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Edited by the Very "Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, D.D., F.S.A,,

Dean of Winchester,

and the Rev. William Hunt, M.A.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VIII

TO THE DEATH OF MARY

GUARDIAN.— "Indispensable to all serious students of the histor^'
of the English Church."

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH

EDITED BY THE LATE

Very Rev. W. R. W. STEPHENS, D.D.

DEAN OF WINCHESTER

AND

The Rev. WILLIAM HUNT, M.A.

A Continuous History, based upon a careful Study of Original
Authorities, and of the best Ancient and Modern Writers.

In Seven Vohwies, tcnifoiyn binding. Crown Svo.
Each vol. is sold separately, and will have its own Index.

Vol. I. The English Church from its Foundation to The
Norman Conquest (597-1066). By the Rev. William
Hunt, M.A. 7s. 6d. [Ready.

„ II. The English Church from the Norman Conquest to
THE Close of the Thirteenth Century. By Dean
Stephens. 7s. 6d. [Ready.

„ III. The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fif-
teenth Centuries. By the Rev. Canon Capes, late
Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. 7s. 6d. [Ready.

„ IV. The English Church in the Sixteenth Century from
THE Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of
Mary. By James Gairdner, Esq., C.B., LL.D.

[Ready.

„ V. The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and
James I. By the Rev. W. H. Frere.

,, VI. The English Church FROM the Accession of Charles I.
to the Death of Anne. By the Rev. W. H. Hutton,
B.D., Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.

„ VII. The English Church in the Eighteenth Century. By
the Rev. Canon Overton, D.D.

MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH ^i^

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VIII

TO THE DEATH OF MARY

JAMES GAIRDNER, C.B.

Hon. LL.D.Edin.

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

THIS vowME ^:i :;oT

First Edition igo2
Reprinted 1903

INTRODUCTION

Interest in the history of the English Church has been steadily
increasing of late years, since the great importance of the Church
as a factor in the develop7nent of the national life a?id character
from the earliest times has come to be more fully and clearly
recognised. But side by side with this increase of interest in the
history of our Church, the want has been felt of a 77iore complete
presentment of it than has hitherto been atte^npted. Certain
portions, indeed, have been 7vritten with a fulness and accuracy
■jj that leave nothing to be desired ; but many others have been dealt
:^ with, if at all, only in maniials and text-books which are generally
'3 dull by reason of excessive compression, or in sketches which,
^'" however brilliant and suggestive, are not histories. What seemed

rto be wanted was a contimious and adequate history in volumes
of a moderate size and price, based upon a careful study of original
■^ authorities and the best ancient a?id modern writers. On the
X^ other hand, the mass of material which research has now placed
at the disposal of the scholar seemed to render it improbable that

^"^'any one would venture to undertake such a history single-handed,

or that, if he did, he would live to co?nplete it. The best way,

""H^ therefore, of meeting the difficulty seemed to be a division of

^ labour amongst several competent scholars, agreed in their general

principles, each being responsible for a period to which he has

vi INTRODUCTION

devoted special attention^ and all working in correspondence
through the medium of an editor or editors^ whose business it
should be to guard agaifist errors^ contradictions^ overlapping^
and repetition ; but^ consistency and continuity being so far
secured^ each writer should have as free a ha7id as possible.
Such is the plan upon which the present history has been pro-
jected. It is proposed to carry it on far enough to include at
least the Evangelical Moveme?tt in the eighteenth century. The
whole work will consist of seven crown octavo books uniform in
outward appearance^ but necessarily varying somewhat in length
and price. Each book can be bought separately^ and will have
its own index, together with any tables or maps that may be
required.

I am thankful to have secured as 7ny co-editor a scholar who
is emincfitly qualified by the remarkable extent and accuracy of
his knoivledge to render me assistance, without which, amidst
the pressure of many other duties, I could scarcely have ventured
upon a work of this magnitude.

W. R. W. STEPHENS.

The Deanery, Winchester,
20th filly 1899.

INTRODUCTION

According to present arrangements the work will be dis-
tributed amongst the following writers : —

I. The English Church from its Foundation to the Norman
Conquest, by the Rev. W. Hunt, M.A. Ready.

II. The English Church from the Norman Conquest to
the Close of the Thirteenth Century, by Dean
Stephens. Ready.

III. The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Centuries, by the Rev. Canon Capes, late Fellow of
Queen's College, Oxford. Ready.

IV. The English Church in the Sixteenth Century from the

Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of Mary, by
James Gairdner, Esq., C.B., LL.D. Ready.

V. The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and
James I., by the Rev. W. H. Frere, M.A.

VI. The English Church from the Accession of Charles I.
to the Death of Anne, by the Rev. W. H. Hutton,
B.D., Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.

VII. The English Church from the Death of Anne to the
Close of the Eighteenth Century, by the Rev. Canon
Overton, D.D.

PREFACE

This volume has for its subject a period of transition in the
history of the EngHsh Church, the treatment of which, the
author is well aware, is beset by many difficulties.

The copious stores of documents now available have
rendered many long - cherished views untenable ; but the
results of investigation are as yet imperfectly known, and it is
to be feared that the truth on very important subjects will
have much prejudice to encounter before it can win general
acceptance.

With regard to detailed facts, however, the authorities
cited at the end of each chapter are open to consultation, and
the study of their testimony is invited. The only questions
which can arise on such matters are questions as to the
author's care and accuracy in the use of documents, or it may
be, sometimes, as to his judgment in their interpretation.

A more serious difficulty lies in the very atmosphere, so to
speak, in which the historian moves. How is he to interpret
the thoughts and feeUngs of the sixteenth century to an age
so very different ? Since that day the Christian world has
become divided into different religious bodies. The formal
unity of the Church, which it was then thought so important
to preserve, has long since passed away ; the words " heresy "
and " schism " have almost lost their meaning, and party
names have become rigid and exclusive.

But during the whole period embraced in this volume,

X PREFACE

the unity of the Church was not only the generally received
doctrine, but was also a doctrine which the State felt bound to
uphold. The rulers of the State might seek to put the Church
under new conditions ; they might even seek to discredit some
old doctrines. Both these things they did attempt ; and,
whatever we may think of their conduct, they succeeded
largely in their aims. But this did not affect the old belief,
held even by reformers, in one true CathoHc and Apostolic
Church. A supreme spiritual jurisdiction at Rome was not
felt to be vitally necessary — not even, at first, by all those who
were attached to old standards of belief. Their dissatisfaction
certainly increased during the reign of lawlessness and faction
which sprang up under the boy king, Edward VI., and they
welcomed a return under Mary to the old spiritual head of
Christendom. Yet under the Edwardine anarchy, men who
had without misgivings disowned the papacy were still con-
sidering deeply what were the essential principles of the one
true Church, purified from everything superstitious and un-
necessary. They could not, of course, quite agree among
themselves ; but they made very considerable progress towards
agreement, and laid the foundations in a new ritual of a more
real Catholicism than that of Rome.

But the authority of all that had been done as yet was
questionable. If royal supremacy had taken the place of
papal supremacy, how was royal supremacy exercised during a
minority? Were the acts of a violent faction of successful
intriguers to be regarded as the acts of royalty? No new
standard of faith could actually be promulgated in the days
of Edward VI., and what was heresy before could only be
regarded at best as heresy encouraged by men in power.

It must be understood, therefore, that wherever heresy
is spoken of in this volume, nothing is implied as regards
the truth or falsehood of the doctrines so described. The
essential nature of heresy, as understood in those days, was
an arrogant and pertinacious denial of doctrines laid down by

PREFACE xi

authority ; and where no competent authority had as yet
declared old beliefs superstitious, it was really heresy to dis-
pute them. In a later age, when the Church of England had
distinctly laid down her own dogmatic position in the Thirty-
nine Articles, some doctrines which had formerly been branded
as heresy lost that character for evermore.

Of course the heresies spoken of in this volume were
generally of a kind which we should include, in these days,
under the name of Protestant, and the author has been driven
to use that term occasionally for want of a better. They were
mostly such as in earlier times would have been called Lollard,
and in later times Puritan. But neither of these terms can
properly be used at this epoch ; for the use of the expression
" Lollard " was forborne after some of the Lollard principles
had been adopted by authority, and the name of Puritan
had not yet been invented. On the other hand, the term
" Protestant " is scarcely less of an anachronism as applied to
EngHshmen of this period ; for it was restricted in its applica-
tion to the Germans who agreed in the protest made at Spires
against the enforcement of the edict of Worms. There were,
indeed, even in the reign of Henry VIII., Englishmen like
Barnes who were imbued with Lutheran theology ; but they
were very few. So when the word Protestant occurs in this
volume, in reference to EngHshmen, it will be understood in
its popular modern acceptation.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Introductory — The Church under Henry the Seventh i

CHAPTER II
Henry VIII. and the Holy League.

CHAPTER III

The Case of Richard Hunne

CHAPTER IV
Jurisdiction of Church and State .

CHAPTER V

WoLSEY, Cardinal and Legate — Henry, Defender of the
Faith ........

CPIAPTER VI
Henry VIII.'s Divorce Suit .

PAGE

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII
/ The Submission of the Clergy ... . . loo

CHAPTER VIII
Royal Supremacy . . . . . .124

CHAPTER IX
y A Time of Sore Trial . . . . . • i55

CHAPTER X
The Northern Rebellion ..... 169

CHAPTER XI

y The Suppression of the Monasteries . . . 194

CHAPTER XII

Last Years of Henry the Eighth . . . .213

CHAPTER XIII

Edward VI and Protector Somerset . . . 240

CHAPTER XIV

The Church under New Masters . , .274

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XV

PAGE

Last Years of Edward VI. ..... 297

CHAPTER XVI
Lady Jane, Queen Mary, and Wyatt . . , 316 ^^

CHAPTER XVn
The Reconciliation to Rome . . . , . 336 />^

CHAPTER XVHI
The Progress of Persecution .... 358

CHAPTER XIX
The Pope's Estrangement ..... 378 i^

CHAPTER XX
Conclusion ....... 393

APPENDICES ..,...„ 397
INDEX ........ 401

KEY TO MAP
MAP

419
431

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH

On the ist of January 1501, it so happened that the archi-
episcopal Sees of Canterbury and York were both vacant — the
first by the death of the astute Cardinal Morton,
the second by that of the judicial but rather timid Canterbury
Rotherham. For York a successor was found by the ^"'^ ^°^^"
translation of Thomas Savage, Bishop of London, who had
long ago negotiated in Spain the marriage of Prince Arthur to
Katharine of Aragon, and whose promotion made way for the
preferment of Dr. William Warham to the See of London. In
Canterbury the vacancy was to have been filled by the trans-
lation of Thomas Langton from Winchester, who was elected
by the Chapter on January 22 nd, but died five days later.
In April following Henry Deane was called from Salisbury to
the archiepiscopal throne, which, however, he did not occupy
quite two years, for he died in February 1503. Dr. Warham,
after being Bishop of London for about a year, was then
advanced to the highest spiritual cure in England, which he
held for nearly thirty years.

These men were all statesmen, more or less, and with the
exception of Langton — an old Yorkist employed in embassies
by Edward IV. and Richard HI. — had been very useful to
Henry VII., either in the winning or the keeping of his throne.
It is noticed by Lord Bacon that that king. made large use of
churchmen as ministers of State, seeing that he could easily
reward them by promotions without cost to the Crown. But
the names above given include, with one exception, really all
^ B

2 THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VII. chap.

the great political churchmen who remained in the latter part

of Henry's reign. That one exception was Richard Fox,

Bishop of Winchester, Henry's faithful friend, who

IS op ox. j^^^ shared his exile when he was Earl of Rich-
mond, in the days of Richard HI., and had been his valued
councillor from the beginning of his reign. He had been his
secretary, perhaps even before he was king, and as early as
1487 had been advanced to the office of lord privy seal,
which he continued to hold under Henry VIH. In that
year, too, he was made a bishop by Henry VH., his first See
being Exeter, from which he was afterwards moved to Bath,
to Durham, and finally to Winchester. As Bishop of Durham
he had been actively concerned in the defence of the country
against the Scots — a thing which, as Richard HI. once in-
formed the pope, was always a primary duty with Bishops
of Durham. He had also been sent on pacific missions to
James IV., and not only used his own best endeavours to
prevent misunderstandings between the two countries, but was
a principal agent in arranging that treaty of marriage between
the Scottish king and the Princess Margaret, which ultimately
led to the union of the t\vo crowns in their descendant,
James I. In another way he deserves a no less grateful
recognition from posterity as the founder of Corpus Christi
College, Oxford — the College, as it was called, of the three
learned languages, which elicited the warm admiration of
Erasmus. At the accession of Henry VIII. he was recognised
as all-powerful, his only rival in the Council being the lord
treasurer, the Earl of Surrey, afterwards the victor of Flodden,
with whom he was by no means on very good terms, finding
that the earl, to spare his own shattered fortunes at this time,
sought to use his official position as a means of rewarding
private friends and followers.

The Church, no doubt, was a good training-school for

statesmen ; for churchmen, on the whole, received a far better

education than the nobility, and laymen who were not of

noble birth had no such avenue to promotion.

"^churcSen^ Yet the fact that clergymen could be so easily re-
to become warded, and had such large prizes set before their

politicians. ' -,■,?, • r

eyes, of course tended to draw the attention of some
to politics more than became their spiritual functions. There

I CLERICAL STATESMEN 3

were churchmen, indeed,, like Cardinal Morton and Bishop
Fox, whom the perils of the time, and not personal ambition,
had converted into wary politicians from the very outset of
their careers, and whom the skill and experience thus gained
recommended to the king's service, perhaps even to some
extent against their own inclinations. But others, of whom
in the next age Wolsey was the most conspicuous, conscious
of ability for State affairs, were animated by a zeal, that could
scarcely have been wholly unselfish, for the service of a king
of most discriminating judgment, who quite understood their
value. For either class lay politicians were a very unequal
match. They understood far less about statesmanship than
their more eminent clerical colleagues. But, on the other
hand, these were harassed at times, especially the more con-
scientious among them, with a feeling that the service of the
State was a kind of bondage from which they desired release
to enable them to do better justice to the duties of their
spiritual calling.

The secular functions into which the clergy were thus
drawn were of two kinds, the higher that of ministers of State,
the lower that of legal officials, ambassadors, and State
orators. And the transition to both these grades from ordinary
clerical duties was not at all unnatural. The common law,
indeed, was left to secular judges — the clergy did not meddle
with that. But equity was a matter in which some of them
were, even by their professional education, well qualified to
advise the king ; for the study of the canon law brought with
it that of natural equity. The lord chancellor was the
ofiicial keeper of the king's conscience, and the lord chan-
cellor had almost always been a churchman. So, too, had
his assistant, the master of the rolls, sometimes called in that
day Vice Cancellarms, or vice-chancellor.

Henry Deane, who held the See of Canterbury, as
already stated, for not quite two years, had shown ad-
ministrative abilities even in the days of Edward Archbishop
IV., but it was only as head of a religious i^^ane,
establishment — the priory of Llanthony near Gloucester, to
which, by the king's favour, he united the decaying parent
house of Llanthony in Ewyas, then within the borders of
Wales. His further advancement is supposed by some to

4 THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VH. chap.

have been owing to Cardinal Morton, from whose public work
in draining the fens of Ely he may have taken hints for the
fencing of the Irish pale with a dyke and wall. As Bishop of
Bangor he seems to have done much to restore order in a
neglected and impoverished diocese, which had suffered by
constant disputes between the Welsh and the English. But
his chief work was the part he took in the settlement of
Ireland, as the legal coadjutor to Sir Edward Poynings,
for he was appointed lord chancellor of that country when
Poynings was sent thither, and remained behind him as
deputy governor after his recall.

William Warham, his successor, had recommended himself
to Henry VII. as an able orator and a profound student of
Archbishop "^tural equity and public law. For these merits
Warham. }^g j^^d bccu sclcctcd by the king for various
embassies, and had been rewarded by preferments which
probably came to him unsought. In mind he was a thorough
churchman and student, bountiful in the days of his great-
ness towards scholars like Erasmus, grand and unselfish in his
expenditure in other ways, yet singularly abstemious in his
own personal habits. At his enthronement he was attended
by the Duke of Buckingham as his steward, and by other
great men who owed feudal services to the archbishop. The
duke alone brought 140 horses with him to Canterbury for
the occasion. The banquet which followed was sumptuous
beyond description. All the new archbishop's honours and
offices, says Weever, "were drawn, depicted, or delineated
after a strange manner, in gilded marchpane upon the
banqueting dishes ; and first, because he was brought up in
the University of Oxford, the vice-chancellor with the bedels
before him, and a multitude of scholars following him, were
described to present" {i.e. were represented presenting) "to
the king and the nobihty sitting in Parliament this William
Warham," with laudatory Latin verses on his career. Such
were the glories of great churchmen ; and in Warham they
did not interfere with true humility. More trying, doubtless,
were political responsibilities which he could not at all times
shake off, for about the time he was made archbishop he was
also made lord chancellor; and he was continually called
to the king's councils. He seemed to live in two worlds at

1 INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN 5

once, and was certainly one of those who could not help
feeling at times that the conditions of the two were not
altogether harmonious. He was never an active politician,
and never desired to be ; but duty to the king as head of
the State was as clear as duty to the Church, though in an
extreme time of trial the latter duty, no doubt, would theoretic-
ally be the higher.

But who could have supposed in the latter days of Henry
VH. that an extreme time of trial was near ? How could
such a thing have been credited even in the early ^^

rs o severe

days of Henry VIH., who, if tradition be not trials in
misleading, had himself been intended for the p^'^^p^^'^-
Church before his brother Arthur's death, and expected
one day to be Archbishop of Canterbury ? Indeed, putting
tradition aside, we know quite well that Henry VHI. had
all his days a taste for theological subtleties, and probably
could not have done the things he did but that he was
fully competent to argue points — of course with most royal
persuasiveness — against Tunstall, Latimer, Cranmer, and any
divine in his kingdom. No one could have had the smallest
presentiment of the days that were to come, and any trials
there might have been at that time were not beyond
endurance.

Bishops are naturally the political guardians of the Church.
In times of feudal despotism it was they who stemmed the
violence of tyrants and secured against oppression the rights
both of the Church and of the nation. But after Becket's day
the relations of the sovereign and the Church became more
settled, and the former could only act upon the latter by
conventional submission to its requirements. By this means,
however, the sovereigns of England obtained what the violence
of Henry IL had failed to obtain. They were supported and
strengthened by the power with which their impatient pre-
decessors had often been at war — nay, more, they
obtained a very complete command over it in most crown b the
tilings. The appointments to all bishoprics lay ^thg'^Jhurch"*
virtually with the Crown, for within the kingdom
chapters of cathedrals were obsequious ; and as for the
popes, not in such matters only, but in almost everything
that it was in their power to dispense, they generally showed

6 THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VII. chap.

themselves most anxious to gratify the different sovereigns
of Europe.

Of course they expected favours in return ; and besides a
number of customary exactions from the clergy, such as first-
fruits and tenths of bishoprics, and payments for the expedition
of bulls, they made appHcation for some things to the king
Jubilee at himsclf. The year 1500 was the year of jubilee
Rome. ^^ Rome, whcn pilgrims to the Eternal City were
rewarded with full inHnlgprire and rpmi<;sinr| c^^ gJn.S tn the
great benefit of the papal exchequer. The moneys thus
collected were much wanted for a crusade against the Turk
— that constant enemy of Christendom — who had just taken
Modon in Greece, and at this time menaced Italy itself.
But, gi-eat as the amount was, it was by no means adequate.
So, after the jubilee year was past, Pope Alexander VI.,
most considerately regarding the case of the multitudes
who from poverty, sickness, or the too great labour of
the journey, had not been able to visit the place where
they might have received so much benefit, despatched
nuncios into the diHerent countries of Europe, oftering the
inhabitants the same benefits, on their depositing in the
chests of certain special churches gratuiries, according to a
graduated scale of charges upon their incomes. Here, how-
ever, the different sovereigns of Europe commonly saw their
advantage. They could not allow so much money to pass
easily out of their realms for an object in which they were
not all equally interested. It was a simple matter to make
fine promises to the pope, admit nuncios into the realm, let
collections be made, and then, on one pretext or another,
detain the money collected. This was certainly done, not
only by the needy ^laximilian. King of the Romans, but
by Louis XII. of France and Ferdinand of Spain, who
diverted to their own uses moneys raised with a religious
object. But Henn,' VII. of England really acted more
honestly. He declined, indeed, for various reasons, to set on
foot an expedition from England. The enemy was too far off,
and apparently the king distrusted a combination of many
nations, even if the pope himself was to be relied on. He
also got the pope to forbear from levving by his own authority
a 'subsidy on the clerg}-. as a thing contrary to the liberties of

I JUBILEE AND INDULGENCES 7

the kingdom. But he procured that subsidy himself from the
clergy, calling upon both the archbishops to summon their
convocations for the purpose; on which the province of
Canterbury granted ;^i 3,000 — somewhat more than the
tenth which the pope himself solicited — and that of York, after
some months' consideration, agreed to an exact tenth. So
that it is not true, as has been supposed from his answer to
his Holiness, that Henry declined to help the project at all.
On the contrary, he not only authorised a collection within
his realm, but gave Jasper Pon, the papal collector, ;£4ooo
out of his own purse. He only left it to those nations which
were nearer the Turks, and knew their manner of fighting, to
supply the men and apparel of war.

Bacon characterises Henry's reply to the pope as "rather
solemn than serious," and yet adds that Jasper Pon was
"nothing at all discontented with it." Jasper Pon, who had
a present of ;£"2oo from the king for himself, had certainly no
cause to be discontented with his liberality either towards
him personally or towards the object of his mission. But
Bacon did not know this, and very likely did know how
papal applications for the raising of crusade money in other
kingdoms were generally treated by the sovereigns. It was
quite a mistake, however, to suppose that Henry had no real
sympathy with such objects. In fact, it was not
the first time he had authorised the levying of favoured a
crusade money in his kingdom, though he frankly '^''^^''^^^•
told the pope on a previous occasion that the heavy burdens
his subjects had to sustain for the war in Brittany and the
security of the kingdom made it advisable to defer publication
of the indulgence. Later, in 1505, when Emmanuel, King
of Portugal, proposed a crusade, Henry took up the subject
warmly, and in 1507 he pressed it strongly on Pope Julius II.,
offering to take part in the expedition himself, and hoping
that at least two other kings would join him. His zeal in
the matter induced the Knights of Rhodes in 1506 to
nominate him protector of their order, and won the utmost
applause for him at Rome from the pope and cardinals. Pie
was, indeed, to all appearance, much more in earnest about
it than Pope Julius himself, who, though a very decided
fighting pope where the temporal interests of the See of Rome

8 THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VH. chap

were concerned, cared far less for the recovery of the Holy
, ,. ^^ Land from the Turks than for purely Italian

Julms II. , . o T T ••11 ...

objects. In 1508 Julius joined the iniquitous
league of Cambray for the spoliation of Venice; and not
long before, he, like Leo X. after him, had issued a bull
of indulgence for the rebuilding of St. Peter's, which was
published in the spring of that year at St. Paul's. It had
not long been exhibited there, however, before it was sup-
pressed.

It was Julius II. who gave the dispensation for marrying
Henry VII.'s son, afterwards King Henry VIII. , to his

brother Arthur's widow. The reader will scarcely
dispensltion require to be told how Henry VII. and Ferdinand
^'S- \r?on^^ and Isabella of Spain, after many years of
second negotiation and watching each other's fortunes,
marriage. (.Qj^pig^-g^j^ 'y^ Novcmbcr 1501, the loug talked of
marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Katharine of
Aragon, and how, in April following. Prince Arthur died.
The Spanish sovereigns had paid but one out of three instal-
ments of the bride's dowry, and conceived they had a right,
which Henry disputed,, to ask that one instalment back.
But the matter was compromised by an agreement that the
widow should marry Henry, the king's second son ; and
Queen Isabella, in particular, was anxious for her daughter's
sake, who was left friendless in a foreign land, that the
betrothal should take place as soon as possible, and a treaty
made to give effect to it. The English king for some time
hung back, but a treaty for the new marriage was actually
concluded at Richmond on June 23rd, 1503 ; in which the
sovereigns alike of Spain and England bound themselves to
do their utmost to procure from the pope the dispensation
necessary for a match in which the parties stood related to
each other in the first degree of affinity. The terms of this
treaty seem to have been drawn up in Spain, for it spoke of
the affinity as arising from the first marriage having been
both solemnised and consummated ; whereas in truth, as
Ferdinand soon discovered, it was known in England that
no consummation had followed. Prince Arthur being very
young and delicate. On August 23rd, however, Ferdinand
urged his ambassador at Rome to procure a dispensation in

I KATHARINE'S DISPENSATION 9

precise agreement with the words of the treaty, to avoid all
possibility of cavil on the part of the English.

The pope to whom Ferdinand had intended to apply
was Alexander VI., but he died in that very month of August,
before the despatch was written ; and his successor Pius III.
died in October. Julius 11. succeeded in November; but
the case of marriage with a deceased brother's wife required
some consideration, and even in July of the following year
(1504) the pope in writing to Henry only talked about
sending the dispensation a little later by Robert Sherborne,
afterwards Bishop of Chichester. He conceded, however,
to the entreaties of Isabella of Spain, who was then on her
deathbed, what he had so long withheld from Henry ; and,
that she might die in peace, sent her a brief in the form of
the desired bull, antedated December 26th, 1503. This he
delivered for transmission to the Spanish ambassador under
an oath of secrecy ; but to his extreme annoyance, Ferdinand,
very soon after it arrived in Spain, sent it on to England to show
Henry that all obstacles to the match were now removed.

Thus Julius found himself committed to both parties
equally; and, to make things right, in the spring of 1505
he commissioned Silvestro de' Gigli, Bishop of
Worcester, to go to England and convey to Henry JJ'ant'edl
the bull of dispensation itself, which was to be
the authority for the marriage, and of which the brief was
a mere anticipation. The latter, it should be observed,
was inaccurately spoken of at the time as a bull, or a copy
of a bull, because its tenor was the same in all essential
points as that of the bull which it was proposed to issue ;
but it was in form a brief, that is to say, a formal letter
from the pope to Prince Henry and Katharine, not a public
document, though its authority was very much the same.
The bull, too, was antedated like the brief, December 26th,
1503; but there were some slight differences in the text
besides the form of address — the result, no doubt, of fuller
consideration ; and among these was the little word fo?'sa?t
{" perhaps ") qualifying the inaccurate statement that the
marriage with Arthur had been actually consummated. It is
important to remember these facts in connection with what
took place a quarter of a century later.

lo THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VI L chap

Henry VII., however, had no intention that the marriage
should immediately take place. In spite of the bull, he
professed to entertain some conscientious scruples about it.
These, indeed, Archbishop Warham propounded, but on the
king's part they apparently meant only that he had some differ-
ences yet to settle with Ferdinand before he could agree to
it. He even considered about marrying his son Henry to the
eldest daughter of Philip, Archduke of Austria, who had now
become King of Castile by Queen Isabella's death, and might
be, under good tuition, a formidable rival to Ferdinand in
the affairs of Spain. By the treaty of 1503 it was agreed
that the marriage with Katharine should take place so soon
as Prince Henry completed his fourteenth year, which would
be on June 28th, 1505. But on the 27th the
Pi-fnce^Hen^ry. P^lnce, no doubt by his father's direction, made a
formal protest that the marriage with Katharine had
been arranged without his consent, and that he refused to ratify
what had been done in his minority. This was the king his
father's way of meeting bad faith on the part of Ferdinand,
who had not fulfilled his treaty engagements to have the
whole remainder of the marriage portion in London by that
date ready for delivery; and from this time, in fact, there was
deep distrust between the two kings as long as King Henry
lived. In the chess game they were continually playing
against each other all that time the astute Ferdinand certainly
found his match in the English king ; for not only was he
compelled at last to send the remainder of the marriage
portion and renounce all future claims to it, but he saw him-
self, with all this, in danger still of losing his hold on Castile
by Henry's betrothal of his daughter Mary to young Prince
Charles, King Philip's eldest son, afterwards the renowned
Emperor Charles V., and Henry coolly insisted that he should
ratify the treaty for that marriage, else the other between his
son and Katharine should not even yet take place.

Thus a very severe tension had arisen in the diplo-
matic relations of Henry VII. and Ferdinand just before the
^ death of the former. But the accession of Henry

Accession and ^-ttt -am -i i i

marriage of Vlll. m April 1509 made a complete change.

enry VI . jT^j-^^jnand was not afraid of being overreached by

a youth in his teens, and agreed at once to what he had

t HENRY VlinS FIRST MARRIAGE ii

refused to Henry VII. — the ratification of the treaty for the
match of Charles and Mary. In England, on the other hand,
although the propriety of marriage with a deceased brother's
wife was still questioned by old councillors (of whom Arch-
bishop Warham was the chief opponent), yet the young king
himself was so decidedly inclined to fulfil the long engagement
that the point was settled, no man pretending to doubt at that
time that the papal dispensation was sufficient to give validity to
what was doubtful. The marriage, accordingly, took place just
nine weeks after the new king's accession, and Ferdinand re-
joiced to think that his position in Europe was strengthened by
a cordial ally and son-in-law. A very few years, unfortunately,
sufficed to teach that son-in-law the depths of his duplicity.

Before going farther, however, with the story of the new
reign, there are some things more to be said about the
relations of the Church of England to Rome.
Mention has already been made of Silvestro de' men beneficed
Gigli, Bishop of Worcester, who was sent to ^"^"s^^"^-
England by Julius II. with the bull of dispensation in 1505,
and the name speaks for itself as that of an Italian. He
was, in fact, a Lucchese, like his uncle Giovanni de' Gigli, who
occupied the same bishopric of Worcester before him, and
both were appointed to that bishopric by papal provision. Now
papal provisions were an abuse and usurpation, against which
numerous Acts of Parliament had been passed from the days
of Edward III. ; but their recipients, though under those
statutes liable to imprisonment, had so often obtained the
king's pardon that the statutes had to be renewed again and
again, with almost ineffective warnings for the future, till
latterly there was a sort of tacit compromise between Rome
and England in favour of those ecclesiastics, chiefly foreigners,
who showed themselves equally skilful to do service alike to
pope and king. There was also a general understanding
throughout Christendom that when the holder of any benefice
died at Rome, it might be filled up by a nominee of the
pope ; and cases of the kind were not infrequent, as bishops
and other clergy were drawn to Rome by many causes. Gio-
vanni de' Gigli died there, and it was no doubt by virtue
of this claim that Alexander VI. bestowed his bishopric upon
the nephew. As for the uncle, he had been a papal agent

12 THE CHURCH UNDER HENRY VH. chap.

resident at the courts of Edward IV. and Henry VII., and
had written elegant court poetry for state occasions. The
nephew was made an English bishop seven years before he
visited the country in which his bishopric lay.

Another Italian for some time at Henry VII.'s court was
Adrian de Castello (or de Corneto, as he was called from his
birthplace), who was papal collector of Peter's pence, and on
the death of Pope Innocent VIIL returned to Rome. He
remained for the rest of his hfe in Italy, but while there was
provided by successive popes, first to the bishopric of Hereford
in 1502, then to that of Bath and Wells in 1504. He was
enthroned in the latter See by proxy, his representative
being Polydore Vergil, the agent for all his affairs in England,
who received and transmitted to him the revenues of his
bishopric. He was known at Rome as the rich cardinal, and
built a fine palace there near the Vatican, in front of which
he inscribed the name of his patron, the King of England. It
was here that he entertained Pope Alexander VI. at that fatal
supper at which the pope was said to have been poisoned by
wine out of a flagon which he had intended his host to drink
of. But the scandal seems to have originated with Adrian
himself, who, it must be said, is not very trustworthy. His
palace at Rome was afterwards given by Henry VI II. to
Cardinal Campeggio. Polydore Vergil was a native of
Urbino, sent to England by Alexander VI. as sub-collector
to Adrian, and, with the exception of one or two brief
visits to Italy, he remained in the country nearly fifty years.
For although, as we shall see, he was deprived by Wolsey
of his office of sub-collector, he held many English pre-
ferments, the principal of which was the archdeaconry of
Wells. Being an excellent scholar, a friend and at first a
sort of literary rival of Erasmus, with whom he had much
intercourse in England, he devoted many years of his life
to writing in Latin a most masterly history of the country
of his adoption, which he completed in 1533.

All these Italian churchmen were humanists, and so were a
few others of less note, like Henry VII.'s Latin secretary, Pietro
Carmeliano, a native of Brescia, who wrote Latin poems for
state occasions, and received Church preferments in England
from the royal bounty.

I ITALIAN CHURCHMEN 13

Authorities. — Busch's England under the Tudors, vol. i. , contains not
only a full account of the reign of Henry VII. , but an exhaustive list of
authorities for the period, with a critical examination of the value of the older
writers. But to verify the facts in this chapter the books most required will
be Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy's ed. ) ; Bacon's He^iry VII.; Memorials of Henry
VII. in Rolls ser. ; Letters and Papers of Richard III. and Henry VII. in
the same series ; Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, vol. i. , and Venetian,
vol. i. ; Dictionary of National Biography (for Adrian de Castello, Deane,
Fox, and Warham) ; and Gairdner and Spedding's Studies in English History.
A valuable Life of Bishop Fox by Mr. E. C. Batten is prefixed to his edition
of Fox's Register as Bishop of Bath and Wells, and a further account of him
will be found in Fowler's History of Corptis Christi College. Bp. Creighton's
History of the Papacy may also be consulted. As to Archbishop Warham's
opposition to young Henry's marriage with Katharine see an original document
in }i&xhe.v\.'s Life of Henry VIII. [KexineM's Histoiy of England, ii. 113).

CHAPTER II

HENRY VIII. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE

The first two or three years of the reign of Henry VIII. were
years of peace and prosperity at home, and the king's marriage
and his alliance with Ferdinand of Aragon not only removed
unpleasantness with a powerful prince abroad, but preserved
England from being entangled prematurely in European com-
plications. For on the Continent those years were years of
Consequences ^^^ ^^^ disturbance, especially in the Church,
of the league The wicked league of Cambray had not been many
' months concluded when mutual jealousies arose
among the powers that signed it. Louis XII. came down
on Italy, won the battle of Agnadello (May 14th, 1509), and
was soon master of the best part of the Venetian territory,
while Maximilian harassed the rest without making any
effectual gain. This was not pleasant for Julius II., nor for
Ferdinand of Aragon either. Young Henry VIIL sympathised
with the Venetians, and wished to procure their reconciliation
both with the pope and the emperor, having a strong desire,
in fact, to turn the tables and make a new league against
France, from which, for a time, he was withheld by his prudent
father-in-law. But in the latter part of that year he sent as
his ambassador to Rome Christopher Bainbridge, whom the
late king, just before his death, had rapidly promoted, first to
the bishopric of Durham and afterwards (in succession to Dr.
Savage) to the archbishopric of York. He arrived at Rome
on November 24th, and was met, as other ambassadors usually
were, on entering the city by the pope's attendants, the
cardinals, and the whole body of ambassadors resident, except

CHAP. II THE GOLDEN ROSE 15

that of Venice. For Julius had excommunicated the Venetian
State just before the French invasion, and the representative
of the Signory durst not present himself on public occasions,
but sent a private message to Bainbridge to explain matters ;
to which Bainbridge said in reply that the king was a warm
friend of the Signory and had written to the pope in its
favour.

The attitude of England, no doubt, and, it may be added,
of Scotland also — for James IV. was at one with his brother-
in-law on this subject, and had renewed the treaty between
the two countries in August 1509 — helped powerfully to
convince Pope Julius that he must make friends p^ ^ ^^^.^^
once more with Venice, and in February 15 10 11. and
he absolved the Signory from excommunication. ^^^^
He was anxious to draw Henry VHI. into a league against
France, and Henry told him that he would make none in
which Venice was not included, while James IV. felt so
warmly towards the Republic that he was eager to be their
captain-general against the Infidels. Henry so strongly dis-
approved of the action of France against Venice that the
pope now calculated on his alliance and sent him the golden
rose, which was usually blessed before Easter as a present to
one or other European sovereign. Just after the despatch of
the messenger, however, disquieting news came to Rome that
the English king had made a treaty with France ; which, in
truth, was actually proclaimed in London on April ist.
Bainbridge professed to have heard nothing of it, and was
deeply ashamed. Pope Julius said to him furiously, "You
are all rascals ! " But it was not a treaty against Venice,
whose cause England still maintained ; it was rather a treaty
which France had sought in fear of uncomfortable complica-
tions. In point of fact, it was England that induced Louis
XII., during the summer, to withdraw his troops from Italy
for the time ; and Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who at this
time directed Henry's counsels, told the Venetian ambassador
that the Signory had only to watch events and rely on the
speedy dissolution of the league.

But Julius took advantage of the withdrawal of the French
to press matters further. He now took Venice as an ally,
came himself to Bologna, excommunicated the Duke of

1 6 HENRY VIII. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE chap.

Ferrara whom he had in vain attempted to detach from the
league, and made very earnest efforts to win over

^^p^p^e.^'^^ the Emperor Maximihan. In the depth of a bitter
winter his HoUness took command of his own
army, shared their hardships, and with helmet and breastplate
buckled on him led them to the siege of Mirandola, which
he won in January 15 ii. Then, seeing that the French
cardinals were all opposed to him, he created at Ravenna on
March loth eight new cardinals, of whom the first was Arch-
bishop Bainbridge, reserving in petto another hat for Matthew
Lang, Bishop of Gurk, chief minister of the emperor, in the
hope that he would be able to get him and his master to desert
the French ; but in this he was disappointed. So Matthew
Lang, Bishop of Gurk, was not made a cardinal by Pope
Julius, though he was, two years later, by his successor Leo X.
As for Bainbridge, no sooner had he received that honour
than he did what the warlike pope expected of him. Like
Julius himself, he took the command of a body of 4000
soldiers, and entered into the war.

But the fortune of war soon turned. Julius left the city
of Bologna in May, as he thought, in sufficient custody ; but
it was immediately re-entered by its old masters the Bentivogli,
and the French coming up put the papal and Venetian forces

The Council ^^ ^^S^^> whilc the French cardinals convoked a
of Pisa, Council to meet at Pisa in September, with a view

ep . 1, 1511. j.^ deposing the pope. Julius found it necessary
to hurry back to Rome, and met the summoning of the
Council by convoking one of his own to meet at the Lateran
in April 15 12. Things came round to his side once more.
The Council at Pisa did not promise well. Even Maximilian
gave it but half-hearted support, and when it opened at the
time appointed it was too exclusively French. The Germans
had not yet decided upon sending bishops thither. Ferdinand,
too, had made up his mind to desert France, and caused the
army that he had raised in Spain, ostensibly against the
Moors, to go to Naples and secure his possession there. A

Henr VIII ^^^S^^ Called the Holy League was formed at Rome,

joins the October 5 th, bctwecn the pope and Ferdinand and

oy ^^g"^- ^j^g Venetians in pursuance of the pohcy of Julius

to chase " the barbarians " (as he called the French and

II THE NATION COMMITTED TO WAR 17

other foreigners) from Italy ; and a place being left for
England, Henry joined it on November 13 th.

Thus was the young king fully committed to a war v/ith
France. It was twenty years since England had been at war,
and the brief campaign which ended with the treaty of Etaples
hardly deserved to be called war at all. Under the peaceful
policy of Henry VII. the people had been quite unused to it ;
and as there was no standing army in those days, there was no
military experience at command. Occasionally some con-
spicuous nobleman or gentleman might get his sovereign's
leave to go and fight against the Turks, in aid of the Emperor
Maximilian. Sir Robert Curzon had been ennobled by the
emperor for such a service, and was called Lord Curzon in
England. And in this very year Lord Darcy had sailed with
a band of English archers to Spain to aid Ferdinand against
the Moors. But though their assistance had been asked for
by Ferdinand himself, they arrived only to find that they
were not wanted ; for Ferdinand, in view of a war with France,
had made a truce with the unbelievers for the security of his
kingdom, and the English returned home after committing
some irregularities which brought them into collision with the
natives. Of military discipline the people knew really nothing.
And this was not the only difficulty ; for the mustering of
troops, the fitting out of ships, the victualling of land and sea
forces, and a multitude of things to which that generation
were total strangers, required a master hand to control, and
where was any such to be found ? Not among the nobility
or gentry of the realm ; but the man was found in a known
and rising churchman.

