Act of Succession

The Act of Succession is the parliamentary measure through which Henry VIII’s government seeks to secure the succession of Anne Boleyn’s children and make support for that future a test of loyalty. In the novel, it is not merely a rule about who may inherit: its oath turns a dynastic claim into an obligation to be carried throughout the realm, while Thomas More’s resistance tests whether Parliament can command assent in matters he considers spiritual.

Purpose and Political Setting

The succession measure is presented as part of the effort to settle Henry’s marriage and the status of the children expected from Anne. When Henry summons Thomas Cromwell and Stephen Gardiner to review a bill intended to secure Anne’s children, Anne reads its language over the king’s shoulder. Its provisions contemplate her death and the possibility that she might die without delivering a child. Anne objects that the bill would allow Henry to replace her, while Cromwell explains that Parliament must provide for contingencies. The scene makes the succession law’s practical purpose inseparable from the uncertainty of childbirth and the vulnerability of the queen’s position.

The political question behind the bill is larger than the identity of an heir. In a discussion of Marsiglio of Padua’s propositions, Cromwell argues to Henry that kingship derives through a legislative body acting for the people, and that temporal government includes the authority to determine who is married, who is legitimate, and who is a bastard. He distinguishes those powers from the church’s claims to jurisdiction. The succession legislation thus belongs to a wider contest over whether the realm’s institutions can define its own political order.

The Oath and Its Reach

Cromwell treats the oath as an instrument that must work beyond the court and Parliament. He intends it to be sworn by men in every borough and village and by women of consequence, including widows with inheritances and landowners. Commissioners will travel across countryside and border regions to secure pledges even from people who may barely have heard of Anne. In his conception, the oath makes loyalty measurable and enforceable across social rank and distance; a law that cannot be enforced on rich and poor alike is not enough.

That ambition is also a source of unease. Cromwell imagines the limits of the commissioners’ reach: the oath can be carried across Cornwall, the Welsh marches, and the Scottish border, but not readily to the supernatural inhabitants of hedges and hollow trees, or to the dead buried beyond the reach of ordinary administration. The imagined gap between the state’s demand for universal assent and the country’s older, less visible worlds gives the oath a scope that is at once administrative and haunting.

More’s Refusal and the Limits of Parliament

At the Lambeth proceedings, Thomas More is asked to swear to the Act of Succession. He says he cannot take the oath, but will neither speak against it nor dissuade others from swearing. Thomas Audley insists that this is insufficient. More’s position refuses both open opposition and the affirmative assent the government requires, leaving the law’s demand for loyalty in direct conflict with his conscience.

More’s distinction becomes explicit in his conversation with Richard Riche. Asked to consider a hypothetical act of Parliament making Riche king, More accepts that Parliament could change a temporal jurisdiction. But when Riche asks whether Parliament could make God cease to be God, More answers that it could not; he then argues that spiritual jurisdiction lies outside the realm and cannot be transferred by a parliamentary vote. In this reasoning, the succession question is entangled with the separate claim that Henry has been named head of the church. The government treats the vote as politically binding; More maintains that Parliament’s authority has a limit where divine law and spiritual jurisdiction begin.

Enforcement and Consequences

Cromwell’s response is to make the oath’s consequences concrete. After More’s family has taken it, Cromwell considers whether he can delay the king’s action against More, and writes instructions for Richard Cromwell to escort the prisoner to the Tower. He hesitates and allows one more day, but the hesitation does not remove the state’s demand. The Act’s authority is shown not only in its parliamentary form, but in the machinery of oath-taking, investigation, and imprisonment brought to bear on refusal.

The novel also emphasizes that disagreement over the Act is not automatically proof of treason. When Riche reports More’s argument, Cromwell distinguishes More’s underlying belief from what can be shown he said and whether his words can be proved malicious. The law’s force therefore depends on interpretation as well as enactment: the same distinction between temporal and spiritual authority that More uses to defend his conscience may be recast by the government as a denial of the king’s title. Through this tension, the Act of Succession becomes a test of how far parliamentary authority can reach—and of what happens when a subject refuses to let political obedience settle a religious question.