Note (back) — Chapter IX

These significant proceedings did not stand alone. In 1515 the Bishop of London's chancellor was indicted for the murder of a citizen who had been found dead in the Bishop's prison.[667] The Bishop interceded with Wolsey to prevent the trial; any London jury would, he said, convict any clerk, "be he innocent as Abel; they be so maliciously set in favorem hæreticæ pravitatis".[668] The heresy was no matter of belief, but hatred of clerical immunities. The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, wrote More to Erasmus in 1516, was "popular everywhere";[669] and no more bitter a satire had yet been penned on the clergy. In this matter Henry and his lay subjects were at one. Standish, whom Taylor describes as the promoter and instigator of all these evils, was a favourite preacher at Henry's Court. The King, said Pace, had "often praised his doctrine".[670] But what was it? It was no advocacy of Henry's loved "new learning," for Standish denounced the Greek Testament of Erasmus, and is held up to ridicule by the great Dutch humanist;[671] Standish, too, was afterwards a stout defender of the Pope's dispensing power, and followed Fisher in his protest against the divorce before the legatine Court. The doctrine, which pleased the King so much, was Standish's denial of clerical immunity from State control, and his assertion of royal prerogatives over the Church. In 1518 the Bishopric of St. Asaph's fell vacant. Wolsey, who was then at the height of his power, recommended Bolton,[672] prior of St. Bartholomew's, a learned man; but Henry was resolved to reward his favourite divine, and Standish obtained the see. Pace, a good churchman, expressed himself to Wolsey as "mortified" at the result, but said it was inevitable, as besides the King's good graces, Standish enjoyed "the favour of all the courtiers for the singular assistance he has rendered towards subverting the Church of England".[673]