The marked abilities of Thomas Wolsey had been dis-
cerned even by Henry VII., who towards the close of his
reign had sent him on two delicate diplomatic
missions, the one to Scotland to prevent James IV. woTse°/.
from coming to a rupture with England, the other
to Flanders on matters connected with the king's projected
marriage with Margaret of Savoy. There is an extraordinary
story of his despatch in the latter business recorded by
Cavendish on Wolsey's own authority, but certainly with some
inaccuracies of detail due to the lapse of time. We need not
doubt, however, that he discharged his mission to Calais, if

i8 HENRY VIII. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE chap.

not farther, with amazing celerity ; so that he may have been
back again at Richmond, as stated, the third night after his
departure, and thus made the king next morning at first
believe that he had unwarrantably delayed his setting out. His
services were recognised by Henry VII. by his promotion to
the deanery of Lincoln, and even from the beginning of the
new reign further preferments flowed in upon him. Henry
VIII. in his very first year appointed him his almoner, and
by this title he was known for some time. But for the first
two years of the new reign we see nothing of him in public
life. The young king was governed in politics by the old and
experienced councillors of his father, especially by the aged
Bishop Fox of Winchester ; and his foreign policy was greatly
influenced by his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon. It is
only in August 15 ii that we find Wolsey for the first time
signing documents as a member of the Privy Council.

We are told with great probability by Polydore Vergil that
Wolsey owed his introduction to the Council to Fox, Bishop
of Winchester, to counterbalance the influence of Thomas,
Earl of Surrey. But there is malice in what Polydore further

tells us that he soon won over the king by his witty
unpoJ!i?arity. talk and jesting, and his unclerical singing and

dancing, and that to avoid observation he had his
sovereign to his own house, which he made "a chapel of
all pleasures," showed him the impolicy of putting the
kingdom under too many rulers, and undertook to govern
it better if the whole charge was committed to himself.
Scandal of this kind might be current, and as far as the moral
aspect of it is concerned there may have been some truth in
it, for Wolsey was not too scrupulous. But Polydore had his
own reasons, which we shall see hereafter, for saying ugly
things of him ; and they who believed that Wolsey's ambition
ever hoped to gain absolute control of public affairs without
the intelligent assent of the king in all things, knew nothing of
the secrets of the Council-board as revealed in our day by
State papers. Wolsey, no doubt, often did direct the king's
policy in after years when it was policy of a very unpopular
kind, and he bore all the unpopularity alone, though the king
distinctly approved what he had done. He even bore at
times the unpopularity of measures which were not his own

II IVOLSEV THE WAR MINISTER 19

when the king required a scapegoat ; and it is wonderful how
in the early years of the reign people seemed to be convinced
that " the king could do no wrong."

It was thus that, from the moment he became a man of
public importance, Wolsey likewise became the target of much
ignorant and malicious scandal; which, indeed, increased
towards the end of his career, because to avoid absolute ruin
he had to bear the king's sins as well as his ow^n. " Since his
death," wrote his faithful servant Cavendish, " I have heard
divers surmises and imagined tales made of his proceedings
and doings, which I myself have perfectly known to be most
untrue ; unto the which I could have sufficiently answered
according to truth, but, as me seemeth, then it was much
better for me to suffer and dissemble the matter, and the
same to remain still as lies, than to reply against their untruth
of whom I might, for my boldness, sooner have kindled a
great flame of displeasure than to quench one spark of their
malicious untruth."

It may have been Surrey's influence that prevented Wolsey's
entrance into the Council till the new reign was more than
two years old ; for his merits were already well known, and it
is remarkable that, whereas he had been employed on two
embassies by Henry VII., he seems to have exercised no poli-
tical functions at all during this interval. But Henry VIII.'s
entrance into the " Holy League " at once afforded a vent for
his energies which evidently could not be denied him. It
may be that the general plan of the war in the following year
was not actually drawn up by him, but he was certainly
supposed to have influenced it. A fleet was to harass the
northern shores of France. An army was to be landed in
Spain and to co-operate with the troops of Ferdinand in the
invasion of Guienne. The fleet, which was placed under the
command of Sir Edward Howard, conducted the vessels con-
taining the troops sent to Spain as far as the coast of Brittany.
The troops were under the command of the Marquess of Dorset.
But neither expedition led to very satisfactory results.
Sir Edward Howard took the French at first by
surprise and committed merciless ravages in Brittany ; but
afterwards the largest ship of his fleet, The Regent^ caught fire
along with a French vessel grappled to her, and both ships

20 HENRY VIII. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE chap.

burned to the water's edge. But in Spain much worse things
happened. Both sailors and soldiers became unruly. They
were severely tried by the climate and heavy rains, and they
could not feel kindly to the King of Aragon, who kept them
inactive while he himself secured his own special prize, the
kingdom of Navarre. They mutinied and said that Mr.
Almoner was the cause of their discomforts. Finally, they
insisted on coming home without orders, and forced their
generals to comply.

This disgraceful insubordination and breach of discipline
was doubtless encouraged to some extent by the knowledge of
Wolsey's unpopularity with influential noblemen like Surrey,
who conceived that they had a right to direct the king's
Councils by virtue of their very position. But the king, in
his indignation at the result, only bestowed his confidence the
more freely on his almoner, who even now began to have
special secrets of State committed to him alone of all the
Council. And we must presume it was owing to the disgrace
in Spain that just at that time the Earl of Surrey experienced
such a reception from the king that he withdrew from Court ;
on which Wolsey, writing to Bishop Fox, ventured to suggest
that it might not be difficult then permanently to exclude him
from it : " Whereof, in my poor judgment," he adds, " no little
good should ensue." Mr. Almoner had already a higher
place in the king's confidence than the best of the nobility,
and his services were more wanted now than ever to devise
new expeditions which should wipe out a stain upon the
national honour. For months he was busily engaged in duties
anything but clerical — in matters relating to the provision of
shipping and transports, victuals, conduct money, and the like.
The strain upon his energies was intense, and his friend and
patron Fox writes to him, seriously hoping that it will not last
long, else his "outrageous charge and labour" will certainly
ruin his digestion and deprive him of his sleep.

The honour of England was retrieved in April 1513 by the
gallant death of Admiral Sir Edward Howard in boarding a
French galley under heavy fire from the land. Then followed
the invasion of France in the summer, in which Wolsey accom-
panied the king, and which was distinguished by the capture
of Therouanne and Tournay ; while James IV. of Scotland,

II THE CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE 21

seizing the opportunity for a war with England, invaded the
Borders and fell at Flodden. At the conquest of Tournay the
bishopric of that city happened to be vacant, and
the pope at Henry's request conferred it upon '^Jf^ouJ'nTy!''
Wolsey. His right to the See, however, was
disputed by a French bishop, Louis Guillard, who had got
the length of being elected to it, and Wolsey never obtained
possession till five years later, when, in the peace made with
France, he surrendered his claim for a pension of 1200 livres.
Meanwhile, in the course of the year 15 14, he was pro-
moted first to the bishopric of Lincoln, and then to the
archbishopric of York, which became vacant by the death of
Cardinal Bainbridge at Rome.

But we have passed by some things which require to be
related before we go farther. However fruitless as regards
England itself were the naval and military operations
of 15 1 2, Henry VHI.'s entrance into the Holy of England's
League undoubtedly gave that confederacy a strength J°|^"^|jJ^
and efficacy which it would not have received from
the united exertions of all the other allies. For, in fact, the
League was very nearly crushed before many months were over
by the great victory of the French in the battle of Ravenna
(April nth, 1 51 2); and though their gallant young general,
Gaston de Foix, lost his life in the engagement, the victors were
for a short time supreme in the north of Italy. Rome was
filled with consternation, and the fiery old Julius himself seems
to have been meditating whether to treat with France through
the Florentines or to escape by sea to Naples. But France
had then reason to dread an attack from England. Just
before the battle in Italy the English Parhament had met.
It was opened, as usual, by Archbishop Warham as chancellor
with a sermon — the text being, curiously enough (Ps. Ixxxv. 10),
" Righteousness and peace have kissed each other," in which
he insisted on righteousness as the only way to victory in the
wars of princes. Englishmen had no doubt of the righteous-
ness of a war with France, especially when that nation set up
a schismatic Council, and Parliament gave the king a subsidy.
The French king could not spare reinforcements for Italy, and
the conquering army was too far from its base. The pope
recovered courage and excommunicated Louis XII. Italy

22 HENRY VIII. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE chap.

was soon cleared of the invaders, but the pope was determined
to continue the war against them in order completely to ex-
tinguish the schismatic Council; which was, indeed, obliged first
to withdraw to Milan and then afterwards to Lyons, where it
finally disappeared. But meanwhile the expulsion of the
French from Italy had left the allies to dispute old claims
among themselves. The Emperor, who, finding the alliance
of France unprofitable, came over to the pope, wanted all the
Venetian territory which had been allotted to him by the
treaty of Cambray ; and the pope, to secure his adhesion to the
Lateran Council against the Conciliabulum of Pisa (to which
he had given no material support, after he had helped to start
it), once more allied himself with him against the Venetians.

Julius II. died in February 15 13, and Leo X., who was
elected next month as his successor, continued the war against
France. Next year he sent Henry VII I. a cap and
Hen^'vTiL sword by Leonardo de' Spinelli, whose coming to
^ cap^^nd England with the consecrated gifts was an affair of
much ceremony. He was met by the bishops at
the seaside, and when he reached Blackheath by the Duke of
Suffolk, by the Marquess of Dorset, by Wolsey as Bishop of
Lincoln, and by all the spears. When he came to the west
door of St. Paul's he was met by Archbishop Warham, and
by the Bishops of Winchester, Durham, and Exeter inpontifi-
calibus. Proceeding with the choir to the high altar, he there
deposited the cap and sword, after which he retired to the
Austin Friars. Next Sunday the king came to the cathedral,
and under a " travers " near the high altar the envoy was
introduced to him and delivered the pope's letters, to which
an answer was made by Dr. Tunstall. The king then went in
procession, with his own sword as well as the pope's borne before
him, the latter being borne by Spinelli. The cap was then
put upon the king's head and the sword girt about him by
Archbishop Warham. Then mass was sung ; after which the
king returned to his palace, the sword sent by the pope
being borne by the Duke of Suffolk, by whom it was ultimately
delivered in the king's chamber into the hands of the vice-
chamberlain.

Leo X. also promised to Cardinal Bainbridge to fulfil an
intention of his predecessor, Julius II., of conferring upon

II PAPAL HONOURS TO HENRY VHI 23

Henry VIII. the title of "Most Christian King" which
Louis of France had forfeited. Bainbridge, some months
before his death, notified this offer to the king, and was
surprised to find no notice taken of it. He befieved that his
letters had been kept back by De' Gigli, Bishop of Worcester,
of whom he had a bad opinion. But it is not impossible that
Henry was thinking even then that peace and friendship with
France might be better than enmity.

Cardinal Bainbridge died at Rome in 15 14. His executor,
Richard Pace, suspected him to have been poisoned by a
priest named Rainaldo of Modena. The man, being
taken and committed to the castle of St. Angelo, caShiaf
confessed the deed after being tortured, and said he i^ainbridge
had been instigated to it by Bishop de' Gigh, who
gave him money to buy the poison. He afterwards retracted
the statement about the bishop's complicity, and ended by
stabbing himself. Pace then caused process to be begun
against De' Gigli and one of his chamberlains. De' Gigli,
however, maintained that the priest was a lunatic whom he
had dismissed from his service in England, and the king and
Wolsey expressed themselves satisfied as to his innocence.
The deceased cardinal bore an evil character with some, for
avarice, pride, and anger ; and even his friend Pace admitted
that he had some vices which could not be denied ; but Pace
was grieved that he should be defamed by De' Gigli after he
was dead, as he was most faithful in promoting the king's
interests at Rome. One might certainly suspect that De'
Gigli's usefulness to the king and Wolsey — especially to the
latter in connection with his promotion to be Bainbridge's
successor at York — tended somewhat to blind the eyes of
justice. But it must be remarked that the case was pretty
fully inquired into at Rome, and that De' Gigli was unani-
mously acquitted a few months later by the whole College of
Cardinals.

The bulls for Wolsey's promotion to the archbishopric of
York were dated September 15 th, 15 14; and if such pro-
motions should be earned by political services, one „, ,

AVolscv

would say this was very well earned indeed. In Archbishop
that year Wolsey had rescued the king from the °^^'°''''-
hands of faithless allies. For after Henry's shifty father-in-law

24 HENRY VJJJ. AND THE HOLY LEAGUE chap, ii

Ferdinand had a second time negotiated with the enemy
behind his back, and persuaded the Emperor MaximiHan to
join in the perfidy, they both discovered suddenly that they
had been overreached by a more astute diplomacy, and that a
new and very close alliance had sprung up between England
and France before they were aware. It was to be cemented,
of course, by a marriage — one of the most shameful of the
political matches so common in those days. Henry actually
consented to make his sister Mary, a beautiful girl of eighteen,
the bride of Louis XII., a broken-down man of fifty-two. The
marriage took place in October with great magnificence at
Abbeville, and a new chapter of European history seemed just
to have opened, when King Louis died on the ist January
following.

Authorities. — Histoire de la Ligue de Cambray ; Guicciardini's History
of Italy ; Nouvelle Biographic (for Julius II.) ; Letters and Papers of Hefiry
VIII. (Calendar), vol. i. ; Brewer's Reign of He?iry VIII. ; Herbert's Life
and Reign of Henry VIII. (which ma}^ be consulted in vol. ii. of Kennett's
Complete History of England) ; Dictionary of National Biography (articles
"Bainbridge" and " Wolse}'") ; Polydori Vergilii Anglica Historia ; Hall's
Chronicle. Julius II. 's intention of conferring on Henry VIII. the title
" Most Christian King" is mentioned by Guicciardini, book xi.

CHAPTER III

THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE

Meanwhile, just before the close of the year 15 14, all
London was excited about a very suspicious affair which had
taken place in St. Paul's Cathedral. A citizen j^j^h^^^
named Richard tlunne, a merchant-tailor, who had Hunne found
been committed to the Lollard's Tower for heresy, ^"^^ '
was found dead in his place of confinement, hanging by the
neck by a silk girdle. He had been a well-to-do man, and
had undoubtedly borne a fair character until his heresy was
detected — for an imputation of heresy in those days blighted
a man's good name. What gave rise to the charge in his
case is not precisely stated; but presently he got into a
dispute with the incumbent of his parish about a claim
for the burial of an infant child, in which the bearing-
sheet was demanded as what was called a mortuary. This
he refused to give, on the plea that the infant had no
property in it, and the priest cited him for it in the
spiritual court. Such claims may well have been disliked
by others besides Hunne ; but when resisted, a citation, of
course, was the natural way of determining whether they were
legitimate or not by spiritual law ; and the plea urged for
refusal certainly seems rather a captious one. To avoid a
trial, Hunne fell upon the device of setting the temporal law
against the spiritual by suing the priest who claimed the
mortuary in a prmjiimire, as if the cause in dispute came
within the jurisdiction of the king's courts and not those of
the Church. The king's courts, however, decided against
him that it was quite clearly a matter for an ecclesiastical

26 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

tribunal ; and Hunne was mortified to find that he had to
await in prison a charge of heresy, the prosecution of which
had been suspended by the bishop during the trial of his
action of prcBnmnire. It was this disappointment, some said,
that preyed upon his mind and drove him to despair; but
many others insisted that it was a case of murder, not of
suicide.

In connection with this and other matters it must be
borne in mind that the word heresy in those days did not

indicate a mere state of opinion at variance with
^jfer"esy°^ that of thc Church. Thought is by nature free, but

the individual was expected to show due deference
to authority. Knotty points of theology were discussed by
competent persons at the universities, and a well-trained
clergy could remove stumbling-blocks in the way of humble
inquirers ; but it was a sacred duty not to allow erroneous
beliefs to spread and pollute the faith of the people.
The Church, however, possessed, strictly speaking, only one
means of repressing their growth, and that was suasion.
If argument failed, it could only have recourse to excom-
munication ; for it seemed there could be no real com-
munion, no really united society, where individuals were
free to declare themselves wiser than the Church, and to
endeavour to thwart it in the very object of its mission.
But after excommunication, a further step naturally followed.
The excommunicated heretic had forfeited the privileges of
his baptism ; he was no longer a member of the Church, and
he must therefore be handed over to the secular power to
undergo secular punishment. It was not really the bishops
^' who burned heretics, as the latter continually asserted ; for
the bishops and the Church had done with them altogether
when they were excommunicated and handed over to the
civil power. It is true the Church had for ages insisted that
burning was the right punishment for an irreclaimable heretic,
and, moreover, that the civil ruler incurred excommunication
who refused to execute the sentence ; but it was the general
feeling, besides, of all political rulers that heresy was dangerous
to civil order, and that, if the Church could do nothing to
cure such perversity, the offender must be committed to the
flames.

Ill HERESY REGARDED AS CRIME 27

Now, it would be wrong to suppose that as yet there was
great objection felt to this state of matters among the com-
munity. Men in those days were accustomed to rough
remedies for evils of every kind, and heresy was admitted to
be an evil of a very serious character. Yet there was always
a good deal of it simmering among the population. And it
would seem that, in London especially, among the com-
mercial classes, there was not only a good deal of disaffection
to the teaching of the Church on different subjects, but a
desire to depreciate Church authority and jurisdiction, particu-
larly in matters which touched the pocket. Of course, these
feelings were much encouraged some years later, when men
perceived the widening breach between the king and the
court of Rome on the subject of his divorce, and things were
spoken, written, and printed, with the underhand connivance
of the highest authorit)^, which would never have been tolerated
only a few years before. All this must be taken into account
in reading what is said in histories about the death of Hunne ;
for, unhappily, what is commonly related is derived entirely
from statements in Hall's Chronicle^ which was published in
the later years of Henry VIII., and which is inspired through-
out by a manifest bias against the clergy.

It must be conceded, indeed, that Hall's Chronicle is,
for the reign of Henry VIII. , quite an invaluable source of
information, being, in fact, a careful, orderly, and,
in most things, a very accurate record of events, chr^nkie.
But we must be on our guard against the author's
bias, for his unfairness on some particular subjects goes the
length of positive dishonesty. He was a lawyer of Gray's
Inn, subservient to the Court, and what in later days would
have been called a bitter Puritan. Professional prejudices
against ecclesiastical jurisdiction, perhaps, went to increase
his sympathy with heretics, and his hatred of Church courts
and of Cardinal Wolsey ; but of his spite against ecclesiastical
authority there is no doubt, and so good an opportunity did
he find for gratifying it in connection with the death of
Hunne, that he is not satisfied without devoting ten closely
printed pages of his history to what professes to be a verbatim
report of " the whole inquiry and verdict of the inquest."

Now, the case was undoubtedly, on the face of it, sus-

28 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

picious enough, and it lost none of its unpleasant aspect in

the process of this inquiry, of which we can only give the

salient points. The jury's report, as given by Hall,

Report of the i^gg-jj^s : " Wc fouttd the body of the said Hunne

inquest. o _ , . • n /• -n

hanging upon a staple of iron m a girdle of silk,
with fair countenance, his head fair kemed (combed), and
his bonnet right sitting upon his head, with his eyen and
mouth fair closed, without any staring, gaping, or frowning ;
also without any drivelling or spurging in any place of his
body. Whereupon by one assent all we agreed to take down
the body, and as soon as we began to heave the body it was
loose ; whereby by good advisement we perceived that the
girdle had no knot above the staple, but it was double cast,
and the links of an iron chain, which did hang on the same
staple, were laid upon the same girdle whereby he did hang.
Also the knot of the girdle that went about his neck stood
under his left ear, which caused his head to lean toward his
right shoulder. Notwithstanding, there came out of his
nostrils two small streams of blood, to the quantity of four
drops ; save only these four drops of blood the face, lips,
chin, doublet, collar and shirt of the said Hunne was clean
from any blood. Also we find that the skin, both of his
neck and throat, beneath the girdle of silk was fret and faced
away with that thing that the murderers had broken his
neck withal. Also the hands of the said Hunne were wrung
in the wrists, whereby we perceived that his hands had been
bound. Moreover we find that within the said prison was
no mean whereby any man might hang himself but only a
stool; which stool stood upon a bolster of a bed, so tickle
that any man or beast might not touch it so little but it was
ready to fall. Whereby we perceived that it was not possible
that Hunne might hang himself, the stool so standing. Also
the girdle from the staple to his neck, as well as the part
which went about his neck, was too little for his head to come
out thereat. Also it was not possible that the soft silken
girdle should break his neck or skin beneath the girdle. Also
we find in a corner somewhat beyond the place where he did
hang a great parcel of blood. Also we find upon the left
side of Hunne's jacket from the breast downward two great
streams of blood. Also within the flap of the left side of his

Ill THE CORONERS INQUEST 29

jacket we find a great cluster of blood, and the jacket folden
down thereupon; which thing the said Hunne could never
fold nor do after he was hanged. Whereby it appeareth
plainly to us all that the neck of Hunne was broken, and the
great plenty of blood was shed before he was hanged."

This is about one-thirteenth part of what is given by Hall
as the finding of the jury, with the coroner's signature at the
end. The remainder, however, contains a large number of
depositions and other documents, some of which are distinctly
of later date than the inquest itself, and to embody them in
what professes to be a verbatim report of that finding ,

,. 1-1 1- r • ' c • -r-. 1 Anachronisms

was a thmg which admits of no justification, l^or the in the alleged
inquest itself bears a very precise date at the begin- ^"'^"^s-
ning — the 5th and 6th December in the sixth year of Henry
VIII. (15 14) — and, some way after the passage already quoted,
refers to a statement made in the Tower of London by Charles
Joseph, the Bishop of London's sumner, one of the alleged
murderers. But depositions immediately following speak of
Charles Joseph as being at perfect liberty on the Wednesday
night after Hunne's death, who, it appears, was found dead
on Monday the 4th December ; so that the statement made by
Charles Joseph must have been certainly later than the 6th
which was the date of the inquest. Then, again, we have, with
a special heading, " the deposition of Robert Johnson and his
wife dwelling at the Bell in Shoreditch, where Charles Joseph
set his horse that night that he came to town to murder
Richard Hunne." This deposition alleges that Charles Joseph
sent his horse to the Bell " upon a holiday at night about
three weeks before Christmas" — a statement which clearly
must have been made aftei- Christmas, and therefore at
least three weeks later than the inquest. This deposition
also contains evidence of words used by Peter Turner, Joseph's
son-in-law, and James, Chancellor Horsey's cook, before
Hunne's death, tending to show that that death had been
preconcerted. Immediately after which occurs this passage :
"And we of the inquest asked both of Peter Turner and of
James Cook where they had knowledge that Hunne should
so shortly die ; and they said ' In Master Chancellor's place,'
by every man."

What are we to make of all this? A deposition taken

30 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

some time after Christmas mentions suspicious words used
by Peter Turner and James Cook on the ist December — "the
Friday before Hunne's death, ' as the date is given in the
document. "And we of the inquest," it is added, put
questions thereupon. But how could this be if the inquest
was taken on the 5th and 6th December, as stated expressly at
the head ? We find ourselves in a tangle of very explicit state-
ments that we know not how to reconcile. Moreover, we
have another deposition — that of Richard Horsnayle, "bailiff
of the sanctuary town of Good Easter in Essex " ^ — testifying
that Charles Joseph became a sanctuary man on " Friday
before Christmas day last past." And this, too, is embodied
in the inquest of the 5th and 6th December ! So also are the
two documents which immediately follow, both of which appear
to be of the following year (15 15), the first being headed:
"The copy of my lord of London's letter sent to my lord
Cardinal " {i.e. to Wolsey, who was only created cardinal in
September 1515), and the second: "The words that my lord
of London spake before the lords in the Parliament Chamber."
These last two documents are so glaringly out of place as
part of the inquest that we might suppose they at least had
been printed where they stand by inadvertence — a theory which
does not very well apply to the documents preceding. They
are, moreover, very instructive papers taken by themselves,
and partly afford a key to these extraordinary accusations.
The verdict of the coroner's jury accused by name Dr. Horsey,
the Bishop of London's chancellor, Charles Joseph, his
sumner, and John Spalding, bellringer, of wilful murder ;
and these persons were accordingly committed to prison.
There Charles Joseph, " by pain and durance," was induced
to accuse himself and the others. And on this the
^f^Lo^don'^s Bishop of London (Richard Fitz-James) wrote to
complaint of Wolsev, who had now become cardinal, begging his

the citizens. -" . i /- n

mtercession with the kmg to have the matter fully
inquired into "by indifferent persons of his discreet Council
in the presence of the parties " before any further proceedings
were taken, and on proof of his chancellor's innocence that

1 In the report published by Keilwey on Standish's case it is said that
Hunne took sanctuary at Westminster. He may have escaped afterwards
from Westminster into Essex.

Ill INQUIRY BY THE KING 31

his Majesty might "award a placard unto his Attorney to
confess the said indictment to be untrue. . . . For assured
am I (adds the bishop) if my chancellor be tried by any
twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favorem
hcereticce. pravitatis that they will cast and condemn any clerk,
though he were as innocent as Abel."

It is certain that Wolsey responded to this appeal, and
that the king authorised an inquiry such as the bishop desired,
as we shall see presently. Moreover, it would j^^,,-
seem that proceedings of some kind were taken ordered by

1 . r- • c ^ J • . the king.

agamst the jury for returnmg a false verdict ;
and that the friends of the jury, impatient of that imputa-
tion, got a bill brought into Parliament in 15 15 to make
them "true men." This was the occasion of the speech
quoted by Hall, which the Bishop of London delivered
" before the lords in the Parliament Chamber." He declared
upon his conscience that the jury " were false perjured
caitiffs ; and said furthermore to ail the lords there then being,
' For the love of God, look upon this matter ; for if ye do
not, I dare not keep mine own house for heretics ' ; and
said that the said Richard Hunne hanged himself, and that
it was his own deed and no man's else."

So then, according to Bishop Fitz-James's view, the jury
on the inquest wxre actually perjured, and so strong w^as the
feeling against the clergy in the city of London that any
twelve men there would be glad to condemn any clergyman,
even though he were "as innocent as Abel." The case seems
strange, and may suggest to the modern reader the inquiry.
Were the citizens of London really so unjust ? Or were the
clergy themselves so depraved as to m.erit such unpopularity ?
Perhaps the most charitable view, as well as the most probable,
is that the case was one of public opinion run mad, being
carried away by false but plausible evidences. For, of course,
the verdict of the jury, even if it had not been supported by
the Sumner's extorted confession, was calculated to arouse the
most intense indignation ; and the jury themselves, though
their treatment of evidences was most unfair, and apparently
dishonest in some things, were probably convinced that they
had returned a righteous verdict. That they had no notion
of weighing evidences may be surmised even from one or two

32 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

points in their finding — as, for instance, that about the stool
on which Hunne could not possibly have balanced himself in
order to hang himself. This conclusion of course implies
that the furniture of the chamber had been quite undisturbed
and unchanged when the jury viewed it; but if so, what
becomes of the theory set forth in the inquest, that the
murderers first killed Hunne and afterwards heaved the body
into the position in which it was found hanging by a silk
girdle? It must have been still more difficult, one would
think, for murderers by the aid of that " tickle " stool to hoist
a dead body into such a position than it could have been for
the living man to hang himself.

On the merits of the case, however, we may appeal to one

who was not a clergyman, and whose honesty and judgment

What More ^^^ abovc suspiciou. Somc twelve or thirteen years

says of the later, whcn Sir Thomas More was chancellor of the

'^'^^^' duchy of Lancaster, he wrote a treatise called a
Dialogue, grounded on a real or supposed message sent
him by a friend in the country, desiring his guidance upon
certain matters connected with heresy which were creating
uneasiness, and, among others, the unpleasant rumours about
the death of Hunne. In this Dialogue Sir Thomas pro-
fesses to report the conversation that he had with the messenger
as nearly as he could remember it ; and he points out very
clearly that the rumours which the messenger took for positive
facts were absolutely groundless, as the reader will see by the
following extracts : —

Why, quod he, do ye know the matter well ? Forsooth,
quod I, so well I know it from top to toe that I suppose there be
not many men that knoweth it much better. For I have not
only been divers times present myself at certain examinations
thereof, but have also divers and many times sunderly talked with
almost all such (except the dead man himself) as most knew of
the matter; which matter was many times in sundry places
examined. But specially at Baynard's Castle one day was it
examined at great length and by a long time, every man being
sent for before, and ready there all that could be found that
anything could tell in the matter ; and this examination was had
before divers great lords, spiritual and temporal, and others of the
king's honourable Council sent thither by his Highness for the

Ill THE EXAMINATION 33

nones, of his blessed zeal and princely desire borne to the
searching of the truth. Whereunto his gracious mind was much
inclined, and had been by a right honourable man informxcd that
there was one that showed a friend of his that he could take him
by the sleeve that killed Hunne.

The messenger remarked that he had heard this statement,
and that the man went so far to justify his assertion that he
pointed out some one to the Council as the actual murderer ;
but on being asked how he knew it he confessed it was by
the unlawful art of necromancy, and the bishops would have
had him burned for witchcraft. Thus apparently the belief in
some unknown murderer, notwithstanding that the verdict of
the jury had been discredited, was still kept up by superstition.
The messenger added that, as he understood, there was
another witness before the Lords who had seen many men
that hanged themselves, because he had held office under
several of the king's almoners, who were entitled to the goods
of suicides as deodands, and that this man had shown clearly
from his experience that Hunne had not hanged himself.
Moreover, a clergyman, who was a friend of Chancellor Horsey,
had been obliged to admit before the Lords that he had told a
layman that Hunne would never have been accused of heresy
if he had not sued the prc&munire. This, however, the
messenger observed, "went not so near the matter as the
other two things did."

"Yes, in good faith," replied More, "all three like near,
that they were all heard." And he added that there were
many other things still more suspicious, which when j^^^ ^^^^
investigated turned out not to be so serious. He shown to be
then takes up those three stories successively, and
shows what became of them on examination. All possible
witnesses had been warned to be present at the inquiry,
and the man who could take Hunne's murderer by the
sleeve could not be ascertained. The man that knew
the man pointed him out ; but the latter said he had not
said quite so much as that, but he had a neighbour that
told him he could do it. The neighbour was produced,
but denied that he had said it either ; it was another who
told him. But even he had only said that he believed

34 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

another person could do so — a gipsy woman who could tell
wonderful things by looking in one's hand, and who, he was
sure, could tell who killed Hunne just as easily as she could
say who stole a horse. But she was on her way back to her
own country. Then the official of the king's almoner, who
had seen so many men that had hanged themselves, was
called in. " But would God," says More, " that ye had seen
his countenance ! The man had of likelihood said somewhat
too far, and was much amazed, and looked as though his eyen
would have fallen out of his head into the Lords' laps." Being
asked by what symptoms he knew a man that had hanged
himself from a man that had been hanged by others, he was
unable to explain. Still, of course, an expert might not be
able to explain everything that was clear to himself; so the
Council put other questions. How many cases had he dealt
with of men that had hanged themselves ? Would he say a
hundred ? No. Ninety ? He considered, but did not think
he had seen ninety. Well, twenty? No, not twenty. This
he said at once, to the Council's amusement, without the
hesitation he had just shown about ninety. They came down
to fifteen, ten, five, and four, and he began to study again.

Then came they to three, and then for shame he was fain to
say that he had seen as many and more too. But when he was
asked when, whom, and in what place, necessity drew him at
last unto the truth, whereby it appeared that he never had seen
but one in all his life, and that was an Irish fellow called Crook-
shank, whom he had seen hanging in an old barn.

The third story turned out to be as unsubstantial as the
other two.

The temporal man that had reported upon the mouth of a
spiritual man was a good worshipful man, and for his truth and
worship was in great credit. And surely the spiritual man was a
man of great worship also and well known, both for cunning and
virtuous. And therefore the Lords much marvelled, knowing
them both for such as they were, that they should like to find
either the one or the other, either make an untrue report or
untruly deny the truth. And first the temporal man before the
Lords, in the hearing of the spiritual person standing by, said,
My Lords all, as help me God and halidome, Master Doctor here
said unto me his own mouth that if Hunne had not sued the

rii THE INQUEST DISCREDITED 35

prcBinimire he should never have been accused of heresy. How
say you, Master Doctor ? quod my Lords, was that true, or else
why said you so ? Surely, my Lords, quod he, I said not all
thing so, but marry this I said indeed, that if Hunne had not been
accused of heresy, he would never have sued the prcBinunire. So,
my Lords, quod the other, I am glad ye find me a true man.
Will ye command me any more service ? Nay, by my truth,
quod one of the Lords, not in this matter, by my will ; ye may
go when ye will. For I have espied, good man, so that the
words be all one, it maketh no matter to you which way they
stand ; but all is one to you — a horse mill or a mill horse, —
Drink ere ye go, or Go ere ye drink. Nay, my Lords, quod he,
I will not drink, God yield you. And therewith he made courtesy
and went his way, leaving some of the Lords laughing to see the
good, plain, old honest man, how that, as contrary as the two
tales were, yet when he heard them both again he marked no
difference between them.

After this amusing exposure More has yet to make answer
to some further objections of the messenger, who thinks it a
great presumption of guilt in Chancellor Horsey (-banceiior
that after being indicted he did not stand a .Horsey
trial, " but was fain by friendship to get a pardon."
This presumption will also occur forcibly to readers of
Hall's Chronicle, where it is said that "by the means of
the spiritualty and money, Dr. Horsey caused the king's
attorney to confess on his arraignment him not to be guilty ;
and so he escaped and went to Exeter, and for very shame
durst never come after to London." The truth, however,
according to Sir Thomas, who is much more to be believed
in this matter than Hall, is that Dr. Horsey never sued for
pardon.

But after a long examination of the matter, as well the
chancellor as the other, being indicted of the deed and arraigned
upon the indictment in the king's bench, pleaded that they were
not guilty. And thereupon the king's grace, being well and
sufficiently informed of the truth, and of his blessed disposition
not willing that there should in his name any false matter be
maintained, gave in commandment to his attorney to confess their
pleas to be true without any further trouble. Which thing, in
so faithful a prince, is a clear declaration that the matter laid to
the chancellor was untrue.

36 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

More, indeed, expresses his firm belief that the king, whose
judgment was remarkably acute in sifting doubtful matters,
would never have granted a pardon for such a heinous offence
as that of which Dr. Horsey was charged if he had been really
guilty. The result of the inquiry at Baynard's Castle seemed
to More himself a complete exculpation of the accused : and
it must be observed that what he reports of it shows clearly
that Hall's account of the case (even apart from the inquest)
was very much sophisticated. But it equally shows — what
we know well enough from other sources — that the public
mind was not completely quieted by the investigation. Even
the judgments of the king's courts in those days were not
always looked upon as embodiments of truth and justice ; and
the facts ascertained could not be put, as now, in black and
white before a large reading public. HalFs account, which
was first published some years after IMore's death, came to be
looked upon as the general authority for the facts ; and Foxe
the Martyrologist, sneering at Sir Thomas More for "thinking
to jest poor truth out of countenance " by a narrative in which
he could not suppress the humorous aspect of the cross-
examinations, boldly sets against his authority what
SfeveM^re ^^ considers the overwhelming evidence of Hall
and the discredited inquest. To prove the truth
of Hunne's murder against ]\Iore, Foxe, writing nearly fifty
years after the event, declares that he requires no other
evidences than "his cap found so straight standing upon his
head, and the stool so tottering under his feet." And Burnet,
of course, quite agreed with Foxe. And so does the modern
reader generally ; for while Foxe's Acts and Mo7iu77iefits has
gone through numerous editions, and is still found in many a
household, More's Dialogue is scarcely to be seen except in
some public library, and many public libraries are without it.

We are indebted to Foxe, however, for the text of a
document which shows that Hunne had been cited for heresy
before Convocation when sitting at St. Paul's, which must have
been in the summer before he died ; on which occasion he
for the time evaded apprehension. It must have been after
this that he sued the prcemunire ; which More believed that
he did out of vainglory, hoping to initiate a cause celebre to be
called in after years "Hunne's case." But his appeal to the

in THE DEAD MAN CONDEMNED yj

civil tribunal turned out fruitless, and, anticipating disgrace
and failure, he grew weary of his life. This, at least, is Sir
Thomas More's theory of the matter, and if, even on his part,
it was only a surmise, there is no one now better able to form
a judgment. According to Foxe, Hunne was brought before
the Bishop of London at Fulham on December 2nd (just before
he was committed to the Lollard's Tower) and examined
on six articles of heresy, which he himself denied
having uttered in the precise form that they were change?
charged against him, though he admitted with ^^^H
regret that he had said words like them, and
submitted to the bishop's correction. After his death new
articles were found against him, on the evidence of an
English Bible which he possessed, of a prohibited version,
with a very objectionable prologue and passages marked in
his own hand. From the two sets of articles we may infer
that his offences consisted, first in maintaining that tithes were
not due by divine law but were only exacted by the covetous-
ness of priests; secondly, in abusing bishops and priests,
declaring them among other things to be the Scribes and
Pharisees that crucified Christ; thirdly, in defending the
heretical opinions of one Joan Baker who was obliged to
abjure ; and fourthly, in keeping prohibited books full of
false doctrine and abuse of Church authorities. To this we
may add that, according to More, some evidence came to
light six or seven years after his death, showing that he had
been in the habit of resorting to midnight meetings with other
heretics, who read together in secret.

Of course, in these days we cannot look upon either
heresies or midnight readings as things which it is wise to
repress ; but the very liberty which we now enjoy ^^^
makes it difficult for us to realise the fact that the post-mortem
mistaken policy of repression made these heresies ^"^^^ ^°°'
all the more mischievous, and not a little dangerous besides.
It is idle, moreover, to blame our ancestors for a policy
which seemed to every one so obvious and necessary that
the heretics themselves would have put it in force if they
could have got authority on their side. A further step
had now to be taken which is equally against modern
feeling. The trial, which could not take place in Hunne's

38 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap.

life, was solemnly held after his death. On December
1 6th the Bishop of London, accompanied by the Bishops
of Durham and Lincoln, sat in judgment in St. Paul's,
and twenty-five other divines attended, besides what Foxe
contemptuously calls " a great rabble of other common anointed
Catholics." Proclamation was made for any one who would
defend Hunne's books and opinions to appear and they should
be heard ; and when no one came forward, sentence was
pronounced against the dead man as a heretic, and his body
was delivered to the secular power to be burned. It was ac-
cordingly taken to Smithfield and burned there on the 20th,
" to the abomination of the people," as Hall declares ; and
no doubt it was to the great discouragement of heretics.

Before we quite dismiss this subject, there are still one or
two points necessary to be mentioned, lest the studious reader

should think that they have been overlooked. Foxe
HunScas'i. ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^o attempted to answer More's

Dialogue on this matter; for Tyndale, the trans-
lator of the New Testament, against whose work and
teaching much of the Dialogue was directed, published
about two years later an elaborate answer to the v/hole
book. But I think it must be admitted that what he has
to say on this subject is singularly ineffective, consisting
simply of a few carping criticisms and the remark that More
"jesteth out Hunne's death with his poetry wherewith he
built Utopia." For Tyndale does not, like Foxe, refer to the
discredited inquest as good evidence; it was evidently not
safe to do so then. He only tries to minimise the result of
the inquiry at Baynard's Castle because More did not give
the names of the lords who met there, and presses the fact
that Horsey received what he, like most people, called a
pardon, without noticing More's statements, first, that it was
quite unsolicited, secondly, that Horsey had actually faced a
trial, and third, that the king's attorney stopped further pro-
ceedings, confessing his plea of " not guilty " to be true.

