office devoutly maintained a medieval outlook. Stephen Gardiner, bishop
of Winchester, save for the final weeks of Henry’s life when in disgrace
he was kept off Edward VI’s regency council, nonetheless thrived.^31 Ye t
those who remained loyal to Rome, for example, Thomas More and the
bishop of Rochester John Fisher, suffered the extremes of Henry’s ire.
Both Protestant and Catholic fortunes first turned on the ‘king’s great
matter’, the question of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, but also
on the several other ‘lesser matters’ that were its sequels. The particulars
of Henry VIII’s estrangement from Catherine of Aragon and their
annulment enter this study only as ancillary matters;^32 of greater
importance are the intended and unintended consequences for the
English church of how Henry effected his desires.
Henry VII (1485–1509) had done much to strip the nobility of their
power, and had also strengthened certain aspects of his own household
government. He had as well established prerogative courts, and the Star
Chamber, which operated more under Roman and less under the
common law.^33 But Henry VIII, never the hands-on monarch his father
was – too involved with the gloire of his state and his life as a
Renaissance prince – left many things to his administrators, and when
one fell from grace, there was no lack of those who sought to fill the
void. The significance of Thomas Cromwell – or rather the part Henry
VIII allowed Cromwell to play – in the transformation of English
government and religion in the 1530s, can hardly be over-stressed.^34 The
events of this period, which Cromwell helped orchestrate, fundamentally
changed England from one ruled as a feudal estate to that of a personal
monarchy; and not ruled so much through the king’s household, as
through the Privy Council. Further, where Henry VII had curtailed the
power of the nobility, Henry VIII would limit the Church; and this not
14 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^31) Lacy Baldwin Smith believes Gardiner’s exclusion owed to his resistance to Henry
VIII over the impending dissolution of the chantries. See, ‘Henry VIII and the Triumph of
Protestantism’,American Historical Review(71) 1966, pp. 1237–64. However, this view
has been greatly improved upon by E.W. Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will: the Protectorate
Provisions of 1547’, The Historical Journal37.4 (1994), pp. 901–14, p. 912, which sees
Gardiner the victim of Protestant factions surrounding Edward Seymour and Paget, who
hoped to slander him about the land issue to Henry by not communicating Gardiner’s
desires on the matter. Ives then goes on to say, somewhat contradictory to this, that Henry
had no intention of putting Gardiner on the Regency council anyway, as he did not trust
him to support the royal supremacy, pp. 912–13.
(^32) Cf. Chapter Five on Jewel’s life as bishop of Salisbury.
(^33) M.M. Knappen, Constitutional and Legal History of England(Hampton, CN, 1964),
pp. 316–18.
(^34) I am following the interpretation of Sir Geoffrey Elton in his Policy and Police: The
Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972). Cf., also
Reform and Reformation. England, 1509–1558 (Harvard, MA, 1977), pp. 157–296.
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