It must also be borne in mind that this dissolution of the monasteries, this attack on the monastic system, was not a religious movement fanned by reformers, but an act of Parliament, at the instance of a royal minister.  It was not done under the direction of a Protestant king,—­for Henry was never a Protestant, but as a public measure in behalf of morality and for reasons of State.  It is true that Henry had, by his marriage with Anne Boleyn and the divorce of his virtuous queen, defied the Pope and separated England from Rome, so far as appointments to ecclesiastical benefices are concerned.  But in offending the Pope he also equally offended Charles V. The results of his separation from Rome, during his life, were purely political.  The King did not give up the Mass or the Roman communion or Roman dogmas of faith; he only prepared the way for reform in the next reign.  He only intensified the hatred between the old conservative party and the party of reform and progress.

How far Cromwell himself was a Protestant it is difficult to tell.  Doubtless he sympathized with the new religious spirit of the age, but he did not openly avow the faith of Luther.  He was the able and unscrupulous minister of an absolute monarch, bent on sweeping away abuses of all kinds, but with the idea of enlarging the royal authority as much, perhaps, as promoting the prosperity of the realm.

He therefore turned his attention to the ecclesiastical courts, which from the time of Becket had been antagonistic to royal encroachments.  The war between the civil power and these courts had begun before the fall of Wolsey, and had resulted in the curtailment of probate duties, legacies, and mortuaries, by which the clergy had been enriched.  A limitation of pluralities and enforcement of residence had also been effected.  But a still greater blow to the privileges of the clergy was struck by the Parliament under the influence of Cromwell, who had elevated it in order to give legality to the despotic measures of the Crown; and in this way a law was passed that no one under the rank of a subdeacon, if convicted of felony, should be allowed to plead his “benefit of clergy,” but should be punished like ordinary criminals,—­thus re-establishing the constitutions of Clarendon in the time of Becket.  Another act also was passed, by which no one could be summoned, as aforetime, to the archbishop’s court out of his own diocese,—­a very beneficent act, since the people had been needlessly subject to great expense and injustice in being obliged to travel considerable distances.  It was moreover enacted that men could not burden their estates beyond twenty years by providing priests to sing masses for their souls.  The Parliament likewise abolished annats,—­a custom which had long prevailed in Europe, which required one year’s income to be sent to the Pope on any new preferment; a great burden to the clergy; a sort of tribute to a foreign power.  Within fifty