Tyndale, doubtless, had never seen the extraordinary docu-
ment published some years after his death in Hall's Chronicle
as a true report of the inquest. Foxe had seen it, and he
takes its authority as all-sufficient, misrepresenting, at the same
time, so far as he notices them, the arguments both of Sir

Ill FOXE'S VERSION OF THE STORY 39

Thomas and of Alan Cope, who had exploded a few of the
alleged cases of martyrdom contained in his celebrated Acis
and Monuments. He actually dares to tell us that More
"thinketh it probation enough" that "he could not see hi7n
taken by the sleeve who murdered Hunne," just as if More
was one who would never have been satisfied with other
evidence if better could have been produced ; and he is
scarcely more ingenuous with a remark of Cope, who says that
even supposing, for the sake of argument, that Hunne was
really murdered, the fact, no doubt, implicated Horsey in the
gravest possible crime, but did not make Hunne a martyr,
unless a man slain by robbers on the highway was a martyr
likewise. He reasons upon this as if it were a positive
admission, " comparing the bishop's chancellor and officers to
thieves and murderers " ; then resting on Cope's own assertion
that Hunne was a heretic, insists that he died "for fheir
heresy," which meant martyrdom for truth. In short, Foxe,
taking it as admitted that Horsey murdered Hunne, considers
Horsey's act as the act of "the Popish Church," and done
for the suppression of heresy 1 Further, Foxe produces a
piece of evidence on this matter which cannot easily be
accepted as genuine — a letter from the king to p^n^^^^
Dr. Horsey declaring that he had pardoned him, letter from
though abhorring his crime, in order that he ^ ^"^'
might make restitution of Hunne's goods to his son-in-
law, Roger Whapplot of London, draper; that he had
then hoped Dr. Horsey would amend and make compensa-
tion to the family "as well for his death as for his goods
embezzled, wasted, and consumed by your tyranny and
cruel act so committed " ; but as this had not been done he
enjoins Horsey to do it at once on pain of his displeasure.
This royal letter, which is undated, is suspicious even for its
extraordinary style ; and it is so utterly opposed to what More
tells us of the king's conviction of Horsey's innocence, that
we certainly cannot accept it for what it pretends to be.

It is true that in the early part of the year 15 15, which
was doubtless before the investigation at Baynard's Castle,
the king actually signed a bill for the restitution of Hunne's
goods to his children. There was something irregular about
this ; for apparently it was a bill that had passed througli the

40 THE CASE OF RICHARD HUNNE chap, in

Commons and came up to the Lords on the 28th March.
It was read a first time in the Lords on the 3rd April, and
then their lordships seem to have agreed that, notwithstand-
ing the premature signature, it should be, as the record says,
"delivered" {ut billa pro liberis Ricardi Himne restituendis^
licet Regia manu signata sit, deliberetur), which probably
means, delivered to the chancellor for execution as a mere
grant from the Crown, for nothing more is heard of it in the
Lords. Foxe is therefore justified in saying, as he does just
before quoting the supposed royal letter to Dr. Horsey, that
the king gave Hunne's goods to his children under his broad
seal. But the letter to Dr. Horsey is at best a subsequent
draft of a document for which the king's signature was desired.
It could not possibly have received the sign-manual.

One thing, perhaps, may be conceded — that an imputation
of murder, even though unjust, could not long have stuck to
a man whose ordinary life and conversation were wholly above
suspicion. Dr. Horsey was probably unpopular before the
occurrence which brought down upon him so much obloquy.
He had certainly fallen under displeasure six years before — in
the days of Henry VII. — when he was committed to the
Tower, we cannot tell for what. His sumner, moreover,
seems quite to have merited the ill repute in which sumners
were held in Chaucer's day, though his other alleged accom-
plice, the bellringer, was declared by the Bishop of London to
be " a poor innocent man." The extorted confession of the
sumner when he was in the Tower was probably the thing
which served most to perpetuate a belief in Dr. Horsey's guilt.

Authorities. — Hall's Chronicle; More's Dialogue and Supplication
of Souls {Works, pp. 235-240 and 297-299); Tyndale's Answer to Sir Th.
Mores Dialogue; Alani Copi Dialogi Sex. p. 847 (ed. 1566); Yox€s Acts
ajid Monuments ; Journals of the House of Lords, i. 38, 39, 41. (The name
is erroneously printed in the Lords' Journals as Ralph Hume in some
instances. ) Although Hall's general accuracy is borne out by abundant docu-
mentary evidence, his dishonesty in some matters where he is biassed, as
against the clergy, or against Cardinal Wolsey, can be equally well proved.
See Transactio7is of the Royal Historical Society, xiii. 97, 90, Of the character
of Foxe's narrative we shall see further evidence as we go on.

CHAPTER IV

JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Having spoken of Hunne as a heretic, we are naturally
reminded of two or three important subjects which require
some little elucidation in a work like the present — that is to
say, the nature of heresy itself, the extent to which it prevailed
at this time, and the different forms which it took. But before
we can properly enter on these subjects, it may be well to note
that Hunne's case was almost immediately mixed up with
another very important matter — the right of sanctuary ; and
in connection with this, the political status of the Church on
the eve of the Reformation requires some little consideration
in the first place.

We can hardly realise in these days the external deference
paid to the Church at a time when its political position was
unchallenged. To us the expression " Church and
State" looks like a reversal of the true order of £fereSce
things ; the State is, to every one, in practical t^e church
matters, by far the more important of the two. But
it was not, at least, the more august of the two in the age of
which we are speaking, when the House of Lords would
suspend its sittings on days when the presence of the lord
chancellor and the bishops was required in Convocation.
Parliament, indeed, was only national, while the Church was
international ; and well might the interests of a larger society
take precedence of those of the nation. Yet this deference
was somewhat hollow ; for national interests were already
asserting their supremacy, and the privileges of the Church

42 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap.

were not always respected where practical considerations stood
in the way.

In the Middle Ages the clergy were a sacred order by
themselves, subject to their bishops and theoretically exempt
oidimmunit ^"^^"^ secular jurisdiction, though in cases of crime
from secular they Were compelled to appear first in the King's
luns iction. QQyj.|.g ^^^ plead their privilege. At one epoch,
indeed, if a clerk had been apprehended even for murder he
was at once claimed by his ordinary and delivered up to him
without a trial, to be imprisoned till he could purge himself of
the crime according to ecclesiastical law, and, if he failed to
prove his innocence, to be degraded and handed over to the
secular arm as a layman. ^ This system probably worked well
and was attended with good results in days when the discipline
of the Church was superior to that of the State. But centuries
had passed away since then, and the system had got roughly
modified in different directions. One of the earliest modifi-
cations insisted that the clergyman should be indicted before
he claimed the privilege of his clergy, and under Henry VI.
it became the practice of the courts to insist on his being
actually convicted before being handed over to his bishop.
Then the clergy were allowed to claim an extension of the
privilege to such minor officers serving the Church as door-
keepers, readers, exorcists, and sub -deacons. At last this
" benefit of clergy," as it was called, was conceded to all who
showed themselves competent to read. But in the fourth
Modified y^^^ ^^ Henry VII. an Act was passed to check

under the abuscs of the system, and men not actually

^"'^ ■ in orders claiming clergy after a conviction of

felony were branded on the thumb — with a letter M in

cases of murder, or with a T in cases of theft — and disabled

from claiming the privilege again.

A further restriction had just been imposed, but only in a

tentative way, in the fourth year of Henry VI II., when it was

Further enacted that persons guilty of murder or robbery

restrictions in churches, highways, or houses should be refused

a temp e . ^^^ benefit of clergy altogether unless they were

actually in holy orders. This enactment was only to be in

force till the next Parliament ; but though it was said to have

* See Vol. II, of this History, chap. ix.

IV PRIVILEGES OF THE CLERGY RESTRICTED 43

produced satisfactory results, it was such a decided innovation
and encroachment on old liberties that it gave rise to serious
questionings. We shall perhaps not err greatly in surmising
that it was the feeling created by these discussions that induced
Hunne to sue his prcB7nunire. But the question of the renewal
of the Act came before Parliament again a year after Hunne's
death, in the latter part of the year 1515. A bill with this
object is mentioned in a list of agenda for the Lords
on November 20th. It went to the Commons first, was
passed by them, and was read a first time by the Lords on
December 17th. It seems to have made no further progress,
except that on the 20th it and five other bills agreed to by the
Commons were read and deferred for further consideration.
On the 22nd Parliament was dissolved, and no more was
heard of it.

The Lords doubtless forbore to renew the temporary Act
in consequence of the remonstrances of the spiritual peers,
and the inveterate tendency of temporal to encroach on the
domain of ecclesiastical law received a check for a time. This
is a fact so very exceptional in its character that we are
naturally driven to ask if there be any explanation of the
circumstance , and it happens that a good deal of information
has been preserved in a book of legal precedents which throws
a very curious light on what was said upon this subject, not
in Parliament but in the King's Council. This book, it should
be said, though not published till the end of Queen Elizabeth's
reign, contains the collections of a lawyer, by name Robert
Keilwey, who had attained full maturity some time before the
death of Henry VIII., so that the report, in this case, is
almost that of a contemporary. Here is a brief outline of
what it records.

During the time of Parliament, it is said, in the seventh
year of Henry VIII. — but it looks as if the sixth year (15 14)
was intended, though the Parliament of the sixth ^j^^ ^^^^^i. ^j.
year was continued by prorogation into the seventh winchcombes
— Richard Kidderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe,
in Gloucestershire, preached a sermon at Paul's Cross, in
which he denounced very severely the expiring Act, declaring
that it was positively against the law of God thus to violate the
liberties of Holy Church, and that all who had been concerned

44 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap.

in passing it had incurred ecclesiastical censures, in proof of
which he produced a book of a decretal. He certainly spoke
the mind of the clergy generally, who, as we have just seen,
ultimately gained their point. But the matter was so important
that at the request of the temporal lords the king called a council
of divines at Blackfriars to consider the question ; and there
Dr. Henry Standish, Warden of the Grey Friars of London,
maintained that the Act was not against the liberty of the
Church as it was for the weal of the whole realm. For this it
is clear that he incurred great unpopularity among the clergy,
and he was at once answered by another divine, who declared
that the Act was opposed to a decretal which all Christians
were bound to obey. But Standish reminded his opponent
that there was another decretal by which all bishops were bound
to be resident at their cathedrals at every feast, yet most of the
English bishops disregarded it, and in like manner the decretal
for the exemption of clerks from secular jurisdiction had never
been recognised in England. The discussion went on, and,
if truly represented in the report, the supporter of Church
privileges made a very curious use of the text Nolite tangere
Christos meos (Touch not mine anointed ones, Ps. cv. 15),
which he quoted as the words of our Lord instead of David,
till Standish corrected him. After the lords had heard both
sides they desired some of the bishops to cause the abbot to
make open renunciation of what he had said at Paul's Cross ;
but the bishops refused, declaring that they were bound by
the law of the Church to maintain the abbot's opinion.

The matter was allowed to rest till Michaelmas term
following, about the time of the final sittings of that Parlia-
ment, when Standish was summoned to appear
caUedL bcforc Convocation to make answer to certain
'^"Ses" ^^"^ articles, so as to elicit his express opinion whether
it was lawful for a temporal judge to call clerks
before him, whether first {i.e. the lower) orders in the Church
were sacred, whether a papal constitution was binding on a
country where the usage had been to the contrary, and
whether a temporal prince could restrain bishops who refused
to punish their clergy. Archbishop Warham delivered him a
bill of conclusions and appointed him a day for reply. But
apparently the articles which he was to answer were not

IV STANDISH AND CONVOCATION 45

administered to him, and Standish, to avoid being questioned,
appealed to the king. The clergy were then called to answer
before the king for having forgotten what was due
to their sovereign in calling Standish before them t^^th^^fn!^
for the counsel he had thought right to give him.
Their reply was that they had not cited him on that account,
for he had given his counsel to the king long ago, but for
certain public lectures that he had since delivered, containing
matter held to be inconsistent with the teaching of the Church.
The articles against him, though drawn up, had not been
delivered, but in drawing them up they had never intended
to do anything to the prejudice of the Crown. They, more-
over, denied having discussed with him the lawfulness of
con venting clerks before lay judges. This looks somewhat
like a contradiction of the first article ; but apparently the
meaning of it simply was that they had neither actually
discussed nor intended to discuss, from a practical point
of view, a matter claimed as belonging to the prerogative
of the Crown; "for if it were the thing that needeth any
reformation, yet the said prelates well perceive that it could
nother be holpen nor hurted by the said friar ; and so they
should have but lost their time in ministering any such
article to him or matter unto him." At the same time they
considered that any opinions they might have expressed
among themselves in Convocation ought not to be treated
as disloyal, any more than opinions expressed in Parliament
that existing laws were unsatisfactory. They said they were
bound on their oaths to investigate cases of heresy, and it
was for that matter alone that they had summoned Standish
before them.

It was in vam, however, to say that such a question was
merely a scholastic one, of no practical or political significance.
And no king ever realised more clearly than Henry VIII.
the importance of a clear understanding of the principles
alike of ecclesiastical and of civil jurisdiction. He was
himself, indeed, no less of a theologian than a statesman ;
and in spite of all the frightful demoralisation of his after
years he retained both characters to the very end. The
clergy appealed to him to remember his coronation oath as
concerning the privileges of the Church. The lay lords did

46 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap.

the same in desiring him to uphold his temporal jurisdiction.
He called the dean of his chapel, Dr. Vesey or Voysey, after-
wards Bishop of Exeter, and desired him on his allegiance to
say whether the conventing of clerks before lay judges for
criminal causes was against the law of God.
T^lofckrks Voysey replied that it had always been used in
^^ud'^^ei^^ England, and might very well stand witli the liber-
ties of the Church. Then a council of lawyers,
spiritual and temporal, was called at Blackfriars, where the
articles against Standish were read, and he was called upon
to reply to them. He denied some and explained others.
Some curious arguments were urged, comparing the citation
of a spiritual father to that of a temporal father. Standish
boldly replied, that a temporal judge might without offence
cite either the one or the other ; but at all events he might
very well cite any other clerk. And no commandment was
absolute, for the Israelites slew and spoiled the Egyptians
w^ithout offence. Dr. Voysey backed up this argument by
showing that the canon law had varied in different times and
countries ; that formerly secular priests had wives till they
were forbidden to marry by a decree in the time of St.
Augustine ; but that decree, though obeyed in England and
other countries, was not received in the East, where priests
had wives like laymen.

In the end the judges decided that all the members of
Convocation who had taken part in the proceedings against Dr.
Standish were subject to a p7'(ziniinire^ and that the
decisis? ^^'^g could quite well, by his prerogative, hold a
parliament consisting only of temporal lords and
commons without summoning the spiritual lords at all, who sat
there only by virtue of their temporal possessions. Then the
judges and councillors, spiritual and temporal, came before the
king at Baynard's Castle, where Wolsey, Archbishop of York
and cardinal, knelt before the king to intercede for the clergy,
who had no thought of doing anything in derogation of the
royal prerogative. Wolsey declared that for his own part he
owed his advancement solely to the king, and would never
assent to anything tending to impair his authority; yet the
conventing of clerks before lay judges did seem to be a matter
that touched the liberties of the Church, which the clergy were

iv STANDISH SUPPORTED BY THE KING 47

all bound by oath to preserve. He therefore prayed the
king that the matter might be referred to the pope and his
councillors at Rome. The king on this made answer, "We
think Dr. Standish has sufficiently replied to you in all
points."

This might have been supposed conclusive, especially as
no one seems to have expected any change to be made in
long-estabhshed usage. But the clergy were up-
holders of an academic theory, and felt no more ^objecT^^
bound to admit that established usage was right,
than to admit that sin was right because all men were
sinners. The very best men among them objected to what
seemed to be the king's final decision. "Sir," said Fox,
Bishop of Winchester, "I warrant you Dr. Standish will
not abide by his opinion at his peril." Standish replied
(and the answer is a curious one, considering that, as one
might suppose, he could well rely on the king for support),
" What should one poor friar do alone against all the bishops
and clergy of England ? " Archbishop Warham said that
in former days many holy fathers had resisted the law of
the land on this point, and some had suffered martyrdom in
the quarrel. But Chief Justice Fineux replied that the
conventing of clerks had been practised by many holy kings,
and many fathers of the Church had agreed to it. " More-
over," he said to the archbishop, "if a clerk is arrested by
the secular authority for murder or felony, and the temporal
judge commits him to you according to your desire, you
have no authority by your law to try him." Hereupon the
king said : " We are, by the sufferance of God, King of
England, and the Kings of England in times past never had
any superior but God. Know, therefore, that we will maintain
the rights of the Crown in this matter like our progenitors ;
and as to your decrees, we are satisfied that you of the
spiritualty act expressly against the words of several of them,
as has been well shown you by some of our spiritual Council.
You interpret your decrees at your pleasure ; but as for me,
I will never consent to your desire, any more than my
progenitors have done."

This was final as regards the king ; for though Archbishop
Warham still begged that the matter might be respited till

48 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap

they had a decision on the subject from Rome, which they

would procure at their own cost, the king made
appeasTd. ^^ reply. " Nevertheless," says the record, " by

this motion they found means to keep Dr.
Horsey out of the hands of the temporalty, and he re-
mained in the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury
under colour of a prisoner until the cry about Hunne was
somewhat abated, and they had made his peace with the
king about the said murder, and then he came privately
into the king's bench, was arraigned, and pleaded 'not
guilty.' The attorney - general, Erneley, admitted the plea,
and Horsey was dismissed. And as to Dr. Standish, at the
said last assembly at Baynard's Castle, the bishops promised
the king that he should be dismissed from the court."

So the affair, after all, ended in a kind of compromise.
The clergy could not get practical recognition for their theory

of the immunity of clerks from secular jurisdic-
"seuS^ tion, and they promised to dismiss their action

against Standish ; but the king, in this case, kept
Dr. Horsey out of the hands of the laity. Such is the
report, it must be observed, of a secular lawyer, coloured,
as we may well suppose, by popular and professional
prejudice. To him Hunne's death was a murder, and
perhaps he thought it so ; at all events, the jury had found
it to be so; and though the attorney -general had admitted
the defendant's plea of "not guilty," the thing was rather
more like a pardon than an acquittal. Dr. Horsey was
the only material sufferer by this long controversy ; for,
innocent as we must suppose him to have been, he could not,
being a clergyman, have the satisfaction of having his character
cleared in court, and this actually in consequence of the
privileges claimed for his order. In the eye of civil lawyers
he was only a pardoned murderer, while he was really the
victim of a conflict between civil and ecclesiastical authority.
For the king, while he declined to say a word tending to the
diminution of his prerogative, felt apparently that in this case
ordinary secular tribunals could not be trusted to do what was
right and just.

The light thrown by this particular case on the standing
opposition between civil and spiritual jurisdiction is certainly

IV A HIGH THEORY 49

remarkable ; for here we find, not, as we might expect, only
a few indiscreet spirits among the clergy zealous to maintain
ecclesiastical privileges which had never been practically
admitted, and which would seemingly have been subversive of
all good government, but men of high political ability like
Bishop Fox and Archbishop Warham pleading hard for their
recognition, and even Wolsey urging that the clergy were
bound by oath to maintain those liberties against which the
temporary Act was aimed. The wonder is that such opposite
theories of law could have remained side by side with each
other for ages without leading to serious friction. There can
be no very dangerous dispute, however, between two persons,
one of whom can always have his way, while the second can
only offer advice. The Church had no coercive power except
such as the State was pleased to allow her. The canon law
could only set forth that which was supposed to be theoretic-
ally right; and if the state of the world, which was always
evil, would not permit this abstract right to take full effect,
why, then, the evils of the time must be endured, but that
was no reason for relinquishing one point of theory. If the
Church did not always declare what was best in faith, in
morals, and in government, what was the use of the Church ?
Now, here was one of the Church's own servants, seeking,
or at least protected by. Court favour, deliberately (as it
seemed) perverting the Church's teaching, and measuring that
which was best by what was most unquestionably politic and
convenient. This savoured of heresy, and it seemed only
right, if possible, to call the offender to account. But, then,
how was it possible ? All very well if, free from all fear of
consequences, experts in canon law could have been left to
fight it out between them, and the vanquished party could
have been forced to recant for fear of punishment. Then,
indeed. Bishop Fox would have been justified in saying that
Standish would not dare abide by his opinion. Then, too,
Standish himself might very well say, " What should one poor
friar do alone against all the bishops and clergy ? " But all
the bishops and clergy had laid their case before the king,
and he, after giving it full consideration, was content to be
guided by the opinion of Dr. Standish ; so there was no
executive in this case to compel the heretic to recant. The

50 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STA TE chap.

king, taking a practical view of the matter, as any king was
sure to do, agreed with the opinion declared to be heretical,
so the prosecution of Standisli must be forborne. None the
less, the king had high respect for the scruples of the clergy,
and paid all the accustomed deference to their old immunities.
~ We may thus understand how the situation was summed
up by an official of that day. Dr. John Tayler, a doctor of
canon law, who happened at the time to fill both
Dr. Tayier's j-^g office of clerk of the Parliament and speaker of

note. r /~i • 1

the Lower House of Convocation. At the bottom
of his official account of the proceedings of each of these
bodies he wrote a note to this effect : — " In this parliament
and convocation most dangerous seditions arose between the
clergy and the secular power about the ecclesiastical liberties,
a certain Minorite Friar, by name Standish, being the instru-
ment and the instigator of all evils."

And now it may be desirable to see what means we have
of judging of the extent to which heresies with regard to
Number of ^^ctrinc prevailed throughout the country, and what
prosecutions the character of those heresies was. On this
eresy. g^^j^^^ -^ -g obvious to refer to Foxe's Acts and
Motiuments^ which contains the result of a search made by
the author in episcopal registers, especially those of Canterbury,
London, and Lincoln, for cases of heresy brought before the
bishops. And as Bishop Burnet also examined some of these
registers for his Histoij of the Reformation^ his testimony
may occasionally be compared with that of the earlier writer
for greater fulness. But as regards our chief authority, Foxe,
it is important to note the object with which he wrote. In
treating of " the persecution in the diocese of London," he
expressly tells us that his object was to stop the mouths of
Roman Catholics who were continually asking at the time he
wrote, " where this our Church and religion was within these
fifty or sixty years." And it is to show the continuity of "the
true Church of Christ " during that period that he begins with
what one would take to be a complete list from the Register
of Bishop Fitz-James of the heretics brought before him
between the years 1510 and 1527. This really goes beyond
the time of Bishop Fitz-James, who was succeeded in the See
of London by Tunstall in 1522 ; but no matter. Under the

IV PROSECUTIONS FOR HERESY 51.

year 15 10 we have eleven names; under 15 11 we have
twelve ; under 1 5 1 2 only one. Then after an interval of four
years we find two in 151 7, and six in 15 18. Then occurs a
period of rest till 1521, under which there are four names, the
last that belong really to Fitz-James's episcopate. Then come
one only in 1523, two in 1526, and one in 1527. Forty
heretics altogether in seventeen years. If that were a
complete record for the most populous diocese in England, it
would not appear that the amount of overt heresy in the
country was very considerable. And as not one of these
forty appears to have been burned, we cannot cite this list,
at all events, as evidence of extreme persecution.

But clearly the catalogue is not quite exhaustive, as it
does not include those who were committed to the flames ;
and, moreover, it does not include the name of
Richard Hunne, whose trial for heresy, as we have g^^^fne?
seen, only took place after he was dead. We may
note besides, of course, Bishop Fitz-James's own words, that
London was so full of men of heretical sympathies that his
chancellor, Dr. Horsey, had no chance of a fair trial by any jury.
This, indeed, points to a very unpleasant state of public feeling,
and shows clearly enough that there was something wrong in
the relations of Church and State, though no one, as yet, could
see any remedy for the evil. But still, the overt cases of
heresy were very few, and fewer still the cases of those who per-
severed to the end, or rather, let us say, of those who at last
were compelled to face the fire ; for of steadfast perseverance
to the end at this period we see nothing. To complete the
list of detected heretics under Bishop Fitz- James from the year
1 5 1 o (which, however, was not the beginning of his episcopate)
we must first deduct from the above forty the four who were
convented after 1522, then add one for the exceptional case
of Hunne and two for two so-called " martyrs," Sweeting and
Brewster, to be mentioned presently, who were burned in
Smithfield in 15 11. That makes thirty-nine in twelve years.

But it may be desirable first to give a specimen of an
earlier case, also given by Foxe, which took place ^,. , ^

1 • Tiir^ Elizabeth

under the same episcopate. Elizabeth Sampson Sampson's

was convented before Bishop Fitz-James in London

as early as 1508 for speaking disrespectfully of images

52 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap.

and pilgrimages. She declared, among other things, that
"our Lady of Willesden was but a burnt-tailed elf, and
a burnt-tailed stock ; and if she might have holpen men
and women who go to her on pilgrimage, she could not
have suffered her tail to have been burnt ; and what
should folk worship our Lady of Willesden, or our Lady
of Crome, for the one is but a burnt-tailed stock, and the
other is but a puppet ; and better it were for the people to
give their alms at home to poor people, than to go on pilgrim-
age. Also she called the image of St. Saviour ' Sim Saviour
with kit lips ' ; and that she said she could make as good
bread as that which the priest occupied ; and it was not the
body of Christ, but bread, for that Christ could not be both
in heaven and in earth at one time." These sentiments she
was compelled to abjure before Dr. Horsey some years before
that unhappy official got into trouble about Hunne.

Let us now examine Foxe's list of the forty heretics
con vented in seventeen years, which we have just slightly
amplified and reduced to thirty -nine in twelve
^^hurch ""^ y^^^^- These thirty-nine, it seems, represented
Foxe's true Church of Christ ; they were the
spokesmen, of course, for others in what they believed or
disbelieved. From what we have just said, we may well
expect to find that a good many of the objectionable doctrines
were such as are largely favoured now, and even declared con-
sistent with true orthodoxy ; so that we are quite disposed to
sympathise with those who were prosecuted for entertaining
them. But it must be remarked, in relation to Foxe's theory
(that these men were of the true Church while their oppressors
really belonged to anti-Christ), that at this time not a single
member of that true Church remained constant in the pro-
fession of a true gospel ! Every one of those thirty-nine
No case of ^t)jured, and the two who were ultimately burned
persistence wcrc put to death as relapsed heretics, after again
eresy. j-enouucing their heresies and craving absolution
from their excommunication before they suffered. What !
penitent for having professed " the true gospel " at the last,
when there was no escape ! The true gospel ought surely to
fortify a man under such circumstances if anything can do so ;
and if it cannot, what is gained by a false profession in face

IV BURNINGS FOR HERESY 53

of certain death ? Foxe is evidently grieved to record a fact
which after all makes the existence of his true Church in that
age rather shadowy; but he refers the "certain knowledge"
to God whether the bishop's register is really to be trusted
in this matter ; and if it be, he begs the reader to note the
unmerciful character of " the Pope's Church," which insisted
on the death of men who were penitent at the last.

In any case, the evidence is rather against the claim of
these two sufferers to be enrolled in the catalogue of martyrs,
since they did not testify by their deaths to the truth of their
beliefs ; and a good many other of Foxe's " martyrs," it may
be observed, had as little claim as they. As to these two,
we learn from Foxe himself something of their
history and the articles of which they were accused. bum?d"
One of them was a carpenter of Colchester, who BreSen
appears to be named rightly in one place as James
Brewster, though in another his Christian name is given as
John, and in another as Jacob. He had been abjured
before Archbishop Warham in 1505, the See of London
being at that time vacant, when he was enjoined to go
through certain acts of penance at Colchester, and to wear
the badge of a faggot on his upper garment all his life
after. He had been detected even then resorting to his
fellow-sufferer, William Sweeting, as one of a little company
who met in the fields to hear him read "out of a certain
book " ; moreover, he himself possessed " a little book of
scripture" {i.e. a book in manuscript) in English "of an
old writing almost worn for age, whose name is not there
expressed." He had conversed with people unbecomingly
about pilgrimages, offering to images, the worshipping of
saints, and the sacrament of the altar. After doing his
penance he wore the faggot on his left shoulder for nearly two
years, when, having engaged himself as a field-labourer in the
Earl of Oxford's service, it was taken off by the earl's controller.
This itself was a breach of the injunctions laid upon him, but
perhaps it enabled him to escape observation for a while, and
what fresh offence he gave, if any, is not recorded.

The other, "William Sweeting, otherwise named Gierke,
first dwelt with the lady Percy at Darlington in the County
of Northampton " ( ? Durham), and afterwards went to

54 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap,

Boxted in Essex, where he was for seven years holy-
water clerk ; after which he was bailiff and farmer
2g wmiam i-Q ]y[j.g_ Margery Wood for thirteen years. She
apparently lived at Boxted, for we are next told
that he departed thence to St. Osyth in the same county,
where he served the prior of St. Osyth's, George Laund,
for over sixteen years, and by his conversation infected
with heresy the prior himself, who was afterwards compelled
to abjure. He accompanied the prior up to London, was
committed to the Lollard's Tower, and being abjured at St.
Paul's was ordered to bear a faggot, first at Paul's Cross
and then at Colchester; after which, like Brewster, he was
enjoined to wear the faggot badge all his life long. He ac-
cordingly wore it upon his left sleeve, but, like Brewster also,
only for two years, when he engaged himself to "the parson
of Colchester" as holy-water clerk, and took it off. He
remained in this service two years, then travelled about and
came to Rotherhithe, where he also served as holy-water clerk
for the space of one year. After that he went to Chelsea,
where he became neatherd " and kept the town beasts " ; but
there he was apprehended " on St. Anne's day in the morning,"
July 26th, 151 1. From all this it would seem that he could
not have been much under fifty when he was compelled to
abjure, and that he was between fifty and sixty when he was
burned. The things laid to his charge when he was first ac-
cused were his familiarity with Brewster (who had already been
abjured) and other heretics, denial of transubstantiation, and
objecting to pilgrimages and images, reproving his wife for
desiring to go on pilgrimage and for worshipping images and
setting candles before them.

The two men were now asked why they should not receive
sentence as relapsed heretics ; on which both of them sub-
mitted to the judgment of the Church and were released from
excommunication. But they were no longer to be trusted, and
must die the death. So they were burned together in Smith-
field on October i8th.

It is sad enough, certainly, to think of men being treated
as public enemies and disturbers of the peace because they
uttered rather too freely things that were in the minds of many.
But we must consider that a system of perfect freedom was

IV TOLERATION UNKNOWN 55

not as yet in the minds of any men at all. However free-
thinking on various subjects might abound — and ^, ,

^ , - . . , , loleration

there was much of it, even m those days — as yet
authority must be invoked to defend from con- •'"p"^^^^^^-
tempt and profanation doctrines and usages which the
Church held sacred. That was clearly the general opinion,
and it was quite the same when " the true gospel " of Foxe
and his friends had triumphed by a revolution. The State
must defend by penal laws the form of faith which she
professed, even if it penalised the general belief of Christen-
dom. But how much feebler was the plea for toleration when
men lived under an old-established system never yet shaken
or even seriously threatened with revolution? Free-thinking
there might be, and no doubt always was ; but who could
define, even in his own mind, the limits of truth and false-
hood? Just as in our reign of freedom many are per-
plexed with intellectual difficulties, but feel gradually as they
go on that they cannot discard a few things without discarding
more — that the irresistible claims of logic will lead them
farther and farther on in the direction of pure agnosticism,
and that this, when reached, or even a point a long way short
of this, strikes their minds quite truly with the force of a
7'eductio ad absurdum proving that there was some error at the
outset, — so was it, doubtless, in the days gone by. The faith
was in the keeping of the Church, and all the doctrines bound
up with it had been debated by the most subtle minds in past
ages. Even transubstantiation was not rashly to be impugned,
though it was bound up with a certain physical philosophy
which was difficult to realise then and has not maintained its
credit in modern times. For a man who was no schoolman
and no doctor of divinity to question, and teach others to
despise, doctrines and usages which had met with the approval
of great thinkers and the sanction of long-established usage
was really a piece of arrogance. He was a wanton disturber
of men's minds.

It will be observed that the year 151 1, in which these two
men suffered, was a year in which the prosecutions for heresy
were more numerous than in any other year from i5iotoi527.
The burning of these two victims no doubt produced the desired
effect ; for the very next year the cases of heresy fell from

56 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STATE chap.

twelve to one, and during the next four years there seem to
have been none at all in the diocese of London. As regards
the forty in those years who were not burned, we are indebted
to Foxe for some slight account of the charges against them,
in which, as he himself confesses, he has deliberately
^wSh 'heresyf ^"PP^^^^^^ some of the most odious. His con-
fession on that head is so truly remarkable that it
must be given here in his own words : —

x\nd because I think it somewhat superfluous to make any
large recital of all and every part of their several process [es], I
mind therefore briefly only to touch so many of their articles as
may be sufficient to induce the Christian reader to judge the
sooner of the rest ; being (I assure you) of no greater importance
than these that follow, except that sometimes they v/ere charged,
most slanderously, with horrible and blasphemous lies against
the majesty and truth of God ; which as they utterly denied, so do
I now for this present keep secret in silence, as well for brevity's
sake as also somewhat to colour and hide the shameless practices
of that lying generation.

This is surely a most extraordinary way of dealing with
historical evidence. Foxe searched through the bishops'
registers to show what a number of persons suffered — or were
persecuted even when they were not burned — for the truth of
the gospel, or for opinions which he so regarded. But if the
same evidences declared that they were prosecuted in some
cases for " horrible and blasphemous lies against the majesty
and truth of God," then, of course, the accusations were false
and slanderous. For proof of this it is sufficient that the
accused denied the charges ; and Foxe therefore judiciously
keeps silence about them " as well for brevity's sake as also
somewhat to colour and hide the shameless practices of that
lying generation " ! So, of course, we must content ourselves
with the charges Foxe himself either credits or can explain by
the answers of the accused.

The first on the list, Joan Baker, is charged not only with

refusing to reverence the crucifix, but with persuading a friend

Character of °^ ^^^^^ ^yii^g ^-t the point of death not to put any

the accusa- trust in it, or in images of any kind ; that she was

eresy. ^^^^^ ^^ j^^^ gone SO often on pilgrimage "to St.

Saviour and other idols " ; that she maintained that the pope

IV EXAMPLES OF HERESY 57

had no power to give pardons, and that Lady Young, a person of
whom nothing more is known than that she had been burned
not long before, died a true martyr of God. Apparently Joan
Baker was a fanatical Lollard, who adopted the Lollard
fashion of calling images idols, and could not leave a dying
person alone without ill-judged exhortations on her part. The
second, William Pettier, was charged with asserting that there
were six gods, with some very irreverent explanations ; but he
declared his language had been misreported. Others denied
the corporal presence of Christ in the Sacrament ; others had
spoken against pilgrimages and the worship of images, against
keeping any holy day but the Sabbath, against transubstantia-
tion, and in contempt of the pope's pardons. One had pro-
nounced St. Paul's church to be a house of thieves because
the clergy were not liberal to the poor \ another had said the
Church was too rich ; another had received heretics in his
house and heard them read erroneous books. But all in
this list repudiated the sentiments attributed to them and
were dismissed, no doubt with warnings for the future.

These heresies are really on the whole much the same as
those for which people were called in question in other
dioceses. An examination of all the cases recorded by Foxe
for the period immediately preceding the Reformation shows
charges of the same character everywhere. There are, indeed,
a few other varieties. Some men were charged with eating
flesh in Lent ; some with speaking against purgatory and
prayers for the dead ; some with possessing the Lord's Prayer
and the Creed in English. Others were charged with pos-
sessing the book called Wydtffes Wicket and commending
Wycliffe's opinions ; afterwards men begin to be charged with
favouring Luther's doctrines. Now and then, mixed up with
doctrine, there was some irreverence towards the Virgin. But
one thing to be noted is that really very little is said about the
pope, and what httle even the heretics uttered did not greatly
affect his authority. One would dispute his power to give
pardons or indulgences ; another would maintain that the
power given by our Lord to St. Peter did not pass to his
successors. But this, which is the nearest thing we find to
the modern Protestant position, was very far indeed from
a repudiation of the actual jurisdiction of the Church, and

58 JURISDICTION OF CHURCH AND STA TE chap, iv

of its existing Head. It was needless speaking against a
jurisdiction so firmly established. Only royal power could
possibly shake that, and the idea of royal power being so
exerted was the last that would occur to any one at that
time.

Authorities. — On the relations between Church and State, Maitland's
Roman Canon Law in the Church of England will be found very valuable.
Lathbury's History of Convocation may also be consulted. The statutes
referred to bearing upon rights of sanctuary are 4 Hen. VI I. c 13 and
4 Hen. Vni. 0. 2. For the Abbot of Winchcombe's sermon and what
followed see Keilwey's Reports, ff. 181 sq., and Journals of the House oj
Lords, vol. i. p. 57. For the heresy cases see Foxe's Acts and Monuments,
Burnet's History of the Reformation, and Collier's Ecclesiastical History.

CHAPTER V

WOLSEY, CARDINAL AND LEGATE HENRY, DEFENDER OF

THE FAITH

From what we have just seen it may be judged that, though
there was a good deal of heretical feeling throughout the
country, comparatively few men were guilty of overt
heresy, and even these were rarely, if ever, constant ^g^nSiy^'
to the death. There is no appearance, indeed, ^"^^^^^"^'^
that they were the more enlightened part of the
nation. Few among them appear to have been men either
of social position, of judgment, or of education. The
Lollard philosophy tended to bring all learning into dis-
repute except the study of the Scriptures and the reading
of Wycliffe's books. It is probably only an ideal champion
of this school whom More describes in his Dialogue as
charged with the education of two sons of the friend to
whom that book is addressed. More inquired of this teacher
to what faculty he had given most study, and found that he
had given most diligence to the Latin tongue. Other studies
he cared little about ; " for he told me merrily," says More,
"that Logic he reckoned but babbling. Music to serve for
fingers. Arithmetic meet for merchants. Astronomy good for
no man. And as for Philosophy, the most vanity of all ; and
it and Logic had lost all divinity with the subtleties of their
questions and babbling of their dispositions, building all upon
reason^ which rather giveth blindness than any light ; for man,
he said, had no light but of Holy Scripture."

These words convey the essence of the Lollard philosophy
still smouldering among the people. The Lollards were not

6o WOLSEY, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

rationalists, for they distrusted reason. They beheved in

the Bible as the great fountain of all necessary
vfiws.'^ truth, and would not allow that its interpretation

belonged to the Church and a specially educated
clergy. They considered, on the contrary, that its true
interpretation was revealed to all humble-minded Christians —
"known men," as the phrase was in the fifteenth century,
meaning men known to God as His own. But their tendency
to despise traditions and ordinances not distinctly authorised
by Holy Writ gave strong encouragement to acts of positive
irreverence; and the danger with which their destructive
doctrines menaced not only the faith but the social order of the
nation was generally recognised. The penalty of the stake did
not seem too severe for such wilful disturbers, and it was only
wilful and obstinate heretics that were thus dealt with. For
heresy was not mere opinion ; every one regarded it as a crime.
Nay, the heretics themselves took this view, and always sought
to prove that they were not guilty of heresy.

In England, and probably in most countries, before the
days of Luther, men of education were generally on the side
of authority. There is only one conspicuous instance of a
man of highly cultivated mind being charged with heretical
tendencies ; and the charge in his case was, perhaps, plausible.

Yet Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, was not a
^^^^"^^jJjf'Mieretic — so far from it, that his name occurs in

one of Foxe's lists of " persecutors," that is to say,
of men who examined heretics. Neither could it be said
that the founder of St. Paul's School in London was a
despiser of learning. Heretics, however, took such pleasure
in his preaching that they came up from the country to hear
him, and he really did depreciate — at least as a means of
understanding Scripture — not only the study of pagan authors
but also that of scholastic divines. He was himself well read
both in the schoolmen and in the classics ; he had studied
both these and the fathers also in France and Italy before he
took orders. But he startled Erasmus, at first, by abusing St.
Thomas Aquinas, whom he accused of arrogance for attempt-
ing to make all things definite and for profaning the Gospel
with mere human philosophy. Like the Lollards, he read the
Scriptures by his own inner light, and his inner light, sometimes,

V COLET DESPISES RELICS 6i

was rather mystical. But there is no doubt the novelty of his
preaching had a most stirring effect. The bishops were suspicious
of him, and he did not like the bishops. His own bishop, Fitz-
James of London, who spoke so strongly in Hunne's case
about the prevalence of heretical feeling in the city, had a
sort of feud with the dean of his own cathedral, and actually
denounced the new foundation of St. Paul's School as useless,
if not mischievous. Bishop Fitz- James, no doubt, was a very
honest man, but was not prepared for a revolution in matters
of education. Colet, on the other hand, was somewhat
reckless in the way he attacked old prejudices and supersti-
tions ; for it seems quite clear that he was the Gratianus
Pulliis who journeyed with Erasmus to Canterbury, confounded
the vergers with inconvenient questions, and disgusted the prior
and other keepers of relics with his evident disdain for filthy
rags and venerable old shoes. His very preaching seems to
have laid him open to a charge of heresy, and Bishop Fitz-
James cited him before Archbishop Warham for something he
had said against images and against written sermons — a mode
of preaching that the aged bishop himself was obliged to have
recourse to. Warham dismissed the charge ; but the bishop
afterwards, along with others, tried to stir up the court against
him for discouraging the war with France. Colet, indeed,
preached before the king on Good Friday, 15 13, a sermon
which Henry himself thought a little ambiguous, fearing that
it might discourage the soldiers. But he called Colet after-
wards to a private interview, in which he familiarly discussed
the matter with him, desiring him only to explain himself
afterwards, lest people should think he maintained that no
war was justifiable to a Christian. Finally he dismissed him
publicly with great honour, saying, " Let every man have his
own doctor ; this man is mine."

