A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [108]
The king’s response was just as vehement. Following his lead, Parliament passed thirty-two religious bills, which, among other things, cut off all revenues to Rome, and confiscated all Church lands—by a conservative Catholic estimate, 20 percent of the land in England. Other measures suppressed monasteries, decreed that spiritual appeals by English Christians must be made to Canterbury or the king, required new clergymen to swear loyalty to the crown before they could be consecrated, and stipulated that only royal nominees could become bishops and archbishops. Then Henry took the ultimate step. In the Act of Supremacy (November 1534) he abandoned Rome completely, founding a new national church, Ecclesia Anglicana, and appointing himself and his successors its supreme head.
Sir Thomas More, Wolsey’s successor as high chancellor, had followed Henry for a time, but he had been in agony, trapped between conflicting loyalties. More was the king’s humble servant. However, he was also a devout Catholic. The less his sovereign saw of him, he reasoned, the better. Therefore he resigned the chancellorship in 1532. It was in vain. He could not hide; he was too eminent; the king was watching him closely. His personal crisis reached a climax in the spring of 1534. When the king demanded that his subjects take an oath to obey the Act of Succession, he was asking more than More could give. It meant swearing fealty to Henry and repudiating the papacy. Most of the English clergy meekly obeyed. More didn’t protest; he simply remained mute. He condemned neither the oath nor those who had taken it, but though remaining loyal to the crown in word and deed, he refused to renounce Rome—a devastating silence, because Henry was taking an enormous risk. Although he was a powerful monarch, his reign was confined to the living. England’s rising national spirit supported him, as Germany’s had supported Luther, but if the pope excommunicated his entire kingdom, condemning every Englishman to eternal flames, the possibility of an uprising would be far from remote. In this exigency the king could not hesitate.
More had already opposed Henry’s marriage to Anne and refused to attend her coronation, a mortal insult. Any tolerance of further lèse majesté by Henry would be interpreted as weakness, especially since the former chancellor, garlanded with royal honors, was the most influential man in English public life. The king could be merciless or he could forfeit his crown, and for this king that was no choice. More was charged with treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
At his trial More finally spoke out. Splitting the Church was a tragic crime, he said; he could not, in all conscience, be an accomplice to it. Nor, he added, could he bring himself to believe that “any temporal man could be the head of the spirituality.” He was one of the most eloquent men of his generation, but he spoke in a hubbub and could scarcely be heard. The hearing was a formality. The verdict had already been decided. His judges included Anne’s father, her uncle, and her brother, Lord Rochford. They condemned him to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered”—the extreme penalty for betrayal of the sovereign. It meant that the chancellor’s shrunken cadaver, cut into four parts, would be left to rot on the London docks.
That was too much for the king. As Anne sulked—Sir Thomas had succeeded Wolsey as the object of her malice—Henry changed the sentence to simple beheading. The scholar who had served him so faithfully went to the ax with his head high. As he mounted the scaffold it trembled and seemed about to collapse. Turning to a king’s officer he said calmly, “I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” Then, altering the ghastly ritual by blindfolding himself, he asked