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The king made no demand of any subsidy from this parliament; but he found means of enriching his exchequer from another quarter: he took further steps towards the dissolution of colleges, hospitals, and other foundations of that nature. The courtiers had been practising on the presidents and governors to make a surrender of their revenues to the king, and they had been successful with eight of them. But there was an obstacle to their further progress: it had been provided by the local statutes of most of these foundations, that no president, or any number of fellows, could consent to such a deed without the unanimous vote of all the fellows; and this vote was not easily obtained. All such statutes were annulled by parliament; and the revenues of these houses were now exposed to the rapacity of the king and his favorites.[**] 17 The Church had been so long their prey, that nobody was surprised at any new inroads made upon her. From the regular, Henry now proceeded to make devastations on the secular clergy. He extorted from many of the bishops a surrender of chapter lands; and by this device he pillaged the sees of Canterbury, York, and London, and enriched his greedy parasites and flatterers with their spoils.

* Burnet, vol. i. p. 314.

** See note Q, at the end of the volume.

The clergy have been commonly so fortunate as to make a concern for their temporal interests go hand in hand with a jealousy for orthodoxy; and both these passions be regarded by the people, ignorant and superstitious, as proofs of zeal for religion: but the violent and headstrong character of Henry now disjoined these objects. His rapacity was gratified by plundering the church, his bigotry and arrogance by persecuting heretics. Though he engaged the parliament to mitigate the penalties of the six articles, so far as regards the marriage of priests, which was now only subjected to a forfeiture of goods, chattels, and lands during life, he was still equally bent on maintaining a rigid purity in speculative principles. He had appointed a commission, consisting of the two archbishops and several bishops of both provinces, together with a considerable number of doctors of divinity; and by virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy, he had given them in charge to choose a religion for his people. Before the commissioners had made any progress in this arduous undertaking, the parliament, in 1541, had passed a law by which they ratified all the tenets which these divines should thereafter establish with the king’s consent: and they were not ashamed of thus expressly declaring that they took their religion upon trust, and had no other rule, in spiritual as well as temporal concerns, than the arbitrary will of their master. There is only one clause of the statute which may seem at first sight to savor somewhat of the spirit of liberty: it was enacted, that the ecclesiastical commissioners should establish nothing repugnant to the laws and statutes of the realm. But in reality this proviso was inserted by the king to serve his own purposes. By introducing a confusion and contradiction into the laws, he became more master of every one’s life and property. And as the ancient independence of the church still gave him jealousy, he was well pleased, undercover of such a clause, to introduce appeals from the spiritual to the civil courts. It was for a like reason that he would never promulgate a body of canon law; and he encouraged the judges on all occasions to interpose in ecclesiastical causes, wherever they thought the law of royal prerogative concerned; a happy innovation, though at first invented for arbitrary purposes.

The king, armed by the authority of parliament, or rather by their acknowledgment of that spiritual supremacy which he believed inherent in him, employed his commissioners to select a system of tenets for the assent and belief of the nation. A small volume was soon after published, called the Institution of a Christian Man, which was received by the convocation, and voted to be the standard of orthodoxy. All the delicate points of justification, faith, free will, good works, and grace, are there defined, with a leaning towards the opinion of the reformers: the sacraments, which a few years before were only allowed to be three, were now increased to the number of seven, conformable to the sentiments of the Catholics. The king’s caprice is discernible throughout the whole; and the book is in reality to be regarded as his composition. For Henry while he made his opinion a rule for the nation, would tie his own hands by no canon or authority, not even by any which he himself had formerly established.

The people had occasion soon after to see a further instance of the king’s inconstancy. He was not long satisfied with his Institution of a Christian Man: he ordered a new book to be composed, called the Erudition of a Christian Man; and without asking the assent of the convocation, he published, by his own authority and that of the parliament, this new model of orthodoxy. It differs from the Institution;[*] but the king was no less positive in his new creed than he had been in the old; and he required the belief of the nation to veer about at his signal. In both these compositions, he was particularly careful to inculcate the doctrine of passive obedience; and he was equally careful to retain the nation in the practice.

While the king was spreading his own books among the people, he seems to have been extremely perplexed, as were also the clergy, what course to take with the Scriptures. A review had been made by the synod of the new translation of the Bible; and Gardiner had proposed that, instead of employing English expressions throughout, several Latin words should still be preserved; because they contained, as he pretended, such peculiar energy and significance, that they had no correspondent terms in the vulgar tongue.[**] Among these were “ecclesia, poenitentia, pontifex, contritus, holocausta, sacramentum, elementa, ceremonia, mysterium, presbyter, sacrificium, humilitas, satisfactio, peccatum, gratia, hostia, charitos,” etc. But as this mixture would have appeared extremely barbarous, and was plainly calculated for no other purpose than to retain the people in their ancient ignorance, the proposal was rejected. The knowledge of the people, however, at least their disputative turn, seemed to be an inconvenience still more dangerous; and the king and parliament,[***] soon after the publication of the Scriptures retracted the concession which they had formerly made; and prohibited all but gentlemen and merchants from perusing them[****].

* Collier, vol. ii. p. 190.

** Burnet, vol. i. p. 315.

*** Which met on the 22d of January, 1543.

**** 33 Henry VIII. c 1. The reading of the Bible, however,
could not at that time have much effect in England, where so
few persons had learned to read. There were but five hundred
copies printed of this first authorized edition of the
Bible; a book of which there are now several millions of
copies in the kingdom.

Even that liberty was not granted without an apparent hesitation, and a dread of the consequences: these persons were allowed to read, “so it be done quietly and with good order.” And the preamble to the act sets forth “that many seditious and ignorant persons had abused the liberty granted them of reading the Bible, and that great diversity of opinion, animosities, tumults, and schisms had been occasioned by perverting the sense of the Scriptures.” It seemed very difficult to reconcile the king’s model for uniformity with the permission of free inquiry.

The mass book also passed under the king’s revisal; and little alteration was as yet made in it: some doubtful or fictious saints only were struck out; and the name of the pope was erased. This latter precaution was likewise used with regard to every new book that was printed, or even old book that was sold. The word “pope” was carefully omitted or blotted out;[*] as if that precaution could abolish the term from the language, or as if such a persecution of it did not rather imprint it more strongly in the memory of the people.