Colet died in 15 19. It was in 151 1 — that critical year in
which heresy had reached for the time its highest degree of
activity — that Warham had appointed him one of the judges
to try heretics in the diocese of Canterbury. And next year
the archbishop further appointed him to preach
the opening sermon to a Convocation specially ^^^^J^^^^JJ^^^^^
summoned to take measures against the further
spread of their mischievous opinions. He did so, and the

62 JVOLSEV, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

sermon which he preached on that occasion was a memorable
one. He took his text from Romans xii. 2, and the first part
of his discourse, on not being conformed to this v/orld, was
directed against the abuse of clergymen being led away from
the duties of their sacred vocation by ambition, covetousness,
amusements such as hunting and hawking, or secular occupa-
tions suitable for the laity. But the " reforming " which was
to counteract the " conforming " was a matter for which he
appealed to the bishops. He had no new legislation to
suggest ; there were laws enough already ; only the spirit to
carry them out was wanted. To purify the clergy themselves
from worldly and secular objects was the one thing in his
view that the Church most required. If men had only a
devout and self-sacrificing clergy, that great wave of heresy
might be trusted to subside.

It did subside, as we have seen, for a while ; but, it is

to be feared, not so much in consequence of any great

effort made at that time to purify the Church,

Temporary . , i /- i i i

subsidence as owmg to the example of the two relapsed
of heresy, ^gj-etics bumed in Smithfield. Their fate excited
so little compassion that it is clear they had not many
admirers. Just after they were burned Ammonius jestingly
tells Erasmus that it was no wonder wood for fuel was
dear, so much of it was required to make holocausts of
heretics. The jest would have been a very bad one, but that
the exaggeration was so intense ; and this only emphasises the
fact that the victims were but a solitary pair, and that it was
rare to have so many. But an evil checked in such a fashion
is certainly not eradicated. The laity were deterred from
open outbreaks of lieresy, and scholars were very well satisfied
with the laws and teaching of the Church ; but laymen,
doubtless, would still have their own thoughts and cogitations.
And what prospect was there of a purification of the clergy
such as Colet desired ? He looked to their rulers to do the
work, and the rule of the Church was about to be committed
to the greatest master of statecraft.

It was almost exactly a year after Wolsey's promotion to
York that he was made a cardinal. The dignity was conceded
to him only through the exertion of strong influence in his
behalf by his sovereign, who had been anxious to procure it for

HIS CREATION AS CARDINAL 6^

him even when he was Bishop of Lincoln. Both the king
and Wolsey himself had expressed themselves most
anxious to promote the interests of the Holy See. ■v^'isey
"The king/' Wolsey wrote to De' Gigli, "will be ^^^^^^^
ready to expose his person and goods to support the
honour and dignity of the Holy See." Henry, in fact, promised
the pope to send relief to the Christians of Dalmatia and the
city of Jaicze, then besieged by the Turks, for which object the
pope urgently desired of the English clergy a tenth, or at least
a twentieth. The latter amount Henry agreed that he should
have, and the pope was so delighted with his liberality that
De' Gigli wrote he meant to insist on Wolsey's promotion in
spite of the opposition of all the cardinals. Wolsey was
accordingly created "cardinal sole," not one of a batch, as
cardinals generally were created, and his title was given him
afterwards from the church of St. Cecilia t7'ans Tiberim.

The hat was despatched to England with little delay, in
order that Wolsey might wear it in the coming Parliament ; and
the messenger entrusted with it, Bonifacio Collis, who was De'
Gigli's secretary, as well as scutifer to the pope, was met at
the seaside and Blackheath much in the same way as Leonardo
de' Spinelli had been when he brought the cap and sword
for the king. He entered London on November 15 th, and
rode through the city with the Bishop of Lincoln on one side
of him and the Earl of Essex on the other, the mayor, alder-
men, and city companies lining the streets. At Westminster
the abbot, with eight other abbots, received the hat and con-
veyed it to the high altar. On Sunday the i8th the cardinal
came to the abbey to receive it, surrounded by a crowd of
bishops. High mass was sung by Archbishop Warham, to
whom Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was "crosier," and Dr.
Colet preached a sermon exhorting the new cardinal to execute
righteousness to poor and rich, and desiring all people to pray
for him. The bull was then read, and the cardinal knelt
before the altar, where he " lay grovelling " during benedictions
and prayers. Then came a Te Deuin ; and after all was over,
the newly created cardinal proceeded to his palace near
Charing Cross, preceded by his cross and mace, and in front
of them by the Archbishop of Canterbury, now without a
cross borne before him, and the Bishop of Winchester, while

64 JVOLSEV, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the rest of the nobility,
led the way. A sumptuous feast at York Place, graced by the
presence of the king and queen and the widowed " French
queen " (Mary, now Duchess of Suffolk), formed the conclu-
sion of these grand proceedings.

But now the aid against the Turks was not felt to be so
very urgent. In fact, it was refused by the Convocation of

Canterbury. The archbishop, of course, as bound
^refus°e?an" 1^ duty, exhibited the pope's brief, and a letter from
theTlTrkJ^ De' Gigli on the subject addressed to himself. But

the clergy reminded his Holiness in reply of the great
efforts they had made for such objects in the time of Julius II.,
and they considered that King Henry's victories over the
French had now removed all danger from the Holy See. It
is noteworthy, moreover, that the pope's request could only
have been laid before Convocation by consent of the king ;
and that John Tayler, who was both prolocutor in Convocation
and at the same time clerk of the Parliaments, in stating to the
bishops the reasons for non-compliance, spoke of it as more
directly a grant to the Crown than to the pope. The Convo-
cation, he said, had been called for other purposes, and more
tenths had been paid by the clergy in one sitting than to any
other king in their days. He hoped Henry VIII. would be
led by the example of his father, who remitted the tenths when
the cause for granting them had ceased. For the clergy to
grant the pope's demand now would be a most dangerous
precedent, and they were determined not to open a door
which hereafter they might be unable to shut. Such was the
reply ; and it does not appear that Henry's zeal for the Holy
See prompted him in the least to resent it. A refusal of an
aid which was meant for his own purposes would have been a
different matter.

The new turn taken by Henry's policy when he allied him-
self with France in 1 5 1 4 may have had something to do with

the displeasure which he then took with Cardinal

Ad^iaiTand Adrian de Corneto, the collector of Peter's pence in

P°^y^?j^^ England, and with his sub-collector, Polydore Vergil.

Henry insisted on Cardinal Adrian resigning the
office, which he desired to bestow on his own Latin secretary,
Andreas Ammonius, the witty and scholarly friend of Erasmus.

V APPOINTED LORD CHANCELLOR 65

The cardinal, however, at first affected to disbeheve in the
genuineness of the king's letters, and declared that the pope's
briefs in answer to them were surreptitiously obtained. He
got the whole college of cardinals to write in favour of himself
and Polydore Vergil to the king ; but as this produced no
effect, the pope endeavoured to effect a compromise by appoint-
ing Ammonius sub-collector instead of Polydore, and reserving
to Cardinal Adrian a pension of 1400 ducats. Even this,
however, was not accepted in England as a settlement; it
was not the mere deputy -collectorship that was wanted for
Ammonius. Meanwhile Polydore Vergil's letters to Cardinal
Adrian were intercepted, and were found, as might have been
expected, to contain some very bitter observations. He
had written that the king was but a boy ruled by others,
and signed papers without knowing their contents. He
had spoken of De' Gigli, Ammonius, and Wolsey by nick-
names, and abused the last as a tyrant hated by everybody,
though he had offered him a yearly pension of ;£"ioo
for his favour, and he recommended Adrian to pension one
or two of the pope's officials to settle the matter. This,
it should be mentioned, was some months before Wolsey
was made cardinal. When the letters were read, Polydore
was at once committed to the Tower, and there he still
languished when Wolsey's hat was brought to England, and
his brand-new honours were the talk of all the world. Neither
Polydore nor his master Adrian had anticipated this ; and
while Adrian got friends to write for him to Wolsey to clear
him of a suspicion that he had opposed his promotion,
Polydore wrote an abject letter to the new cardinal from his
dungeon in the Tower. While lying, as he said, in the shadow
of death, he had heard of Wolsey's elevation. When he was
permitted he would be glad to bow in adoration before him ;
and then, the letter goes on to say, " my spirit will rejoice in
thee, my God and Saviour." To make the fulsome blasphemy
complete, the letter was addressed : " Reverendissimo domino,
Deo meo, domino Cardinali Eboracensi dignissimo."

Wolsey's promotion in the Church was very soon followed
by promotion in the State as well. On December 22 Arch- ;"/
bishop Warham resigned the great seal, and the king
delivered it to Wolsey, who took his oath of office as lord

66 JVOLSEV, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

chancellor at Eltham on Christmas Eve. Wolsey was now
Woiseymade p^e-eminent as the first subject in the land, and he
lord Chan- seemed at this time to be the king's sole adviser. The
Venetian ambassador wrote that the king was bent
on aggrandising him to the utmost, and that the whole authority
of the State really rested with him. So indeed it appeared to
do for many years afterwards, but historians have been too
prone to believe that the policy which he was forced to carry
out invariably originated with himself. The king's ears were
always open to other counsels ; and though he was well aware
that Wolsey was his most sagacious adviser and most practical
man of business, it was he himself who in all cases decided
on the Hne of action to be followed, while Wolsey devised
means of accomplishing the intended objects.

Warham's retirement from the chancellorship was perfectly
voluntary ; in fact, he had been seeking to resign the office
for years past. A most conscientious man, he always sought
to do his duty in whatever post he might be appointed to
fill ; but he did not love his responsibilities. Jealous of the
rights of his See, he had two or three years before had a
rather unpleasant controversy with his suffragans, who com-
plained of their jurisdiction being infringed by the prerogative
of Canterbury. His leading opponent in this dispute was
the venerable Fox, Bishop of Winchester ; but the matter
was an intricate one, and after being referred to Rome it was,
by consent of the parties, submitted to the king, who arranged
a compromise.

Shortly after this, not only Warham, but Fox also, retired

altogether from political life. Polydore Vergil, who, of course,

Retirement ^^ ^^^ history colours the matter in his own fashion,

of Warham says that Fox's steadfast patronage of Wolsey (whose

and Fox. "' , , , . , .^ . ^ ii.it

true character, he thmks it only reasonable to believe,
was unknown to his patron !) made him so unpopular with
good men that, though an excellent man himself, he gradually
withdrew from public affairs. But in another passage the
same writer says that both Fox and Warham, finding all
power in the hands of a single man, withdrew to their dioceses
after earnestly warning the king not to let a servant become
greater than his master. Henry was certainly not the sovereign
to require such a hint, and neither Warham nor Fox, we

V OLD COUNCILLORS WITHDRAW 67

may be sure, proffered any such needless advice to him.
The true state of matters, although mixed with some surmise
even here, may be learned from a contemporary despatch of
the Venetian ambassador Giustinian, written in London on
July 17, 15 16. "For many days and months past," says
Giustinian, " the Bishop of Winchester and the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who were principal members of this government,
have withdrawn themselves, on account, it is said, of the
succour given to the emperor against the King of France
and your Excellency " {i.e. the Venetian State, which was
now allied with France). " Canterbury was lord chancellor,
and Winchester held the privy seal, both which offices are
of extreme- importance and have been resigned by them.
The office of lord chancellor has been conferred on the right
reverend cardinal, and the privy seal on the right reverend
Bishop of Durham. The illustrious the Duke of Suffolk,
who married the queen-widow of France, has also absented
himself; it is said, he is not in so much favour with this
king as heretofore. Another likewise, by name Sir Thomas
Lovell, who was an old servant to the late king, and also to
his present Majesty, and exercised extreme authority, seems
moreover to have withdrawn himself, and interferes but little
m the government. So that the whole direction of affairs
rests (to the dissatisfaction of everybody) with the right
reverend the cardinal, the Bishop of Durham, and the
illustrious the lord treasurer."

The fact was, the old councillors of Henry VII. were glad now
to give place to a younger and more active man. The only
new one among those mentioned as having retired from court
was Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, lately Wolsey's fellow-
courtier, whom the vehemence of his love for "the French
queen," Mary, had lately caused to spoil a delicate diplomatic
mission, so that no wonder he was under a cloud. As for
Fox, it was simply that advancing years had made
him less fit for the arduous duties of lord privy ^°^'^

^ J reasons.

seal, and that he was extremely anxious to devote
his remaining energies to the too long neglected concerns of
his diocese. Wolsey's efforts and entreaties were not wanting
to bring him back to court again, and if he could have per-
suaded himself to come it would have been for Wolsey's sake

68 WOLSEY, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

to lighten somewhat the burden of those " intolerable labours "
which he understood better than the world at large. So he
expressly says in a letter to Wolsey himself. But he was glad
to see affairs were in such very capable hands, and that busi-
ness was despatched with " better, straighter, and speedier ways
of justice " than had been seen in times past. This was a
remarkable tribute to Wolsey's merit from the most competent
of all possible judges. As for himself, however, Fox goes on
to say in the same letter that he believes Wolsey would not have
him serve the world to the damnation of his own soul and of
other souls committed to him. His absence was not in order to
hunt or to hawk, but for quietness of his own mind, which was
troubled with other men's iniquities more than he durst wTite.

The Bishop of Durham, who has just been mentioned as
being promoted to Fox's place of lord privy seal, was by

Bishop J^^i^e Thomas Ruthall. Hitherto he had only been
Ruthaii, lord secretary to the king, and there is not much to be

privy seal. . , . •^, . i i • i •

said of him except that he was a very industrious
secretary, while at the same time he was, like other bishops of
Durham, peculiarly responsible for the defence of the Borders
against the Scots. In 15 13, when the king invaded France,
he did not accompany him thither like other bishops, though
a letter placed in a wrong year among the State papers has
led to the supposition that he did. He remained in England,
and must have felt comparatively at ease when the captain
of his castle of Norham reported to the Earl of Surrey that
there was no fear but that the castle could stand a siege till
the king came out of France to relieve it. The boast, how-
ever, was not justified. A week or two before the battle of
Flodden, the King of Scots came over the Borders with an
overpowering army, battered Norham Castle and razed it to
the ground. Even after the subsequent defeat of the Scots,
Ruthall bitterly lamented the destruction of his castle ; but
he was content to bear the expense as the injury had been so
fully requited. He wrote to Wolsey with pride of the way
in which the men of the bishopric had distinguished them-
selves in the field, fighting under St. Cuthbert's banner.
Everybody, he said, believed that the victory was due to St.
Cuthbert's intercession, who never allowed injury done to
his church to pass without signal punishment

V ENGLISH DISLIKE OF FOREIGNERS 69

In 1 51 7 occurred in London the riot of Evil May-day.
For some time the citizens had been grumbling more than
their wont at the prosperity of foreign tradesmen
settled among them, who were too much patronised ^^^l\^
by the court, and held their heads too high. The
grievance was considered so serious and so indisputable that
a broker named John Lincoln, shortly before Easter, wrote a
" bill " desiring Dr. Standish, who was to preach the sermon
at St. Mary, Spital, on Easter Monday, to refer to it in his
discourse and appeal to the mayor and aldermen "to take
part with the comminalty against the strangers." Standish
very properly replied that it did not become him to urge
such a thing in his sermon. But the broker carried his
complaint to one of the canons of the hospital, named Dr.
Bele, who was to preach on the Tuesday, declaring that
English artificers could hardly find work to support their
wives and children, as the foreigners took away all their living.
Dr. Bele promised to consider the subject and read part of
the " bill " aloud before his sermon. His text was Ccehun
cceli Domino, terrain autem dedit filiis hominum ; on which he
maintained that the land of England was given to English-
men, who ought to defend their rights as birds would defend
their nests. The " Spital " in which Dr. Bele thus preached
was in those days really situated in the midst of fields called
Spitalfields ; but the citizens of London, with the lord mayor
and magistrates at their head, were in the habit of repairing
thither to hear sermons by famous preachers during the
Easter holidays. And the effect of this sermon of Dr. Bele's
preached before such an audience may easily be imagined.
Attacks were made on foreigners in the streets even on April
28, and the mayor committed the rioters to various city
prisons. But on the 30th the apprentices rose in the night
and sacked the houses, first of PYench and Flemish artificers,
then of the Florentine, Lucchese, and Genoese merchants,
and ultimately even of foreign ambassadors. The results
altogether would have been much more serious but for the
precautions taken by Wolsey, who indeed was obliged to fortify
his own house at Westminster, while he caused leading
noblemen to bring up forces by several roads to beset the
gates of the city, some of which they forced the night

70 WOLSEY, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

before. About seventy rioters were captured and twelve were
condemned to death. Then further prisoners were taken,
to the number of four hundred men and eleven women,
who were brought before the king in Westminster Hall on the
22 nd, bound in ropes together and with halters about their
necks. But at the intercession of Wolsey and the lords the
king pardoned them and they flung away their halters.

That same month of May a strange thing happened at

Rome. On the 19th Cardinals Sauli and Petrucci

^agaS^ were committed to the castle of St. Angelo for

at^Rome con Spiring to poison Pope Leo X. When the case

was further inquired into, others were implicated,
among whom was Cardinal Adrian de Castello. The pre-
cise nature of his complicity is uncertain, but apparently he
had a guilty knowledge of the conspiracy. At all events he
and Cardinal Volaterra were obliged to confess their guilt, and
to throw themselves at the pope's feet imploring forgiveness.
The pope pardoned them their lives, and even reduced the
fine imposed by the Consistory for their offence ; and none
but Petrucci suffered capitally, even Sauli being only deprived
and afterwards reinstated. The pope, afraid of making too
many enemies, hesitated to deprive Cardinal Adrian, though
Fii ht of ^^^ reputation was so tarnished by the disclosures
Cardinal that he cscaped in disguise to Venice, and what

became of him further is unknown. It is only
certain that the Venetians were his friends and endeavoured
to mediate for his restoration ; and with the pope their
efforts might have been successful, but both the king and
Wolsey had a very bad opinion of him. So, when the
Venetian ambassador in England, knowing that Henry had
already given Adrian's bishopric of Bath to his favourite
minister, endeavoured to present a letter from Adrian to the
king in the cardinal's absence, he met with a severe rebuff.
Henry took the temporalities of the bishopric into his hands,
but the pope hesitated to deprive Adrian for a whole year,
until circumstances arose which forbade him to delay any
longer.

A crusade against the Turks had already been sanctioned
by the Council of the Lateran on March 16, and a bull
was published to give effect to it. The Emperor Maximilian

V A PROPOSED CRUSADE 71

had written to Rome offering to lead the expedition in person —
an excellent joke, at which Henry VIII. laughed heartily, as
it was only a characteristic device to get hold of
other people's money. But there was hypocrisy ofacmsade^
even in the proposal of a crusade at all. "The
Court of Rome," wrote Erasmus to Colet, "is shameless.
What can be more gross than these continued indulgences ?
And now a war against the Turk is made the pretext, when
the real purpose is to drive the Spaniards from Naples; for
Lorenzo, the pope's nephew, who has married the daughter of
the King of Navarre, lays claim to Campagna." To More
Erasmus wrote of it in a lighter, sarcastic vein, as a thing that
no one believed in. "The pope," he said, "has put out a
prohibition against wives giving themselves up to pleasure at
home in the absence of their husbands in the war ; they are
to abstain from finery and not to wear silk, gold or jewels, to
use no paint, to drink no wine, and to fast every other day.
But as for your wife," he writes to More, " she is so serious
and devout, she will gladly comply with these injunctions."

The world, however, was externally at peace, and the pope,
in the spring of 15 18, was sending legates to different
countries to arrange for the grand joint enterprise. The
legate intended for England was Cardinal Campeggio ; but
before he set out De' Gigli was instructed to inform the pope
that it was not usual to admit any foreign cardinal to exercise
legatine authority in England. The king, however, was con-
tent to waive this objection, provided the faculties which were
conceded to legcites de jure were suspended and Wolsey was
joined in equal authority with Campeggio. This woise-and
the pope felt it necessary to concede, and Cam- Campeggio
peggio arrived at Calais in June. But Cardinal ^^^ ^'^*
Adrian was not yet deprived of his bishopric of Bath, and
Campeggio found he could go no further till this was done,
for the king was very much displeased at the pope's delay.
The sentence against Adrian was accordingly pronounced at
Rome on July 5, and when the news reached England a
Knight of the Garter was despatched to bring Campeggio over.
He was received on landing at Deal by Sherborne, Bishop
of Chichester, two noblemen, and a number of the Kentish
gentry, and he made a splendid entry into London. Between

Blackheath and the city a tent of cloth -of- gold had been
raised for his reception, under, or perhaps in front of which
Bishop Ruthall welcomed him to England in a set oration.
In the tent the legate put on his pontificals, and was con-
ducted to London by a cavalcade of 4000 horse. From St.
George's Church to London Bridge the way was lined on both
sides by friars, monks, and clergy, with capes of cloth-of-gold,
and with sixty gold and silver crosses among them, singing
hymns " with a harmony almost divine," as Wolsey reported
to De' Gigli ; and as the legate passed they censed him and
sprinkled him with holy water. The procession extended two
miles as he entered the city amid salvoes of artillery. At St.
Paul's he was received by bishops with their mitres on, and
entered the church under a canopy. After offering at the
cathedral and giving his benediction to the people, he again
took his mule to Bath Place, the house belonging to Cardinal
Adrian's bishopric, where he was received by its new owner,
his brother-legate Wolsey.

That day was Campeggio's own, for Wolsey had not
appeared in it in public. The Venetian ambassador thought

that he and the king were absent for fear of
audience itifection. In planning the day's arrangements

beforehand Wolsey may have felt it prudent to
spare himself, as he had recently been in ill health ; but a
diplomatic reason, too, may have had something to do with
it. A joint audience of the king was arranged for August 3
at Greenwich, and in this Wolsey took precedence of his
brother -legate, occupying the larger of the two gilt chairs
set apart for them, which was placed nearer the throne than
the other. It was he, too, who explained to the king in a
Latin oration the cause of the mission of both; and after his
Majesty had replied to this, a brother of Campeggio's stepped
forward by permission of the king and made a further speech
on the same subject, to v/hich a reply was made in the king's
name by one of Wolsey's attendants. The orator expressed
the king's gratitude to the pope for sending such a mission,
though it was not necessary, he said, to stir his Majesty up,
either to make terms with all Christian powers or to undertake
the expedition against the Turks, towards which he was him-
self very well inclined. Should the need arise, the speaker

V THE TWO LEGA TES 73

said, his Majesty would marshal his forces and would in no
wise fail in the duty of a Christian king. The Venetian am-
bassador was rather surprised that he spoke in such explicit
terms.

A still more magnificent reception was given to the two
legates at court on the following Sunday, the 8th. But, as
the Venetian ambassador remarked, "no business
was transacted on that day, and they merely per- <J°i^eIS.
formed high mass, and gave a grand banquet to
the said legates and all present, the pomp being greater
and the court more sumptuous than I have yet seen it.
I will not write how far the decorum of the Apostolic
Chair was preserved on this occasion, as it would be a long
story and unnecessary, reserving this for my Report ; and
for the present, it may suffice for me to say that less respect
for the Holy Chair could hardly have been shown." The
whole thing was empty — respect for the Holy See and zeal
for a crusade as well. These were but pretexts and forms of
expression under which secular princes were accustomed to
work out their own designs. The Holy See was but a piece
of mechanism which could be got to move in the interests of
powerful princes, investing with a religious sanction, or cover-
ing with a religious pretext, schemes and negotiations of which
the more special aims were not to be disclosed prematurely.

Thus it was on the present occasion. During the year
1517 England and France, though at peace, were supposed to
be anything but cordial. But France wanted to g^^^.^^.
recover Tournay, and after much secret negotiation negotiations
it v>'as suggested that an agreement might be come ^'
to on that subject in connection with a general European
peace and a league against the Turks. So the pope's project
of a crusade assisted the gradual development of new relations
between France and England ; and just before Campeggio
reached England in July 15 18 a secret treaty had been
signed, not only for the surrender of Tournay to France,
but for the marriage of the infant Dauphin, born that very
year, to the Princess Mary, then two years and five months
old. These arrangements, however, depended on the con-
clusion of a general treaty for a universal peace in which
England and France were to take the lead, and both the

74 PVOLSEV, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

secret and the general treaty continued to be the subjects of
negotiation for some time after Campeggio's arrival. Both
were finally arranged, and on October 2nd the general
peace was signed. Next day in St. Paul's the articles of the
treaty were read and sworn to by the king and the members
of the French embassy ; after which the king went to dine
with the Bishop of London, and in the evening both he and
the ambassadors were entertained by Wolsey at a most magni-
ficent supper, the splendour of which, it was conceived, had
never been equalled by the banquets of Cleopatra or Caligula,
On the 5th, at Greenwich, the Sieur de Bonnivet, as proxy for
the Dauphin, took the child Mary's hand and went through
the form of marriage with her.

The scene even in St. Paul's when the treaty was sworn
was declared by Bonnivet to be too magnificent for description.
But the reading of the articles was not audible to any but
the parties concerned — a sign, as the Venetian ambassador
remarked, that they had cancelled the words of the preamble
concerning the expedition against the Turks. And that was
just as well, for Venice generally felt it needful to keep on
good terms with the Turks, especially when there was no real
intention on the part of other powers to make war on them.
It was, in truth, a fact that no allusion was made to the
crusade in the treaty. That whicli was professedly the main
object of Campeggio's mission had been quietly set aside. But
the mission had produced valuable results, both for England
and for Wolsey. The English cardinal had acquired yet a
new dignity — though it was only to last during the time of
Campeggio's visit to England ; and, what was far more than
the mere title of legate, he had made his power felt as the
negotiator of a new and close alliance between the two great
Western powers, on which alliance a general Ii^uropean peace
was to be based, if such a thing was to take form and shape
at all. This great result, moreover, had been carried in the
teeth of strong prejudices both at home and abroad. For an
alliance with France was not popular with the English nobility.
It was distasteful even to Queen Katharine. It was much
disliked by young Charles of Spain, who had by this time
succeeded his grandfather Ferdinand, and, having gone to take
possession of his new kingdom, had been in the dark as to

V THE TREATY WITH FRANCE 75

what was going on in England. His ambassador, indeed, was
disgusted at the special arrangement for giving Tournay back
to France when it was really a Flemish city. But Charles
himself, on consideration, felt it necessary to waive objections
and join the general treaty in the January following.

On the death of Maximilian, in 15 19, Charles and
Francis I. became competitors for the Empire ; and though
Henry VIH. promised his new ally Francis that he would
favour his candidature, his ambition was provoked to send his
secretary Pace into Germany, to see if there was any chance
of securing the election for himself. He might have spared
his pains, even if he could have effectually concealed from
Francis the evidence of his bad faith ; which, in point of fact,
the French king soon learned, but was too wise to complain
of Charles of Spain was elected emperor, and is henceforth
known in history as Charles V.

It is impossible that Wolsey could have approved of
Henry's policy in thus seeking to enter the field as a
candidate ; but, as already shown, he never ventured to
oppose what the king had set his mind upon. Henry had
hoped for some support from Rome, as he knew that the
election either of Charles or of Francis would be distasteful
to the pope ; but when the result appeared no longer to be
matter of doubt, his Holiness naturally favoured the winning
side. At this Henry was displeased ; but Wolsey, in his
despatches to De' Gigli, bade him inform the pope that he
had done his utmost to mitigate the king's resentment, and
on the strength of this friendly service to the Holy See urged
him to continue his authority as legate, which was only at
first conferred upon him for a time that he might be
Campeggio's colleague. Campeggio himself on returning to
Rome advised the pope to comply with this ^ ^^^ ,^
request, and Wolsey's legateship was prolonged legateship
for a term of three years ; after which it was ^^° °"^^ "
continued for further terms by two successive popes, and
further powers were added at each extension.

Whether this was an advantage to the country it is difificult
to say. It certainly led to collisions in the matter of jurisdic-
tion between Wolsey and Warham, especially in testament-
ary business. The primate of all England was eclipsed by

76 IVOLSEV, CARDINAL AND LEGATE chap.

the legate, who interfered in matters usually appertaining to
the See of Canterbury. Even in 1518, just after being made
legate, Wolsey wrote an official reprimand to his brother-
archbishop for calling a council of his suffragans without his
sanction to consider reforms in the Church. On January
23, 1523, an agreement was made between them about
testamentary jurisdiction, but it does not seem to have worked
satisfactorily ; and a little later in the same year another
curious example of the relations of the legate to his brother-
archbishop excited much observation. Wolsey actually
stopped the sittings of the Convocation of Canterbury at St.
Paul's and caused it to sit with his own Convocation of York
at Westminster. These coUisions were but official, and
apparently in the nature of things inevitable. Wolsey was
always fully alive, not only to the dignity, but to the rights
and privileges of every office that he held ; and Warham was
no less so. But their personal relations seem to have been
entirely amicable.

The Field of the Cloth of Gold, in June 1520, transient
as its glories were, was not only a display altogether unique

The Field of ^^ ^^^ kind, testifying to Wolsey's wonderful genius
the Cloth as an architect, but was also, in its short-lived
brilliancy, most truly representative of a policy
in which he found himself overruled. It was the final
outcome of that Anglo-French alliance which he had so
assiduously brought about in 15 18. But in England that
alliance had always been unpopular, not only from old
traditional dislike to the French people, but also because it was
manifestly opposed to the interests of the young emperor, the
Queen of England's nephew, who inherited the goodwill that
Englishmen had always felt towards the House of Austria.
So the French alliance had been no sooner made than

The French powerful influences began to undermine it, and the
alliance great intcrvicws at the Field of the Cloth of Gold

iin ermine . ^^^.^ really a delusive show. Just before Henry
crossed to Calais the emperor came to P^ngland and visited
him and the queen at Canterbury ; and immediately after the
splendid pageants were over they had another meeting with
the emperor at Gravelines. The French were disgusted, and
rightly suspected perfidy ; for secret compacts had been made

V THE PAPACY PROMISED HIM jy

to their prejudice both at Canterbury and at GraveHnes. Yet
in 1 52 1, when war broke out between the emperor and
Francis, Henry, professing to remain neutral till he knew the
merits of the quarrel, sent Wolsey over to Calais to confer
with representatives of both sides, but with secret instructions
which compelled him to make a treaty with the emperor
against France, in which moreover, with strange duplicity, the
infant Princess Mary, so recently pledged to the Dauphin, was
now transferred as a bride to the emperor.

As usual, Wolsey had bent himself to the king's fixed
purpose ; but in presiding over the Calais conferences he had
earnestly endeavoured to bring about a truce, and
in negotiating with the emperor he had sought to c^feSuS
prevent the king committing himself prematurely
to enter into a war which would too probably be for the sole
advantage of his ally, and far too largely at his own expense.
It was at this time that the papal See fell vacant by the death
of Leo X. ^; and it was so manifestly desirable for the allies to
have a new pope in whom they could both feel confidence,
that the emperor wrote at once to Wolsey to say that he had
not forgotten a promise made to him some time before to
procure his elevation to the papacy. For years the emperor
and Francis had competed for the cardinal's favour, and the
emperor's offers on this point were only meant to counter-
balance those of the French king, who had promised to
secure for him the votes of several cardinals in any future
conclave. It was quite Wolsey's object that they should bid
against each other for the support of England, and he did not
object to promises of this sort, or gifts, which he actually
received, of fat benefices in Spain (though payment of their
revenues was always in arrear), but he did not feel himself
committed to either side by any presents made to him. And
though, perhaps, he did not think the prospect of the papacy
altogether hopeless, he does not appear to have been at
all sanguine of attaining such elevation. He merely noted
the emperor's promise to test his sincerity. The -^voj^g,
king, however, sent Pace to Rome to influence named for
the cardinals, and Wolsey's name really was ^P^P^^^y-
proposed in the conclave, but it is certain that no imperial
influence was used in his behalf. The emperor's school-

78 HENRY, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH chap.

master was elected on January 2, 1522, and became Pope
Adrian VL

Before proceeding with our survey of events we must
go back somewhat. It was within eight weeks of his rather
Henr VIII unexpected death that Leo X. conferred upon the
Defender of King of England the title since borne by all his
successors of Defender of the Faith. From early
days Henry had shown a taste for theological discussion, and
the story that his father had intended once to make him
Archbishop of Canterbury is not at all incredible. In 15 18,
as we learn from Erasmus and some allusions in State
papers, he composed a treatise on the question whether
vocal prayer was necessary to a Christian ; and Wolsey was
pleased to tell him that he found his arguments invincible,
although he had once thought otherwise, and had opposed
his Majesty's views in private discussion. It is curious
that this royal treatise has been lost sight of. Three years
later a more ambitious subject occupied his pen. Martin
Luther in Germany had been growing bolder and bolder. It
was in 1517 that he had published his ninety-five theses
against Tetzel and the sale of indulgences. So far he had
only claimed the right of a doctor of divinity to denounce
false doctrine and challenge his opponent to theological dis-
putation. In 1520, however, after much further controversy,
he not only burned Pope Leo's bull, but, confessing that his
opponents had made him see some things more clearly,
issued his famous treatise " on the Babylonish Captivity of
the Church," in which he repudiated the pope's authority
entirely, attacked the whole scholastic system with which the
scriptural truths of religion had been overlaid, and declared
four of the seven reputed sacraments to be only of human
origin. The work produced a marvellous impression in
Germany, where it was hailed for the most part with enthu-
siasm ; and Bishop Tunstall, ambassador with the emperor
at Worms, in the beginning of the following year piously
hoped that copies of it might not find their way to England.

They did, however ; and Secretary Pace found the king
perusing a copy in April 152 1, just after the unhappy Duke
of Buckingham had been lodged in the Tower, a victim
to royal jealousy, to be next month tried and beheaded.

V WRITES AGAINST LUTHER 79

What strange thoughts must have kept company in Henry's
brain ! It was just four days after the duke's execution that
he wrote to the pope informing him that he dedicated to his
Holiness a treatise which he was composing in r^y^^^^^ -^
defence of the Christian faith. That was the book against
Assertio Septem Sacrame?itorum^ which he was then
writing in answer to Luther. The book was printed in July,
and in accordance with instructions the English ambassador,
Clerk, presented to the pope at a private audience a copy
covered with cloth-of-gold with an inscription in the king's
own hand. The pope read much of it, apparently with delight
and eagerness, expressing unbounded admiration, but saga-
ciously objected to a public presentation lest it should create a
new excitement on the part of the Lutherans. Clerk, however,
was admitted to present it in Consistory, and next day the bull
was issued conferring upon Henry the title of Fidei Defensor.
How little could any one imagine at that time that such a
title was anything more than a diplomatic compliment to an
amateur theologian ! How little could Henry himself have
believed that he would, after some years, put himself in the
pope's own place, defending and defining, for domestic use,
the ancient faith of Christendom ! Yet the step he had
already taken in writing a theological treatise in support of
the pope's supreme authority in the Church was something
so unusual that it did not escape notice among his councillors ;
and, curiously enough, the one councillor who ventured to
remonstrate with him on his warm advocacy of the pope in
this respect was Sir Thomas More. When he first read the
book More suggested to the king, from a mere politician's
point of view, that it might be well to leave that part of the
matter out, or at least to touch it more gently, lest the king
should hereafter have some dispute with the head of the
Church at Rome. But the king replied warmly that he
would not abate one word of what he had said on that point,
and further declared to More a secret reason for maintaining
it so strongly ; of which reason Sir Thomas had never heard
before, and which must remain to us a matter of speculation.
As a result of further reading and study, however. More stated
in later years that he finally came to the conclusion that the
king was right, and that his own conscience would be " in

8o HENRY, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH chap.

right great peril " if he denied the pope's primacy '* to be
provided by God."

Of course, the king's book was lauded to the skies.
Numerous editions were published, and translations into
German and English appeared a few years later. It contained
some really able argument and some vituperation, which
Luther was at no loss to return with interest. He believed
it to be the work of Dr. Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop
of York, an ill-matched antagonist of Erasmus, and he struck
at Lee through the king, whom he nevertheless declares that
he, as in duty bound, " bespatters with his own mud " for
blasphemies against Christ.

The papal See was not yet vacant when Wolsey returned to

England in the end of November from the wearisome con-

Woise 's f'srences at Calais, where his health had at times

further brokcu dowH, and he had spent, as the king himself
pre ermen .-,. j.g^]^Qj^g^^ ;i^io,ooo in the cxpcnscs of his uiissiou.
Moreover, he had not attained a result satisfactory to himself.
In reward for his services, however, the king bestowed on
him the abbacy of St. Alban's which had just fallen vacant ;
and this he held in coinmendam during the next eight years,
together with his archbishopric of York and another important
bishopric besides; for he had still at this time the See of Bath,
forfeited by Cardinal Adrian. He resigned Bath, however, in
1523 on Ruthall's death, for the bishopric of Durham, giving up
that again six years later for the See of Winchester. With such
benefices in his actual possession he had no great occasion to
long for the papal chair ; and we can very well account for
his opposition to the emperor's schemes without attributing
it, as others have done, to disappointment in this matter.

It was to counteract Wolsey's policy and get a new loan

from the king, with an immediate declaration against France,

that the emperor again visited England in May

His policy. 1 .... ° - , „ , , "^

1522, and his visit was successful. England was
fully committed to the war, and Wolsey was made the in-
strument to procure the means ; which he certainly solicited
in rather extreme ways, first by a loan, then next year by
a heavy subsidy in Parliament, and two years later by a so-
called " amicable grant " — a mode of extortion which had to
be given up after raising a rebellion in some quarters. All

V H^OLSETS COLLEGES 8i

this added to the unpopularity which he had already incurred
by his known French leanings before the war, when he was
libelled in Skelton's verse as betraying his country for French
crowns. And Skelton again satirised his action in 1523 when,
the Convocations of Canterbury and York having been called
concurrently with Parliament for supplies, he as legate stopped
the proceedings of the former at St. Paul's and caused both the
Convocations to meet together before himself at Westminster.

During this war there was another vacancy of the papal See,
when the emperor again behaved with the same hypocrisy to
Wolsey that he had done before. But that was to ^^^^1^^^.
be expected, and Wolsey was by no means disap- papal
pointed at the election of Clement VII., who had
been a good friend to England when he was known simply as
Cardinal de Medicis. Two months after his election the new
pope confirmed Wolsey's legateship for life ; and he very soon
after conferred upon him other favours of a kind which prob-
ably gratified him even more.

For it must not be supposed that, engrossed as he was with
high affairs of State, and bound to devise measures in accord-
ance with royal policy, he had no high projects of
his own. He had, in fact, great designs for the propSd
benefit alike of the Church and of the country. In ^°^^''s^^-
1524 he procured from Clement VII. bulls to enable him to
convert the monastery of St. Frideswide at Oxford into a col-
lege, transferring the canons elsewhere, and to endow it by the
suppression of a number of small monasteries, the continuance
of which seemed not very necessary. Another college he
intended to found in like manner in his native town of Ipswich.
These projects he had very much at heart, and must have spent
a large amount of money on them both in England and at the
court of Rome. The dissolution of these monasteries, how-
ever, small as they were, was not liked in the country ; and at
Bayham, a Premonstratensian house in Sussex, the country
people, disguising themselves, put the canons in again for a
time — an outrage which, of course, was duly punished. The
cardinal's design, moreover, was not recommended to the
people by the acts of some of his agents, especially not by
those of one Thomas Cromwell, of whom we shall read much
hereafter, who had " an itching palm " for gratuities,

I <&4-6o<]

82 HENRY, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH chap, v

The emperor turned out, as Wolsey expected, a very ex-
pensive ally to England, and after his armies had taken Francis
I. prisoner at Pavia it became quite clear that he meant to
keep the whole profits of the victory to himself. But Wolsey

effectually counteracted his attempts to leave Eng-

Sunter^- l^nd in the lurch, and made a treaty with the French

plotted the king's mother, securing very large payments to his

own king for his assistance to procure her son's libera-
tion. And he continued to make Francis, after he was released
from captivity, feel the need of England's friendship rather than
the emperor's, till in the spring of 1527 a great embassy was
sent over, with Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, at the head, to pro-
cure a closer alliance by which Francis might the more easily
recover his two sons whom he had been obliged to leave as
hostages for himself in Spain. For this again the French were
compelled to pay in money most heavily ; but the end was
worth the price. Finally, it was arranged that Wolsey should
go over to France a little later in the year and make the alliance
still more firm and binding. Not only the king, but some of the
council also, appeared now to have become wonderful converts
to his policy of a French alliance rather than an imperial one.
But it is certain that Wolsey himself did not know all the
reasons which caused the current to set in that direction.

