Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/92

 1532, commanding him to desist from cohabiting with Anne, as he was then doing, and to take back Catherine, on pain of excommunication. But Henry, wishing to show the pope that he had a strong ally in Francis, arranged for an interview at Calais and Boulogne in October, and when they met, Francis agreed to remonstrate with his holiness. Anne Boleyn, too, now created Marchioness of Pembroke, was at this interview, and it was feared by some that Henry would have married her at once.

The death of Archbishop Warham in August 1532 had, indeed, made Henry's object somewhat easier of attainment. The king nominated a pliable successor, Cranmer, and, in spite of the disregard he had so persistently shown for the holy see, ventured to request the pope to pass the new archbishop's bulls without insisting upon payment of first-fruits. He had, however, a practical argument in favour of the request, which was of considerable weight. Parliament had already decreed that all payment of first-fruits to Rome should cease. This was a measure passed ostensibly in the interests of the bishops and clergy, to relieve them from grievous impositions at the very time when other enactments were passed to restrain their liberties. It went easily through the lords, but was strongly objected to in the commons, where it narrowly escaped shipwreck, though the Duke of Norfolk endeavoured to persuade the papal nuncio that it had been passed entirely against the king's will, to prevent a mass of treasure going yearly out of the realm. Its operation, however, was to be suspended during the king's pleasure, and a continuance of the payment might still be permitted if the pope's conduct gave the king satisfaction. Henry's demand was much debated in the papal court; but at length (22 Feb. 1533) the bulls were sped in the way that he desired.

Just before this, on 25 Jan., Henry had secretly gone through the ceremony of marriage with Anne Boleyn, a fact which was not divulged till Easter, when she was known to be with child. On 5 April a decision was obtained in convocation (not carried, however, without some dissent) against the power of dispensing for marriage with a brother's widow. Parliament was also induced, after considerable opposition, to pass an act abolishing appeals to the court of Rome. The commons were afraid if the kingdom were laid under interdict that the wool trade with the Low Countries would be stopped; but their scruples were got over, and they passed the bill. Cranmer then, as archbishop, obtained leave to determine the king's matrimonial cause, and on 23 May at Dunstable he declared Henry's marriage with Catherine to be invalid. Five days later, at Lambeth, he gave sentence that the marriage already contracted between the king and Anne Boleyn was valid. Anne was then crowned as queen on Whitsunday, 1 June. Thereupon sentence of excommunication was passed against Henry at Rome, 11 July, while he, having nothing more to expect from the pope, had two days before confirmed the act abolishing annates by letters patent. He moreover caused Bonner to intimate to his holiness, who was then in France, an appeal to the next general council, although he had hitherto treated with contempt the pope's own intimation of such a council. He called Catherine ‘Princess-dowager of Wales,’ and when Anne Boleyn, in September, gave birth to a daughter (afterwards Queen Elizabeth), he deprived his other daughter, Mary, of the title of princess, treating her as a bastard. In November he caused Elizabeth Barton [q. v.], the ‘Nun of Kent,’ as she was popularly named, to be arrested, along with several others who had listened to her denunciations of his conduct towards Catherine and her hostile prophecies; and though his own judges declined to find them guilty of treason, he had an act of attainder passed against them in parliament early next year.

Anticipating now an adverse decision at Rome in the long-pending divorce suit, Henry endeavoured to neutralise its effect beforehand by repudiating the authority from which it came. His council decreed that henceforth the pope should be called only ‘bishop of Rome,’ and parliament, having reassembled in January 1534, arranged a new scheme for the appointment of bishops without reference to the holy see, together with a new system of ecclesiastical appeals, which were to be heard in the last instance by the court of chancery or commissioners appointed under the great seal. Other acts followed for the abolition of all imposts levied by the see of Rome and for the complete abrogation of the pope's authority. The last of these enactments had not yet passed the House of Lords when the pope on 23 March at length pronounced the marriage with Catherine valid, and all the proceedings before Cranmer null. But the sentence came too late to affect either legislation or judicial acts in England. Another most important statute passed was the act of succession, entailing the crown upon the children of Henry and Anne Boleyn, and compelling all the king's subjects to swear to its tenour. About a fortnight after its enactment this oath was refused by More and Fisher, who were thereupon committed to the