STUDENTS SERIES H257 ile ENOL By F. J. Sheed Communism and Man 6/- “ Tris easy to talk about communism and its dangers to man, but it is not so simple to back one’s arguments : with a logical foundation. Communism and Man will go a long way in providing a factual and solid back- . ground for the foundation. ‘The author begins by discussing communism and what it is. He shows us its ‘beginnings in Hegel, ’ the changes that Marx made, and what it has come to ‘mean to-day. Incidentally, in this section there is one of the very few explanations of dialectical materialism that is actually an explanation. The author then ‘examines man as a rational and social animal and as a a creature of God. Here, too, the book is thorough and complete in its analysis. ‘The last part of the Book, in which the author proves the insufficiency of PN ee man, is one of the strongest arguments against co munism ever written. There will be very few answers to this argument. For there can be no answer.” £ Pulpit Digest Man: The Forgotten 1/6 “In this slight volume . . . Mr, Sheed attacks the muddled thinking of the present day, insisting on a § right conception of the fundamental natute of man before any attempt can be made to rebuild the Social Order. He has a gift for brevity, and in less than soo words gives (in a chapter entitled “The Moral Law’) an admirable summing up of what is involved in our duty to our neighbour. j Times Literary Supplement SHEED & WARD LTD. 0/111 FLEET STREET LONDON E.C.4 f q Thousand Printed in EngloSelected Letters and Addresses of Pius XII Cr. 8v0 367 pages ‘The period from 1939 has been one of war and violent social conflict. ‘The repudiation of religion and the moral law has snapped the ties that bind men to one another and to God. ‘The Holy Father has ceaselessly pointed out the way to a solution for every evil that weighs so heavily on mankind. Again and again he has stated that only in the application to individual domestic, social, political and international life of Christian principles too long neglected, lies the foundation of a lasting peac For the period they cover, the encyclical letters and addresses gathered here are at once a masterly commentary and a penetrating diagnosis 12s. 6d. from CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY 38-40 Eccleston Square London S.W.1 PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES Waunes—34 Cuanis Srneer, Canotre — “Bursoxonam—re Barn Stezay, ‘Suuron0:—27 Jon Datrow Seana, ‘Machesra Hei aso Newessras 33 Wasrcare Ronn, Neweasnur (2) Livenroot:—so Maxcnesren Soames, Deny: Hise House, Tirkvoon iia He Las, Daxow 4 4 THE REFORMATION AND CAPITALISM BY RT REV. ANDREW BECK, A.A. ‘ IntRODUCTION Tae more one studies that strange phenomenon, the Reformation in England, the more difficult does it become to disentangle and classify the various causes which eventually produced such a complete religious change in this country, and such an alteration in the English attitude of mind not only to God and the Catholic Church, but also to the Stateand to fellowmen. The outstanding character- istic of the Reformation was the change in the external form of religious worship which it produced—the des- truction of the Mass and the substitution of a vernacular liturgy. ‘This point tends to make us look upon the Refor- mation as uniquely a religious movement, and to forget other aspects of it. Of course it was a religious movement, but during’ the sixteenth century it was not always so consciously a Protestant movement as we are now inclined to think. The “‘under-mind” of the Reformation was not always the spirit which was most in evidence on the surface of things. ‘An attempt to understand the working out of the Refor- mation brings with it the feeling that the question is not always approached from the right angle, or perhaps that ‘The substance of this pamphlet appeared asan article under the same title in the Clergy Review, January, 1933. Thanks are due to the editors and proprietors for permission to reproduce it here,2 The Reformation and Capitalism there is a point of view which is not sufficiently dwelt upon when the whole movement is considered. When we look back to them from the present we can see the shaping of events over long periods of time, and we are naturally tempted to judge the past by our knowledge of what was later going to happen. We may gain valuable lessons for ourselves from such a study, but it is a method of thought which leads to false historical judgments, for it consists in reading history backwards—aptly described as’ reading history with a squint, with one eye on the present and one on the past. This has been called the Whig method, and it is unsound, for the past is immediately judged by a comparison with the present, and the mind, skipping over the intervening ages, tends to base its appreciation of past conduct on present standards and present knowledge. Mr. H. Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History has summed up the position with an example in the history of persecution and religious toleration. “ Whereas the man who keeps his eye on the present tends to ask some such question as, How did religious liberty arise ? while the Whig historian by a subtle organization of his sympathies tends to regard it as the question, To whom must we be grateful for our religious liberties? the historian whois engaged upon studying the sixteenth century at close hand is more likely to find him- self asking why men in those days were so given to persecution. This is in a special sense the historian’s question, for it is a question about the past rather than about the present.” Yet this is what we so frequently—though perhaps un- consciously—do when we look back on the Reformation. We think of the camps of Catholicism and Protestantism as, clearly divided almost from the beginning, and we forget Introduction 3 that the leaders of the Reformation, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and in our own country men like Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Northumberland, Cecil, Bacon, and Gresham were really lapsed Catholics. Even some of those who later died for the faith were among the lapsed at first. The hesitations, for example, of Blessed John Forest and Blessed Richard Whiting, or even the temporary compromise of the first of all the martyrs, Blessed John Houghton, help us to ‘grasp something of the unprecedented situation with which these men were faced, and how difficult it was for even the most honest of minds to decide. Under Elizabeth, too, the way was far from plain, and the number of “convert martyrs” is striking evidence of the anxieties through which men’s minds must have gone. A study of the question of Catholic assistance at the new Prayer Book service makes clear how vague and shadowy was the border- line between the two parties. The teaching of the Church on communicatio in sacris was only with difficulty imposed on English Catholics even after the Elizabethan perse- cution was well under way. Dr. Meyer has shown that the “ apostasy from the Catholic Church did not therefore take place suddenly and of set purpose, but was the result of silent compromise with conscience,”* and this is all the more striking when it is recalled that as early as 1562 the Holy Office quite definitely forbade Catholics to be present at the new service. The heavy penalties attached to non- attendance at the Prayer Book service had made a number of Catholics argue that in the circumstances such attendance was allowable, or at least excusable. A question on the subject was sent to the Council of Trent, and Bishop Alvaro de Quadra also laid a petition before the Holy Office. In this petition the strongest possible case was made out, It was pointed ont that the new service was England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth, p. 70.-4 The Reformation and Capitalism “ entirely made up from scripture and the prayers of the Church, without any false doctrine or impiety” (which was not true), and the petition added that the penalty for refusal to assist at the new service was death (which was not trueeither at that time). The answer of the Holy Office was a categorical refusal to sanction any such attendance at an heretical service ; and in Rome this point of view was never changed.* Yet it is clear from Dr. Meyer's workt that the matter was by no means settled in practice by this reply. Even as late as 1588 there were men like Thomas Langdale, the apostate, who “affirmed, as many schismatical old priests do still, that it was not only lawful in these extremities to go to church without protestation but also to receive the Supper of the Lord.”} Blessed Edmund Campion had even taken deacon’s orders in the new Elizabethan Estab- lishment, Blessed Cuthbert Mayne and many other Oxford men—several later to be martyrs—hdd conformed, so that it is not surprising to find many in less exalted positions just, drifting with the tide. The attitude of Campion’s friend and adviser, Richard Cheney, Bishop of Gloucester, may have been exceptional, but it shows how easily compromise could be made, Cheney for a time persuaded Campion to do as he himself had done, and to adhere externally to the new Establishment while still holding to Catholic teaching and doing his best to promulgate it. Professor G. M. Trevelyan, though a great follower of the Whig tradition, has admirably said: “Those who conceive of opinion in Tudor England as sharply divided between two mutually + Seo Pollen : The English Catholics the Reign of Queom Eliza ‘eth BE especially Appendix XIT and the note on p. 6 especial dix. XII and the note on p. 69. LFiom lin dnowo to a Comfortable Advertisment, ec., & mand. sctipt preserved at Oscott College, printed in Bayne? Anglo-ftoman Raltions, 1558-1565 cee ne te OO oaclomg a The Failure of the Clergy 5 exclusive and clearly defined parties of Catholic and Protestant can never understand the actual course taken by the Reformation before the latter years of Elizabeth. Opinion was in the making, not yet made. Honest men as well as time-servers were perpetually altering their views. Few held a consistent body of doctrine which would have satisfied the Catholic or Protestant partisans of a later day.”* There are two points especially which it seems necessary to bear in mind in trying to form a just appreciation of cause and effect in the sixteenth century. The first is that the clergy as a whole failed to appreciate the situation at all under Henry VIII, and that there was good ground for the anti-clerical feeling which allowed the first steps in the Reformation to be taken with such apparent ease in England. The second is that, even before the actual break, a growing commercial spirit had in great measure “ secularized " the Tudor mind, and it was this spirit which in the main directed the Reformation. ‘Tue FAILURE OF THE CLERGY That there was popular dislike of the clergy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is well known, and the manifestations arising from Hunne’s case, for example, though spectacular, are