Authorities. — Lupton's Life of Deaji Colet (1887) and his pamphlet
on Colet' s Influence on the Reformatio?i (1893) are of value apart from
matters of opinion ; the former contains the best text of Colet' s sermon to
Convocation ; Seebohm's Oxford Reformers is also a valuable help ; Letters
and Papers of Henry VI IL (Brewer), vols, i.-iii., and the other Calendars
of State Papers for the period contain much information bearing on ecclesi-
astical and civil history, the chief points in which will be more easily verified
through Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII. ; Letters of Erasmus, especially lib.
viii. ep. 8 and lib. xv. ep. 14 (which gives a most interesting account of
Colet's life). For an account of Cardinal Wolsey's policy at this time see
Drei Jahre englischer VermittlufigspoU/ik, 1518-1521, by Dr. Wilhelm
Busch (Bonn, 1884) ; also Cardinal Wolsey und die englisch- kaiser lie he
Allianz (1522) by the sanie wTiter (Bonn, 1886). For what relates to in-
dividual men the reader may consult Batten's Life of Fox (noticed under
Chapter I.) and the articles on " Colet," " Fox," " Ruthall," and " Wolsey"
in the Dictionary of National Biography. As to the friction between Wolsey's
jtirisdiction as legate and that of Warham as archbishop see Wilkins' Con-
cilia, iii. 660, 661, 681, and Hall's Chronicle, 657. For Henry VHI.'s
work on vocal prayer see Erasm. Epp. lib. vi. no. 12, col, 357 ; lib. xix.
107, col. 942 ; cp. Pace's letter to Wolsey in Calendar, June 24, 1518 (no.
4257, p. 1 319). For More's conversation with the king about the pope's
primacy see his English Works, p. 1426.

CHAPTER VI

HENRY VIII. 'S DIVORCE SUIT

The Bishop of Tarbes and his colleagues had concluded
a treaty with Wolsey on April 30th and returned home.
Wolsey set out for France in the beginning of July. Between
these dates some very important matters had taken place in
secret, rumours of which were already spread before the
cardinal's departure. It must have been early in May that
the king imparted to him the awful secret that he jjenry viii.
desired to be divorced from his queen, Katharine ,. intends a

^ . rni • r oivorce from

of Aragon. 1 he opposite statement, so often re- Katharine of
peated, that it was Wolsey who inspired the king ^'^^son.
with doubts of the validity of his marriage, is not only morally
incredible, but opposed to the most convincing written
evidences ; for all along it was the king who feared that
Wolsey was not hearty in promoting this particular object,
while Wolsey was trying hard to assure him that he was so —
merely because loss of the king's favour, he knew, would be
his utter ruin. In fact, the king's design was so deep that he
did not entrust even Wolsey with all^that was in his
mind ; and it is certain that Wolsey went to France ^bje^Jt'iTept^
in July without any suspicion of so wild a project as ^^^"''f^g °"^
that of making a woman like Anne Boleyn take
Katharine's place as queen. Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas
Boleyn, recently created Viscount Rochford, had certainly
held possession of the king's affections for some years, and
had no doubt preserved her innocence hitherto against the
king's advances ; but no one looked upon her as fit to
share a throne. Wolsey quite believed that the king had a

84 HENRY VIII.'S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

French princess in view — not the Duchess of Alengon, as
the story went in a later generation, for she had been already
married in the preceding January, but Renee, daughter of
Louis XII., who ultimately became Duchess of Ferrara.

But meanwhile, as soon as he knew that the king was
resolved on a divorce, and that there was little hope of
diverting him from his purpose, Wolsey first threw out a pro-
ject by which the king might at least feel his way, and perhaps
discover for himself, by the intricacies opening out before
him, how very hopeless the thing really was. Henry was
most desirous that it should appear that doubts raised
about the validity of his marriage did not originate with him-
Secret in- ^^^^ '' ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ reasou he consented that Wolsey
quiry as to should usc his Icgatiuc authority, and call him before
of thrking^s him and Archbishop Warham in secret, requiring
marriage, j^-^^^ ^^ provc that his marriage was really valid.
Archbishop Warham, it will be remembered, had objected to
the marriage at the first, and he evidently beheved there might
be a question even now as to its validity. The king appeared
and gave the cardinal and archbishop liberty to state their
objections ; which being stated, the king read a written reply,
and appointed a proctor for the further hearings. But nothing
came of these proceedings, except that they afforded a pretext
for the king to notify to Katharine, which he did on June
^' 2 2, that he had been informed by divines and lawyers
that they had not been truly married, but had been eighteen
years living in sin. The queen burst into tears, but the king
begged her still to keep the matter secret and he would do all
he could for her. Nobody could believe, as yet, that the king
would go through with such a design, and the queen's re-
monstrances presently brought a new point to light, the dis-
covery of which certainly made it look more hopeless than
ever. The queen solemnly declared that Prince Arthur had
never consummated his marriage with her ; so that the obstacle
of affinity to her second marriage did not really exist.

This seems to have been a revelation to Wolsey which
filled him with discomfort ; but when the king suspected his
misgivings he protested that he had no more doubt of the
matter than before. Although, he said, there might be no
af^nity to bar her marriage with the king, still Katharine

VI FIRST STEPS 85

had been married to his brother in fade ecclestcB, and thereby
there was an imped unentitm publicce. honestatis, which was not
dispensed with in the bull. On this plea Wolsey informed
the king he thought the marriage might still be proved invalid ;
and he set out for France still hoping that he retained the
king's confidence. On the way he was visited by Archbishop
Warham, with whom he talked about the case, saying that the
queen had most unfortunately taken alarm, though the king
had no object but to discover the truth -, and Warham
iin his simplicity wondered how the queen had come n^n^Ic?'
to hear of it, but said that, however disagreeable to
her, the law must prevail. Later in his journey the cardinal
visited Bishop Fisher at his cathedral city of Rochester, learned
from him what rumours he had heard about the king's intended
divorce, and, bidding him keep the matter secret, assured him
they were quite mistaken. The king, he said, had no such
object at all ; but the Bishop of Tarbes in the spring had
thrown doubts upon the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, and
the king had thus been driven to consult divines and lawyers
about the dispensing power of the pope. This shameful
mendacity the cardinal did not scruple to use in concert with
the king to prevent outcry among the people. But in France,
though arrayed in greater glory than he ever was in his life
before — for he was sent as the king's lieutenant and not as a
mere ambassador, and had all the attention paid to him that
could have been paid to his sovereign, — he found too clear
evidence that in this matter he was not in the king's con-
fidence after all.

The ostensible object of his mission to France was to make
a firm alliance between France and England against the
emperor, whose troops had treacherously attacked
Rome in the preceding year, and afterwards in May ^JVrance"
1527 (though Charles had disowned the previous
outrage) had again entered the city and sacked it with bar-
barities worse than those of Alaric and the Goths, compelling
the pope to take refuge for months in the castle of St. Angelo.
In going to France, Wolsey had ordered at Canterbury a
special litany for Pope Clement to be sung by the monks of
Christ Church. When in France he was met by Francis him-
self on his way to Amiens, where he confirmed a number of

86 HENRY VIIi:S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

different treaties with him in the cathedral, one of them being
for refusing assent to any general council called by the
emperor so long as the pope remained a prisoner. These
treaties completed the ostensible business for which he had
gone over, but he remained still behind. He awaited further
instructions ; but he was forbidden to speak about the king's
intentions except in a very hazy manner, and without saying a
word about Renee. In September he became aware that the
king had other designs than he had thought fit to communi-
cate to him, when the king's secretary, William Knight, came
to him at Compiegne with letters desiring that he would
forward him on a mission to Rome. He saw clearly that the
object was to take the divorce business out of his hands, and
as soon as he found it possible he returned to England. He
then had to repair to court at the summons of Anne Boleyn,
whom he found on his arrival closeted with the king.

It is doubtful whether Henry's married life had been pure
even from the first. Ten years after marriage he had a child
by one Elizabeth Blount — a boy, whom in 1525 he advanced
to the dignity of Duke of Richmond, giving him at the age of
six a household with which to hold state in the North, while
the Princess Mary with an inferior establishment was to rule
in the marches of Wales. At the same time the Boleyn family
began to have honours showered thick upon them, Anne's
father being created Viscount Rochford. But the

Henrys o , ^ .

passion for kittg's passion for Anne, though no doubt sufficiently
o eyn. ^j^^^-Q^g ^^ court, could havc provoked no great
amount of speculation ; for he had already debauched her sister
and was expected to do the same with her. Anne, however,
withstood his advances, and was not to be won, except by
pledges which a married man had no right to give ; and the
king was considering now how to make these pledges good,
either by obtaining from the pope (in consideration of his
merits towards the Holy See) a licence for bigamy, or a
declaration of nullity on the theory that there was a flaw
in the dispensation for his first marriage. To his eager
eyes it appeared that either of these ways was conceiv-
able, and he had actually despatched Knight to procure
the former, if possible ; but on Wolsey's remonstrance he
recalled his instructions and set his mind on the latter. A

VI STRANGE DISPENSATION REQUIRED 87

dispensation, however, would be required to marry Anne quite
as much as it had been for his marriage with Katharine ;
for by his ilhcit intercourse with her sister, Anne stood in
precisely the same degree of affinity to him that Katharine
had done by her marriage to his brother. This seemed
to the king the most serious obstacle in his way ; for as to
his existing marriage, he believed it could be treated as null,
and declared so with comparative ease. So, again concealing
from Wolsey the step he proposed to take, he got a draft bull
of dispensation drawn up in England and sent over in secret to
Knight in Italy, that he might get it passed under lead. This
document expressly sets forth that the king considered he had
incurred excommunication by marrying Katharine, from which
he hoped to be released by some competent judge ; and it
empowered him, in that case, to marry any woman, even in the
first degree of affinity, in whatever way that affinity might have
been contracted, whether by lawful or unlawful connection.

To obtain this, the reader might suppose, was a matter of
some difficulty ; but the real difficulty proved only to be in
getting access to the pope while he was a prisoner. Knight
found this absolutely impossible, but contrived through Cardinal
Pisani to get the draft dispensation submitted to him, and
received an answer from Clement that he would do j^^j ^^^
what was required as soon as he should have regained mission to
his liberty. Very soon afterwards the pope escaped ^^^"
from St. Angelo, and when Knight followed him to Orvieto,
though he tried to excuse himself a little, he passed the docu-
ment with only a few corrections and promised to send it after
Knight, who thereupon started homewards, believing that he
had done pretty well. He had not gone far, however, when
he was met by a courier from the king with despatches which
compelled him to go back and obtain for Wolsey a very special
commission, the exact nature of which must be a matter of
conjecture — most probably to examine the sufficiency of the
dispensation on which the king had married Katharine, and
which, we know, it was intended to prove invalid by some
flimsy objections. To procure this commission he hastened
back with Sir Gregory Casale, an Italian agent of the king,
whose services in such a matter were likely to be of value, and
tried to impress upon the pope the argument that the uncer-

88 HENRY VIIJ.'S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

tainty of the succession in England from the king having no
male heir seriously endangered the peace of the kingdom. The
pope handed the draft commission to Cardinal Pucci, who, on
examining it, reported that if such a commission were passed it
would be to the eternal dishonour of the pope, the king, and
Wolsey. Pucci thereupon cut out and altered several clauses
to render it unobjectionable ; but the pope declared that even
so it was unsafe for him to grant it while he was still so much in
the emperor's power. When the French troops came nearer
Rome he might concede it, excusing himself to the emperor
as having acted under pressure ; and he promised to send
it then. With this promise Knight and Casale had to be
content, and the former again set out for England.

In this business Knight had been following the king's in-
structions and neglecting those of Wolsey, whom the king and
he had agreed to hoodwink ; but it soon appeared that nothing
had been really gained by which the king's object might be
effected. In the beginning of 1528 the whole business had
to be confided frankly to Wolsey, and he despatched his
secretary, Stephen Gardiner, along with Edward Foxe, to the
pope, whom they found still at Orvieto, to urge that he should
send a decretal commission — that is to say, a commission
laying down the law by which such a case should be deter-
mined— to Wolsey and some others, who should try, and decide
without appeal, the question whether the facts were such as to
Gardiner's '"^'^ke the dispensation of Julius invalid. Gardiner
efforts to used his most able advocacy, and, by his own

ODtain a ^ •,• ^ r

decretal account, Drowoeat the pope and cardmals for raismg
commission , ^j^^^^g obstaclcs to a demand on the king's part
which he maintained to be undeniably just. But his account
of the matter was certainly highly coloured. The pope and
cardinals were not to be persuaded, and Gardiner was obliged
to content himself with a more general commission, with which
he despatched Foxe to England. The king and Anne Boleyn,
however, believed that he had done wonders, and were easily
persuaded by Foxe that whatever was lacking in the commis-
sion would be made good by a private undertaking of the pope
to confirm the sentence and not to revoke the cause.

Wolsey, however, saw the matter differently. The com-
mission obtained was really of no more value than that pro-

VI A DECRETAL COMMISSION 89

cured by Knight, and the cardinal at once wrote to Gardiner
still to press for a decretal, using all sorts of arguments to
show that it was important even in the interests of the Holy
See that the king, to whom he had given the strongest
assurances of the pope's friendliness in this matter, should not
be driven by disappointment to pursue a dangerous course.
A decretal, even one not to be used in the process, but only
to be shown to the king, would at least save his credit with
Henry, and Gardiner was instructed to make the most solemn
oath that if granted it should not be shown to any one else.
Thus urged, the pope, vv^ith great hesitation, conceded a thing
essentially wrong in itself. He agreed to send Cardinal
Campeggio to England to try the cause along with Wolsey ;
and Campeggio took with him, besides a more regular com-
mission, a decretal commission of the kind asked ^^.^^^ ^j^^
for, with strict injunctions that it was not to be used pope at last
in the procedure but to be shown only to the king hut^not foV
and Wolsey, and afterwards to be burnt. Gardiner "^^'
then repaired homewards, and after his departure another bad
concession was wrung from the pope by Sir Gregory Casale
in the shape of a written promise not to revoke or interfere
with the due execution of the commission.

The choice of a legate to sit with Wolsey had not been an
easy matter, and the mission was not very agreeable to Cam-
peggio himself, who was a great sufferer from gout, and took
no less than two months and a-half on the way from Italy to
England. We may, however, while he is on the road, take
the opportunity to relate some domestic events having a more
immediate bearing on religion than even a legatine mission of
such an unprecedented character. The flame raised by Luther
in Germany, though quite unintelligible to English-
men at large, had by this time got hold of some little i^^Engfanr
companies at the two universities, and the White
Horse Inn at Cambridge was nicknamed Germany, because it
afforded easy access to men of Lutheran tendencies from the
backs of three of the colleges. On Sunday, December 24,
1525, Dr. Robert Barnes, prior of the Augustinian
Friars at Cambridge, preached a sermon at St. Cambridge.
Edmund's Church there from the words of the Epistle
for the day (" Rejoice in the Lord alway "), deprecating such

90 HENRY VIWS DIVORCE SUIT chap.

special observances as those of the great Christmas feast. The
preacher, who was a man of about thirty, had only received
his degree of D.D. at that university two years before, and
previously to that had studied at Louvain. The sermon caused
him to be at once charged with heresy before the vice-chan-
cellor, and afterwards before Wolsey as legate, who reasoned
with him mildly. He maintained the twenty-five articles with
which he was charged, but, three bishops having been deputed
to examine him, he was at length compelled to abjure at St.
Paul's along with four German merchants.

We shall hear of Dr. Barnes again ; but it should be
further remarked about him before we go on to speak of other
Lutherans, that on this occasion he was most gently dealt with,
not only by Wolsey, but by Gardiner and Edward Foxe, who
presented him to the cardinal and kept him from being sent to
the Tower. One of the articles with which he was charged was
aimed at the pomp and display made by Wolsey himself; and
the cardinal quietly asked him whether he considered that he
ought to coin his silver pillars and pole-axes to relieve the poor,
rather than employ such symbols of State for the public good.
Barnes told him that he thought they should be coined. For
the sake even of his university Wolsey would fain have saved
the fanatic from humiliation ; but Barnes insisted on disputing
the matter with divines, and it soon appeared that his ability
as a disputant did not equal his polemical spirit.

Another source of spiritual danger came under the atten-
tion of the bishops in 1527. An English translation of the
T ndaie's ^^^ Testament, executed under Lutheran influence,
New Testa- had been printed abroad and had been secretly im-
ported into England at the close of the preceding
year. It was the work of an enthusiast strongly opposed to
Church authority. William Tyndale, otherwise called Huchyns
or Hychyns, was a west-country man who, after a good uni-
versity training, first at Oxford and afterwards at Cambridge,
took orders and became chaplain to Sir John Walsh, a knight
of Gloucestershire. Having preached at times in Bristol and
the neighbouring country, he was delated for heresy to Dr.
Parker, chancellor of Worcester diocese, but escaped un-
punished. He proposed to himself the task of translating the
Bible, and came up to London, where he sought to get into

VI ILLICIT BOOKS 91

Bishop Tunstall's service, but the bishop had chaplains enough.
He found another patron, however, in Humphrey Monmouth,
a rich cloth-merchant, who was interested in some occasional
sermons which he delivered at St. Dunstan's in the West. For
a short time Monmouth received him into his house ; but the
project on which he had set his heart was one which had to
be executed abroad, and Monmouth gave him money to go
and to pursue his labours. He sailed to Hamburg, apparently
in 1524, went to Luther at Wittemberg, and afterwards, with
the aid of a runaway English friar, William Roye, who acted
as his secretary, began printing at Cologne an English New
Testament on the model of Luther's German one. Their
proceedings were interrupted by the German divine Cochlaeus,
who found out what was going on and informed the civic
authorities. The two fled to Worms with sheets of the un-
finished work, and succeeded at length in printing two
editions, the one in octavo and the other in quarto, of 3000
copies each. The latter v/as enriched with copious marginal
glosses.

Search was ordered to be made for this and other books in
England as early as November 3, 1526, by a mandate from
Archbishop Warham, who, by May of the following year, be-
lieved that he had bought up the whole impression of both
editions abroad for the sum of £,6(i 13s. 4d., to which he
invited the bishops of his province each to contribute his
quota. And this they no doubt did, as certainly Bishop
Nix of Norwich did. But in vain did they congratulate
themselves that they had suppressed the book ; for it would
seem that in 1529, when Bishop Tunstall was abroad, he found
that there were more copies on sale at Antwerp, and used the
services of one Augustine Packington to buy these up also
with a view to their being burnt. And burnt, of course, they
were; but the only result was to put money into Tyndale's
pocket which enabled him to print new editions.

It was no doubt easier in days gone by to close up the
fountains of a literature esteemed as poisonous ; but the task
had become hopeless now with such an agency as the printing
press for its diffusion. Nevertheless, prohibited books could
only be read in secret societies, where the brethren knew each
other and helped each other to evade inquiries. At Oxford,

92 HENRY VIIi:S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

in February 1528, no small excitement was created by the
Garret's ^^cape of a priest named Thomas Garret or Garrard,
escape from who had been arrested as a heretic by secret war-
rant from Wolsey. He had been selling Lutheran
books" since his arrival at Oxford the Christmas before. One
of the secret brethren, Anthony Dalaber, a scholar of St.
Alban's Hall, aided his escape, giving him a lay habit for
disguise. But, the commissary of Oxford having sent notice
to all the ports, the fugitive was arrested at Bedminster near
Bristol and lodged in Ilchester gaol. On the news of his
capture, Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, wrote to Wolsey that
since he was caught his escape might be considered fortunate,
so much had been revealed that was before unknown. He
seems to have slightly infected some of Wolsey's new college,
w^ho, however, desired to be absolved from excommunication
for Easter. He had confederates in London, among them
Farman, parson of Honey Lane — a living he himself held long
afterwards. There were fears, too, that he had done much
mischief at Reading Abbey, where he had sold the prior more
than sixty books. Na}^, even on the last Sunday in Lent, a
monk of Bury had dared to preach at St. Peter's, Oxford, rail-
ing at Wolsey and the bishops for sequestration of evil preachers,
and encouraging the heretics with the words, " Be not afraid of
them that kill the body." But Garret himself made a confes-
sion of his errors and wrote to Wolsey desiring to be released
from excommunication.

With the fear of the stake before their eyes, men had not
the courage of their opinions. No doubt when they recanted
they were often convinced by other arguments besides fear ;
but fear was only too likely to affect their judgment. And
how demoralising it was to have secret societies with books
kept underground, and "brethren," as Dalaber's own account
of the matter shows, concealing escapes like that of Garret by
repeated falsehoods, confirmed, when necessary, by perjury !
Heresy was regarded as an evil weed, which even humane
men like Sir Thomas More considered it necessary to stamp
out at all costs.

To return to the question of the king's divorce. Cam-
peggio arrived in England in October. He had secret
instructions from the pope given him at his departure to

VI CAMPEGGiaS INSTRUCTIONS 93.

do all he could in the first place to dissuade the king from
bringing the matter on to a trial ; and if he failed
in that, to endeavour to induce the queen to enter ^^^nSd ^"
a nunnery. Moreover, he had promised the pope
that if the trial came on he would not pronounce sentence
without letting his Holiness know the opinion he had come
to ; for, as a matter of canon law, he really believed that a
good deal might perhaps be said on both sides. He soon
found, however, that it was hopeless to dissuade the king from
his purpose. Henry was master of the whole subject — at
least of all the points which made in his favour — and an angel
from heaven, Campeggio said, could not convince him that
he was wrong. He only wanted an authoritative decision.
The queen was equally determined not to retire into a
convent. Her cause was popular everywhere, and she was
cheered in the streets, while Campeggio was received with
manifest ill - will as one sent purposely to perpetrate an
injustice. The king himself called the lord mayor and
aldermen of London to come to him at Bridewell, and tried
to disarm obloquy by a Jesuitical speech reproducing the
fiction about the Bishop of Tarbes, and declaring that he was
only anxious to secure a peaceful succession after his death.
But his desire to hasten the trial was soon checked when
Katharine showed Campeggio a copy of the brief of Julius
II. for her marriage with Henry — the brief which,
as we have seen,i was issued before the bull. The brief of

' Julius II.

This brief really cut away the ground on which
the king rested his case, because it was granted on in-
formation that Prince Arthur had actually consummated his
marriage with her. This statement the king himself knew
perfectly well to be false ; but he had relied on the fact that
the presumption was in its favour, and that the testimony of
Katharine to the contrary could not be admitted as evidence.
What was to be said now, when, even supposing it to be
true, there was actually a dispensation which met the case
exactly ?

Henry was much perplexed, and made desperate efforts
either to get the original brief out of Spain into his own
hands, or to get it declared a forgery. In pursuit of the
1 See above, p. 9.

94 HENRY VIIL'S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

former project he coerced the queen to write to the emperor
for the document, as necessary for the defence of her cause ;
but her messenger, as soon as he had reached Spain, wrote
himself to the emperor that her real wishes were just the
opposite of what she had been compelled to put on paper.
The queen's treatment, indeed, even at this time was shame-
ful. Separated from her husband (who now lived under one
roof with Anne Boleyn at Greenwich), visited by deputations,
who reproached her with her conduct towards him, surrounded
by spies to cut her off from friendly help, and forced to write
letters against her real mind, it was hard to conceive that much
worse could be in store for her. But the king was more
infatuated than ever in his passion for Anne, being quite
persuaded apparently that, notwithstanding all obstacles, a
sentence would soon be passed in his favour, by which he
could make her his queen.

At last, after the failure of all efforts to get the brief
pronounced a forgery, it was determined to hurry on pro-
ceedings and obtain a sentence, if possible, before the cause
should be revoked at Rome. For, indeed, the English
ambassadors at Rome received a citation at the beginning of
May 1529 to show cause why such revocation should not take
place ; and good reason there undoubtedly was ,to justify it,
for the queen, notwithstanding the spies by whom she was sur-
rounded, had been able to send to Rome a statement of the
constraint to which she was subjected. On May 31 the
. lesfatine court was formally opened by the kind's

Ihelegatme ,. ° . , i ,-■ ,- i -r^-i i -r-. • i

courtat licence m the great hall of the Black Friars, and
Biackfnars. (,j|-^|-JQj^g y^Q^Q scnt to the king and queen to appear
before the two judges on June 18. On that day the queen
appeared and refused the judges, making a formal appeal
against their jurisdiction. The legates took her objections
into consideration on the 21st, and pronounced themselves
competent judges ; on which she made an appeal to the
pope and withdrew. The legates went on with the cause,
and on the 28th Bishop Fisher made a speech in court
which produced a profound impression. The king, he said,
at a former sitting had invited any one who felt competent
to do so to relieve his conscience of the scruple with regard
to his marriage, and he, the bishop, felt bound to declare to

VI THE TRIAL BEFORE THE LEG A TES 95

him the result of two years' study of the question, adding that
he was ready to lay down his life for his opinion, as the
cause of matrimony was even more sacred since Christ's day
than it was when John the Baptist died for it. He then
handed in a book which he had written on the subject.

The legates remonstrated that this was an interruption, as
the cause was not committed to Bishop Fisher ; but Standish,
Bishop of St. Asaph, and Dr. Ligham, Dean of the Arches,
supported Fisher's contention in favour of the queen. The
king drew up a very ill-tempered reply, and from that day, it
is clear, his illwill towards Fisher never abated. The pro-
ceedings were pushed on till July 23, when Campeggio, in
conformity with the Roman practice at that time of year,
declared the court prorogued till the beginning of October.
What this implied was clear. No one expected it to meet
again, and the king for a while seemed to have dismissed the
idea of prosecuting his suit for a divorce any further. In
form the past proceedings had been merely ex officio, as if
they had not been originated by him at all, and his object
now was to prevent publication of his coming citation to
Rome, and to get Campeggio to stop further proceedings there,
even at the queen's suit. We are told by Cardinal Pole that
those about him were greatly relieved, believing that the
matter was at an end. But in the beginning of August the
king in the course of a progress came to Waltham Abbey, and
with him the two associates, Gardiner and Foxe, whom he
had employed in this business at Rome. At the house
where these two were lodged was one Thomas Cranmer,
a private tutor, who had removed thither with two
pupils from Cambridge to escape a pestilence ; and Cranmer's
in conversation he suggested to them that the king
might get sufficient authority for treating his marriage as null
if he only procured a number of opinions to that effect from
universities. The suggestion was shortly afterwards mentioned
to the king, who caught at it at once.

Meanwhile the nobles at Henry's court, who had long re-
sented Wolsey's monopoly of the king's favour, had V
seen their opportunity in the divorce question to ^^°f!fi7'^ '^^
procure his fall. The Duke of Norfolk was Anne
Boleyn's uncle. Her father, her brother, and her cousin,

96 HENRY VlIi:S DIVORCE SUIT chap.

Sir Francis Brian, were powerful about the court, and used
their influence with her to keep Wolsey at a distance from the
king. He was allowed, though with difficulty, to be present
when Campeggio took his leave to go to Rome, and Henry,
to the disgust of all the courtiers, had a long conversation
with him. But Anne Boleyn resolved that it should be his
last interview, and by her extraordinary influence over Henry
she succeeded. A mere farewell next morning was all that
was allowed him. In October the storm burst, and he was
indicted of a prainunire in the King's Bench, which for reasons
of policy he himself confessed, though he had procured neither
cardinalate, legateship, nor bulls from Rome of any kind
without the king's consent. The great seal was taken from
him, and More was appointed chancellor in his room. He
was obliged to give up all his property to the king, and to
retire to Esher, a house belonging to his bishopric of V/in-
chester. But on his way thither Henry Norris met him at
Putney and gave him a gold ring from the king as a token,
with a secret message that the king was not displeased
with him, but had been obliged to do as he did to satisfy
Anne Boleyn and her friends ; all should be well in the end.
Wolsey at this lighted from his mule like a young man, and
"kneeled down in the dirt upon both his knees, holding up
his hands for joy." It seemed he was not left quite to the
fury of his enemies.

He was, however, hated by good men and bad alike, and
by bad men for opposite reasons. They insinuated that he
had not done his utmost for the divorce, and then that he had
put the scruple into the king's head and led him in quest of
what was hopeless. Parliament was summoned, and was
opened by the king himself in November, with Sir Thomas
More at his right hand as chancellor, who said some bitter
things of his predecessor. Good men believed, and Sir
Thomas himself no doubt hoped, that with his appointment
the pursuit of a divorce was at an end ; for he had distinctly
told the king he could not serve him in that way. A bill of
attainder against Wolsey was prepared, very unfair in tone,
and, as he himself protested, untrue in many of its statements ;
but it passed the House of Lords on December i, and
seemed in a fair way to pass the Commons as well, were it;

VI CROMWELL DEFENDS WOLSEY 97

not that Wolsey had there an able defender in Thomas Crom-
well, who had already found access to the king, and was able
to use arguments in the House by which it was thrown out.

This Thomas Cromwell was said to have been the son of
a blacksmith at Putney. He had lived a roving, disorderly
youth, having been a soldier in the French service
in Italy; but he had afterwards married a shear- cTomwdi
man's daughter in England, and applied himself to
the arts of making money and gaining favour. He got into
Wolsey's service, and had been employed by him in the sup-
pression of the small monasteries dissolved for the founda-
tion of the cardinal's two colleges — a business in which his
conduct laid him open to serious complaints. Just before
his defence of Wolsey in the House of Commons he had
gone to court for his own sake, not for his master's, very un-
comfortable as to how the judgment upon Wolsey might affect
himself; and he found his own and his master's prospects
more auspicious than he altogether expected. The king,
apparently, gave him the means to thwart the bill of attainder,
and probably began to feel at the same time that in him he
had a new instrument on whom he might rely for a new policy.
But the nobles, and particularly the Duke of Norfolk, who
was for the present most influential in the council, were dis-
quieted by the consciousness that the king regretted the loss
of such an able adviser as the cardinal, whose counsels he
had always valued a great deal more than theirs ; and fearing
his being recalled to power, they persuaded the king to send
him to the North to attend to his diocese of York. Wolsey
obeyed, and not unwillingly. The king had cured him of
ambition, and his desire was now to do his duties as a Church-
man. Yet the king sought to profit by his depression, and
compelled him to give up York Place at Westminster for a
royal palace, to the injury of his See. Judge Shelley was sent
to him to make the demand, and procure execution of the
deed. The judge admitted that there was " some conscience
in the case," but thought Wolsey might acquiesce considering
"the king's high power," who was able to compensate the
church of York double the value of what he took, though
there was no condition that he would. " Master Shelley,"
said the cardinal, "I will no wise disobey, inasmuch as ye,

98 HENRY VIIL'S DIVORCE CASE chap.

the fathers of the laws, say that I may lawfully do it. There-
fore I charge your conscience, and discharge mine. Howbeit,
I pray you, show his Majesty from me, that I most humbly
desire his Highness to call to his most gracious remembrance
that there is both heaven and hell."

He was no abject sycophant who could use such words.
Wolsey had submitted to great personal discomforts at Esher,
and at Christmas he was so ill that the king sent Dr. Buttes to
him, who reported him to be in serious danger ; on which the
king not only sent him a cheering message with further medical
aid, but induced even Anne Boleyn to send him a token. In
February he executed an indenture with the king, resigning
the bishopric of Winchester and the abbey of St. Albans for
the sum of ^6374 : 3 : 7 J, of which only ^3000 was given
him in money, the rest in necessary goods and furniture.
Before he left for the North the king allowed him to occupy
for some time a lodge in Richmond Park for his health ; but
Norfolk was so impatient of his stay that he set out in Passion

Week. During the summer he rested at Southwell,
journey whcre there was a palace sadly out of repair belong-
Nonh ^"S ^^ ^^^ archbishopric. While there, he learned

to his intense grief that the king had resolved on the
suppression of his two colleges at Ipswich and at Oxford. In
September he moved farther north, and had arranged to be
installed at York on November 7, to the general joy of all
the country, for he had shown himself a most popular arch-
bishop, composing quarrels and doing kindly acts everywhere.
Suddenly the Earl of Northumberland came to him at Cawood

with a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and
' arrested him on a charge of treason. Some con-
versations he had had with the French ambassador had been
betrayed to Norfolk by an Italian physician in his service, who
had been well paid for his treachery, and added wicked ex-
aggerations. Wolsey journeyed southward again to Sheffield,
where he was kindly received as a guest by the Earl of Shrews-
bury, but a visit here from Sir William Kingston, constable of
the Tower, convinced him of the awful fate intended for him.
He was so ill he could hardly travel, but in a few days he
reached Leicester in a state of extreme weakness, and there
took to his bed, telling the abbot, " I come to leave my bones

and death
1530.

VI WOLSE Y'S DEA TH 99

among you," because he had been admitted a brother of the
house some years before. He lingered from Satur-
day night till Tuesday morning, November 29,
when he passed away at eight o'clock.

Just before his end Sir William Kingston had been en-
deavouring to reassure him, telling him he made himself worse
by vain fears. " Well, well, Master Kingston," he replied, " I
see the matter against me how it is framed ; but if I had served
God as diligently as I have done the king. He would not have
given me over in my grey hairs."

Authorities. — Calendars of State Papers, especially Letters and Papeis,
vol. iv. , and Spanish, vols. iii. , part ii. , and iv. , part i. For the story of
the divorce see English Historical Review, vols. xi. and xii., and Ehses'
Romische Dokumente. For Cranmer's suggestion see Nichols's Narratives of
the Reformation (Camden Society), pp. 240-242. For Tyndale and his New
Testament see Demaus's Life of Tyndale (Lovett's edition, 1886) ; EUis's
Letters, 3rd ser. ii. 71-76, 86-92 ; Hall's Chronicle, pp. 762-763 ; Dictionary of
National Biography, etc. For Barnes see Dictionary of National Biography,
and authorities there quoted. For Garret see Foxe's Acts aiid Momiments,
and the notices in Letters and Papers, vol. iv.

CHAPTER VII

THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY

" The king has gone beyond me," says Wolsey in the play,
when, by a bold dramatic anachronism, he is represented as
receiving the news of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn,
which took place more than two years after his death. The
playwright, like the painter, must occasionally fill up the scene
with impossibilities ; but the really essential fact was not wrong.
Hen 's ^^^ k^i^gj ^s wc havc sccn, had really gone beyond
far-reaching Wolscy in his dcsigns, and there was no statesman
^° ■'^^'' now to whom he even thought of looking for guid-
ance. A minister rather looked for guidance to him ; and he
was prepared to "go beyond" Norfolk, beyond Cromwell,
beyond any minister whatever, with even greater readiness
than he had gone beyond Wolsey. Nay more, as the world
was by and by to discover, he was prepared to go beyond
any understandings or compacts by which the pope, the
emperor, Francis L, or any prince in Christendom might fancy
for a moment that they had bound him.

Henceforth the most servile pliancy was the road to
favour ; but a new policy might be suggested by one who
understood his aims and was not over-scrupulous about the
means of promoting them. The Duke of Norfolk, who
seemed to manage everything upon Wolsey's fall, was sub-
servient enough, but his idea that noblemen again would rule
was purely a delusion. The man of the coming era
Cn^mweU ^^^ Thomas Cromwell, who had already been study-
ing the principles of Macchiavelli, and disgusted
Reginald Pole by telUng him that the ABC of statesmanship
was to discover and to follow up whatever the prince had in

CHAP. VII ROYAL SUPREMACY SUGGESTED loi

view ; for princes were not bound by the same laws of honour
as mere private persons. Cromwell, according to Pole's firm
belief — and from his knowledge of the man he was sure it did
him no injustice — had already inspired the king with the idea
that if he could not get his way from the pope he
could abolish papal jurisdiction in England, and with of royal
it the theoretical exemption of the clergy from the ^"P^^^^^y-
civil power. It was monstrous, he suggested, to have two
governments in one country. The king should make himself
supreme head of the Church in England, and then it should be
treason to withstand his will in any matter.

If counsel such as this was not actually breathed into the
king's ear by Cromwell as early as November 1529, the whole
course of public events, even in that brief parliamentary
session before Christmas, as well as in later years, was certainly
framed exactly upon these lines. But it should be noted that
this advice itself suggested an interim policy of keeping friends
with the pope as long as convenient ; and with this view the
suggestion of Cranmer about the universities was very much
to the purpose. Who could object to offering a general ques-
tion to disputation in English and foreign seats of learning ?
And if the desired decision could only be obtained by a good
deal of bribery and other indirect methods, it would take
some time to prove the degree of corruption used, and the
king might perhaps avail himself of the decisions meanwhile,
marry Anne Boleyn, and rest upon the strength of an accom-
plished fact. In any case, such a king as Henry could
brandish these decisions in the face of the world as a full
justification of his position. This was the line of policy clearly
in view as a consequence of Cranmer's suggestion ; and even
before the two legates had taken leave of the king, Wolsey had
spoken to Du Bellay, the French ambassador, about getting
opinions from divines in France. About a month later Reginald
Pole, of whom we have just spoken, went abroad to
study in Paris. Pie was already a distinguished ^'j?QJJf'^^
scholar, being now in his thirtieth year, and his rela-
tions to the king at this time were those of a grateful kinsman ^

' His mother, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was the daughter of the
ill-fated Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. The king's mother was a
daughter of King Edward himself.

I02 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap,

and loyal subject to a sovereign to whom he owed the best
possible education. For when he was only twenty-one the
king had sent him to Italy, and he had spent some years at
Padua, where he formed lifelong friendships with the best
scholars of the day. But he did not like the king's efforts to
procure a divorce, and his pretence (though not untrue) of a
desire for further study at Paris was really prompted by a still
greater desire not to be implicated in the king's proceedings
with regard to Katharine. It was an unpleasant surprise
to him, therefore, to be asked soon afterwards to obtam
opinions on that very matter from the divines at that university
— a task from which he found it in vain to excuse himself.
He did what was required of him, — obtained opinions in Paris
in the king's favour, though it was against the grain. And the
king, when he returned to England, hoping to use him for his
own purposes further, kept open for him, after Wolsey's death,
the rich bishoprics of Winchester and York, trusting that he
would be persuaded to accept one or other of them and
approve of the divorce. He, however, gave his opinion to the
king in writing unfavourable to the divorce , and the two
bishoprics, after being ten months vacant, were filled up in
1 53 1, the king's secretary, Gardiner, being promoted to
Winchester, and Edward Lee to York.

Not much was done, however, either at home or abroad, in
this matter of the universities until the year 1530 ; and we must
first pay attention to the legislation of the Parliament of 1529.
The House of Commons in those days was usually filled with
nominees of the Crown ; and this House had been packed
with very special care. The fact was notorious, and the
object is pretty clearly indicated by the chronicler Fabyan, who
calls it "a parliament for enormities of the clergy." In
secular matters it showed its servility by releasing the king
from the obligation of his own most solemn assurances to re-
pay a cruelly extorted loan. But its leading measures showed a
distinct design to cripple the resources of the Church and
destroy its independence by restrictions hitherto unknown.
As we are told by Hall, the Commons proposed a
against the numbcr of grievances against the spiritual body,
clergy. Plainly for the excessive fees they levied, for the use
of various processes, and for exactions such as Hunne had

VII PARLIAMENT ATTACKS THE CLERGY 103

vainly attempted to dispute. One of the chief complaints was
of the fines taken for probate of wills, Sir Henry Guildford,
controller of the king's household, declaring that he had paid
1000 marks to the cardinal and Archbishop Warham for pro-
bate of the will of Sir William Compton. Another complaint
was that priests, acting as surveyors and stewards to bishops
and abbots, occupied farms which poor husbandmen could
not get except of them. Another was that abbots and priors
kept tanhouses, and bought and sold wool, cloth, and mer-
chandise. Lastly, non-residence and pluralities were great
and crying abuses.

