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A Study in the Formulation of Policy: The Genesis and Evolution of the Act of Six Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Glyn Redworth
Glyn Redworth
Affiliation:
St Edmund Hall, Oxford OX1 4AR
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Extract

The Act of Six Articles of 1539 affirmed half a dozen key Catholic beliefs and their denial was made punishable by law: a heretic's death was automatically prescribed for repudiation of transubstantiation, and possible death as a felon for those who denied the divine authority of clerical celibacy, vows of chastity, private masses or the practical necessity of auricular confession. The measure was made even more severe as recantation was of no effect where transgression of the first article was concerned. Little wonder its detractors called the act ‘the whip with six strings’, or the ‘bloody statute’. From early on, the passage of the act was often seen in terms of a personal triumph for Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, along with Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, who piloted the measure through parliament. All of the allusions to Gardiner's involvement come from hostile sources, and most of these ascriptions are vague and lacking in circumstantial detail. William Turner, in The rescuyinge of the Romishe fox, referred to the act in a much quoted statement as ‘the six articles, otherwise called Gardiner's gospel’; it remains a moot point whether Winchester's enemy, Turner, was ascribing to Gardiner authorship of the act or merely endorsement of its orthodoxy. An unknown author, whose work is to be found in Narratives of…the Reformation, argued that the act stemmed from the king's anger against reformist bishops who quarrelled over his deployment of monastic wealth, so Henry, ‘being stirred thereunto by Winchester and other old papists in the next parliament, made vj new articles of our faithy.… The most comprehensive and detailed indictment of Winchester's involvement comes in a highly virulent, and extremely effective, piece of propaganda directed against the bishop.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 42 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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2 Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. Nichols, J. G. (Camden Society, 1859), 224Google Scholar However, another version of this same passage appears as a preface by ‘E. P.’ to Cranmer's Confutation of Unwritten Verities, but does not single out Stephen Gardiner for special mention, talking only of ‘the incitation of the old popish bishops’; Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. Cox, J. E. (Parker Society, 1846), 16.Google Scholar Some commentators did not delve at all into the provenance of the statute. The chronicler Hall, though he carried no brief for the act, seems to have accepted it as just another government bill, finding nothing to say on its origins, Hall, E., The union of the two noble and illustre famelies at the tyme of Lancastre and Yorke, London 1548, sig. 3Qvi rGoogle Scholar.

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18 LP xiii (i). no. 1211; an outline of diplomatic events is found in Merriman, R. B., Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Oxford 1902, i. ch. 12,Google Scholar ‘The Foreign Policy’, pp. 213-41.

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20 A point on which Bishop Gardiner realised the king would be sensitive.

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64 Cf. Concilia iii. 845 with PRO SP/I 152, fo. 19. Hethe's declaration is written underneath a version of the six questions connected with debates in Convocation. Moreover, the record of the votes cast in the Lower House [PRO SP/I 152, fo. 21] cannot relate to the events in Convocation of 2 June, as Lehmberg believed, Later Parliaments, 70-1, but stems from a motion whether to authorise Hethe to make his declaration, which itself refers to the two contrary votes. Lehmberg did not notice this provisional assent, which is nonetheless crucial to consider as it amends and clarifies the version of convocational activities given by Wilkins. It had not previously been recognised that the first set of questions recorded by Wilkins in fact comprised those to which the lower clergy were prepared to accept the bishops' answers. Presumably Wilkins was working from a document noting the presentation of the questions to Prolocutor Hethe. Wilkins was confused - hence his insertion of an English sentence in the middle of a Latin text to provide the link between the two incompatible sets of questions. Wilkins thought that the two sets of conflicting questions which he printed were both presented on the same day, 2 June, by Thomas Cromwell. He also believed that nothing of note occurred in the five sessions before that day. We know, however, that the Lower House had given their consent to the bishops' deliberations. This must have been requested on the fourth day that convocation sat, and given during the fifth session, because the debates in the Upper House of Convocation only began around the 23 May, and the records of the House of Lords state that the third meeting of Convocation took place on 14 May and, as Wilkins says, the sixth meeting took place on 2 June, LJ i. 108; Concilia iii. 845.

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83 For instance, when Lehmberg points out that the form adopted by Convocation concerning the issue of chastity now contained the interesting proviso that only vows ‘advisedly’taken are binding, he did not realise that the phrase ‘made to God advisedly’ was one of Henry's autograph additions to the draft bill. Lehmberg, loc. cit.; BL, Cott. MS, Cleo E v. fos. 327, 330; Concilia iii. 348-9.

84 For discussion of the question whether Henry's supremacy was purely jurisdictional -like the Emperor Constantine's - or also magisterial like the pope's [in which case the assent of convocation was inessential), see Ullmann, W.,‘This realm of England is an empire’, this Journal xxx (1979), 175–203, at pp. 180–1, 195-6. Cf.Google ScholarElton, G. R., The Tudor Constitution, Cambridge 1982 (second edn), 341–3,Google Scholar and Studies i. 183-4.