in their general trend typical of the attitude of Londoners towards the clergy of their day. FitzJames, the Bishop of London, said of them that “they be so maliciously set in favorem haereticae pravitatis that they will cast and condemn my clerk, though he be as innocent as Abel.”t In the first part of his Ulopia, ** History of England, p. 297. The whole chapter is worth reading. } Richard Hunne, a merchant-tailor, had been sent to the Tower on'a charge of heresy. He was found dead in his cell, hanging by the neck by a silken girdle, The jury at the inquest brought in a charge of wilful murder against Dr. Horsey, the Bishop of London's6 The Reformation and Capitalism written in 1516, St Thomas More did not hesitate to con- demn the selfish and unjust practice of enclosure, by which landlords substituted grazing for arable farming, fenced or hedged in large tracts of land, and drove out the peasants, who had no legal redress. Among them he included ‘certain abbots, holy men no doubt” but no better than the rest, who “ throw down houses, pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing but only the church to be made a sheephouse.”” These men were so interested in their secular activities that they were in danger of forgetting the truths of Eternity. In fact, what strikes the student of the social scene in the early sixteenth, century is the almost complete absence of spiritual depth in those who were expected to be the leaders of the people in holiness, religion, and prayer. The hierarchy of 1531 made a pitiful mess of its oppor tunity to vindicate the spiritual in the face of the King’s demand for submission. St John Fisher alone of the Bishops resisted at the critical moment. But he was admittedly the exception, “the holy man of his time” and in this fact alone we have a clue to the success of the Reformation and a very striking commentary on the martyr bishop's own words : "In the days of the Apostles were no chalices of gold, but many golden priests ; but now there be many chalices of gold, but almost no golden priests.” ‘The Bishops failed because they were not fit for their high’ calling, or rather because the real meaning of their calling had been forgotten. “They were the practical men of the time, and it is only fair to see them for Chancellor, and two others. | FitzJames appealed to Wolsey declaring that the jury wore “‘falsé perjured caitifis.” Feeling ran very high, but eventually, after a long inquiry, Dr. Horsey was ‘acquitted. Ci. J. Gairdner, Lollavdy and the Reformation in Eng. fanid, Vol, pp. 278-284 ; History of the English Church, Chapter 111; Trevelyan, Ep. cit. p. 288; Fisher, Paltical Histor) of England, Vol. Vi pp. 133. 134. 208-210. The Failure of the Clergy 7 what they were, not so much ecclesiastics over-occupied with the King’s business, as trained and competent civil servants who happened to be clerics, to whom, because they happened to be clerics, fell the distinction, the honours, the wealth—and the sacrarient—of the episcopate.”* Warham even went so far as to forge Fisher's name and seal on the paper presented to Henry declaring that all the Bishops agreed that he had a case to put before the Legatine Court.f Of them all Wolsey had probably been the worst so far as moral life and depth of personal devotion are concerned. Yet, without Wolsey’s sensuality, we see something of the empty hardness and formality which religion had come to mean to these men in the brilliant pen-picture of Dr. Stokesley given by Dr. David Mathew and his brother in The Reformation and the Contemplative Life. He was efficient ; hard where money was concerned; academic. His religion was a.‘ con- ventional and arid observance,” quite failing to understand the sacramental piety of Catherine. St Thomas More, too, has a bitter description of the clerics who came to ‘Lambeth in 1534 to take the oath of Succession, and refers to the whole epissde as “playing a pageant.” The spiritual dignity of their priesthood sat lightly upon them. ‘When the first blow fell the Church in England was in a bad way. It was led by the successors of “ tough prelate- politicians like Beaufort and Morton and Wolsey, and the men who helped to burn St Joan and to pillory well- meaning reformers like Bishop Pecocke.”§ The appearance * The Hierarchy that Failed, by Fr. Philip Hughes, in the Clergy Review, Vol, 1, No. 1, Jan., 1931 'f Bridgett, Blessed John Fisher, p. 168. There is-a vivid descrip- tion of the scene in Hackett’s Henry the Eighth, pp. 271-273. The incident is somehow typical of the whole attitude of the Bishops pp. 178-181 * : GEbrstopher Dawson, Mediaval Religion, p. 194. For More's remark, Lives of the English Martyrs, edited ‘by Dom Bede Camm, Vol. I, p. 200,8 The Reformation and Capitalism of religion continued, but the “‘ under-mind ” of prelates, ecclesiastics, and courtiers was secularized. On religion in such a state fell Henry's demand for submission to the Royal will. And the hierarchy, at the crisis, failed. Tur Commerciat Minp Tf such were the leaders, what can be said of the common people? We can perhaps form an estimate of their scale of values by examining their attitude towards wealth and the means of acquiring it, This is the second point which must be borne in mind in discussing the Reformation in England. In its early history it was not a religious move- ment at all. It was political in its chief developments, and economic in its atmosphere. And even “economic” is too high-sounding a name for the whole process. It was a product of staleness and formalism in religion, and the motive behind almost the whole of, it was cupidity—a desire for wealth, and, in many cases, power. A tealization of all the ramifications of Thomas’ Cromwell’s moneylending business helps to understand the spirit which first brought about the destruction of the monasteries, and this spirit can best be recaptured perhaps through example rather than through generalization. In the Royal Manor of Hitchin, a little town in Hertfordshire, there was a small Carmelite Priory, and one of its tenants, ‘Thomas Parys, was nothing less than a spy in the pay of Cromwell.