These were things which, as Hall observes, "before this
time might in no wise be touched nor yet talked of by no man
except he would be made an heretic or lose all that he had,
for the bishops were chancellors and had all the rule about the
king." The welcome change was, of course, due to other per-
sons now having " the rule about the king "; but how far " poor
husbandmen," or anybody else, were greatly the better for it
we may judge by the story of after-days. Of course, fees may
have been excessive, and pluralities and non-residence may
have been too common \ but that spiritual men engrossed
farms could only have been due to their superior capacity for
managing property ; and that abbots should have kept tan-
houses and sold wool is not wonderful when we consider that
it was the monasteries which had from time immemorial led
the way in developing the resources of the country. As to
fees on probates, they had been complained of as excessive
even in Edward III.'s time. But the bishops then only received
notice to amend them, with a warning that otherwise the matter
would be inquired into 5 now the State had taken upon itself
to regulate such fees without consulting the Church. And
though this may have been a step in a right direction, the
spirit of the whole legislation was bad, and was clearly
intended to punish the only power in the land which could
be trusted to denounce wrong in high places with something
like authority.

We need not therefore take Hall's view of the matter when
he tells us that the bishops generally, and the Archbishop of
Canterbury in particular, " both frowned and grunted " at the
bill concerning probates in the House of Lords, because it

I04 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

" touched their profit." It did no doubt impair the profits of
the See of Canterbury, but it was not felt as a personal
matter even by Archbishop Warham ; still less by the honest
and outspoken Bishop Fisher, whose words in addressing the
Chamber the chronicler goes on to quote : " My lords," he
said, " you see daily what bills come hither from
mSSmifceTn the Comuion House, and all is to the destruction
the House of of the Church. For God's sake, see what a realm

Lords. , '

the kingdom of Boheme was, and when the Church
went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with
the Commons is nothing but ' Down with the Church ' ; and
all this, meseemeth, is for lack of faith only." The words
were reported in the House of Commons, and some members
— not, one would think, without a little prompting — made it
a grievance that their doings were said to be for lack of faith,
as if the bishop esteemed them heretics. The Speaker,
Thomas Audeley, laid their complaint before the king at York
Place, declaring it an insult to the chosen representatives of
counties, cities, and boroughs, and dishonourable to the king
and realm besides, that the laws they made for the common-
wealth should be spoken of in such an assembly as if made
by Turks or Infidels. The king was not sorry to have an
opportunity of calling the bishops before him, and compelling
Bishop Fisher especially to explain the words that he had
used.

While the Parliament was sitting in Enghnd the pope and
Charles V. met at Bologna, where they continued together tiU
March, and where in February the latter received the imperial
crown at the hands of the former. The meeting did not
augur well for the divorce, for the emperor was naturally
committed to the cause of his aunt, the Queen of England ;
and Anne Boleyn's father, Viscount P^ochford, who was now
raised a step in the peerage as Earl of Wiltshire, was sent in
January on a mission to the emperor to set before him the
very conscientious reasons which compelled the king to seek
a release from his existing marriage tie. Of course his efforts
in this were not convincing ; but his mission had one result
which does not seem to have been anticipated. A formal
citation of Henry to appear at Rome had been drawn up
some time before by Simonetta, auditor of the Rota, but no

VII THE KING CITED TO ROME 105

one dared to serve it in England. Now, at the suggestion of

the emperor's ministers, it was served on the King

of England's representative, which was just as '^^^0^^"^*;^*^'^

effective, and one great obstacle to the hearing of

the cause at Rome was removed. In vain, after the emperor's

departure, did Wiltshire urge the pope to withdraw the citation.

The pope, after referring to the emperor, only agreed to a

delay of six weeks.

Early in 1530 the work was seriously begun of getting
opinions at Cambridge and at Oxford, in France and in Italy,
as to the nullity of marriage with a deceased ,

brother's wife. The way was prepared at Cam- cause at the
bridge by the zealous envoys, Gardiner and Foxe,
whom the king had lately sent to Italy. Both of them were
Cambridge men, the latter provost of King's College.
Cranmer also had written a book in favour of the king's
divorce, which had been largely circulated there to influence
opinion. Gardiner went to Cambridge with the king's letters
and deftly managed the affair with the aid of the vice-
chancellor, by getting one or two opponents of the king's
purpose to leave the senate-house. The example of Cam-
bridge was then held up to Oxford with a little royal bullying,
and a decree favourable to the king was obtained from that
university also on April 4. For the French universities
Henry could rely on the friendship of Francis I., and by
some manipulation opinions were obtained even from the
Sorbonne, as well as other learned bodies in France, against
the dispensing power of the pope in the case of marriage
with a brother's widow. As for Italy, Richard Croke was
commissioned to search the libraries of Venice, Padua, and
Bologna for authorities in support of the king's views, and
Ghinucci, Bishop of Worcester, had a full commission to
hire doctors as advocates. The final result as regards foreign
universities was that within six months and a few days
favourable opinions were obtained from-those of Orleans, Paris
(the two faculties of canon lawyers and divines pronouncing
separately). Angers, Bourges, Bologna, Padua, and Toulouse.
No attempt was made to obtain opinions from the emperor's
countries.

While the king was thus fortifying himself with learned

io6 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

opinions abroad, he held a council in May 1530 with his
bishops at home on a subject about which they
xSlment ^^^ been much disturbed — the great increase of
'^"'bookf '*^^^ heretical books, especially of Tyndale's New Testa-
ment, imported from abroad. The printing press
was now teeming with this and other works of a heretical
character, many of them gross libels upon the clergy, some-
times put forward as having been printed beyond sea when
they were really printed in London. To allow free circulation
of such matter, and to let it be freely answered, or answer
itself, was not the policy of those days. It was the function
of the Church to denounce error, and of the State to prevent
mischief spreading ; and while a list of prohibited books was
proclaimed, it was also ordered in May that all officers of
the Crown and persons in any authority on taking office
should make oath to extirpate heresy and assist the bishops
in suppressing it. At the same time there was a further
burning of New Testaments at St. Paul's Churchyard But
to prevent the evil of false translations in future the king
enjoined the bishops to cause a new translation to be prepared
with the aid of the best scholars at the universities. A laudable
object, no doubt, but it required time ; and what were people
thinking even now of the Defender of the Faith ? Just ten
days before this proclamation. Nix, Bishop of Norwich,
writing apparently to the Duke of Norfolk, says that he has
done his utmost to suppress erroneous books in his diocese,
but it was beyond his power, and many said openly that
the king really favoured their circulation. Indeed, there
were heretics so bold as to say that before Michaelmas Day
their opinions would be upheld by authority. There was
indeed something brewing that may have given rise to this
anticipation.

The king now made one desperate effort to procure a
papal judgment in his favour. He called the leading noble-
men to his court in June, and, by solicitations
The English^ ^^^^^^^^^ ^° ^^^^ of them Separately, got them to
thJ'^o? ^^§^^ ^ ]o\ViX. letter to the pope, declaring that the
king's divorce was a matter of high necessity in the
interests of the kingdom ; and as the unlawfulness of his mar-
riage had been declared by a number of the most famous

VII THE '' PRMMUNIRE" 107

universities, they must urge him to grant the requisite sen-
tence, otherwise the king and his people might be driven to
other means of redress, even if it should lead to the assem-
bling of a general council. Not only was this address signed
by the noblemen summoned to court, but it was sent dov/n
into the country for signature by others, and among the rest
it was signed by the fallen cardinal, Wolsey, at Southwell. It
was despatched on July 13, and received a dignified reply
from Clement on September 27.

The next step taken by the king was even more extra-
ordinary. We have seen that Wolsey, when proceedings were
taken against him for a prcemimire in the King's Bench,
thought it politic to confess the charge against him. His
usher. Cavendish, told him afterwards that he had been unable
to answer friends who had inquired of him why he had not
stood up in his own defence, as everybody considered the
accusation unjust. The cardinal said he was induced to do
so because his enemies had made it the king's case ; and that
when the king had been encouraged to seize all his goods and
possessions, there was no doubt that, rather than accept a
defeat in law and make him restitution, Henry, urged by "the
night crow " (as he called Anne Boleyn), would devise his utter
ruin ; whereas his submission, he believed, had made the king
somewhat relent in his severity towards him. In truth, the
prcemunire against Wolsey was a piece of gross injustice, for it
implied that he had procured bulls from Rome without the
king's consent — a thing absolutely inconceivable, and in fact
against all evidence. But now that the offence had been con-
fessed by Wolsey himself, what followed ? His legatine juris-
diction, it appeared, had been a usurpation all r^^^^^^^
along, and the clergy were in a prcemunire also involved in a
for having submitted to it ! This was a curious ^'''^''"''"''''•
discovery, especially after the king himself had been at so
much pains to invite another legate into his kingdom and
appear before a legatine court himself on summons. But it
was unconstitutional to reproach the king with his own acts ;
it was for his subjects to suffer the penalty.

Notice of proceedings in this matter had been given by
the beginning of August, but apparently no positive steps
had been taken for some time. On January 16, 1531,

io8 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

Parliament met again after prorogation, and five days later the
Convocation of Canterbury did the same. The chosen scene
of the deliberations of the latter body was the chapter-house of
Westminster Abbey, and the great question before them was
whether they could compound with the king for their alleged
offence. It had been proposed to give him a subsidy of
;^4o,ooo, but they were made to understand they must increase
the grant to two and a -half times as much to secure their
pardon. On this the vote was raised to ;£" 100,044 : 8 : 4,
and so passed both Houses on January 24, with a preamble
stating that it was granted in consideration of the king's great
services against heretics, without a word about the threat by
which it was really extorted. The clergy only expressed
gratitude to the king for saving them from hypocritical agita-
tions against Church property which might, as they put it,
have compromised the peace of the kingdom and the power
of the civil ruler himself. Yet it was believed that to levy so
large a sum would compel them to sell chalices and reliquaries.
There was no help for it, however ; the king's greed must
be satisfied, and the money was voted. Nevertheless, on
February 7, Henry notified to them that he declined to accept
the gift without the insertion of certain clauses in the preamble,
the most important of which acknowledged him as " Protector
and Supreme Head of the English Church and Clergy," while
another insinuated that he had the cure of his subjects' souls
committed to him, and a third expressly mentioned what
they had so studiously ignored — a general pardon for their
transgressions of penal statutes. These things were bitter
pills. The Upper House took the royal message into considera-
tion, and for three whole sittings debated the unaccustomed
title of Protector and Supreme Head without coming to any
agreement. The judges and councillors sent to them said
they had no commission to conclude about the general pardon
for the ■p7'(Bmu7ih-e till that title was acknowledged ; but the
intimation produced no effect. The king then sent them by
Anne Boleyn's brother, Viscount Rochford, another message
allowing them to modify the title by the insertion of the words
post Deum after Siip7'emum Caputs and refusing to discuss the
matter further. Even this form, however, was not accepted,
but in place of it Archbishop Warham, on February 11,

vri CONCESSION IN CONVOCATION 109

suggested the words — "of the Church and Clergy of Eng-
land, whose especial Protector, single and supreme lord, and,
as far as the law of Christ allows, even Supreme Head we
acknowledge his Majesty to be." And when this was pro-
posed not a word seems to have been said to -phereco
second it. The situation was evidently growing nitionof
painful, but the archbishop found a way out of it. ^"P'^^'^^^^-
"Whoever is silent," he said, "seems to consent." "Then
we are all silent," one voice replied; and thus the clause
passed the Upper House, and was agreed to by the Lower.
With this the king had to be content ; and perhaps it was due
to some negotiation that the grant was ultimately made a round
sum of ;£"ioo,ooo, payable in five yearly instalments, the last
to be paid in Michaelmas 1535. Convocation modified other
articles also, correcting, among other things, the statement
that the cure of the souls of his subjects was committed to his
Majesty. But the acknowledgment they had made, even in
that modified form, of the king's supremacy, was a thing that
for some time they regretted more and more, and they even
urged that it should be retracted in Parliament, otherwise, they
said, they would not pay a penny of the hundred thousand
pounds voted — a threat which, of course, was futile, though it
led to disturbances later.

The Convocation of York was then asked to follow the
example of the southern province, and ultimately did so ;
but not without a protest from Tunstall, now Bishop of
Durham, against the title as admitted by the southern clergy.
He and Kite, Bishop of Carlisle, were at this time the only
bishops in the northern province, for Wolsey had died in
November of the past year ; and Tunstall's voice was far the
more weighty of the two — so weighty that the king himself
wrote to him in answer to his protest, for which Tunstall had
respectfully declared to him his reasons in a letter from York
of May 6. The York Convocation also bought their pardon
from the prt^munire for the sum of ;!^ 18, 840 : o : 10. But
protests were sent to the king from both Convocations in May
against the new kind of sovereignty he was endeavouring to
establish over them.

The pardon for the province of Canterbury was confirmed
in Parliament, as that of York was also the year after. But

no THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

when the bill was read in the Commons it provoked not a
'little opposition — not from any illwill to the clergy, but from
a feeUng that the laity who had had anything to do with
Wolsey were liable to the very same treatment. In their
alarm they sent a deputation to the king, who at first would
not hear of any interference with his prerogative. After a
while, however, he evidently felt the situation to be dangerous,
and granted them a free pardon under his great seal. So the
difference between the clergy and the laity in the end was
that the latter obtained gratuitously what the former had to
buy at an extortionate price. It was the clergy whom Henry
was most anxious to bring into complete subjection.

Parliament was kept sitting from the middle of January to
the end of March. It was the same Parliament that had
met on Wolsey's fall, and it was destined to be continued by
different prorogations till it had nearly reached what is now
the statutory limit of a parliament's existence — seven full
years. Its members had no idea at the first that their
services could be required so long, and even now they felt it
very inconvenient — all the more so that in this session there
seemed no very great business for which they were kept
sitting. During February everybody was tired of it, and many
got leave of absence, which was very readily granted to those
who favoured the queen. On the last day of the month the
king visited the House of Lords, and stayed there nearly
two hours directing their lordships' attention, among other
matters, to the abuse of sanctuaries, which it was desirable
to restrict, and also to an extraordinary crime which had
just been committed in the Bishop of Rochester's house-
hold, and certainly deserved the strictest investigation and
punishment.

It appeared that two servants had died and most of the

others had been very ill from eating a certain pottage, of

which, happily, the bishop himself had not partaken.

Bishop 'phg bishop's brother caused the cook to be appre-

Fisher s cook. ^ . . ^ • ■,

hended, and apparently a confession was obtamed
from him that he had thrown in a powder, the effects of
which he had not expected to be fatal. However this might
be, either he or some one else had clearly been guilty of
dehberate poisoning ; and it was only too well known that the

VII MORE'S STATEMENT in

bishop was in ill favour, not only with the king, but with
Anne Boleyn and her friends. That the king himself was in
any way responsible for the crime is exceedingly improbable ;
but it so clearly brought the court into suspicion, that he
was anxious to show his indignation in the strongest possible
fashion; and Parliament, at his instigation, passed a law
against poisoning of awful severity, which was to have an
ex post facto reference to this particular case as well as to
future ones. The poisoner under this statute was to be
boiled to death in a caldron ; and the hideous penalty was
actually inflicted shortly afterwards in Smithfield.

On March 30, the day before the prorogation, Sir Thomas
More, as chancellor, had a duty imposed on him by the king
which must have been no less unwelcome to him ^. ^,

. . bir 1 nomas

than It was at variance with an express understanding More as
on which he had taken office. For when he was ^ ^"^^ °^'
appointed chancellor, the friends of Queen Katharine were
for the time put in good heart. It was still believed by
many that the king would not pursue his divorce any farther,
and it was only on being assured that his services would not
be used in promoting such an object that More consented to
accept the great seal at all Now, however, he was made
an instrument in the matter against his will. Along with
twelve members of the House of Lords, spiritual and temporal,
he visited the House of Commons, and informed that assembly
that the king, on account of the doubts which had been raised
about his marriage, had sought opinions from the chief uni-
versities of Christendom, which the Bishop of London would
lay before them. A book containing twelve of those procured
from foreign universities was then read by Brian Tuke.
Afterwards above a hundred other opinions from foreign
countries, if we may trust Hall, were shown, but not read for
lack of time, and the chancellor informed the Commons that
after the prorogation next day they were to report these things
in the districts from which they came. The matter, of course,
had been previously declared in the House of Lords, where
the Bishops of Lincoln and London (Longland and Stokesley)
had nearly spoiled the business by their readiness to argue in
the king's behalf. For the Bishops of St. Asaph and Bath
(Standish and Clerk) protested that that House was not the

112 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

place to discuss the question ; but Norfolk interfered and said
the king had not sent the documents to be discussed, but
only to declare the motives by which he had been influenced.
On this some one asked the chancellor the trying question
what his own opinion of the case was. He replied that he
had frequently given it to the king himself, and would say
no more.

On May 31, by the king's order, a great deputation of lords
and bishops visited the queen, and represented to her that
Deputation '^^ ^^"S ^^^ much displcascd ; that, owing to the
to Queen course shc had pursued, he had been cited to
appear personally at Rome — a thing quite incom-
patible with his position and dignity ; and that she ought
to agree that judges should be chosen by mutual consent
who were above suspicion. Although taken by surprise,
and without legal advice at hand (it was evening, and
she was about to have retired to rest), she answered wisely
and with dignity even when Bishop Longland and Dr.
Edward Lee (who was soon after made Archbishop of York)
pressed her with arguments which were both indecent and
insulting. She told Sampson, Dean of the Chapel, that she
ought not to be accused of precipitation in desiring a definitive
sentence in a matter which had cost her so many days and
nights of misery ; and the deputation retired completely
baffled, Dr. Lee declaring that all the king had done hitherto
went for nothing. At this time the king and queen had not
yet completely parted company, but were in the habit of
visiting each other every three days. They were at Windsor
after Whitsuntide, and remained there till July 14. But on
that day the king removed to Woodstock without bidding her
good-bye. Grieved at this, and being told she was not to
follow him, she sent him a few days later a message of mild
complaints ; to which he sent back a rude answer, that he
was angry with her obstinacy in refusing his reasonable pro-
posal after she had caused him to be cited to Rome.

In October Dr. Lee, now Archbishop-elect of York, with
the Earl of Sussex, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Dr. Sampson,
were again sent to her, to suggest some amicable arrangement
between her and Henry ; but she replied gently and firmly,
that it was more necessary now than ever that the cause

VII ARCHBISHOP WARHAM'S PRO TES T 113

should be decided at Rome. It was, indeed, only from
Rome that she could expect justice; for though her cause
was undoubtedly popular in England, her supporters could
do nothing, and she was practically friendless.

Just before this, on September i, a disturbance took place
at St. Paul's, where Bishop Stokesley had asked the London
clergy to meet him for the purpose of being as-
sessed to the extortionate subsidy conceded by stJpaurl
Convocation. His plan was to take six or eight
priests at a time into the chapter -house and try personal
persuasions with each group to grant as large a sum as
possible. But when a few were called in, many pushed in
along with them, and when the door was shut those outside
insisted on admission to know what was done with the others.
In this they were encouraged by laymen, who warmly took
their part. So the door was forced open, and the bishop,
whose officer received a blow on the face in the struggle,
was obliged to address a larger assembly than he had intended.
The bishop urged each to bear his part, though the burden
was a heavy one. " My lord," said one in reply, " twenty
nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest, now victual and
everything is so dear, and poverty enforceth us to say nay.
Besides, we never offended in \he pmrnunire, for we meddled
never with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops and
abbots who have offended pay." This led to high words and
some buffeting, for which some priests and laymen, being
brought before the lord mayor, were committed to the Tower,
the Fleet, and other prisons.

Next year (1532) Parliament again assembled in January,
and its services were soon made use of in pressing the clergy
still further. On February 24, Archbishop Warham felt it
his duty to make a formal protest against all the enactments
made in this Parliament since its opening in November
1529 in derogation of the pope's authority or of the eccle-
siastical prerogatives of the province of Canterbury, The
legislature was perhaps even then discussing measures, in
which Chapuys reports that they were engaged in the
beginning of March, subversive of episcopal authority
altogether. But their suggestions by and by took the form
of a supplication or complaint against the bishops, of which

114 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

drafts remain, with corrections, in the handwriting of Thomas
Supplication Cromwell, showing clearly that it really emanated
against the fj-Qm the court. It began by saying that much
discord and illwill had of late arisen between the
king's subjects, spiritual and temporal, owing on the one side
to new and fantastic opinions, and on the other to the
severity and uncharitable behaviour "of divers ordinaries,
their commissaries and substitutes," in the examination of
those errors and heretical opinions ; and it went on to say that
by these differences the peace of the realm was threatened.
The causes of this were, first, that the clergy in Convocation
made laws and constitutions without the consent either of
the king or of the laity, yet the laity were constrained to
obey under censures, though the said laws had never been
declared to them in the English tongue. Second, some
changes recently made by Archbishop Warham had placed
the business of the Courts of Arches and Audience entirely
in the hands of ten proctors, so that suitors could not have
indifferent counsel, and matters that touched the Crown were
concealed by the proctors for fear of losing their offices — an
abuse that might be corrected if a certain number of proctors
were nominated by the king. Third, poor people were
convented before the ordinaries ex officio^ sometimes for
malice, sometimes at the mere caprice of " sumners " and
apparitors, and put to trouble and expense without warning,
and without redress even when absolved. Nine other causes
also were capitulated : mainly, excessive fees in spiritual courts
or for spiritual functions, delays in probates, provisions of
minors to benefices, the excessive number of holidays (which
the king, it was suggested, might correct by an order in
council), and vexatious examinations for heresy.

Besides the fact already pointed out, that this document
really emanated from the court, and was virtually a petition
to the king drafted under the king's own eye, it is important
to note that it represents the illwill between the clergy and
the laity to be a thing of recent origin. Towards the close,
especially, it is specifically stated that " there is at this present
time, and by a few years past has been, outrageous violence
on the one part, and much default and lack of patient
sufferance, charity, and goodwill on the other part." The

VII THE SUPPLICATION IN THE COMMONS 115

same fact comes out in another quarter, and it deserves some-
thing more than the passing notice that it must receive here.
For it was certainly about this time — probably in this very
year 1532 — that the lawyer, Christopher St. German, published
anonymously his "treatise concerning the division between
the spiritualty and temporal ty," which was clearly inspired by
the very same influences as this bill in Parliament. Sir
Thomas More answered it in his Apology published next year
(1533), in which he speaks of the author as "the Pacifier,"
and denies that the state of feeling between clergy and laity
was by any means so acute as he represented, or even of
very old standing, for it only dated from the publication of
the books of Tyndale, Frith, and Friar Barnes — that is to
say, it was the growth of about five years of agitation. It
did not seem, moreover, that " the Pacifier " was really
anxious to allay this agitation, any more than the framers of
the bill in Parliament were.

That some of the grievances were plausible, and some
perhaps not altogether theoretical, may be assumed almost
as a matter of course ; but the main object of the bill was
obviously to suggest that there were matters connected with
spiritual administration which the clergy could not be trusted,
as they hitherto had been, to reform themselves, and which,
therefore, the king must take into his hands. Convocation
was at that very time shaping measures for the reformation of
a large number of abuses ; but its action was paralysed by
this very bill, and none of the proposed ordinances ever
became legal canons.

This supplication having been approved by the Commons,
it was agreed to present it to the king, as, no doubt, was
intended ; for it was not a legislative measure to go up to the
House of Lords. On March 18 the Speaker and a depu-
tation of other members were admitted to the king's presence,
and laid it before him, beseeching him at the same time
to consider the great inconvenience and costs they
had incurred by their long attendance in this Parlia- comnfons
ment, from which they hoped he would relieve J^eJJ^n°ce
them by a dissolution and enable them to repair to
their several homes in the country. The very fact that they
could make such a petition just after presenting their bill of

ii6 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

grievances against the spiritualty showed how unreal their
complaint was ; and the king, while keeping up the farce,
could not but point out the inconsistency of their requests.
First, he said that their bill of grievances contained weighty
matter, to which, as an impartial judge, he must not give light
credence without hearing what the clergy had to say in
answer ; and they must stay to learn the result. Moreover, he
had sent them a bill concerning wardships which had already
passed the Lords, and which he hoped they would pass like-
wise, its object being to guard the Crown against a great loss
of feudal dues on the succession of heirs, which resulted from
the device called feoffments to uses. But these dues were to
the Commons a much more serious grievance than any that
they had against the spiritualty, and they declined to pass this
bill, even to please the king.

Parliament soon after adjourned for Easter till April
I o ; but in the meanwhile it passed, under very considerable
^^^ pressure, an Act against the payment of annates (or
withholding first-fruits on benefices) to Rome. It has been
amiaSto strangely imagined that this measure was framed
Rome, i^y ^}^g clergy, as if they complained of payments
incident to their own promotions. Even in the House of
Lords it met with opposition from others besides the bishops
and the abbots ; but in the Commons the very members
who had been chosen at the king's pleasure offered a stout
resistance, and they only agreed to pass it ultimately on
the understanding that it was not to take effect for a year,
during which time some arrangement might be made with the
pope. Yet the pope's nuncio then in England was solemnly
assured by the Duke of Norfolk that the king had been obliged
to pass it to satisfy the Commons, who had proposed other
measures against the Holy See, and that it was still in the
king's power to secure payment to the pope of his old accus-
tomed dues if he and his Holiness could come to a proper
understanding with each other.

On the reassembling of Parliament the lord chancellor
with a number of the leading peers visited the House of
Commons, and informed them that it had been found necessary
to fortify the Borders against Scotland, and for this the king
required an aid in money. The demand was not at all agree-

VII THE ANSWER OF THE ORDINARIES 117

able, and one of the members named Temse even ventured to
say that there was no danger from the Scots, as they could
do no harm without foreign aid, and that the king should
be petitioned to take back his wife and treat her well, as
the emperor, who would not abandon the cause of his aunt,
could do them far more mischief than any other power.
Moreover, to bastardise the Princess Mary might have very
serious results for the nation. Temse's motion appears to
have been seconded, and carried with general applause, so
that the question of the aid was for a while deferred.

On April 12 Archbishop Warham laid before Convo-
cation the supplication of the Commons, saying that he
thought it desirable that their complaints should be answered ;
and, as the Lower House was informed that the king expected
a speedy reply, it was delivered to the prolocutor for their con-
sideration. At the next sitting, on Monday the 15th, two draft
replies to the preamble and parts of the first article were read
in the Upper House by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and
were unanimously approved. On the 19th the Lower House
also agreed to them, and the archbishop ordered the whole
reply to be written fair for presentation to the king. But it
seems there were still some points requiring communication
between the two Houses, and the presentation did not actually
take place till about three days before the end of the month.
The reply was drawn up in the name of the ordin- r^,

^ J ^ 1 he answer

aries, as it was they who were put on their defence ; 0/ the
and it was certainly frank and clear. They denied
that there was any general want of charity among themselves
towards the laity, though among a large body there might be
ill-ruled persons. As to heretics, they had only done their
duty in punishing such persons. Their power of making laws
for themselves could not be a grievance to the community, for
it was founded "upon the Scripture of God and the deter-
mination of Holy Church " — the principles by which all laws,
spiritual and temporal, must be tested — and they were always
ready to reform such statutes as did not agree with them. In
fulfilment of a high trust committed to them by God, they
were not at hberty to submit their canons to the king's assent ;
but they humbly besought him from henceforth to declare to
them his mind on any subject, and they promised to do their

ii8 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY ciiaf

best to follow it if it pleased God so to inspire them. The
king, they were sure, would acquit them of encroaching on his
prerogative, whatever less learned persons might say. And
as regards the other grievances they replied seriatim, though
this latter part of the answer does not appear to have been
inscribed on the records of Convocation.

This "Answer of the Ordinaries," as it is commonly called,
was presented to the kmg, who on April 30 sent for
Speaker Audeley and a deputation of the Commons, and
delivered it to them for consideration. " We think," he said,
" their answer will smally please you, for it seemeth to us very
slender. You be a great sort of wise men. I doubt not but
i-ino-'s y^^ ^'^^^ \odk circumspectly on the matter, and
pretend|d we will bc indifferent between you." Of course the
impartia ity. (^Qj^j^^Qj-^g ^lust havc undcrstood pretty well what
this professed impartiality meant, and we may presume that in
this matter they were not unwilling to fulfil the king's expecta-
tions. But before dismissing them the king had another thing
to tell them. He was very much surprised, he said, to hear
that one of their House had ventured to speak of his having
parted company with the queen. Questions of matrimony
were not for the House of Commons, and what he had done
was for purely conscientious reasons, after consulting " the
doctors of the universities." Moreover, he was forty-one years
old, and was not likely at that age to be moved to such a
thing by mere lust. So the Speaker departed, and conveyed
his Majesty's observations on both these subjects to the
House.

It was clear that Henry was not to be diverted from his
persistent aim by evidence of its unpopularity. Even before
the suggestion made in the House of Commons that he should
take back his queen he had received a still more significant
warning. On Easter Day, March 31, William Peto, the pro-
vincial of the Grey Friars, preached before him at Greenwich.
The convent of the Grey Friars at Greenwich belonged to the
stricter division of the order called the Observants, who stood

P^.^^ in high esteem with every one. The preacher

Peto's strongly warned the king in his sermon of the

sermon. ^^LngQx in which princcs stood from evil counsellors

and sycophants. After the sermon the king called him to a

VII THEY BEGIN TO YIELD 119

private interview ; but Peto only warned him the more strongly
that he was endangering his crown by seeking to discredit his
marriage. Henry concealed his displeasure, and gave him
leave to go on a call of duty to Canterbury ; but, as soon as
he had left, got a chaplain of his own, Dr. Richard Curwen, to
preach in the same place and contradict what Peto had said.
Curwen waxed bold in the part assigned him, and said he
only wished Peto were there to answer him ; on which Henry
Elstowe, the warden of the convent, rose and said he would
answer for his superior, denouncing Curwen to his face as one
of a company like Ahab's lying prophets. Of course this
made matters worse than ever for the king, who, on Peto's
return, insisted, but insisted vainly, that he ought to deprive
the warden and make him recant what he had said. A
courtier also threatened Elstowe, telling him that for such
conduct he deserved to be put in a sack and drowned in the
Thames, "These threats are for courtiers," replied the friar;
" the way to heaven is open as well by water as by land."

It does not appear what further action was taken by the
Commons as to the reply of the ordinaries after the king had
hinted that it would hardly satisfy them. The intimation
that the king himself was not satisfied induced Convocation
to make a further reply to him. They understood
that he chiefly took exception to the part in which answer of
they claimed the right of making laws for them- ^ ^*=^''gy-
selves without the royal assent. As to this they rested simply
on the determinations of the Church, accepted throughout all
Christendom, that the prelates, having a spiritual jurisdiction,
had power to make laws without the consent of any temporal
power ; and showed that hitherto Christian princes had felt
themselves bound to suffer it. Moreover, it was founded on
Scripture, and had been defended by the king himself in his
book against Luther. Nevertheless, considering the king's
wisdom, learning, and goodness, they were willing to forbear
from further legislation without his consent, unless it were
for the maintenance of the faith. As to past laws, if there
were any not in use and not affecting the faith or the correc-
tion of sin, they were ready to revoke them when they should
be pointed out.

This dignified concession did not satisfy the king, and he

I20 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

was disappointed to find that the answer was mainly the work
of Gardiner, whom he had so lately made a bishop. Gardiner
was ill in body and distressed at the king's displeasure, but he
stood his ground, expressing in a very respectful letter, slightly
tinged with irony, the hope that as one unlearned in divinity
he had not gone very far wrong in following a large number
of weighty authorities, including the king himself when he
wrote against Luther. This second answer, however, con-
tained a real concession, and the king was determined to
wring from the clergy a still more complete submission.

It would seem to have been on May 8 that this reply
of the clergy to the king was agreed to. That morning, while
the subject was under consideration, the Bishop of London,
who presided for the day in the archbishop's room, informed
both Houses that he had been notified by the Duke of
Norfolk that the Commons had voted the king a fifteenth,
payable in two years, and he hoped that the clergy would
show themselves no less willing to aid the king. The demand
was cruel after they had conceded so much already. But the
liberties of the Church were the matter that Convocation was
most concerned about now, and at the request of the Lower
House certain bishops and divines were appointed as a
deputation to wait upon the king and report to him how
seriously these were already compromised by the action of

Mhe Parliament. On May lo, Foxe, who was one of the
deputation, brought in a set of three articles proposed by the
king for their acceptance, requiring a complete sacrifice of
their independence as regards the power of making ordinances.
And to quicken their determination the king applied next

(;;day to the House of Commons.

That day, May ii, he sent again for the Speaker and

twelve other members, whom he addressed, as reported, in

these words : " Well-beloved subjects, we thought

complains that that the clcrgy of our realm had been our

^^buf half hTs^ subjects wholly ; but now we have well perceived

subjects. ^^^ ^i^gy ^g l-jyj- j^^if Q^j. subjects — yea, and scarce

our subjects. For all the prelates at their consecration make
an oath to the pope clean contrary to the oath they make to
us so that they seem his subjects and not ours." In proof
of which he delivered to them a copy of each of the oaths,

vii THE KING NOT SATISFIED 121

and desired them to take some order that he might not be
deluded by his spiritual subjects.

That so wise and able a king could have reigned full
three-and-twenty years without discovering, what none of his
predecessors had done, that the oath which bishops and abbots
took to the pope was incompatible with that which they took
to himself, was surely not a little remarkable. For if there
was even a hint of incongruity in the two oaths themselves,
it was merely that the new-made prelate, on recovering from
the king the temporalities of his See, expressly renounced
the benefit of any grants that he might have from Rome
if they should be found injurious to the king, with whom he
promised to live and die as a loyal subject. Henry knew
as well as any man that the two oaths did not constitute an
incompatibility of duties unless there was a " right divine of
kings to govern wrong." But it v»^as precisely this right that
he was intent on vindicating.

On the king's demands being brought in by Foxe, the
archbishop adjourned the Convocation to St. Katharine's
Chapel, still within the Abbey, no doubt for greater privacy, and
there the paper was read over again. They then adjourned
till Monday the 13th, to meet in the chapter-house, con-
ferences being held meanwhile as to the course of action
to be pursued with the aged Bishop of Rochester by a
deputation which visited him at his house. On the 13th the
three articles presented to them on the king's part were
admitted with some limitation \ after which the Houses again
adjourned till Wednesday the 1 5th. On that day the arch-
bishop received a writ from the king to prorogue the Con-
vocation till November 5, and a number of lay peers came
in, but retired after some private communication with the
archbishop. The prolocutor then brought up from the Lower
House a report of the members who agreed, dissented, or
would have delayed answering the proposed three articles.
Then the archbishop said he awaited an answer from the king
by the lay lords, who presently were again admitted, and,
after communicating with the bishops, again retired. Then in
an after-dinner sitting certain bishops brought in and read
the paper that came from the king, and the bishops were
asked to consent to it without any limitation. All agreed

122 THE SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY chap.

except Clerk, Bishop of Bath, and it was sent down to the
Lower House to be despatched.

The writ of prorogation was then read, and next day, May
1 6, the archbishop dehvered to the king the formal document
. known in history as "the Submission of the Clergy."
i of the By this they promised, first of all, henceforth to
'^^'^*^' enact no new canons, constitutions provincial, or
ordinances provincial or synodal without the king's licence \
secondly, to submit it to the examination of the king and of
thirty-two persons, sixteen of whom should be of the temporalty
of the two Houses of Parliament, and sixteen of the clergy, all
to be chosen by the king, whether any of their past constitu-
tions and ordinances were against God's laws and those of the
realm, and if found so by the majority, that they should be
abolished ; and thirdly, that laws which the majority of those
thirty-two persons approved as consistent with God's laws and
those of the realm, should receive the king's assent and con-
tinue in full force. The preamble of the document says that
the clergy make this concession out of confidence in the king's
" excellent wisdom, princely goodness, and fervent zeal to the
promotion of God's honour and Christian rehgion, and also in
your learning, far exceeding in our judgment the learning of
all other kings and princes that we have read of." The words
savour, no doubt, of flattery, but they also supply a hint of that
limitation vaguely mentioned in the register, for which, even at
the last moment, the clergy contended in vain. Though it
was a forced surrender of their old acknowledged rights, they
threw the responsibility on a really wise and learned king, and
further, as is more distinctly shown by the wording of another
draft, cherished the vain hope that in future reigns they would
c> recover their lost position.

On that same 1 6th May Sir Thomas More surrendered the

great seal. After repeated and earnest requests to the king

to be relieved of the office of lord chancellor,

More resigns . . i tt i t n

the Chan- his resignation was at length accepted. He had all
eel ors ip. 2\Qwg disHkcd the king's policy, and for more than a
twelvemonth afterwards he was busy in answering heretics like
Tyndale and Frith, and endeavouring to protect the clergy
from those accusations which were now so freely uttered
against them with encouragement from high quarters. In

VII RESISTANCE AT AN END 123

order to supply his place, Thomas iiudeley, Speaker of the
House of Commons, was appointed, not at first chancellor, but
keeper of the great seal, and knighted for greater dignity.
In January following, however, the name and office of lord
chancellor were conferred upon him, and he held them till his
death in 1544.

Authorities. — Hall's Chro?iicle ; Letters and Papers (Calendar) of
Henry VIII. vols. iv. and v. For Reginald Pole see Dictionary of National
Biography. For the citation served on the Earl of Wiltshire see Friedmann's
An7ie Boleyn, i. 107. For Tyndale see Demaus's Life. For Bishop Nix's
letter to the Duke of Norfolk see Calendar, vol. iv. no. 6385. Rymer. The
documents in Wilkins's Concilia, vol. iii. , are important, especially the
extracts from the proceedings of Convocation in 1531 and 1532, which are
given at pp. 724-6, 742-4, 748-9 ; but see the same in Atterbury's Rights,
Powers, and Privileges of an E7tglish Convocation, 2nd ed. 1701, Appendix,
nos. iv.-vi. , including v'x.a, b, c, d, e, and/. There are differences more than
verbal between the extracts in Wilkins and in Atterbury, which suggest that
Heylin, from whose notes they were printed by Wilkins, occasionally
abbreviated the text of the register in his own words. For the protest of the
two Convocations see Friedmann's Anne Boleyft, i. 142. For the story of
Bishop Fisher's cook see Statute 22, Hen. VHI. c. 16, and Chapuys,
March i, 1531, in Calendars (both EngUsh and Spanish). The Supplication
of the Commons in 1531 and the Answer of the Ordinaries are printed in
Froude's History '{&± 1875, i- 211-220), out of place in connection with the
session of 1529 ; but the best text of both documents will be found in Gee and
Hardy's Documents illustrative of the History of the English Church (nos. 46
and 47), where will also be found the Submission of the Clergy (no. 48) and
the Act about Annates (no. 49). A document bearing on this subject has
been printed by Strype [Ecclesiastical Memorials, I. ii. 158, ed. 1832), and
copied from him by Wilkins (iii. 760) with the erroneous heading, "An
Address from the Convocation to the King for an Act to take away Annates."
It was really a petition which Parliament was intended to adopt. Tlie measures
prepared by Convocation for the reform of abuses maybe seen in Wilkins iii.
717 sq. , where they are printed with an extraordinary footnote, assigning them
to the year 1529 as the most probable date ; and this on the evidence of the
sixth article about heretics, although among other publications cited in that
article is the Augsburg Confession of 1530. The error has been pointed out
by Canon Dixon [Hist, of the Church of Eiigland, i. 87, note).

An anonymous Life of Fisher written a generation later, ed. by Van Ortroy,
may be consulted with advantage on some points, though it contains errors
which can be easily perceived. Harpsfield's Treatise o?i the Pretended Divorce
(ed. for the Camden Society by Pocock) has also matter of importance. As
to Sir Thomas More and the understanding on which he became chancellor,
see Roper's Life of him, p. 60, and More's own statement ( Works, p. 1427).

CHAPTER VIII

ROYAL SUPREMACY

Sir Thomas More had abundant reason for resigning the
great seal. Seeing so clearly as he did the direction of
the king's policy, his conscience would never have allowed
him to keep it one day after he could obtain leave to give
it up. But he was anxious to do more than keep his own
hands unsoiled ; for as early as March 1528, long before he
was made lord chancellor, Tunstall, who was then Bishop of
London, had urged him to use his pen in the defence of the
faith, and given him an episcopal licence to keep and read
Lutheran books, which were even then smu2:gled

More writes , _ , , . • i i , • • . ,

against mto England m considerable quantities, in order
^""^^■^ ' that he might confute their fallacies in plain simple
English. The task was a congenial one to him ; and he had
already published three notable works in defence of the
Church, all written in the intervals of leisure allowed by other
duties, and one of them during the time he held the office of
lord chancellor.

