Supplication against the Ordinaries

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Supplication against the Ordinaries landed before King Henry VIII in March 1532, carried by the Speaker of the Commons and a company of knights and burgesses. It was a petition, passed by the House of Commons, listing nine specific charges against the Church's bishops and clergy. What made it remarkable was not just what it said, but how it said it. The MPs closed their list of grievances by declaring their "marvellous fervent love" for the King, then immediately asked him to dissolve Parliament and let them go home. The King paused before speaking. What he said in reply, and what the bishops said back, set in motion a confrontation that would define the relationship between Crown, Parliament, and Church in England for generations.

• 2. What Ordinaries Actually Did

  ›

  The word "ordinary" referred to a cleric, such as the diocesan bishop of an episcopal see, with jurisdiction over a defined territory. In practice, this meant real power over real people. The contemporary chronicler Edward Hall records that MPs in the Commons complained bitterly about the "cruelty of the ordinaries" in heresy proceedings conducted ex officio, meaning on the Church's own authority rather than on a private accusation. Hall's own account is vivid on the mechanics. A man could be summoned, told he faced charges of heresy, and shown articles against him. No accuser, however, would ever be named or brought forward to face him. The accused then had a stark choice: recant, or burn. There was no third path. As Hall put it, the party cited "might make none" purgation. For the Commons, this was not an abstract legal objection. It struck at something fundamental, the idea that a man should know who accused him and why.

• 3. Nine Charges

  ›

  Beyond the heresy trials, the Supplication's nine charges ranged across nearly every friction point between lay society and the institutional Church. The independent power of the Convocation to make its own laws without the King's consent topped the list. After that came the use of subtle questioning that trapped ignorant men in heresy proceedings, and the inconvenience of ordering laymen to appear in Church courts far outside their own dioceses. The petition also named excommunication used for minor causes, excessive fees collected in Church courts, and heavy charges when bishops installed clergy into their parishes. Two charges carried a particular edge. One targeted the practice of bishops giving Church offices to young persons described as their nephews, a polite term for relatives inserted into positions they had not earned. The other objected to the large number of holy days observed, the petition said, with little actual devotion. The final charge concerned clergymen who held secular offices, blurring the boundary between Church and state in ways the Commons found troubling.

• 4. The King's Careful Answer

  ›

  On the 18th of March, the Speaker presented the document to the King, and Henry's spoken reply was calibrated to reveal very little. He told the Commons that a king who is a judge ought not to be "too light of credence," and promised he had not acted on the Supplication without hearing the accused party. He acknowledged the petition was directed against the spiritual persons and prelates of the realm. Then came the sharpest moment. The MPs had asked both for a full investigation of clerical abuses and for Parliament to be dissolved immediately so they could go home. Henry pointed out these two requests contradicted each other directly. He offered them a choice: stay and see the matter through, or leave without remedy. He closed with a warning, measured but clear, that if they refused a reasonable settlement, he would "search out the extremity of the law" and would not make the same offer again. The Speaker and his company were then required to leave.

• 5. The Convocation's Defence

  ›

  For several weeks after that audience nothing visible happened, but when the Convocation of Canterbury reconvened on the 12th of April, the Supplication was the first item on the agenda. The King had clearly asked Archbishop William Warham for a formal response. Warham put the question to the Convocation's Lower House immediately. Three days later, Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, reacted strongly against the clauses concerning the Convocation's power to make Church law, the canons. The inferior clergy gave their assent to Gardiner's arguments on the 19th of April. Gardiner's reply was the only one entered into the Convocation's official register. He argued that no real division existed between clergy and laity, and that if any discord had arisen, it came from the "uncharitable behaviour of certain evil and seditious persons" infected with heretical opinions. He also acknowledged that honest and well-meaning men in the Commons could be misled by persistent and manipulative lobbying from bad actors who only pretended to care about justice. Gardiner upheld the Convocation's legislative independence by citing scripture and Church tradition, praised the King's wisdom, and saw no need for royal permission over Church law. Warham added his own postscript, claiming he had already reformed excessive court fees the year before.

• 6. Competing Drafts and Hidden Hands

  ›

  Who actually wrote the Supplication is a question historians have not fully resolved. The Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton argued that the government put the petition into its final form behind the scenes, before any debate on clerical abuses even began in Parliament. Similar complaints had been drawn up in 1529 after parliamentary debate but were never enacted. Thomas Cromwell had held onto those earlier drafts. The historian Stanford Lehmberg offered a different reading, suggesting that Cromwell may have taken it upon himself to draft the document, or that MPs had raised the issue spontaneously on their own initiative. The preamble itself contained an unusual framing, blaming heretical books alongside the "uncharitable behaviour" of the ordinaries for the division between clergy and laity in England. The Convocation's answer rejected the Supplication in substance but wrapped its refusal in carefully humble language. A proposed second reply was corrected by John Fisher at Rochester in May 1532, when delegates came to consult him about what would become known as the Submission of the Clergy. Whether that second, fiercely unyielding reply was ever actually placed before the King, historians do not know.