1515-1524 THE LUTHeran reFORMATION 377 ceptions, the clergy were ignorant, and even when not absolutely dissolute were remiss and easy-going in their lives. He was, therefore, anxious to make them more worthy of respect, and, with the consent of king and Pope, he began in 1524 to dissolve several small monasteries, and to apply their revenues to two great colleges, the one founded by him at Oxford and the other at Ipswich. He hoped that without any change of doctrine or organisation the Church would gradually be purified by improved education, and would thus once more command the respect of the laity. 4. Henry VIII. and the Clergy.-With Wolsey's object Henry, being himself well educated and well read, fully sympathised. For many years there had been a tacit understanding between the king and the Pope, and now that both the king and the Pope supported Wolsey's action there seemed to be less danger than ever of any disturbance of the friendly relations between Church and State. Yet though Henry was on good terms with the Pope, he had made up his mind that whenever there was a conflict of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters his own will, and not that of the clergy, was to be predominant. As early as in 1515, when a question of this kind was moved, Wolsey asked on behalf of the clergy that it might be referred to the Pope. "We," said Henry proudly, “are by God's grace king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the rights of the crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break and interpret at your pleasure, but we will not consent to your interpretation of them any more than our predecessors have done." Henry VIII., in short, took up the position which Henry II. had assumed towards the clergy of his day, and he was far more powerful to give effect to his views than Henry II. had ever been. Such an act of self-assertion would probably have caused a breach with the great Popes of the middle ages, such as Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Leo X. was far too much a man of the world to trouble himself about such matters. 5. German Lutheranism.-Before many years had passed the beginnings of a great religious revolution which appeared in Germany served to bind Henry and Leo more closely together. Martin Luther, a Saxon friar, had been disgusted by the proceedings of a hawker of indulgences, who extracted small sums from the ignorant by the sale of the remission of the pains of purgatory. What gave world-wide importance to Luther's resistance was that he was not only an eloquent preacher of morality, but the convinced maintainer of a doctrine which, though not a new one, had long been laid aside. He preached justification by faith, and the II. C C 1517-1521 HENRY AND LUTHER 379 acceptance of his teaching implied even more than the acceptance of a new doctrine. For centuries it had been understood that each Christian held intercourse with God through the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. His individuality was, as it were, swallowed up in the vast community to which he belonged. Luther taught each of his hearers that the important thing was his faith, that is to say his immediate personal relation with God, and that the intervention of human beings might, indeed, be helpful to him, but could be no more. Such a doctrine touched all human activity. The man who in religion counted his own individual faith as the one thing necessary was likely to count his own individual convictions in social or political matters as worth more to him than his obedience to the authority of any government. In Luther's teaching was to be found the spirit of political as well as of religious liberty. This side of it, however, was not likely to reveal itself at once. After a time Luther shook off entirely the claims of the Papacy upon his obedience, but he magnified the duty of obeying the princes who gave him their support in his struggle with the Pope. 6. Henry's Controversy with Luther.-Luther, when once he was engaged in controversy with the Papacy, assailed other doctrines than those relating to justification. In 1521 Henry, vain of his theological learning, wrote a book against him in defence of the seven sacraments. Luther, despising a royal antagonist, replied with scurrilous invective. Pope Leo was delighted to have found so influential a champion, and conferred on Henry the title of Defender of the Faith. If Henry had not been moved by stronger motives than controversial vanity he might have remained the Pope's ally till the end of his life. 7. Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn. It was a great disappointment to Henry that he had no surviving male children. England had never been ruled by a queen, and it was uncertain whether Henry's daughter, Mary, would be allowed to reign. Henry had already begun to ask himself whether he might not get rid of his wife, on the plea that a marriage with his brother's wife was unlawful, and this consideration had the greater weight with him because Catharine was five years older than himself and was growing distasteful to him. When in 1521, in his book against Luther, he assigned a divine origin to the Papacy, he told More of a secret reason for this exaltation of the Pope's power, and it is possible that this reason was his desire to obtain from the Pope a divorce under the pretext that it would secure a peaceful succes sion. At all events his scruples regarding his marriage with Catharine were quickened in 1522 by the appearance at court of Anne Boleyn, a sprightly black-eyed flirt in her sixteenth year, who took his fancy as she grew into womanhood. Flirt as she was, she knew her power, and refused to give herself to him except Catharine of Aragon: from a painting in the National Portrait Gallery. in marriage. The king, on his part, being anxious for a legitimate son, set his heart on a divorce which would enable him to marry Anne. Wolsey, knowing the obstacles in the way, urged him to abandon the project; but it was never possible to turn Henry from his course, and Wolsey set himself, in this as in all things else, to |