From the Eternal City with (not much) love
Rome’s influence on Chester isn’t just related to its foundation in AD74 as a fortress to protect the north west border of the Roman empire. This blog article tells the story of the events in 1527 when the imprisonment of a Pope in Rome by an Emperor led an English King to change his relationship with the church in England, resulting in the transformation of the city of Chester.
On 6th May 1527 Pope Clement VII was forced to flee along the Passetto di Borgo, the 800 metre long elevated passage (shown on the left of the above photo) that links the Vatican with Castel Sant’Angelo (on the right in the photo), the Papal fortress on the north bank of the Tiber. His rapid flight was due to an attack on Rome by soldiers of the army of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Pope’s personal bodyguard, the Swiss Guard, covered his retreat and made a last stand near the obelisk in Piazza San Pietro before being all but annihilated by the much superior force of mercenaries that made up Charles’ army.
The German, Spanish and Swiss mercenaries had not been paid and could not be controlled by their commanders, leading to Rome’s sacking with thousands of people tortured and murdered and much of the city’s treasures looted. After being held hostage in Castel Sant’Angelo by the Imperial forces, Clement was finally able to leave his fortress on 6th December 1527 but was forced to agree to an alliance with Charles V.
How did these dramatic events, some 1,400 miles from Chester, have such a great effect on England and its king? Some eleven days after the attack on Rome and Clement’s flight to Castel Sant-Angelo, Henry VIII started the process that he hoped would lead to the annulment of his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine, with whom he had been unable to produce a male heir, on the grounds that she had previously been married to his dead brother Arthur and, he argued, the marriage had been consummated and was therefore invalid. He also happened to be obsessed with Anne Boleyn, who he needed to marry to have a chance of producing a legitimate son.
But any divorce required the Pope’s agreement and Catherine strongly denied that she and Arthur had consummated the marriage. It was Henry’s great misfortune that, at this critical time, the Pope came under the political influence of an Emperor whose much loved aunt was none other than Catherine of Aragon. His inability to obtain a divorce from Pope Clement was to lead Henry to break with Rome and make himself the head of a new church, the Church of England.
The most visible consequence for Chester of the schism with the Roman Catholic Church was due to Henry’s newfound power to claim possession of his Church’s property, including the land and buildings of its religious institutions. The three friaries in Chester – the Black Friary, the White Friary and the Grey Friary - were the first to surrender to Henry VIII’s commissioner on 15th August 1538, while the Abbey of St Werburgh and St Marys Nunnery were dissolved on 20th and 21st January 1540 respectively. The land and buildings of the friaries and the nunnery, covering about 20% of all the land within the city walls, was bought from the king by private interests and the buildings were, over time, demolished to allow new development. All that remains of the nunnery is its chancel arch, which now stands in Grosvenor Park, whilst the existence of the friaries is marked only by the street names of Black Friars, Grey Friars and White Friars.
The abbey, with its accompanying landholding that covered perhaps a further 20% of the Medieval city, would have suffered the same fate but for Henry VIII’s decision in 1541 to create a new diocese of Chester with the abbey church as the new bishop’s cathedral.