Note (back) — Chapter XI

These, at the moment, were two. He wanted to extract from the clergy a recognition of his supremacy over the Church, and he wanted money. He was always in need of supplies, but especially now, in case war should arise from the Pope's refusal to grant his divorce; and Henry made it a matter of principle that the Church should pay for wars due to the Pope.[791] The penalty for præmunire was forfeiture of goods and imprisonment, and the King probably thought he was unduly lenient in granting a pardon for a hundred thousand pounds, when he might have taken the whole of the clergy's goods and put them in gaol as well. The clergy objected strongly; in the old days of the Church's influence they would all have preferred to go to prison, and a unanimous refusal of the King's demands would even now have baulked his purpose. But the spirit was gone out of them. Chapuys instigated the papal nuncio to go down to Convocation and stiffen the backs of the clergy.[792] They were horrified at his appearance, and besought him to depart in haste, fearing lest this fresh constitutional breach should be visited on their heads. Warham frightened them with the terrors of royal displeasure; and the clerics had to content their conscience with an Irish bull and a subterfuge. "Silence gives consent," said the Archbishop when putting the question; "Then are we all silent," cried the clergy. To their recognition of Henry as Supreme Head of the Church, they added the salvo "so far as the law of Christ allows". It was an empty phrase, thought Chapuys, for no one would venture to dispute with the King the point where his supremacy ended and that of Christ began;[793] there was in fact "a new Papacy made here".[794] The clergy repented of the concession as soon as it was granted; they were "more conscious every day," wrote Chapuys, "of the great error they committed in acknowledging the King as sovereign of the Church"; and they made a vain, and not very creditable, effort to get rejected by spiritual votes in the House of Lords the measures to which they had given their assent in Convocation.[795] The Church had surrendered with scarcely a show of fight; henceforth Henry might feel sure that, whatever opposition he might encounter in other quarters, the Church in England would offer no real resistance.