“ Through the State Papers one can follow him almost daily, spying treacherously into the convents of every county, signing his reports ‘ your assuryd beydesman and servant,’ and closing each with a petition for the spoil, like a hungry jackal picking the friars’ bones.” After several efforts he eventually persuaded Cromwell that the Priory was worth seizing for the sake of the lead in its The Commercial Mind 9 gutters. “That ponderous and metallic argument was far more likely to move Cromwell (the Malleus Monachor- tum, or, as old Fuller renders it, Mauler of Monasteries), for, as one of our Priory Papers bitterly remarks, he was merely a blacksmith’s son.”* The attitude of men towards money in the early years of the sixteenth century was different from what we are sometimes told was the mediaeval attitude, and it shows that even before any religious break the Tudor “ under- mind” was already separating itself from the traditional teaching of the Church. Professor Constant, in his book, The Reformation in England, has.a first chapter which brings chastening reflections to the Catholic reader ; and he sums up vigorously: “The Reformation in this country was brought about solely by a grievance of a practical order intimately bound up with a question of money.” It has been customary for some time to say that_ economic individualism, selfish money-seeking, commercial enter prise divorced from morality, and in general the “ big- business "” mind owe their growth and development to Calvinism. The implication frequently seems to be that without Calvin and without the Reformation movement which was systematized by Calvin, this development of organized money-making, of credit finance and their trail of attendant dealings and subterfuges would not have taken place. Max Weber originated the theory in its modern form in 1903. He has been followed in Germany by Werner Sombart, Professor Ernst Troeltsch, and others, and in England by Professor George O'Brien, especially in An + RL, Hine, The History of Hitchin, Vol.1,p. 143, { Page 31-_"On p, 419, , 6, he also gives Charles V's opinion of the Reformation it Bhgland in'r539. The aim of the English King fing of the Lutherans according € the Emperor was to "usurp fctlegastical property, amd shake of the youo of the Apostolic See"ro The Reformation and Capitalism Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, and witha good many restrictions and qualifications by Professor R. H. Tawney.* There can be no doubt that the Reformation did materi- ally affect the growth of this “capitalist spirit,” and this stands out very clearly in the Puritan writings of the next century. Miss M. James has well summed up the results of Protestant teaching in a telling paragraph: “At home the doctrine of an active faith resulted in a sort of sanctified industrialism. Abroad, it produced sanctified imperialism. Just as individuals were supposed to glorify God by rising to a higher position than their fellows, so 2 chosen nation was said to exalt Him by dominating its neighbour. One writer declared that ‘ Asa well-monied man that is prudent by God’s blessing gets above his neighbours, so it would be with a rich State, through God’s being well managed.’ Yet evidence is accumulating more and more rapidly which tends to show that the “capitalist spirit ”” did not take its origin in the Reformation movement but was already active and flourishing in the later Middle Ages. ‘The opinion might even be hazarded that, in England at Jeast, the position was reversed, and that the Reformation ‘was not so much a cause of the growth of that spirit as an efiect of its already well-established activity. Credit transactions of all kinds were far more common throughout the Middle Ages than is generally realized, and the idea that medieval society was “static” has been found to be less than half a truth. In the thirteenth century the produce of Papal tithes was sold in open market * Especially in Religion an ise of Capitalism. Ch, also Giorgy eoe’, Boonen, rope, Cattle Teachog a Big Buse The Month, August, 1926, " How the Reformation, De- Christianized Economics,” and April, r932, “Calvinism and ‘ Big + Social Policy during the Puritan Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p22, ‘ The Commercial Mind 1 against bills of exchange ; while the reference in Matthew Paris to the Caursines is well known, They “cloaked their usury under a show of trade,” and got 60 per cent. per annum on their loans.