Submission of the Clergy

The Submission of the Clergy was a pivotal transfer of authority from the English Church to Henry VIII. Margaret Pole presents it not as an abstract constitutional change but as a rupture with immediate consequences: the Pope’s authority in England was challenged, Thomas More resigned, and the king’s control over his marriage became harder to separate from his control over the Church.

Background: Marriage and Jurisdiction

The submission unfolded amid Henry VIII’s effort to resolve his marriage to Katherine of Aragon in his favor. The dispute concerned whether the marriage was valid and what authority could decide the question. Margaret recalls the argument that the king might obtain a papal dispensation if Katherine’s claim that the marriage had never been consummated were accepted; her opponents treated that claim as a threat to Henry’s household and rule. The conflict therefore involved more than a private marriage: it raised the question of whether the Pope or the king could determine the legal and religious terms on which the royal family and succession rested.

The News Reaches Princess Mary

Montague brings the news to Princess Mary and Margaret. Mary understands that her father is moving against the Church and insists on hearing what has happened rather than being treated as a child. Montague tells her that the Church has yielded to the king, that the Pope is to be disregarded in England, and that Thomas More has surrendered the Lord Chancellor’s seal and gone home. Mary immediately sees the breadth of the change: the king has taken control not only of the Church’s wealth, but also of its laws and courts. She recognizes that this new authority bears directly on her parents’ marriage.

The report makes Mary’s political understanding visible through her questions and response. She connects the Church’s submission to Henry’s effort to rule on his own marriage, while Margaret recognizes that Katherine has explained the measures the king and Thomas Cromwell have taken. Mary does not answer the news with a public declaration of resistance. She says she will pray for wisdom, for her tutors, for John Fisher, and for Thomas More, whom she regards as a man who knows what he ought to do.

What the Submission Changed

Montague describes the clergy’s new restrictions in concrete terms: the Church could no longer make law, convict heresy, send its wealth to Rome, or take commands from Rome. These limits made the submission a change in jurisdiction as well as a declaration of political obedience. The churchmen were expected to respond to the king, while the Pope’s authority could no longer operate as an effective counterweight within England.

Margaret challenges the idea that the matter belongs only to men in office, naming the Pope, the king, churchmen in Parliament, and figures such as More, Fisher, and Mary’s tutor Richard Fetherston as those who should speak. Montague answers that the clergy had already spoken: most agreed without argument, and when the matter came to a vote, they stayed away. In his account, More’s departure is therefore not simply a personal resignation; it exposes how little room remained for independent counsel when the Church’s leaders had largely acquiesced or withdrawn.

Aftermath: Conscience Under the King’s Claim

The submission’s conflict over authority reappears in the spring of 1534, when Thomas Cromwell administers the oath of succession to the assembled peers at Westminster Palace. Margaret records that the Pope had publicly ruled Henry and Katherine’s marriage valid, while the king claimed the power to declare his wife not his wife and his daughter a princess. The competing claims leave subjects facing a choice between royal command and their understanding of religious and legal truth.

Thomas More refuses the oath as written, while indicating that he could sign a revised version. He does not condemn those who drafted or accepted it; he says he cannot sign the existing text for the sake of his own soul. Margaret recalls that Henry had promised More he would not put him to this test, but later breaks that promise. The later oath is not the submission itself, yet the narrative shows how the submission’s reordering of authority creates the conditions for such tests: the king’s claims reach into church governance, marriage, succession, and individual conscience.