The first of these, of which some account has already
been given in reference to what it says about Hunne's
case, appeared in. 1529, and was called The Dialogue.
In the form of a conversation professedly reported from
memory. More here goes into a number of questions that
were beginning to be discussed, such as freedom of opinion
in religion, the value of images, pilgrimages, and prayers
offered to saints, the credibility of miracles, the authority of
the Church, and finally the errors and heresies contained in
Tyndale's translation of the New Testament. The second,

CHAP. VIII MORE' S CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS 125

called The Supplication of Souls, was written in 1529 in
answer to a scurrilous and dishonest pamphlet entitled A
Supplication for the Beggars. Like other heretical pamphlets,
this had been printed abroad, the author, one Simon Fish,
a lawyer, having escaped for a while beyond sea. Its object
was to suggest a general confiscation of Church endowments
that they might be applied to the relief of poverty. IMore's
answer dwelt on the claims of souls in purgatory, for whom
those endowments were instituted. The third treatise was a
rejoinder to Tyndale, who had published in 1531, apparently
at Amsterdam, an answer to his Dialogue, defending his
translation of the New Testament against More's criticisms.
It was issued in 1532 under the title, A Confutation of Tyn-
dale's Answer,

It cannot be said that as controversies went on More's
tone towards his antagonists improved. He no doubt felt
that there were then powerful influences in the world tending
to degrade the Church, destroy the faith — or such guarantees
for the faith as were then thought necessary — and so demoralise
the whole of society. For the kinsf, as we have , . , ,

r . 1 . . °' , , which the

seen, while professmg to be strictly orthodox, was king secretly
really encouraging heresy underhand, not at ail ^^<=°^^^g^s-
ill-pleased that heretics should give the Church some trouble
while he himself was putting it in fetters. Of this there are
other indications besides the statement in Bishop Nix's letter.
St. German's book, though the author, it is true, professed to
be a good Catholic, was evidently inspired by court influences ;
and if we may believe some anecdotes preserved by Foxe, the
king was so much interested in Fish's Supplication for the
Beggars, which he kept secretly in his desk, that he sent the
author his signet as a protection against the lord chancellor
(Sir Thomas More) and the Bishop of London. Nor are we
left in doubt that he pursued such a course in other instances,
of which we will here mention one or two. Dr. Robert
Barnes had been abjured for heresy in England
and had fled abroad, but came again into the
realm with the king's safe-conduct, granted to him, as More
tells us, " at his humble suit." It is true that More, writing
while he was still lord chancellor in 1532, says the king's
motive in granting it was " to the end that if there might yet

126 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

any spark of grace be founden in him it might be kept kindled
and increased, rather than the man to be cast away." But it
may be suspected that Sir Thomas only puts an interpretation
on the king's action which the king himself wished it to bear,
and which Sir Thomas hoped he was honest in professing.
For he goes on to remark that the king had been equally
gracious to two other heretical exiles, Richard Bayfield and
George Constantine, who returned to England even without a
safe-conduct, trusting in the king's forgiveness, and, having
obtained it, at once brought in more of Tyndale's heretical
books. Nor is there a doubt that Dr. Barnes obtained his
pardon, not in the hope of his return to orthodoxy (for he
had been writing in support of Lutheranism in Germany), but
in the hope that his heresies would make him a useful instru-
ment to the king, who found very good employment for him
without further recantation. In fact, it would appear from a
despatch of the imperial ambassador, Chapuys, that it was not
Barnes who really solicited the king's pardon, but the king
who eagerly solicited his crossing over.

Another case was that of Tyndale, the arch-heretic, whose
translation of the New Testament was denounced by royal
authority itself in May 1530. Two years before that
T^ndak ^^^^ Tyndale had published his chief original work,
T/ie Obedience of a Christiajt Alan ; and that this
book, like Fish's Supplication^ notwithstanding its heretical
character, was secretly introduced to the king's notice and
gave him real satisfaction we have quite satisfactory evidence.
The story in the next generation was that he came to know
it through Anne Boleyn, who had become interested in it when
the lover of one of her maids nearly got into trouble by
reading it ; and that the king, on reading it himself, declared,
" This book is for me and all kings to read." Coming from
Henry the sentiment was not unnatural, for a more thorough-
going treatise in favour of absolutism it would be difficult to
find ; moreover, it contained abuse of the clergy to Henry's
heart's content. It showed that obedience was right from
children to parents, from servants to masters, from subjects to
kings. But a king was in this world without law ; he might
do right or wrong as he pleased, and was accountable only to
God. Even an evil king was a great benefit to his realm.

VIII THE KING AND TYNDALE 127

On the other hand, the pope's authority was founded upon
jugglery ; cardinals and bishops had no right to obedience,
and men might lawfully break any oaths they had made to
them. Such were the main principles set forth in this treatise
of Tyndale's. It removed positively the only restraint on
despotism that men could see in that day. What wonder
that the Church denounced as heretical a book so expressly
composed in defence of " the right divine of kings to govern
wrong " ? On the other hand, it was clearly in the hope that
such a writer would do him valuable service that Henry, not
many months after his official denunciation of Tyndale's New
Testament, was anxious to lure him over from abroad with
a promise of a safe -conduct, while Lord Chancellor More
was devoting all his leisure to a confutation of the exile's
sophistries. Tyndale was afraid to come to England for
fear of the lord chancellor ; but the king himself was very
anxious to give him, though not openly, full assurance of
safety.

Matters, however, took a very different turn when the king,
early in 1531, became acquainted with Tyndale's next work.
The Practice of Prelates^ published at Marburg in
the year preceding ; in which he not only severely ^^e^idn"'^^
criticised (and absurdly misrepresented) the general
policy of Cardinal Wolsey, but laid on him and on
Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, the blame of suggesting the
divorce from Katharine of Aragon. The king was still
pursuing that object; and though Tyndale certainly shared
the general feehng of Englishmen that it was altogether
iniquitous, his declaration to that effect rendered him
quite unserviceable thenceforth for the purpose for which
Henry had meant to use him. Moreover, he was a strong
imperialist, and disliked the divorce all the more because it
was an injury to the emperor's aunt. He declared Wolsey's
wicked aim in promoting it to have been to marry the king
to Francis L's sister Renee (Wolsey had really gone to France
believing that to have been the king's purpose), and so to have
made England French. But Henry, however willing he
might be to see the burden of his own sins laid on the late
cardinal's shoulders (who had often enough borne them while
he lived), could not tolerate avowed opposition to the thing

Vl.

128 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

on which he had most set his heart, and from this time he
was quite content that Tyndale should remain an exile.

Yet Tyndale had been so far persuaded of the king's
favour that he had promised not to put his answer to Sir
Thomas More's Dialogue in print till he had submitted it
to Cromwell, to see if it gave satisfaction. And even after
being convinced that Tyndale himself could be of no service
to him, the king continued the same policy with Tyndale's
ally, John Frith, whom he sought to win over from Holland
to come to England again, if he would only renounce his
friend's extreme opinions and keep his heresies within such
bounds that they might be serviceable. In short, from the
time of Wolsey's fall, the king was continually encouraging and
trying to make use of heretics whose cause he did not openly
advocate, merely that they might give the Church some
trouble while he was pursuing an object of his owm. The
result, of course, was a very large increase in the number of
heretics. Foxe gives a list of sixty persons compelled to
abjure in the diocese of London between 1528 and
b'^CedcT ^53^' y^'\t\\ the articles objected to them; and he
indicates that these cases are a mere selection,
saying that it would overcharge any story to recite the names
of all that were driven from the realm, cast out of their
houses, or brought to open shame by abjuration "in those
bitter days before the coming of Queen Anne." The date
thus indicated is certainly significant. It was with a view to
the king's second marriage that heresy received so much
indirect encouragement.

Nevertheless, the number of abjurations during that period
is undoubted evidence that the Church prevailed in her
conflict in the great majority of cases without resorting to
extreme measures. Of the number of burnings for heresy
in England during those five years we cannot be perfectly
assured ; but considering how zealous Foxe was to obtain
information on the subject, we may assume that the victims of
whom he makes mention were nearly all who suffered. In
that case hardly more than seven men in England were sent
to the flames ^ during the five years just mentioned ; and in

^ Besides heretics burned, Foxe mentions three men hanged in chains for
burning the Rood of Dovercourt — an exploit to which he says " they were

VIII HERETICS BURNED 129

the next year, 1533, there were but two more. Moreover,
the first instance occurs in 1530, so that the two first years of
the period are a blank, and there is only one victim in the
third. Then come six burnings in two years at a very critical
time, and two the year after. Now let us see who these nine
victims were, and for what cause or causes they suffered.
Their names were Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard
Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, Thomas Benet, James Bainham,
Thomas Harding, John Frith, and Andrew Hewet.

The first, Thomas Hitton, was a Norfolk man, burned at
Maidstone as a heretic in 1530. He was one of Tyndale's
secret agents in importing the forbidden New Martyrdoms,
Testament — a priest who had thrown off his habit alleged or
and had earned his living (he said) as a joiner
beyond sea. On returning from a visit to England he was
arrested at Gravesend on suspicion of having stolen some
linen cloths from a hedge, and, being searched, letters were
found on him from evangelical brethren at home, which he
was to have delivered to heretics abroad. He was brought
before Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher, when he
refused to be sworn or to reveal to whom he had delivered
the books he had previously brought in. After five different
appearances he was delivered to the secular power and burned
at Maidstone. Shortly afterwards he was exalted by Tyndale
to the rank of a saint in a book of prayers, published abroad
with a calendar before it, in which the day of his death —
February 23 — appeared as the day of "St. Thomas the
Martyr." The world, however, was not convinced of his claim
to such a title.

The second so-called martyr, though of greater renown,
had not a much better claim to it. " Little Bilney," as he
was called, though he converted his ghostly father,

T . ^ . . ^ , •? 1 Bilney.

Latmier, to his views at Cambridge, recanted,

relapsed again and prevaricated, before he was finally burned

at Norwich in 1531 ; but just before his death it seems

moved by the Spirit of God," — and also a kinsman of his own, John Randall,
who, even from his account, evidently either was murdered, or hanged
himself. And Alan Cope, soon after the publication of Foxe's book, had no
difficulty in showing the latter to have been the case [Dialogi Sex, 550,
ed. 1573). Various, indeed, were the human materials out of which Foxe
manufactured martyrs !

I30 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

perfectly clear (though Foxe will not believe it) that he again
expressed abhorrence of the heresies he had maintained, and
was reconciled to the Church once more. The third victim,
Richard Bayfield, once a monk of Bury St. Edmund's, who
had escaped beyond sea and brought back with him, for
sale in England, a quantity of books of Luther and
CEcolampadius, had abjured his heresies before the Bishop
of Norwich, but had not afterwards fulfilled his penance or
resumed his habit. Sentence was given against him as in
a case of relapse by the Bishop of London in November
15 31, and he was burned in Smithfield. The fourth, John
Tewkesbury, was a leather-seller in London, much interested
in Tyndale's New Testament and his book called The
Wicked Mammon. He abjured and did penance in 1529,
but afterwards repudiated his abjuration as done under com-
pulsion. He was sentenced by the Bishop of London at Sir
Thomas More's house at Chelsea, and was burned in Smith-
field on December 20, 1531.

James Bainham, who had married the widow of Simon Fish,
was the son of a knight of Gloucestershire — Sir Christopher
Bainham, no doubt, whose name appears on com-
missions of the peace. By the interrogatories admin-
istered to him, it appears that he disbelieved in purgatory, and
thought even Dr. Crome lied when he expressed his belief in
that doctrine in a sermon ; though Crome and Latimer were
the only two preachers who ever, in his opinion, preached the
word of God " sincerely," that is to say, without admixture of
superstition. He considered that Holy Scripture had been
unknown for eight hundred years past, and had only been
plainly declared to the people within the last six years. He
approved of all Tyndale's books, and kept them. Being
brought, however, before the Bishop of London at Sir
Thomas More's house at Chelsea, he was exhorted to submit
himself to the Church, and did so. He did penance at St.
Paul's, and was discharged from prison ; but having after-
wards revoked his submission, he was examined again, and
was finally sentenced and burned.

Of this Bainham, Foxe tells us that Sir Thomas More
caused him to be whipped at a tree in his garden, called the
" Tree of Truth," and then sent to the Tower to be racked,

VIII MORE' S ALLEGED CRUELTIES 131

and that the torture was appHed in Sir Thomas's own presence
" till in a manner he had lamed him, because he imputations
would not accuse the gentlemen of the Temple of cruelty
of his acquaintance, nor would show where his
books lay." An almost identical story was told by the
martyrologist, in his first edition, as to More's treatment of
Tewkesbury, but he had the grace to omit it in later editions.
In this case the tree in More's garden was called "Jesus
Tree " ; the victim " was whipped and also twisted in his
brows with small ropes, so that the blood started out of
his eyes ; and yet he would accuse no man." Afterwards he
was "racked in the Tower till he was almost lame." It
seems to be the same legend in both cases ; and, suppressed
as it was in the case of Tewkesbury, we may be sure that it
was equally untrue in that of Bainham. Indeed, we might
well suspect its falsehood from Foxe's own statement about
Bainham's examination by the bishop at More's house at
Chelsea, where we read : — " They asked him whether he would
persist in that which he had said, or else would return to
the Catholic Church, . . . adding, moreover, many fair
enticing and alluring words, that he would reconcile himself,
saying the time was yet that he might be received," etc. That
is to say, both More and the Bishop of London endeavoured
to win Bainham by gentle means wholly inconsistent with the
alleged brutality. The story is, in fact, one of those malicious
lies which began to be circulated about More even in his
own days, and which More himself expressly denounces as
such in one passage in his writings. But Foxe was above
all things credulous, and accepted with little difficulty every
idle tale to the discredit of the old religion.

More was undoubtedly a great enemy to heretics, and he
said so himself in the epitaph which he wrote for his own
burial. He considered them dangerous to society,
as indeed they v^rere to the old framework of ^n^^nJed
society in those days ; and it is hard to deny
that the break-up of that old framework after his death was
extremely demoralising, first to the national life of England,
and afterwards to the whole Christian life of Europe. But
More gave effect to his enmity in methods strictly legitimate,
and nothing that he ever did was tainted with inhumanity.

132 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

The charges, indeed, have been repeated again and again,
though they rest on no better authority, after all, than the
malice of some contemporaries, and the credulity of a very
one-sided historian. But if they be accepted they destroy
More's character, not for humanity alone, but for honesty and
truthfulness as well. For we must not overlook his own very
explicit statement in answer to these libels. He admits that
in some cases of murder or sacrilege, arising apparently out
of heretical conspiracies, he had caused the keepers of the
Marshalsea and other prisons to ehcit information by methods
which could do the prisoners no permanent hurt. He admits
also that he had twice caused corporal punishment to be used
towards heretics — once to a boy in his own service, whom
his father had previously placed in the service of an immoral
priest, and who had begun to corrupt another child with the
lessons that he had unhappily learned there. The second
case was that of a lunatic who had actually been some time
in Bedlam, and after his release had committed acts of the
grossest indecency in church, of which More's neighbours had
complained to him. " Whereupon I," says More himself,
" being advertised of these pageants, and being sent unto and
required by very devout religious folk to take some other
order with him, caused him, as he came wandering by my
door, to be taken by the constables and bound to a tree in the
street before the whole town, and there they striped him with
rods till he waxed weary, and somewhat longer." The man
was quite conscious of what he had done, and the bastinado
seems to have effectually deterred him from repeating the
offence. More then adds — and this is the statement that
must be weighed in connection with the scandals in Foxe —
" And of all that ever came in my hand for heresy, as help me
God, saving (as I said) the sure keeping of them, had never
any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a
fillip on the forehead."

With regard to Thomas Harding, described by Foxe as

"an aged father dwelUng at Chesham in Buckinghamshire," it

is quite true that he was burned in 1532, but

^^ ^"^' it scarcely appears that he was " persecuted,"
as the martyrologist says, by Bishop Longland, and it
is not at all true that he died a "godly martyr." He

VIII JOHN FRITH 133

had been in trouble for heresy more than once before
in the tmie of a previous Bishop of Lincoln, Bishop
Smith, and was brought before Longland on April 6, not
at Woburn, as Foxe tells us, but at the Old Temple in
London, where he confessed his heresy. After some weeks,
however, a further examination was deemed necessary, and
this time it was conducted by the bishop's vicar-general, John
Rayne, assisted by Robert King, Abbot of Thame (a bishop i7i
partibiis with the title "Reonensis," who afterwards became
Bishop of Oxford), and Thomas Waterhouse, Rector of Ashridge.
He was reported to the king as a relapsed heretic, but before
he suffered he humbly confessed his errors and craved absolu-
tion : on which Vicar-General Rayne declared him free from
the greater excommunication and restored him to the bosom
of the Church. This the readers of Foxe are not informed,
but the fact appears in Bishop Longland's register, from which
he took his information.

As to the last two heretics on our list. Frith and Hewet,
who were burned together in Smithfield on July 4, 1533
(little more than a month after the coronation of
Anne Boleyn), both were Kentish men, the one
a scholar and the other a tailor, apparently his disciple.
John Frith was a young man of great ability, who after
taking a degree at Cambridge went to Wolsey's college at
Oxford, vv^here he first gave evidence of heretical leanings.
On the alarm raised about heresy in connection with
Garret's flight, he escaped abroad, but afterwards returned,
leaving a wife behind him in Flanders. For some unex-
plained reason he was lodged in the Tower as if he had been
a political prisoner, though he was not made to wear irons,
and his only crime seems to have been the secret diffusion of
heretical treatises in MS., to evade the proclamation against
printed books. Sir Thomas More, though he heartily wished
these treatises could remain unknown, felt compelled to write a
letter in answer to one that he had written upon the Sacrament.
When Frith was imprisoned, and it was clear that he would be
tried for heresy, his ally Tyndale wrote to him from abroad to
be cautious about his answers ; for it was very desirable that
heretics in their common war against Church authority should
not be each other's enemies as well. Tyndale himself

134 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

had suppressed a treatise that George Joye would have put
forth, and he warned Frith not to insist on doubtful matters,
like the real presence, in which Dr. Barnes would be as
strongly opposed to him as any of the orthodox. Frith
took the hint, and, being examined on purgatory and tran-
substantiation, confessed that he did not believe in either for
his part, but maintained that it was not necessary to the
Christian faith to believe or disbelieve either the one doctrine
or the other. Such a position seems to have been in those
days quite unprecedented. It was considered absurd. Logic
required, at least as regards transubstantiation, that it was
truth of the very highest importance or very mischievous false-
hood. Urgent efforts were made to induce him to recant, but
without avail. He died, as he himself declared, not because
he insisted that his own judgment in the matter was right, but
because he considered that it was wrong to uphold a doctrine
so mysterious as a necessary article of faith.

Before quitting this subject of heresy within the kingdom, it
is right to take notice of the case of a dead heretic, which
came before Convocation early in 1531 in consequence of the
extraordinary will that he had left behind him. William

Tracy, a Gloucestershire gentleman who had been
testemtnt sheriff of the county expressly declared in this

document that he disbelieved in anything that man
could do or say to help his soul ; he desired no masses said,
and no funeral pomp at his burial, and left all his goods to his
wife and son. The will was dated October 10, 1530; and
as administration could only be granted by an ecclesiastical
court, the Church could not but take notice of a defiance thus
prepared to be flung in its teeth when the offender should be
safe from trouble in this world. Archbishop Warham having
brought the matter before Convocation, it was ordered that the
testator's body should be exhumed and burned, which was
accordingly done. But his son Richard represented that this
was disgraceful treatment of a man who had held the office of
high sheriff, and the king might profit to the extent of a thou-
sand pounds by revoking grants made to those who had been
accessory to it. The hint was one not unlikely to tell on the
king and Cromwell ; and the chancellor of Worcester diocese,
Dr. Parker (who seems besides to have lost his place for it), is

VIII DELA V OF THE CA USE A T ROME 135

said to have paid ^300 for a pardon for simply obeying his
superiors.

Thus the king was at this time doing all he could to
encourage heresy while professing still to be orthodox ; for,
as yet, he had not even thrown off subjection to
the See of Rome, though he was preparing to dishonelt"
do so. And this, in truth, gives some colour to P°^'=y-
what we are told by Foxe, that the " rigorous proclama-
tion" against heresy in May 1530, though set forth in
the name of the king, was really procured by the bishops.
But it was utterly false to insinuate that the king was not
responsible for it; for he could not have undermined the
liberties of the Church in the way he did except by professing
to be the Church's patron and friend. And all the while he
was thus engaged at home, either in the underhand encourage-
ment of heretics or in tying the hands of Convocation, he was
pursuing a long course of strategy in the court of Rome, the
final issue of which was clear enough to him but dark to
everybody else.

It was simply that he might have his own way in m^arrying
Anne Boleyn, free from all fear of interference from abroad,
that he had been contriving, ever since Campeggio's
return to Italy, by various artifices, to delay the judg- delay at
ment of that supreme court, to which he had made ^°"^^"
himself responsible, as to the validity of his marriage with
Katharine. For when he asked for a legate to be sent into
England, he acknowledged the authority from which that legate
derived his commission; and the withdrawal of the commission
on the queen's appeal placed him under obligation to appear,
in person or by proxy, before the Roman tribunal to which
the cause was referred. He, of course, knew quite well
that an impartial decision must necessarily be in the queen's
favour ; and without at first reversing his principles of action
by disputing the authority of the court, he set about raising
vexatious impediments to the hearing of the case, so as to
delay as long as possible that sentence in favour of Katharine
which was likely to have been long enough deferred even
in ordinary course. On being cited to Rome, therefore, his
first step was to cause a lawyer named Edward Carne to
appear there without any formal commission from himself to

136 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

plead that the citation was against the privileges of his king-
dom. The king could not leave his realm, else there would be
disorders in his absence, and he could not plead by proxy in
a cause which concerned his own conscience, as he would
require to communicate personally with his judges. Opinions
were again obtained from universities in this matter. Paris
declared that the citation was invalid, and Orleans followed
suit. The French at Rome suggested that the cause should
be heard at some neutral place, such as Cambray, if not a
place in France ; but the queen would not hear of such a
thing. The French, however, assisted Henry's policy at Rome,
and the English ambassadors contrived to keep the courts
debating for two whole years as to the admission of the
" excusator " (as Carne was called) without a mandate, and as
to the sufficiency of his pleas, before coming to the principal
cause. It was a fine achievement !

But if the main question made no way at all, something

was done at Rome on side issues. On January 5, 1531,

the pope was compelled, at Katharine's request, to

Papal send the king a brief forbidding him to marry again

admonitions. *-• o ^ y o

until the decision of the case; otherwise all his issue
would be illegitimate. And as Henry had refused to receive
a former citation, it was enjoined that this brief should be
affixed to the doors of churches at Bruges, Tournay, and other
towns in Flanders, which would be held sufficient promul-
gation. A year later, on January 25, 1532, Clement was
obliged, though with extreme reluctance, to send him another
brief; for he was now informed that he had parted company
with his queen and openly cohabited with " a certain Anne."
The fact was indubitable, and was leading to displays of public
feeling in England that were anything but agreeable. In the
country the king was assailed with cries to take back his queen,
and very strong expressions were used about Anne Boleyn.
In the spring of 1532, when the Abbot of Whitby came home
from the Convocation of York, the prior asked him, " What
news?" and his reply was, "Evil news, for the king's grace is
ruled by one common stewed whore, Anne Boleyn, who makes
all the spiritualty to be beggared and the temporalty also."
To the same cause, doubtless, may be assigned a strange event
at Yarmouth, about which an inquiry had to be ordered in

VIII UNPOPULARITY OF ANNE BOLEYN 137

July 1532 — "a great riot and unlawful assembly of women;,
which it is thought could not have been held without the
knowledge of their husbands." A month or two later, near
London, if we may trust a report circulated in the North of
France, Anne barely escaped with her life from a mob of
women, and men disguised as women, who had come out
to seize her. But the king seemed as infatuated as ever in
his devotion to her, and on September i he created her
Marchioness of Pembroke.

Ten days before, on August 22, the aged Archbishop
Warham had breathed his last, and we cannot doubt that the
event at once suggested to the king a new method ^ , .
of achieving his end. Thomas Cranmer was at the Archbishop
time at Ratisbon, ambassador to the emperor, whom ^^ ^^'
he was about to follow into Italy. In November he received
at Mantua his letters of recall, and learned that the king
intended to make him archbishop — a promotion which, as he
long afterwards declared, he accepted with reluctance, and
he certainly appears to have been in no haste to come home
and receive it. He had been chaplain to the Boleyn family,
and could not but see that his services would be required
in the divorce matter. Moreover, he had just married, in
Germany, his second wife, Osiander's niece — an uncanonical
marriage, of course, like that of many priests in England, but
rather inconvenient for an archbishop. His future responsi-
bilities, evidently, were likely to be serious. Even before he
received his recall, a great step had been taken to
intimidate the pope by the meeting of Henry VIII. ^"""SiJ"^'
and Francis I. at Boulo2;ne in October. Francis J^^"?^ ^•

p ^ at Boulogne.

had found it his interest, in his continual jealousy of
the emperor, to assist the King of England as much as he could
in the matter of his divorce ; and, as we have seen, he used
his royal influence to procure for him a favourable opinion
from the Sorbonne. He declared to Sir Francis Brian his
indignation at Henry's being cited to Rome, and promised to
write a sharp remonstrance to the pope, which would show
his Holiness that he counted Henry's cause his own. His
agents at Rome pleaded again for a trial of the cause in
England, and he himself was led on by degrees to agree
to the meeting at Boulogne, which, while ostensibly held

138 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

with a view to devising measures against the Turks, was
plainly seen to have other objects. When they met, the two
sovereigns agreed to put pressure on the pope to persuade
him that their friendship would be his only protection against
a general council, which the emperor, at the meeting he
was about to hold with Clement at Bologna, would urge
him to convoke. Francis had some grievances of his own
against the Holy See, and the pope must be made to see that
the two sovereigns would support each other firmly.

Francis had no difficulty in making common cause with
the EngHsh king, and using his good offices with the pope to
protect or release him from excommunication. What did it
signify in the mind of any European sovereign that the pope
used even his strongest weapons to denounce his conduct as
immoral and anti- Christian, and call him to repentance?
These things could always be adjusted in the end, and the
sinner received back into the nominal flock of Christ. But
Francis had no notion at that time of the lengths his "good
brother and perpetual ally," as he diplomatically called him,
was prepared to go in defying all the sanctions of private
and international morality merely to give effect to his
self-will. In the course of a very few months his eyes
were opened.

Even at the meeting, no doubt, Henry urged him to send
Cardinals Grammont and Tournon to the pope at Bologna
with a message of an unwarrantably dictatorial kind. But it
is quite clear that the message actually sent was very con-
siderably qualified — all the more so as Francis, evidently
without Henry's knowledge, was actually negotiating at that
very time the marriage of his second son, Henry, Duke of
Orleans, with the pope's niece, Katharine de' Medici. Neither
Francis nor any one else as yet believed that the King of
England, whatever menacing words he might have used,
would end by throwing off the pope's authority altogether.
Why should he, when he could so easily settle matters in the
last resort by putting away his mistress instead ? W^hat
Francis expected to do as regards Henry was simply to
prevent things coming to an extremity between him and the
Holy See. And Henry, for his part, was anxious that he
should use his influence with the pope in an interview which he

VIII THE KING MARRIES HER 139

was going to hold with Clement next year, that his Holiness
might allow him every possible chance.

Just after the Boulogne interview, however, the pope felt
compelled to send Henry a third brief, regretting that one
who had formerly been so good a son of the Church had so
completely changed his conduct during the last two years,
and warning him, on pain of excommunication, to dismiss
Anne and take back Katharine until the court had pro-
nounced sentence in his matrimonial cause. But this brief,
which was dated November 15, 1532, had only been extorted
from the pope by the imperial ambassador at Rome under a
pledge that no use should be made of it till the nuncio in
England had spoken with the king ; and the nuncio in England
seemed only anxious to do what he could to make matters
pleasant, and prevent their coming to an extremity. Henry
accordingly paid no more attention to this last brief than he
had done to its predecessors. On January 25, ^^^^
1533, he went through a secret ceremony of marries
marriage with Anne Boleyn. The lady must have ""*" ° ^■^°'
then been with child (there were some reports, perhaps
erroneous, that she had already been so within the last year
or two), and the king felt it necessary at length to redeem a
long-standing pledge to her. But keeping this fact concealed,
he continued to treat the pope with respect, intending to
make further use of him, and he entertained the nuncio in
England with all due honour, trying now and then to bribe
him to favour the divorce, and now and then to blind him as
to what was actually going on. The nuncio's presence was
indeed useful, to protect him from the suspicions of his
subjects that he was in danger of papal excommunication.

The trial of the cause was still put off at Rome by renewed
suggestions, not acknowledged as proceeding from the king,
for referring it to some neutral place. The pope was as loth
to treat with Henry as Henry was with the pope if he could
secure his object otherwise ; but the king meanwhile, without
taking the least notice of the official admonition he had re-
ceived on the subject of his own profligacy, ven- f^^^^^^^^>^
tured to ask his Hohness to pass Cranmer's bulls promotion to
for the archbishopric of Canterbury without requir- ^^^^^ "''^"
ing payment of first-fruits. This, however, he did indirecdy

I40 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

A certain priest named Edmund Bonner — soon to be a very
prominent man indeed — had been at the meeting of the pope
and emperor at Bologna, watching matters on his king's behalf,
and on his return to England in January wrote about this to
Benet, the king's ambassador at Rome, observing that it was
of the highest importance that the pope should gratify the
king in this, as well as in remitting the cause again to Eng-
land, because matters, it was darkly hinted, were now taken
in hand altogether beyond expectation. The most practical
argument, however, was, that whereas Parliament had in the
preceding year abolished the payment of first-fruits to Rome,
the king was empowered by the Act itself to make the law
for the future inoperative by letters-patent, to be issued before
Easter 1533 or before Parliament should meet again. There
was much hesitation in the college of cardinals, but the bulls
were passed after a liberal distribution of gratuities.

Matters now advanced with extraordinary celerity. In
March, Anne Boleyn's brother, Lord Rochford, was sent over
to France to inform the king's good brother and ally in
strictest confidence of two facts only to be published in
England at Easter — first, that the king had actually married
Anne Boleyn ; and second, that there was a fair prospect of
issue. Henry therefore relied on his good brother's friend-
ship to maintain the validity of what had been done, and the
legitimacy of the expected offspring ; and he expressed a hope
that Francis would tell the pope plainly that he would not
countenance any further proceedings at Rome in Henry's
matrimonial cause until the excusator had been admitted.
So insulting a message was clearly out of the question. To
threaten the independence of the Holy See as a tribunal in
spiritual things suited nobody's policy but that of Henry
VIII. ; and least of all did it suit that of Francis, when he
was looking forward to an interviev/ with Clement and the
marriage of his son to the pope's niece. Henry, indeed, had
himself favoured that interview in order to disunite the pope
and the emperor. But the French king did what he could by
respectfully urging the pope not to reject the excusator even
yet, till their interview had taken place ; and his efforts were
by no means ineffectual

In March, as soon as the bulls of Canterbury had arrived

VIII CRAMMER'S DECREES 141

in England, the king brought the matter of his divorce before
Convocation, and pressed it with such dictatorial
urgency that Bishop Fisher alone was bold enough and the
to offer any express resistance. Objection was ^^^°^'^^-
raised that the case was before the pope ; but the president
had been furnished with a paper showing that the pope
invited every one to declare his opinion. In the Lower House
it was carried by fourteen votes to seven that the pope had
no dispensing power in such a case. The king had gained
his point. Even the servile House of Commons, however, at
first refused to pass some anti-papal measures proposed by
him, fearing lest the commerce of the kingdom, especially
with Flanders, should be cut off by a papal interdict. But in
the end the famous statute which abolished appeals to Rome
went through all its stages, and any subject henceforth
bringing in bulls of excommunication was liable to di prcBmunire.
All resistance had in fact collapsed ; and on Good Friday,
April II, the new Archbishop of Canterbury (of course under
secret orders) wrote to the king, humbly requesting to be
allowed to determine his matrimonial cause in a court of his
own. Needless to say, he received a commission to do so.
He cited the queen to appear before him at Dunstable, that
the affair might be managed quietly, and on May 10 he
pronounced her contumacious for not appearing. He was,
however, rather uncomfortable lest she should still do so
before he gave final sentence on the 23rd, and
writing to Cromwell advised that the matter should Cranmer's

c> sentence.

be as little talked of as possible. On the 23rd

he gave sentence that the king's marriage was invalid.

Then by a like mockery of lav/ and justice he held a secret
inquiry at Lambeth on the 28th as to the king's marriage with
Anne Boleyn, which of course was found to be lawful. On
what evidences he came to this conclusion the world was
not informed. It was not even said on what day the marriage
had taken place, or by whom it was witnessed, or what priest
officiated at the rite. Cranmer repudiated a subsequent
rumour that he had done it himself, and we may well believe
he had not, But the name of the celebrant was kept a
profound secret, and to this day it is a matter of uncertainty.
The determination that the marriage with Anne was valid was

142 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

published to the world, but not the grounds for it. The

thing was managed just in time to allow of her
^°^°"gjf^" °^ being crowned on Whitsunday, June i. But the

people only wondered, and would not cheer or
uncover as she passed through the streets.

To fulfil his pledge to Anne the king had outraged public
feeling. At Easter he had got Dr. George Browne, prior of
the Austin Friars, to pray for her as queen ; but the audience
were shocked, and almost all left the church. The lord mayor
then received orders to warn the citizens to suppress murmur-
ings, even amongst their wives. Katharine, who had been
removed to Ampthill, received notice that she must no longer
call herself queen, and her little household was warned not
to give her such a title. Henceforth she was known officially
as Princess of Wales, being the king's brother's widow. But
merchants were afraid to ship to Flanders lest the emperor
should declare war on his aunt's behalf, and Cromwell, now
well known as the king's chief counsellor, wisely removed his
worldly goods into the Tower. Henry himself scarcely felt
secure in the triumph of his self-will ; for when, little more
than three months after her coronation, Anne was jealous
of his attentions to some other lady, he rudely bade her shut
her eyes and bear it "as her betters had done," for she
should know that it was in his power to humble her again
in a moment even more than he had raised her. This was
the pleasant understanding on which she had to pass the
remainder of what we suppose we must call her wedded life.

The pope could not but reply to these insults to public
morality and the contempt they showed for the authority of the

Holy See. On July ii he pronounced Henry ex-

eJcommum- communicatcd, and his divorce and re-marriage null,

""Rome^^ but Still allowcd him till the end of September to

make his peace by putting away x\nne and taking
back Katharine, before the sentence should be openly declared.
In anticipation of this Henry had just been putting a further
strain upon the good-nature of Francis, by endeavouring to
dissuade him from accomplishing the meeting with Clement,
who was about to show himself Henry's enemy. He hoped at
least that Francis would not think of interceding with the
^pope on his account, for he cared not a straw, he said, for

viii THE KING EXCOMMUNICATED 143

anything the pope could do against him. This was utterly
opposed to his former tone, and was little better than bluster.
After the sentence the nuncio in England was recalled, and
the king withdrew his ambassadors from Rome, but sent new
ones'to the pope in France, namely Bonner and Peter Vannes,
the papal collector in England ; Gardiner, Bishop of Win-
chester, being at the same time sent to Francis I. On
November 7, Bonner managed to secure an interview with
the pope at Marseilles, in which he intimated on Henry's
behalf an appeal to the next general council against the
sentence of excommunication. It was a gross violation of
diplomatic courtesy to thrust such an appeal upon the pope
when he was the guest of a friendly sovereign, and Francis
resented it even more than Clement, especially as, apart from
the manner of the thing, it was a breach of good faith
towards him on Henry's part, and an absolute riSversal of
the policy agreed upon between them, which was to win the
pope by offering him the means of escape from the council
demanded by the emperor. Henry, however, had now got
all the indulgence from the pope that he could expect, and
cared nothing for the feelings of his ally about his change
of policy.

Meanwhile, on September 7, Anne Boleyn had given
birth to a daughter — the future Queen Elizabeth. Great was
the king's disappointment that it was not a son ; but the
people were delighted, hoping that Mary would not be put
out of the succession. Mary, however, received intimation
immediately afterwards that she must give up the name of
princess and live with a reduced household. This she resented,
especially as it was only a verbal message ; whereupon her
servants were taken from her, and she was compelled to act
as lady's-maid to her new-born half-sister.

To stop growing disaffection, and also to inquire into its
sources, one Elizabeth Barton, called "the Nun of Kent,"
was arrested, along with several others who had
resorted to her, believing that she had a revelation ^^K^nT °^
from heaven. This woman's repute for sanctity
had begun many years before, when she was a servant-maid
at Aldington, near Romney Marsh. She then began to have
trances, apparently the results of fits of illness, from which

144 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

she recovered, as she believed, by miracle, in accordance with
a revelation from the Virgin Mary. Richard Master, parson
of Aldington, made reports of her to Archbishop Warham,
which caused the latter in reply to desire further knowledge
of her case. A monk of Canterbury, Dr. Edward Booking,
whom she made her confessor, encouraged her to become a
nun at St. Sepulchre's in that city. But she returned at
times to Aldington, and people came on pilgrimage to the
neighbouring chapel of Court -up -street, where she under-
went changes of feature and uttered wonderful words in
trances that were arranged beforehand. She rebuked sin and
the various heresies of the time, and when her opinion was
asked about the king's divorce she declared most strongly
that God was displeased with it Nay, she warned the king
that if he married Anne Boleyn he would lose his kingdom
within seven months ; and that in her visions she had seen the
very place in hell that was prepared for him. Books were
written and even printed of her revelations ; and her popu-
larity, which unhappily led her gradually into imposture, was
so great that Cranmer, in order to expose her, called her to
interviews as if he believed in her pretensions.

The king called his judges with several peers and bishops
to discuss what to do with her, but was restrained by the
judges from indicting her and her friends of treason in not
revealing things that concerned his state ; for this, in fact, was
what she had actually done to his face. Henry therefore
determined to use Parliament, and not ordinary law, as the
instrument of his vengeance. But in the meantime a con-
fession was obtained from her at St. Paul's, where she and a
number of her supporters were placed on a scaffold on
Tuesday, November 23, while John Capon, a friend of Anne
Boleyn, lately promoted to the bishopric of Bangor, recounted
the whole story of her hypocrisy.
/«. Towards the end of the year it was decided by the King's
Council that none should preach at Paul's Cross without de-
claring in his sermon that the pope's authority was
^be SFeV^ no greater than that of any foreign bishop ; and
"SS?"^ corresponding injunctions were sent to the heads of
the four orders of friars. In accordance with this
view it was also determined that the pope should be hence-

VIII ROMAN JURISDICTION ABOLISHED 145

forth spoken of only as " Bishop of Rome " ; and that is
the title invariably used in State papers in speaking of
the Roman pontiff during the remainder of this and the
v/hole of the succeeding reign. The pope was now to be
considered only as a foreign bishop who had no authority in
England, and whose judgment either in faith or morals was ^.
no longer to be regarded.

Parliament met again in January 1534 to give fuller effect
to the revolution. Three great Acts were required to put the
Church in England under new conditions. A bill ^^^^
was first brought in "concerning the consecration agaii^.st
of bishops," which ultimately became an Act "for
the restraint of annates" iilready, as we have seen, an Act
had been passed in 1532 to abolish these payments to the
court of E.ome, but it contained a provision enabling the
king to make some composition upon the subject with the
pope, and to declare by letters-patent before Easter following,
or else before the next Parliament, how far the Act was to be
enforced. Of course, this was only a hint to the pope that
the king had it in his power to continue or to cut off an old
accustomed tribute ; and when, after making a com.position
for Cranmer's bulls, Henry saw that further concessions from.
Rome were not to be expected, he issued letters-patent on
July 9, 1533, to give full vahdity to the Act. The abolition
of the annates, therefore, was now confirmed in Parliament ;
no bishops, henceforth, were to be presented to the pope, and
no bulls were to be procured from Rome. Priors and convents,
or deans and chapters, were to elect bishops on receipt of the
king's conge d^elire, which was to be accompanied wnth a letter-
missive in favour of the king's nominee. The king himself, if
they delayed twelve days, might fill the vacancy by patent. A
bishop-elect was to be presented to the archbishop of the pro-
vince, and an archbishop to another metropolitan and two
bishops, or else to four bishops assigned by the king to con-
secrate him.