* In industry, too, the capitalist spirit was fast making headway. By the end of the fifteenth century the old guild system had largely collapsed and the greater industries such as cloth-making, dyeing, leather-dressing, tin-mining, and salt-panning were being run more and more completely on capitalist lines with the masters owning stock and tools, and the workers becoming mere wage-earners. Dr. W. ‘Cunningham was probably the chief exponent of the theory that credit played very little part in medieval trade. He spoke of the “ growth” of industry and commerce as of a gradual development, with the implication that credit transactions were practically non-existent in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately he was not basing his conclusions on historic facts, and more recent research has proved that he was completely wrong. There is probably no better attested fact in the whole economic history of the Middle ‘Ages than the immense use made of credit in commercial transactions. Dr. Eileen Power has shown, for example, that in the wool trade of the fifteenth century "from the wool grower in the Cotswolds to the buyer of Dutch cloth in Poland or Spain there was one uninterrupted succession of credit sales.” Even as early as the fourteenth century financial opera- tions of all kinds were carried on, credit was abundantly used, usually in a small way among merchants, but with sums involving thousands of pounds when it was a question of Royal or public debts. The Hundred Years’ War was * Cunningham, Growth of English Indusiry and Commerce Vol. I, Pp. 207, 208 '} S& a remarkable article, “ Credit in Medizval Trade,” by M. Postan in the Economic History Feview, January, 1928,412 The Reformation and Capitalism to a great extent run on credit, and was responsible for the rise of the first English financiers and army contractors. In London, by the middle of the fourteenth century, there were the beginnings of banking, while abroad in Spain, Italy, and Flanders banking technique was comparatively highly developed.* Later developments of this spirit of commercial enterprise have been well set out in a recent work by Dr. H. M. Robertson—Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism. The book is a criticism of the theory propounded by Weber and Sombart that the “capitalist spirit ” owes its strength to Protestantism and especially to the Puritan doctrine of the “ calling.” It could have been an important contribution to Economic History, but it has been spoiled by the querulous and bickering tone of the author, especially in dealing with Weber and Sombart, his lack of detachment, and his stupid treatment of Jesuit teaching on economic matters. He has, however, two valuable chapters on pre-Reformation Capitalism and the Renaissance State, showing with many further examples that commercial enterprises were in a highly organized state long before the Reformation, and that such modern business methods as, discounting of bills, insurance speculation, and double entry book-keeping were not only well known but in active use throughout Europe, especially in Italy and Flanders.§ * See G. Unwin, Finance and Trade under Edward ITT, especially BPancred “vents War AB Usher," the Opieins of Banking ta Economic History Reviews, April, 1934, and. Deposit Bankok in Barcelona, in the Journal of Econonole and Business History, 103%. + Cambridge University Press, 1933, 708. 6d } Perhaps this was feliz culpa, for it provoked the admirable The Ednoie hats of the Jester vy #1). Brads Sf OU, 1934, 58). See also a witty article in The Month, June, 1954 § Robertson, op. cit, pp. 40-43, 47-55. Two other interesting studies are Capital and Finance in te ge of the Renaissance, Dy R. Ehrenberg {Jonathan Cape, 1948), with a suggestive but some- 5 The Church on Usury 13 He points out, too, that no specific legal system, whether influenced by the revival of Roman Law or by the continua- tion ‘of Common Law, was exclusively productive of individualist ideas, but rather that the individualist spirit was so strong that it could over-ride any form of law and adapt any system to its own purpose.* And that purpose was summed up in the making of money. Tue CuucH’s Teacninc on Usury ‘The big check on this spirit had been the canonist in- sistence on, the evil of lending at interest without sharing risk. ‘This was the principle on which condemnations of usury were ultimately based. The lending of money, or its investment in a trading enterprise, was not wrong so long as risks were shared with profits. In all cases the investor retained the ownership of his money, and the contract was usually valid for only one enterprise. The Church was conservative, of course, and even in 1515 the Fifth Lateran Council gave a definition of usury which was correct, but which seemed to be in opposition to commercial tendencies, It declared that “‘ usury is properly interpret- ed to be the attempt to draw profit and increment without labour, without cost and without risk from the use of a thing which does not fructify.” By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, it had already become more and more clearly recognized that money could be considered asa thing which does fructify. So many occasions of invest- ment presented themselves that the loss of possible profit through lending a sum of money came to be looked upon what biassed Introduction ;_and Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, edited by E. Power and M, Mi, Postan Routledge 1934). * Robertson, op. cif., pp. 82-8414 The Reformation and Capitalism as always present. The old laws against usury had sup- posed a ‘‘ natural economy ” with barter as the means of commercial transaction, with money merely as a token of exchange and therefore barren. The “ money economy ” which had developed so strongly from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century began to ignore the old laws or to find ways of evading them. Once it had become practically possible to lend money at interest even when risk was not shared, the way was open for investment of capital and in most cases a high rate of return was possible. It is well to remember that this breach in the old Catholic doctrines on usury had been made before the Reformation—or rather that so many external circumstances had entered into play that there was nearly always a valid excuse for taking interest on a loan. Theologians like Gabriel Biel (4. 