POWER

4 Dissent and the break with Rome 4.2 Critics of the Church
ACTIVITY
It is 1530. Henry VIII has been
hearing a lot about the ideas of
the Protestant reformers. He
has called a meeting to listen
to the critics and supporters of
the Church. Use your work from
pages 138–140 to draw up a list
of the main complaints of the
Protestants. Remember, Henry
is impatient and bad-tempered
so it needs to be brief and snappy
– probably four or five points.
For example:
The Church needs reforming:
Point 1: The clergy ...
Point 2:
Point 3:
Point 4:
(In reality this meeting never
happened: it was still dangerous
to be a Protestant!)
FACTFILE
A map showing where there were pockets of
Protestant ideas in 1520. The key areas were
London, Bristol, East Anglia and Kent.
Bristol
London
Other criticisms
Many of the reformers’ criticisms were about DOCTRINE and detail – not things
that would have grabbed the headlines today! However, a few issues did capture
the public’s interest and help reforming ideas to gain popularity.
Wolsey’s power and wealth
As far as the reformers were concerned, one person stood for the excesses of the
Church more than any other – Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey had been a humble cleric,
who rose through the Church hierarchy to became the Archbishop of York,
cardinal and papal legate (representing the pope in England). At the same time,
he worked as Henry VIII’s lord chancellor, one of the most influential political
positions in the country. He used these positions to make himself immensely
wealthy. Wolsey built himself the lavish Hampton Court Palace to live in.
Source 11 The Venetian ambassador, Giustaniani, writing about Cardinal Wolsey
in 1519.
The cardinal is the first person who rules both the king and the entire kingdom. On the
ambassador’s first arrival in England he used to say to him, ‘His majesty will do so and
so’, but, by degrees, he began to forget himself and started to say, ‘we shall do so and so’.
Now he has reached such a height that he says, ‘I shall do so and so’.
Pluralism
Wolsey’s career highlighted another, more general problem: PLURALISM (holding
positions in more than one parish). This was an accepted part of Church life. For
example, in Canterbury in 1521, more than half the clergy held more than one
post. However, the reformers believed that it was impossible to serve more than
one parish effectively and that because of pluralism, many parish duties were being
left to poorly trained CURATES (assistants).
East Anglia
Kent
Areas of anticlericalism
Morals
Reformers also questioned the moral standards of the priests.
Priests took a vow of celibacy, but many of them broke
this vow. In the parish of St John Zachary in London, for
example, a brothel had been set up for the clergy. Alexander
Thornton, a Lancashire priest, lived openly with his partner
and had a son by her. These were not isolated cases.
The ‘benefit of the clergy’
Church courts came under criticism in 1511 after the tragic
case of Richard Hunne. Hunne was a London merchant
who refused to pay the fee for his son’s burial. He was
imprisoned, but in December 1514 was found hanged in his
cell. A verdict of murder was declared, but officers of the
Church courts claimed a special privilege called the ‘benefit
of the clergy’. This meant that they could not be tried in an
ordinary court, only in a Church court, and so they escaped
punishment. When word of this spread, the people of
London were outraged and support for the reformers’
ideas grew.
Despite all these examples of ANTICLERICALISM, it is
important to note that those who criticised the Church
– even the laymen – were usually devout Christians
themselves. To begin with, there were also not many people
who openly criticised the Church. Reformist ideas were
confined to a few key parts of the country (see Factfile).
Uncorrected proof
Source 12 John Fisher, Bishop
of Rochester, writing in 1526.
Fisher was one of several
bishops commissioned by
Wolsey to root out heretics.
These heretics do not speak for
the people – let them talk to the
people and hear their views. They
are like blind men, so they must ask
for mercy to be cured. They must
accept the ways of the Church if
they are to be forgiven. Just as the
blind man went to Jesus and had
his sight restored, so the heretic
must return to the church to have
his spiritual sight restored.
1 Re-read Simon Fish’s
criticisms of the church in
Source 8 on page 138. Now
make a list of the ways in
which More disagrees with
Fish in Source 13.
2 Does Source 13 seem more
like a defence of the Church
or an attack on Fish? Explain
your answer.
ACTIVITY
In order to get a balanced view,
Henry has invited the defenders
of the Church to the meeting to
make their case. Use your work
from pages 132–133 and page
141 to draw up a list of the main
points that defenders of the
Church would have made. For
example:
The Church does not need
reforming
Point 1: The clergy ...
Point 2:
Point 3:
Point 4:
Defenders of the Church
In 1521, Wolsey commissioned university THEOLOGIANS to write books
attacking Luther’s ideas. Luther’s works were publicly burned in London in
May 1521 and again in 1526. Wolsey and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
William Warham, decided it would be better to privately persuade those clergy
who had strayed towards Luther’s ideas to return to traditional beliefs, rather
than publicly denouncing them.
Another strong defender of the Catholic Church was Thomas More. More
was a Christian humanist, but he believed that Protestant ideas were heresy.
He wrote a point-by-point rebuttal of Simon Fish’s ‘A Supplication to Beggars’
(see Source 13). In October 1529, More replaced Wolsey as CHANCELLOR. He
proved he was willing to take much more drastic measures to limit the
influence of Protestantism. For example, in February 1530, John Tewkesbury,
who had imported and sold books criticising the Church, was burned to death
in Kent. In August the following year, the Cambridge scholar Thomas Bilney
was executed in Norwich for heresy.
Source 13 Thomas More’s response to Simon Fish, 1529.
It is very hard to work out if the views of Fish are mostly lies or simply foolish. The
faults of any immoral priest he attributes to all the priests of the realm while he also
rebukes those priests who keep their vows because they destroy the realm by turning
it into a wilderness because they have not married and produced children.
He aggravates his great crimes by calling the clergy bloodsuckers, drunk on the blood
of the holy martyrs and saints; gluttons sucking up the wealth of the country.
Critics get the upper hand at court …
However, the influence of both Wolsey and More began to decline around this
time. Wolsey fell out of favour with Henry VIII after he could not convince
the pope to ANNUL the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. More took the
pope’s side over the issue of the annulment, which angered the king.
As these two men fell from power, a new group of Protestant reformers rose
to high-ranking positions in government. Thomas Cranmer and Thomas
Cromwell in particular were helped into court by the Boleyn family, who
supported Luther’s teachings. These new men were hostile to the clergy. They
were also deeply critical of traditional ideas about purgatory, believing it was
simply a way for the Church to gain wealth and lands through indulgences
and bequests from anxious Christians. These reformers regarded the pope
as a scheming foreign ruler. Their powerful positions in Henry VIII’s court
allowed them to start convincing him that Church reform was the best thing
for England – and for the king.
… while ordinary people get on with their lives
It is difficult for historians to assess how far ideas about Church reform
affected the ordinary people of England at this time. Many people would
probably not even be aware of them. If they were, they would also have
heard of the dreadful fate awaiting heretics, so only the bravest would openly
support reform or write down their beliefs. The majority of the population
was illiterate, so there are few written records that allow us to infer what
they believed.
It is likely that many ordinary people felt that the Church took too much
money, and certainly some individual priests came in for criticism. However,
the kind of changes that Henry VIII was about to unleash would hardly have
been imagined, let alone desired, by the common people of England.
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