. i., 1902.

With the advent of Henry VII. to the throne (1485) a new era opened in
the history of England. The English nation, weakened by the Wars of
the Roses and tired of a contest that possessed little interest for
the masses, was not unwilling to submit itself without reserve to the
guidance of a strong ruler provided he could guarantee peace both at
home and abroad. Practically speaking, hitherto absolutism had been
unknown. The rights that had been won by the barons on the plains of
Runnymede were guarded jealously by their descendants, and as a result
the power of the king, more especially in regard to taxation, was
hedged round by several restrictions. But during the long struggle
between the houses of Lancaster and York many of the great feudal
barons had fallen on the field of battle or by the hands of the
executioner, and the power of the nobles as a body had been
undermined. While the Lords could muster their own retainers under
their standard and put into the field a strong army almost at a
moment's notice, it was impossible for the sovereign to rule as an
absolute monarch. It was because he recognised this fact that Henry
VII. took steps to enforce the Statute of Liveries passed by one of
his predecessors, and to provide that armies could be levied only in
the king's name.

The day of government by the aristocracy had passed for ever to be
succeeded by the rule of the people, but in the interval between the
sinking of one and the rise of the other Tudor absolutism was
established firmly in England. In selecting his ministers Henry VII.
passed over the nobles in favour of the middle classes, which were
gaining ground rapidly in the country, but which had not yet realised
their strength as they did later in the days of the Stuarts. He
obtained grants of tonnage and poundage enjoyed by some of his Yorkist
predecessors, had recourse to the system of forced grants known as
benevolences, set up the Star Chamber nominally to preserve order but
in reality to repress his most dangerous opponents, and treated
Parliament as a mere machine, whose only work was to register the
wishes of the sovereign. In brief, Henry VII., acting according to the
spirit of the age, removed the elements that might make for national
disunion, consolidated his own power at the expense of the nobility,
won over to his side the middle and lower classes whose interests were
promoted and from whom no danger was to be feared, and laid the
foundations of that absolute government, which was carried to its
logical conclusions by his son and successor, Henry VIII.

By nature Henry VII. was neither overbearing nor devoid of tact, and
from the doubtful character of his title to the throne he was obliged
to be circumspect in his dealings with the nation. It was not so,
however, with Henry VIII. He was a young, impulsive, self-willed
ruler, freed from nearly all the dangers that had acted as a restraint
upon his father, surrounded for the most part by upstarts who had no
will except to please their master, and intensely popular with the
merchants, farmers, and labourers, whose welfare was consulted, and
who were removed so far from court that they knew little of royal
policy or royal oppression. The House of Lords, comprising as it did