1495), John Eck (1315), and John Major (49-1550), and even saints like St Antonino of Florence and St Bernardine of Siena, had to modify traditional teaching to suit new conditions which sprang up with the increase of commerce and competitive trading. It was Eck in fact who most strongly defended asa theological proposition the legitimacy of the contractus trinus in Germany." This contract had grown up from three separate contracts. A man could enter into a contract of partnership with A; he could also insure himself with B against the loss of his capital ; and he could similarly insure himself with C against any lessening in the rate of profit considered suitable. Every- body agreed that each separate “contract was allowable. Eck, however, maintained that the three contracts could be made with the same person. This meant that it was sufficient merely to plead “triple contract ” in order to obtain interest on a loan.» Eck’s proposition was stoutly * See Robertson, op. cit., pp. 135 et seq. Ashley, Economic History, Vol. 1, Pt. 11, pp. 439-447- The Church on Usury 15 contested, but in practice came to be admitted. When the Counter-Reformation movement in Germany began it led to a good deal of discussion among theologians, and was then more generally known as the German Contract. With the occasion grew the evil. The earlier mediaeval preachers had inveighed against cupidity in all its forms, and had discussed academically whether there was any chance of salvation for the merchant. Now the merchant was to come into his own ; and the “ merchant ” of Tudor days was the counterpart of the modern financier. The stlccessful trader while continuing—to the confusion of posterity—to be called by the generic name of ‘ merchant” retired froip trade and became, in effect, a banker.”* The rise of the English ““ merchant” followed the enor- mous development of the wool trade in the early years of the sixteenth century, After the boom came a period of depression and the successful firms gave up business and began to specialize in finance. Their chief form of trans- action was mortgaging estates at home, and discounting bills of exchange, chiefly on Antwerp, at ‘‘ double usance ” or two months—a process which produced substantial profits, came to be known as “ dry exchange,” was con- sidered as “ clear and plain usury,” and even in the days of ‘James I was condemned by its opponents as “a gripping usury.” It was a process in common use amongst govern- ments as early as 1519, and Dr. Knight wrote to Wolsey in that year expressing amazement that the English Government had not made use of it in paying off Swiss troops.t + Taney in the IMfroduction to Thomas Wilson's A Discourse pon Coury. “Classics of Social and Political Science. G. Ball & mS, 1925, 158. + Tey marvel that money should be sent from England to the Switzers when 2,000 might have been saved by the exchange. Tt is ieported zo. pce of English gold wore sent over” night to Pisey, Jam., 1519. Quoted by Tawney, of. cif., p. 70, note 1.16 The Reformation and Capitalism REJECTION OF THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH A study of Tudor economics brings one to the conclusion that in all classes, and especially in the high places, there was an enormous gulf between ancient theory and more modern practice. The time-honoured arguments against usury were bandied about, but their effect on practical life was very small. The main business of life was the get- ting of money. On the Continent, Charles V realized this quite well. In 1540 he allowed interest of 12 per cent. ‘on commercial loans in the Netherlands, while in England in 1552 and 1553 the usury laws were dispensed with so that Government loans could be raised abroad with interest charged at 13 and 14 per cent.* At the time when Cardinal Pole was preparing to reconcile England to the Holy See, both the Emperor and the English Council insisted that the only hope of a working settlement was to leave the holders of monastic and Church lands in peaceful possession. Charles himself had no illusions as to the working of the “secular” mind, In 1533 he had urged Clement VII to pass sentence of excommunication against Henry, but not to lay England under an interdict as this would be bad tor Spanish and Flemish trade. Again in 1539, he was being urged to undertake the invasion of England and the deposition of Henry. His hostility was completely broken down by Henry's promise of a seven years’ tariff truce. He might have applied to the greater number of the European Governments tHe words he later used, in 1554, about the English when he declared openly that their belief mattered little compared with the way their pockets were affected This changed attitude of mind is well illustrated by the history of English law concerning usury. + Ehrenberg, op. cit, p. x80, Robertson, op. cit, p. 21, Cecil and Gresham 17 In 3487 and 149 statutes were passed reviving in all their stringency the old laws against usury, and punishing evasions with severe fines. In 1545 the first break occurred in the old tradition. While continuing to prohibit usury, and especially fictitious sales, the