Note (back) — Chapter XI

The same deceptive appearance of concord between King and Pope was employed to lull both Parliament and Convocation. The delays in the divorce suit disheartened Catherine's adherents. The Pope, wrote Chapuys, would lose his authority little by little, unless the case were decided at once;[831] every one, he said, cried out "au murdre" on Clement for his procrastination on the divorce, and for the speed with which he granted Cranmer's bulls.[832] There was a general impression that "he would betray the Emperor," and "many think that there is a secret agreement between Henry and the Pope".[833] That idea was sedulously fostered by Henry. Twice he took the Pope's nuncio down in state to Parliament to advertise the excellent terms upon which he stood with the Holy See.[834] In the face of such evidence, what motive was there for prelates and others to reject the demands which Henry was pressing upon them? The Convocations of Canterbury and York repeated the submission of 1532, and approved, by overwhelming majorities, of two propositions: firstly, that, as a matter of law, the Pope was not competent to dispense with the obstacle to a marriage between a man and his deceased brother's wife, when the previous marriage had been consummated; and secondly, that, as a matter of fact, the marriage between Catherine and Prince Arthur had been so consummated.[835] In Parliament, the Act forbidding Appeals to Rome,[836] and providing for the confirmation and consecration of bishops without recourse to the Papal Court, was discussed. It was, like the rest of Henry's measures, based on a specious conservative plea. General councils had, the King said, decreed that suits should be determined in the place in which they originated;[837] so there was no need for appeals to go out of England. Such opposition as it encountered was based on no religious principle. Commercial interests were the most powerful impulse of the age, and the Commons were afraid that the Act of Appeals might be followed by a papal interdict. They did not mind the interdict as depriving them of religious consolations, but they dreaded lest it might ruin their trade with the Netherlands.[838] Henry, however, persuaded them that the wool trade was as necessary to Flemings as it was to Englishmen, and that an interdict would prove no more than an empty threat. He was careful to make no other demands upon the Commons. No subsidies were required; no extension of royal prerogative was sought; and eventually the Act of Appeals was passed with a facility that seems to have created general surprise.[839]