act allowed interest up to ten per cent. In 1552, however, zealous Reformers like Latimer, Lever, and Crowley, were pleased to see a “Byll against Usurie” passed by Somerset's government. This returned to the prohibition of interest in any form. It took a further nineteen years for the commercial spirit to succeed, but in 1571 the day was won. A bill was passed again sanctioning interest up to ten per cent, From that time onwails interest in one form or another has been allowed in English law. Ceci, AND GRESHAM Among the financial backers of the Tudor Government moral theories and ethical considerations counted for very little. Professor Tawney, in the long introduction he has prefixed to Dr. Thomas Wilson's A Discourse upon Usury, has provided students with a wide and deep study of the whole Tudor economic field, and he shows clearly that from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards the spas- modic but ubiquitous credit transactions which had for- merly been carried on, usually in a small way, by farmers, maltsters, merchants, and even priests, gradually fell into the hands of bigger financiers, who developed their money- lending, mortgaging, and other forms of credit business on 9 large scale, Even in quite remote country districts the bodger,” who made advances on standing crops and so cornered the market, was a well-known and well-detested figure. Financiers like Stoddard, the Greshams, and Pallavicino, capitalist employers like Spring of Lavenham,18 The Reformation and Capitalism Winchcombe of Newbury, and Byrom of Manchester, land lords and land speculators like the Willoughbys, Bevis Bulmer or Sutton* seem to have been completely unmoved by any religious considerations. They were “ merchant- minded "—unafiected by the old Catholic doctrine, and most probably influenced by Calvin (whose famous letter to Oecolampadius was not published until 1575), only to the extent of using his name. Tawney's comment on Pallavicino is enlightening: “' Sir Horatio Pallavicino, to whom Lord Shrewsbury sends his agent to negotiate a oan of £3,000, is a figure who was typical of the seamy side of Elizabethan finance. Beginning his career under Mary asa collector of Papal taxes in England, he had experienced a sudden conversion on the accession of Elizabeth, and had laid the foundation of his subsequent immense fortune by retaining in his own hands the funds which his conscience forbade him to deliver to antichrist.”t Everybody has realized that religion meant nothing at all to. Thomas Cromwell ; but what it meant to William Cecil has been less obvious. Yet perhaps more than all others he was of thiat secular-minded class who organized the Reformation. He was not given to explaining his own mind and attitude, but there is a passage in a letter of his which is significant. In 1587, he was negotiating for peace in the Netherlands, and he complains that no notice has been taken of his suggestion that some form of toleration should be extended to those in the Low Countries “ that have been so christened and brought up or are so instructed in their form of religion as either they did not know any + Tawney, op. cit. pp. 45, 53, 54- Cf. H. M. Robertson, of. cit, pp. 104-106, and an article by the same author in Journal of Eco: nomic and Business History, November, 1931. +P. 37, For Calvin's lettgy of. Ashley, Bcononsic History, Vol. I, Part if’p, 438. Ch also. Bawsey, op. cit, pp. 118-120, for an cestimaté of the influence of “that worthy instrument of Gad, Mr. Calvin” Cecil and Gresham other, or that cannot without peril of damnation to their souls change their religion.” People who could not change their religion to suit their convenience were to him a phenomenon. The fact speaks volumes for his own attitude of mind. In fact he could with equal calm obtain from Pole a dispensation from the Lenten abstinence “because of his fidelity to the Catholic Church,” and a few years later make all arrangements for stamping that Church out of existence and for introducing the new Elizabethan Establishment into England ! ‘Another Elizabethan example is Sir Thomas Gresham, better known to posterity as the formulator of “ Gresham's Law.” Hisather, Sir Richard Gresham, had been one of the largest ‘grantees of monastic lands under Henry VIII, and had argued for the foundation of a Royal Exchange in 1537. The son followed the father, was interested in land speculation, and made money in almost every conceivable way. He was financial adviser to the Government under Edward VI and claimed to have saved the nation from bankruptcy. His advice to Elizabeth’s Council in 1558 has a strangely modern ring about it. Here is no mediz- valist discussing the just price or the ethics of exchange speculation. It is a modern business man explaining how to “peg” sterling against the Flemish exchange at “Antwerp, how to gain on exchange fluctuations which have been artificially provoked, why debts should be contracted by-the Government with nationals and not with foreigners, and other matters, even to the theory of gold points, which in the midst of recent financial discussion we have come to Jook upon as modern. Yet these transactions were older ‘veh than Gresham, and had been -practised under Elizabeth's father. Gresham himself was born in 1518, took his B.A. at Cambridge before 1534, was apprenticed to his uncle and20 The Reformation and Capitatism in 1543 was admitted a Freeman of the Mercers’ Company. His early upbringing was nominally Catholic, but can have had little effect on his attitude to life. By 1558 his con- duct seems to have been summed up by the adage, “ God helps those who help themselves.” After explaining to the Council a rather intricate piece of jugglery with ex- change rates on Antwerp by which the English pound could be given a nominal value of 22s., he concludes by saying : “ which thing is only kept up by art and God's providence for the coin of this your realm does not corgespond in fineness not ros, the pound.’"* Aid Gresham can be taken as representative of Tudor financiers in the mid-sixteenth century. ConcLuston ‘The Reformation occurred just at a'ioment when the possibilities of money-making by means of almost every sort of commercial transaction had become vastly developed, and one is led to the conclusion that for the rapidly growing commercial class religious influence, whether Catholic or Protestant, had really very little effect. ‘The commercial mind was in existence before the Reforma~ tion, grew and developed with, but not because of, the Reformation, had as its driving power the pursuit of money, and as its creed a doctrineless individualism. In minds with such a background it is no wonder that the holding on to the wealth acquired by the looting of the monasteries became the matter of importance, and the underlying cause of the continuation of the Reformation in England, Mr. Belloc has for years insisted upon this point. Tt was the looting of the monasteries which fixed the Reformation + Burgon, Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, Vol. I, p. 486. There ashore ie of Gresham (with, bibliography), by EA Salter, published by LoBaard Parsons, Yoana PY Conclusion ar inthiscountry. The“ New Learning ” was fostered by the financiers and the commercial class for purely selfish ends and the Reformation became a “vested interest.” The phrase is used frequently by Belloc, and occurs even in the more modern “ official” histories which he so heartily contemns, The latest biographer of Queen Elizabeth has thus summed up the situation at the beginning of her reign “Nor was this all. The sale of monastic and chantry lands had converted the Reformation into a colossal busi- ness interest in which everyone, yeoman, merchant, gentleman, and nobleman, with any free capital, had in- vested. Lands had changed hands like shares in a modern company, involving a range of speculators far greater than the actual number of holders, many as these were. For most people of any importance, when doctors and laymen in divinity had argued themselves hoarse, this remained the ruling consideration ; and if Catholics offered truth, why so also did the Protestants, and along with it a reliable guarantee, free from all scruples of conscience, of a nation- wide investment. The issue was not simple even for the clergy, since a large number of them had married in the last reign, and if Catholic practice were restored would have to quit their calling or their wives. The Reformation had become a great vested interest.””* The transition from Catholic to non-Catholic England was slow and the old order did not yield without a struggle. But the influence of the financiers was decisive. The Church’s struggle was not with Protestantism but with ‘Mammon both in the clergy and in the laity, Inevitably Seg tig eweial sep nage Bele, iy of bh Val "IV, 196, How the’ Reformation, Happened, pp, 321-120, Cranmer, pp. 151-152, and a critical article on Treveiyan’s England under the Stuaris in the Universe, October 19th, 1934.22 The Reformation and Capitalism the secular and commercial spirit would have come into collision with the traditional teaching of the Church on business ethics. In England it forestalled the collision by an overthrow of the Church and its doctrines. A sop was given to the people in the form of a new Establishment, but this new body had no power to implement its bleating protestations and the commercial spirit went bravely and unscrupulously on its way. Economic expediency had taken the place of the supernatural as a criterion of ethics. NOTE ON BOOKS Apart from the books mentioned in the notes, theré have been several modera publications which deal with’ different aspects of this complex subject. The following will be useful to the student E, Powsr. The Wool Trade in Medieval English History. (Oxford, r94t) ; G. Do Raushy. Phe Wiltshive Woollen Industry in the Sixteenth Century. (Oxford, 1943) Me Yat” Soil Bote tring the Pain Reoton (Rowtedge 7930) an The Efe of the Religious | Changes ofthe Sitenth and eventoonth Centuries om Economie Theory in Byre : European Cioilisation. Vol IV. my in Bye A. Fanvant. Catholiciim, Protestantism and Capitalism. (London, 1929) H. Sém, The Origins of Modern Capitalism. (London, 1927.) H, Hatiser. Les Débuts du Capitalisme. (Paris, 1927) W. R. Scorr, “The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish ‘and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720. (Cambridge, torr.) Especially Vol. IIT A.B. Usui, The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterrancan ‘Europe. "Harvard, 1943.) Important articles have appeared in The Journal of Economic History (Cambridge, Mass.), notably Vol. 1, 1928: "Historical and Theoretical issues tn the Problem of Medieval Capitalism,’ by FH. Knight, and Vol. II, 1929, ‘The Origin and Evolution of Early European Capitalism,’ by J. Strieder. Good bibliographies aré published from time to time in the Economie History Reviow, Pooks anager bong Pes mrBooks on the Reformation by eminent Catholic authors from CTS - BOOKSHOP 28a Ashley Place London S.W.1 |