A second Act abolished Peter's pence and all other payments
to Rome, on the ground that the realm was not subject to any
laws made by any authority outside it ; and the Archbishop
of Canterbury was empowered to grant all such licences and
dispensations as the king had been used to obtain from the q

146 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

See of Rome. Exempt monasteries were to be subject to the
king's visitation instead of the pope's, and any one suing to
Rome for faculties of any kind incurred a pramunire, A
#^hird Act, founded on the Submission of the Clergy and the
statute passed the preceding year abolishing appeals to Rome,
forbade the future enactment or promulgation of canons with-
out the royal assent, enabled the king to appoint the thirty-
two commissioners for the examination of past canons, and
ordained that appeals from archbishops or from abbots or

^eads of monasteries should in future be heard in Chancery.
To these Acts was further added one touching heresy,
annulling the Heresy Act of the second year of Henry IV., and
taking away from bishops the power of conventing persons
defamed as heretics until formally accused by two witnesses ;
while it was declared at the same time that nothing done
against the pope and his decrees should be heresy in future.
By another Act the two Italians, Campeggio and Ghinucci,
were deprived of their bishoprics of Salisbury and Worcester.
Then came an Act for the attainder of the Nun of Kent and
of ail who had taken part with her.

'^ Among the number of these — considering how little was
required to implicate any one in treason in those days — very
g.^j^^ many might have been included besides Dr. Booking
Fisher and Richard Master. But the object was not so
much to make many victims as to discredit the nun,
and perhaps in doing so to strike at a few distinguished
persons. After the nun's confession the Marchioness of
Exeter was compelled to seek the king's pardon (which she
easily obtained) for over-credulity in listening to her. Before
the bill of attainder was drawn up a characteristic official
paper, still existing, gave a list of the names of those accused
and also what was to be done with them. The nun herself
and six others were to suffer death ; six more were to be
attainted of misprision and to be imprisoned during the king's
pleasure, losing all their goods. Misprision of treason con-
sisted in not revealing things politically dangerous, and
the first among the six so accused was Bishop Fisher. His
communications with the nun, however, had been perfectly
innocent ; he could only be accused of not revealing what
she had told the king herself; he had given her no advice

VIII FISHER AND MORE 147

whatever in the matter. But exculpations were useless
in a case of parliamentary attainder. The Act passed
against him and the others, but apparently he was not
imprisoned at this time. He was, indeed, attainted in his
absence, being very ill and unable to travel ; and the king, it
is said, was satisfied with the infliction of a fine of ;£^3oo.
The nun and the six chief culprits were hanged at Tyburn
on April 20.

The name of Sir Thomas More also had been put in the
bill at one time, after an attempt had been made to ruin him
on a different charge, which proved to be a total failure.
He had no difficulty in showing that in such intercourse as
he had held, either with the nun herself, which was but slender,
or with her adherents and emissaries, he had always refused
to hear anything about the king's doings, and had advised her
to avoid the subject. More's name was accordingly put out
of the bill again, and for the moment he seemed to be
discharged of further molestation, except the withdrawal of a
salary which he had till then enjoyed.

An Act was next passed for the succession to the crown,
entailing it on the children of the king by Anne Boleyn. In
the preamble the king's first marriage was declared
to be against the laws of God, and a list of pro- gu^^gsSon
hibited degrees was given in the Act, for which no
dispensation could be admitted. An oath was enjoined to
be taken to the succession under a penalty by every person
of lawful age, and before the prorogation on March 30 it was
taken by every member of either of the two Houses. The
3rd of November was fixed as the date when they were to
resume their labours.

Just a week before this prorogation of the Parliament in
England, sentence had been given at Rome that Henry's
marriage with Katharine was valid. It was for-
tunate, as some of Katharine's friends said, that it '^at Rom"'^^
was passed in her lifetime. The tribunal at Rome
was a perfectly just one — at least in this matter there could be
no doubt of its justice ; but when justice had been so long
delayed, and the injured party left to suffer more and more
as years passed by, the value of such a tribunal was less
appreciated than it might otherwise have been. The common-

148 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

sense of the people and the indignation of the women of
England had settled the matter long ago in the minds of
the public at large. Henry's dallying with the papal nuncio,
and a belief that justice would be done at Rome by an
authority to which the king himself, for a long time, appeared
to pay the utmost deference, had only served to restrain the
general impatience and leave him free to pursue his high-
handed acts of tyranny against his lawful Vt^ife and daughter.
When Katharine was removed to Buckden she was saluted as
queen all the way along, in defiance of a royal proclamation

that she was only to be called princess-dowager.
oSSSrine. But shc was closcly guarded, and was surrounded

by spies who made it very difficult for her even to
write in private. Two faithful chaplains were taken from her
and lodged in the Tower ; her household was reduced, and she
was removed from one unhealthy residence to another, each
of them virtually a prison. She was even afraid of being
poisoned, and would eat nothing that was not cooked in her
own bedchamber. And finally she and her daughter were kept
apart from each other, lest they should give each other com-
fort. Yet after the sentence came from Rome, she was informed
that the king considered it of no effect, as he had appealed to
a general council ; and, moreover, that the law now involved
the penalty of death to any one who should acknowledge her
as queen and would not swear to the Succession Act.

The sentence, in fact, nov/ that it had come, merely made
Henry desperate and more obstinate than ever to defy the
pope. There had been times in his previous pursuit of a
divorce when he had really despaired and thought of changing
his purpose, but novv^ he had committed himself too deeply ;
and though he did not truly respect his new wife after marry-
ing her, the vindication of his own self-will hcd become a
supreme object, to which all other considerations must give
way. He was not without fear of an invasion by the emperor
to give effect to the papal sentence; and he gave orders
to prepare beacons all round the coast, and to have all his
ordnance and shipping thoroughly overhauled. Within the
country, at the same time, he got preachers appointed every-
where to proclaim what he hypocritically called " the Gospel
and the true Word of God," and commissioned a body of

VIII EFFECTS OF THE POPE'S SENTENCE 149

informers to report against any who maintained the pope's
authority.

The execution of the nun and her adherents in April no
doubt caused the people to be sworn with less difficulty to the
Act of Succession. In London many had been ^5^^^^^^^
sworn already ; but though the oaths were taken to the
they produced an intense feeling of irritation, which
men durst not express openly. Many, no doubt, like More's
daughter, Margaret Roper, swore with the qualification " as far
as would stand with the law of God," which seems to have
been connived at to save trouble ; but such evasions could
not well be used by men like More himself and Bishop Fisher,
who both absolutely refused the oath when it was tendered to
them and others by the commissioners at Lambeth on April
13. More was the first person who refused, but he admitted
that he could have agreed to swear to the succession if it had
not been for the preamble ; and Bishop Fisher, when he was
called in, took the same line. On this Cranmer wrote to
Cromwell urging that it would be wise to accept their oaths to
the succession without the preamble ; but the king saw clearly
that such a compromise " might be taken as a confirma^tion of
the Bishop of Rome's authority, and a reprobation of the king's
second marriage." Consequently, after a few days both More
and Fisher were lodged in the Tower, from which neither of
them emerged again alive. Another v/ho refused the oath at
the same time, Dr. Nicholas Wilson, was a royal chaplain, and
had been the king's confessor ; but after sharing More's im-
prisonment for some time he reconsidered the matter, agreed
to take the oath, and was liberated.

Cranmer now began a visitation of his province, and
obtained the signatures of the clergy generally to a declaration
that " the Bishop of Rome has no greater jurisdic-
tion conferred upon him by God in this kingdom repudiaS"
of England than any other foreign bishop." An ^^tjP°P£'''
opinion to this effect had been obtained from the
Convocation of Canterbury on March 31, and a like judgment
was given by that of York on May 5, which the archbishop
certified on June i and 2. Declarations of royal supremacy,
with renunciation of papal authority, were likewise obtained
from the two universities and the monasteries throughout the :

I50 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

kingdom. The process of taking them lasted from May till
the end of the year. A visitation of the different orders of
friars was also requisite to compel them to acknowledge the
new state of things, and two friars were found sufficiently
subservient to accept a royal commission for the purpose.
They were empowered to visit all friars' houses of every order,
laying down rules for their future guidance, and binding each
man separately to the Succession Act. The names of these
visitors were Dr. George Browne, prior of the Augustinian
Hermits, and Dr. Hilsey, provincial of the Black Friars. But
their task was not an easy one. The Grey Friars (or
Franciscans) in particular, especially those of Greenwich, who
had given so much trouble before, offered a firm resistance to
several of the articles proposed to them, especially as by their
rule they were expressly subject to the pope's authority ; and
the seven houses of the Observants (or reformed Francis-
cans) in England had to be cleared, and the more obstinate
among their inmates sent to the Tower. The others v/ere
transferred to houses of the Conventuals (or un-
of the Obser- reformed Franciscans), where they were loaded with
vant Friars, ^.j^g^jj^g ^j^^ treated with great severity. Thus the
whole Order of the Observants was suppressed.

To no religious community, however, was the oath a more
painful trial than it was to the monks of the London Charter-
^, ^^ house, and of no other have we at this time more

The Charter- . ' . -, rr^, /^ , • ^ -r

house of mterestmoj records. 1 he Carthusian Order was one
°" °"' of special sanctity; its rule of life one of special
self-denial. A little secluded company of monks served God
day and night in a place about half a mile outside the bounds
of the city, and did not care to concern themselves with
what the great world did. The Charterhouse was really an
asylum for those who would escape from the world, either to
shun its ordinary temptations, or, it might be, to avoid special
dangers when the times were evil. One brother in that com-
munity had a personal history which deserves special notice.
Sebastian Newdigate had been in past years a

Newdf atl courtier, and can be shown to have received royal
favours as late as 1526, which makes it pretty cer-
tain that it was in the following year that he changed his mode
of life ; for it appears from authentic memoirs that he was

VIII THE CHARTERHOUSE MONKS igi

urged to renounce the court by his sister, Lady Jane Dormer,
who was alarmed at the king's intention of putting away
his wife, and feared the corruption of her brother's morals.
Sebastian would not quite believe at first that the king would
go so far, but he asked his sister what she would think of
his becoming a Carthusian. "You a monk!" she said in
astonishment, "I should expect sooner to see you hanged,"
little thinking that he would ultimately be both. But when he
saw that the king was really pursuing a divorce, Sebastian
abandoned the court and was received into the Charter-
house.

When the commissioners visited the monastery in the
spring and called on the prior, John Houghton, to swear to the
Succession Act, acknowledging the validity of the
marriage with Anne Boleyn, he replied that what Houghton,
lady the king was pleased to marry or divorce was
not a matter that concerned them. But the commissioners
insisting that he should call his convent together, and that they
should declare the king's first marriage invalid and themselves
bound to obey the issue of the second, the prior said he could
not see how the first marriage, duly solemnised and so long
unquestioned, could be invalidated. On this he was ordered
to the Tower along with Humphrey Middlemore, procurator
of the house. They remained in prison for a month ; but
being persuaded by good and learned men that they might
consent under a condition to the demand made upon them,
they were liberated, and persuaded their brethren to swear
to the Act, with the qualification " as far as was lawful." The
brethren hesitated, and the prior himself was convinced their
acquiescence gave them but a temporary respite. " Our hour,"
he told them, "has not yet come." On May 29 the royal
commissioners, Roland Lee (who had just been made Bishop
of Coventry and Lichfield) and Thomas Bedyll, clerk of the
council, took the oaths of six monks and eight servants and
inmates of the house, the prior and procurator being among
the former. But others required more potent persuasion, and
on June 6 Bishop Roland Lee returned, accompanied by Sir
Thomas Kytson, sheriff of London, with an armed band ready
to take them to prison. Under this influence the oaths of the
remaining brethren were taken, of whom nineteen were priests

152 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap.

(among these was Newdigate), three Y:tYQ professi, and thirteen
were conversi. The house was then left in comparative peace
for a time.

Bishop Roland Lee and Thomas Bedyll had been doing
the same work elsewhere, as at Sheen Priory, where they met
with little resistance. They had also tried their powers on the
Observants of Richmond, but were less successful there. The
next thing was to get preachers to set forth the king's title as
supreme head of the Church. In the latter part of August
Bedyll was rather weary of this business, and lamented the
obstinacy of divers religious men "addict to the Bishop of
Rome." Among these were some Carthusian monks (not of
London only) and some of the brethren of the great monastery

of Sion — men ready to endanger alike their souls
^f slon""^ and bodies and risk the suppression of their houses

for upholding the pope's " usurped authority." But
for their great repute for holiness, Bedyll wrote to Cromwell, it
mattered not what became of them, " so that their souls were
saved." And he added, with equal sanctimoniousness, " As for
my part, I would that all such obstinate persons of them who be
willing to die for the advancement of the Bishop of Rome's
authority were dead indeed by God's hand, that no man
should run wrongfully into obloquy for their just punishment."
Sion was the one only monastery of the Bridgettine Order in
England — a double monastery, in which monks and nuns
lived in separate wings of the same building j and the brethren
were held in very high esteem. By the assiduous efforts of
Bishop Roland Lee and Bedyll, the confessor (who was the
superior) had been got to preach the king's title. So also had
a brother named David Curson twice, except that he interjected
mea culpa — perhaps by accident. But on a recent Sunday
one Whitford was wilful enough to preach without saying any-
thing of the king's title at all ; and worse happened on St.
Bartholomew's Day, when one Ricot, though he did as he
was required, added that he who so commanded him should
discharge his conscience ; whereupon nine of the brethren
immediately left the church. Compulsory preaching did not
reconcile men much to the new supremacy.

Parliament met again as appointed on November 3. Its
firsi business was to pass a short Act declaring the king

VIII THE ACT OF SUPREMACY i53

supreme head of the Church of England, and annexing that
title to his imperial Crown. In the preamble the
recognition of that title " by the clergy in their con- supremacy,
vocations " was referred to, but no notice was taken succession,
of the qualification with which that recognition had
been so unwillingly agreed to. A new Act was then passed
touching the succession, setting forth the form of oath to be
taken, and declaring it binding upon every subject of the
realm. Following this was an Act of Treasons, specially
devised to protect the king and Anne Boleyn from any breath
of murmur against the legality of their marriage. There was
also an Act of Attainder against Bishop Fisher and others for
having refused the oath, and a like act against Sir Thomas
More. And there were two enactments which more directly
concerned the Church. By one the impositions of first-fruits
and tenths on benefices, which had been withdrawn from the
pope, were reconstituted and given to the Crown. By the
other the bishops were enabled to appoint suffragans approved
by the Crown, and six-and-twenty places were named as Sees
for those so appointed. This apparently was to supply a want
which would naturally arise from the abrogation of papal
jurisdiction ; for many of the English bishops hitherto had
been aided by abbots or others whom the pope had appointed
bishops in partibus infidelium. Thus there were bishops of
Gallipoli, Sidon, and various other places serving as suffragans
in England, for whom the king could hardly have provided
successors in those far-off Sees.

Thus the edifice of royal supremacy^ which had been five
years in building, was completed by legislation. We shall
next see to what uses the new Acts were put.

Authorities. — More's English Works are referred to in the text ; for
Tyndale's see Parker Society's ed. Tunstall's faculty to More to read
Lutheran books will be found in Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 711. For different
versions of the story about the king and Tyndale's Obedience, see Narratives
of the Reformation (edited by Nichols for the Camden Society), pp. 52-58, and
G. Wyatt's account of it printed in Cavendish's Wolsey (Singer's ed. 1825),
ii. 201-205. As to burnings and abjurations of heretics see Foxe (Cattley's edi-
tion most convenient), where also will be found Tracy's will. Cp. Richard
Tracy's letter about the burning of his bones, in Calendar of Henry VIII.
vol. vi. no, 40. For the case of Thomas Harding see Associated Architec-
tural Societies Reports and Papers, vol. xv. p. 169. More's denial of having
used cruelty to heretics will be found in his English Works, pp. 901-902.

154 ROYAL SUPREMACY chap, viii

For the political history see State Papers of Henry VIII. (published by Royal
Commission in 1830), vols. i. and vii. especially, with the Calendar oi Letters
and Papers, vols. v. to vii. , and Hamy's Entrevue de Fran(:ois Premier avec
Henry VIII. For Cranmer see Diet, of National Biog. and authorities there
cited. Of him, as of Warham, Hook's Lives of the Archbishops gives a pretty
full account. For the Charterhouse and other monks see Chauncy's Historia
aliquot Martyrum (ed. 1888), and the works of Doreau, Hendriks, and
Gasquet. As to Sebastian Newdigate see Clifford's Life of Jane Dormer, pp.
19-23, and Hendriks, pp. 99-104. For the troubles of More and Fisher see
Bridgett's Biographies, Roper's Life of More, and the old Life of Fisher, ed.
by Van Ortroy. As to the statutes referred to, the most important are
printed in Gee and Hardy's Docufnents, which is more convenient for reference
than the statute-book itself.

CHAPTER IX

A TIME OF SORE TRIAL

On January 15, 1535, an order was made in Council that the
title "on earth Supreme Head of the Church of England"
should be added to the king's style. It was a title
that shocked deeply religious minds — even Luther ne^^tyil'^
in Germany could not stomach it. But, as the king
himself always declared, it conveyed no new powers ; and he
was right. A temporal sovereign always must be supreme,
even over the Church within his own kingdom. How far he
may abuse his powers is another question. Thomas Cromwell,
who for some months had been the king's chief secretary and
master of the rolls, on January 2 1 received a commission for
a general visitation of the churches, monasteries, and clergy
throughout the kingdom. On the 30th commissions were
issued for the different parts of the kingdom for a general
valuation of benefices, that they might be taxed for first-fruits
and tenths. The bishops were also compelled to surrender
their bulls from Rome, and in the course of the next few
months express renunciations of papal jurisdiction were ob-
tained from each under their several seals.

To strengthen his hands, Cromwell was appointed the
king's vicar- general or vicegerent in spiritual things, and
Cranmer and the bishops took their orders from ^
him, especially about having the king's supremacy vicar-
preached within their dioceses. The greater part of s''"'''''''-
the clergy and bishops resigned themselves to the new state of
affairs, which many thought so forced and artificial that it
could not possibly last long. But the expression even of this

155

156 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap.

belief was dangerous, and the clergy stood in dread of informers.
In April orders were sent out for the arrest of all who main-
tained "the Bishop of Rome's" jurisdiction or prayed for him
in the pulpit as pope ; and in the same month the new Acts
of supremacy and succession were first brought to bear on
Ch r rh use ^ ^^^^^^ compauy, mainly consisting of Charterhouse
monks and mouks, accuscd of treason. Their names were

John Houghton, prior of the London Charterhouse ;
Augustine Webster and Robert Laurence, heads of the two
Charterhouses of Axholme in Lincolnshire and Bevall in
Notts ; Dr. Richard Reynolds of the Bridgettine Monastery of
Sion ; and John Hale, vicar of Isleworth. Along with these
was also accused a young priest named Robert Feron of
Teddington, who saved his skin and earned a pardon after
condemnation by revealing conversations between himself and
Hale. In these private utterances Hale had spoken of the
king as a cruel tyrant and robber of the commonwealth, and
commented on his gross profligacy, of which his second mar-
riage was the shameful consummation. He was compelled to
ask forgiveness for what he had said both of the king and
Queen Anne, and could only plead in excuse that he had
uttered the scandals against the king on information given
him by another person. He gave the name of his informant,
who was, in fact, one of his own accusers ; but it does not
appear that the latter was made to suffer for statements which,
flagrant as they were, no doubt were strictly true.

Prior Houghton, as we have seen, had already been in the
Tower, and had obtained his release on terms which he was

convinced would only be held sufficient for a time.

^rSrca™ The new Acts passed in November, he knew well,

Dr^Re'moids ^ould bring further trials ; and, while he and his

convent were strengthening themselves against evil
to come, they received as guests the two priors from the
country, Laurence and Webster, each of whom had come
up independently to visit the brethren in London. They
and Prior Houghton took counsel together on the situation,
and resolved to forestall the coming of the king's commis-
sioners to the monastery by a visit to Cromwell to urge that the
brethren should not be pressed for any further oaths. Need-
less to say, such persuasions were in vain, and the two country

IX BARBAROUS EXECUTIONS 157

priors only involved themselves prematurely in the dangers of
their London brethren. On April 20 they appeared before
Cromwell at the Rolls, and were asked whether they would
obey the king as supreme head of the Church of England.
They replied that they could not acknowledge him as such,
and were forthwith sent to the Tower, where they and Prior
Houghton and Dr. Reynolds were visited six days later by
Cromwell and other councillors to induce them to comply with
the Act ; but they still refused. On the 2 8th they were all,
including Hale and Feron, brought to trial at Westminster
before a special commission, with the Duke of Norfolk at the
head. Dr. Reynolds made a singularly bold and able defence.
Next day, after much solicitation made to them to recant,
they were found guilty, and the dreadful sentence for treason
was passed upon them. On May 4 it v/as carried out with
even more than usual brutality, the men being ripped up in
each other's presence, their arms torn off, and their hearts
rubbed upon their mouths and faces.

The world was horrified. The crime was a nevf one, and
besides the barbarity of the execution there was an additional
novelty in the fact that priests were made to expiate a civil
crime- without having been previously degraded from the
priesthood. No such feeling was aroused when a
month later (on June 4) tv/o Dutch Anabaptists, ^bumS^^^
a man and a v/oman, were burned in Smithfield, and
twelve others despatched to meet a like fate in other towns.
That sect had for more than a year occasioned much trouble
at Miinster, where they were even now besieged by their
bishop. Their views, which, besides re-baptism and a good
deal of strange theology, included also community of goods,
had been largely disseminated in Westphalia and Holland, and
now had overflowed into England. Twenty-five of these Dutch
heretics, nineteen men and six women, were examined in St.
Paul's Church on May 25, and fourteen of them were con-
demned with the results just stated. The others were recon-
ciled to the Church and sent back to the Low Countries, to be
dealt with as Mary of Hungary saw fit.

But the fate of such victims seems almost unimportant com-
pared with the cruelties inflicted on the most noble of the
king's own subjects. Other prisoners in the Tower were now

158 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap.

informed that they must swear to the recent statutes to avoid
the fate of the Carthusians. These were Bishop Fisher and Sir
Thomas More, Dr. Nicholas Wilson, once the king's confessor,
Thomas Abell, who had been chaplain to Queen Katharine,
and Richard Fetherstone, the Princess Mary's schoolmaster.
Six weeks were given them to make up their minds, but they
all replied that they were ready to die at once rather than
acknowledge the king's supremacy. Meanwhile the news came

to England that on May 20 Pope Paul III. had
?cardhmi'^-^ made Bishop Fisher a cardinal ; at which Henry

was more enraged than ever, and declared he would
send his head to Rome to receive the hat.

Cromwell, with some others of the Council, had already
paid a visit to Fisher in the Tower, on May 7, to examine
him on certain subjects, the first of which was the king's
supremacy. Cromwell read to him a copy of the Act, but
he replied that he could not agree to take the king as
supreme head of the Church. Cromwell then read to him
another Act, making it treason to deny the supremacy; but
he was already aware of its contents. In fact, he had been
informed in the beginning of February that a new statute had
just come into operation (the date, February i, was fixed in
the Act itself), by which a number of new offences had been
created treason, and, among other things, any attempt by
word or writing to deprive the king or queen of any of their
titles. This, of course, included the title of " Supreme Head,"
and it is a fact that even that subservient House of Commons
refused to pass the bill without inserting the word "maliciously,"
in the hope, apparently, that inoffensive persons who objected
to the new title would be shielded from the rigour of the law.
But Sir Thomas More warned his fellow-prisoner Fisher not
to attach much importance to the insertion of this word. He
knew too well the way in which laws regarding treason were
construed to believe that it afforded the smallest protection
to the accused.

As Rome was bent on rewarding Bishop Fisher for dis-
owning royal supremacy, Henry saw that mere threats would
be insufficient to make his new title respected. On June
14 four clergymen of the king's Council, with a notary and
some other officials, visited Fisher and More separately in the

IX MARTYRDOM OF FISHER 159

Tower, and took down their answers to three interrogatories
prepared beforehand. These were — whether they would obey
the king as head of the Church, acknowledge the validity
of his marriage with Anne and the invalidity of that with
Katharine, and why they would not answer explicitly. More
declined to answer any of these questions. Fisher stood
by his refusal of the supremacy, which he offered to justify
more fully ; but as to the king's marriages, he could only pro-
mise to obey and swear to the Act of Succession, without
saying more.

On June 11 an indictment was found against Bishop
Fisher and three of the monks of the London Charterhouse,
whom the fate of their prior had not terrified into .
submission. The names of these brethren were Jithsome
Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmewe, and our Carthusians,
friend Sebastian Newdigate. The clerk of the Council,
Thomas Bedyll, had visited the Charterhouse on the very
day of the prior's execution, and after a long discussion had
left some books of his own and others' composition against
the pope's primacy. These the brethren returned next day
without comment, and afterwards owned that they saw
nothing in them to alter their opinions. Some of the other
brethren, perhaps, might not be so steadfast, and another
visitor, John Whalley, conceived that a little preaching might
bring them over. But the three were summoned to Stepney
on May 25, apparently before Cromwell, and flatly refused to
accept the king's supremacy. For this they received sentence
as traitors, and on the 19th they were hanged and quartered
at Tyburn. Meanwhile, on the 17th, the venerable Bishop
Fisher was brought to his trial at Westminster, and received
sentence under the same law. On the 22nd he
was beheaded on Tower Hill, and buried in the beheaded
neighbouring church of All Hallows Barking. The
king apparently thought it wise not to let him be quartered
or disembowelled, for the sympathy of the people with the
sufferer was unmistakable.

More's time soon followed. He was brought to his trial
on July I. His caution in persistently declinino; to

A ^-j-j. ^ More's trial

answer dangerous questions did not serve to protect

him. He had never expressly denied the king's supremacy,

i6o A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap,

and had always avoided the subject ; but it Avas found that
he had sent letters to Fisher in prison comparing the Act oi
Parliament to a two-edged sword, and Fisher had used the
same comparison vv^ien examined by the lord chancellor in
the Tower. If a man answered one w^ay, this two-edged
sword would confound his soul ; if the other way, it would
confound his body. What this meant was pretty plain.
Other things were also found out about their private com-
munications, tending to involve More in Fisher's treason ;
and the better to ensure a conviction, Rich, the solicitor-
general, had visited him in the Tower, and drawn him into
a conversation about the authority of Acts of Parliament, to
show that he recognised some Umitation in the obedience
due to them. That was no doubt the case. But the account
of their conversation given by Rich was so entirely false that
More not only corrected it by giving the true story, but
charged Rich with perjury in open court, He conducted
his own defence with all the astuteness that might have been
expected in such an able lawyer; but he was found guilty
under the new law. Then, his tongue being loosed, he spoke
his mind freely, declaring that he had studied the subject of
the statute for seven years, and could find no good authority
to maintain that a temporal man might be head of the
spiritualty. On this he was interrupted by the chancellor,
and a conversation followed in court in which the Duke of
Norfolk also took part. But More certainly held his own, and
ended by hoping that as St. Paul and St. Stephen, whom Paul
persecuted, were now friends in heaven, it might be the same
with him and his judges. No man ever met an unjust doom
in a more admirable spirit.

He was conveyed to the Tower, where on the wharf his
favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, broke through the line
of guards and took a last embrace of her father. The
spectators were surprised and spellbound. When More
himself found breath to speak, he bade her have patience, for
she knew his mind. From his dungeon afterwards he wrote
to her with a coal, the only writing instrument

^"^. he was allowed : " Dear Meg, I never liked your

execution. ^ ^ ■ ^

manner towards me better than when you kissed
me last. For I like when daughterly love and dear charity

IX MARTYRDOM OF MORE i6i

hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy." On July 6
he was beheaded on Tower Hill.

Opposition to the king was now hopeless within the
kingdom, unless there was help from outside. And to whom
could men look outside ? First of all there was the pope,
the old recognised head of a universal, not a mere national,
Church. Sir Thomas More had protested, after being found
guilty, against the law by which he was tried as being opposed
to the laws of God and of the Church universal, the supreme
government of which belonged to the See of Rome. Acts of
Parliament in one particular kingdom were invalid if they
came into collision with a higher authority respected by all
Christendom. But could that higher authority continue to
make itself respected in the way it had been hitherto ? That
was the question which then hung in the balance.
If it could, the powers of this world must agree to JnltrtSf
maintain it and to punish the disobedient. Would
they do so now? The pope wrote to several European
princes that he intended to deprive Henry of his kingdom
for his gross and daring impieties, and there was not one
who did not approve his purpose. England, too, was ripe
for a rebellion, for the king was extremely unpopular. But
Francis I., while he condemned the conduct of his brother
of England, could not afford to give up a useful ally, and was
resolved to remain neutral betv/een him and the Holy See.
The emperor would not show himself hostile to Henry for
fear ot driving him into the arms of France. The emperor's
brother Ferdinand, King of the Romans, must take counsel
with the emperor before action. And so, in fact, nothing
could be done, though there were several noblemen even at
Henry's court who would have been ready to rise against
their sovereign and end his impious tyranny, if the emperor
had only determined on landing an army in England.

Henry himself was by no means blind to the dangers of his
position, though even he did not know what overtures for
foreign assistance were made secretly by his own nobles to the
imperial ambassador Chapuys. But he saw plainly the danger
from abroad if the emperor should be bold enough to turn
against him ; and for this reason he had for years been looking for
friends upon the Continent who could give the emperor trouble.

i62 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap.

I" 1 5 33) when the throne of Denmark was vacant, he had
some hopes of getting elected to it himself by an
intrFgues intrigue with the city of Lubeck, or at least of
lXcIc. securing it for a nominee of his own. His policy here
was a complete failure, and only served to prevent
for many years a cordial friendship with Christian III., the king
actually chosen, who, as Dr. Barnes, then at Hamburg, strove in
vain to persuade him, would really have been a valuable ally
for his purpose against both pope and emperor. Now, in the
autumn of 1535, he was particularly anxious for a good under-
standing with the Protestant princes of Germany, trusting to
dissuade them from agreeing to a general council by which the
pope, with the emperor's concurrence, was anxious to settle
the religious differences of Western Christendom. In this he
was almost forestalled by Francis I., who, equally anxious to
raise up trouble for the emperor, had invited Melancthon to
Paris and endeavoured to persuade the electors, not indeed
to oppose the council directly, but to urge strong reasons for
delay. Francis, however, had been burning Lutherans at
Paris, and the Germans were really much more disposed to
consider proposals from Henry for a religious agreement.
They did not, even at this time, much admire Henry's con-
duct, but thought it might be good policy to league with him
against the pope.

Dr. Barnes had already been paving the way for this with
Luther's friend, John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, and, accord-

Foxe's ^^S ^o promise, the king sent his almoner Dr.
embassy to Edward Foxe, now Bishop-elect of Hereford, to the

ermany. pj.Qj-gg|-^j^|-g [^ ^]^g latter part of the year. To him
and Dr. Barnes, and another English agent. Dr. Nicholas
Heath, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse
stated their terms at Schmalkalden on Christmas Day. These
were, in the main, that Henry should defend the principles
of the Confession of Augsburg (laid by the princes before the
emperor in 1530), and that no general council should be accepted
by either party without mutual consent. On the latter point
Henry was quite disposed to agree with them ; but he declined
to commit himself and his realm to any express theology until
after conference with such learned men as they might send to
him. The ambassadors, however, remained in Germany till

IX DESPOTISM UNCONTROLLED 163

late in the spring of 1536, holding religious discussions with
the theologians there, mainly with a view of getting them to
endorse the king's reasons for rejecting papal authority. In this,
however, they were unsuccessful ; for though the Lutherans
had already admitted some time before that marriage with a
deceased brother's wife was a wrong thing in itself, they could
not be got to concede that when done it was invalid.

To return to domestic matters. We can imagine how
bitterly the situation was felt by Katharine of Aragon,
now superseded as queen and misnamed officially
Princess- Dowager of Wales, or by her innocent '^ at home."^
daughter Mary, proclaimed a bastard, and even
threatened with the Tower if she did not acknowledge herself
as such j for she, too, was actually expected to take the oath and
recognise her father's second marriage ! Never was England
so degraded by tyranny as when the sympathy so generally
felt for these royal victims did not dare to show itself by overt
acts. The people, no doubt, were bound to their king, but
the king was also bound to the law and the constitution ; and
yet there was no mode of keeping him to his obligations.
For the nobles had lost their independence, the common
people were powerless without a head, and the Church within
the kingdom — that element of the national life which had
really most freedom of spirit — was not only bound and
shackled, but terrorised and unable to speak out. There were
not Hkely to be many more martyrdoms now for the primacy
of the See of Rome, for few would care to throw away their
lives for an authority which even now could not launch its
thunderbolts against the most flagrant offender for want of
assurance that its sentence would be executed.

The Church of England was thus left under the absolute
control of Henry, so far as its external polity was concerned,,
A royal visitation of churches and monasteries had been
contemplated for some time, and Cromwell had been
already named in January as the instrument by which it
should be effected. But no particular steps were taken to
carry out the idea till the summer. The bishops stood in the
way, many of whom were holding their own visitations at the
time, and were not inclined to give up the last vestige of their
independence. In June it was suggested to Cromwell by Dr,

i64 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap.

Richard Layton, one of the clerks of the Council (who had
examined More and Fisher in the Tower), that he and a
certain Dr. Thomas Legh (who had examined one of Fisher's
servants) might be appointed his commissaries for the visita-
tion of the north country from the diocese of Lincoln to the
borders of Scotland, for they had friends everywhere in those
parts who would enable them to detect abuses. This was not
conceded at once ; but in July, having accompanied Cromwell
and the court into Gloucestershire, Layton was allowed to
make a beginning in the visitation of monasteries
^sSin' only, taking those in that district first, while his
EiTknd ^^^^^^ D^- Legh started on a similar mission at
Worcester, accompanied by a notary named John Ap
Rice. The methods of these two visitors differed somewhat,
and Legh actually visited again in August the monastery ot
Bruton after Layton had visited it already; but neither of
them seems to have been very scrupulous, and though abuses,
no doubt, existed in some monasteries, it is impossible to sup-
pose they were so flagrant or so general as their reports imply.
From Bath and Bristol Layton proceeded to Oxford, where he
instituted new lectures, abolished the study of the canon law,
and committed shameful havoc in destruction of the works of
Duns Scotus. He then passed on into Surrey, Sussex, and
Kent, where he caused two small monasteries at Folkestone
and Dover to surrender, and returned towards the end of the
year to London, in the neighbourhood of which he and
Bedyll did their best to coerce the remaining brethren of Sion
into accepting the king's new title. His colleague Legh,
meanwhile, had passed through Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berk-
shire, Surrey, and from thence by Bedfordshire to Cambridge,
where, in October, he visited the university (of which Crom-
well had just been made chancellor in the room of Bishop
Fisher), leaving a set of injunctions for its future government.
Both visitors had professed to discover a great amount of
foulness in most of the monasteries they visited, besides super-
stitious relics. But Legh was foremost in a policy
visitations of laying down severe regulations for the monks,
suspended, ^j^ding them by antiquated restrictions which it
had long become impossible to maintain. And this policy,
he frankly told Cromwell in his letters, would be useful

IX VISITATIONS OF MONASTERIES 165

in making monks sue to him for dispensations from
rules which, even in the interest of the houses themselves,
required occasionally to be set aside. But he and his
colleague, John Ap Rice, struck out a still bolder course, and
suggested to Cromwell that as the bishops disliked interference
with their visitations, they should be compelled to acknow-
ledge that they held their jurisdiction merely from the king,
who was, therefore, free to resume it into his own hands \ for
if they were allowed to exercise it without interruption they
would do so according to the canon law, which was now
abolished. This advice was taken, and the bishops in the
beginning of October received orders to suspend their visita-
tions pending the royal visitation to be held under the
direction of Cromwell as vicar-general.

Legh and Layton, then, having traversed by different routes
a large part of the south of England, met before the end of
the year at Lichfield, and visited Yorkshire and the
northern monasteries in company. Here, as in vSedTn^
the south, their objects were to inquire, partly as En^'^f^n^J,
to the revenues of the houses, and how far they
were burdened with debt, partly as to pilgrimages, relics,
and superstitions, but most of all as to the immoralities
practised by the inmates. They had transmitted piece-
meal reports of what they called their co77iperta in the
southern houses to Cromwell. For the province of York
and the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield they made up
a compendium compertorum of most extraordinary foulness,
similar to one drawn up by Ap Rice from the records of
Legh's visitation for the diocese of Norwich. If we are to
beHeve these " comperts " (so the word was Anglicised in a
subsequent Act of Parliament), a large proportion of the
monasteries of England were little better than brothels. There
were even nuns who had had children, and in several instances
by priests. Some of these cases may be accounted for by the
fact that ladies had found retreats in religious houses after
personal misfortune and disgrace ; and no doubt there were
other scandals here and there. But there are grave reasons
for suspecting the whole of these " comperts " to be a gross
exaggeration. Nor can we well believe that visitors cared
much about truth, who did their work so hurriedly. Certain

i66 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap.

it is that many of the houses which stood worst in their
reports were afterwards declared to bear a fair character by
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, specially commissioned after-
wards to report on them for other purposes. Moreover, we
know that the visitors' reports to Cromwell were secret, and
had a distinct object in view, to be mentioned presently.

Cromwell himself had conducted some visitations person-
ally while travelling about with the king in the autumn of
1535. He had made inventories of the goods of such
monasteries as came in his way, and had turned out all monks
or nuns who had made their profession before they were
twenty-five, letting the rest know that they were free either to
go or to remain, as a very rigorous reformation was at hand.
Measures like these, however, did not tend to improve the
discipline of the monasteries, which the royal visitation altogether
was admirably calculated to destroy, encouraging monks to turn
informers, while heads of houses were harassed in a way to
make them weary of their charge and anxious to surrender.

Legh and Lay ton concluded their work in February 1536,

when Henry's " Long Parliament " had met again for its last

. session. The principal measure laid before it was

Suppression ^ . ^. ^ . . ^ . . , ^

of the smaller one lor the dissolution of monasteries under ;62oo
monas enes. ^ ^^^^ -^^ valuc. By what pressure the consent of
the two Houses was obtained to this measure it might be
rash to affirm, although it is certain that the king had intended
to forbid the attendance of the abbots this session, and there
is a remarkable tradition recorded by Spelman of a royal
threat which intimidated the House of Commons. But the
words of the Act itself are suggestive. The preamble states
that carnal sin and abominable living were usual in small
monasteries with less than twelve inmates. So, it is said,
the king had ascertained by the " comperts " of his late
visitations, "and by sundry credible informations," and the
only reformation possible was to suppress such houses entirely
and transfer the inmates to large houses, where religion,
happily, was well observed. Writers of a later generation
speak of a certain " Black Book," supposed to have been
produced in this Parliament, which contained a register of
monastic enormities ; but there is no appearance that any
document of the kind ever existed except the Compendium

IX SMALLER MONASTERIES SUPPRESSED 167

Compertoruni^ and certainly this, in which some of the largest
monasteries were the worst defamed, affords no warrant for
the extraordinary insinuation that vice prevailed invariably
where the numbers fell below twelve, and that the great
monasteries were better regulated. So it is evident that
the Parliament took the king's word as to the character
of the disclosures, and passed the bill because they were
required to do so. Nothing else alleged to have been
discovered m the monasteries could really have gone before
Parhament or the public except certain vague statements
that immoralities were practised in a large number of houses.
But before this parliamentary session had begun — before
the visitors had ended their labours in the north, and while
the king's ambassadors in Germany were still discussing
theology with the Protestant divines — an event occurred which
made a sensible change in the situation. Katharine ^ ^ r

r A r 1 r , ' r Death of

of Aragon, after nearly four years separation from Katharine of
her husband, died at Kimbolton on January 7, ^""^son.
1536. A pathetic story which has gained too much credit
with historians says that at the last she wrote a touching letter
to Henry, which drew tears into his eyes when he read it.
Facts, unhappily, reported at the time in confidential despatches
by Chapuys, show that the tale is a pure invention. Katharine,
for her part, could not have written such a letter ; for she
had long been obliged to yield to the painful conviction that
her husband had become utterly hardened and unscrupulous.
And the news of her death gave him a satisfaction which he
was at no pains to conceal. " God be praised," he said, " we
are nov/ free from all fear of war ! " Next day he clothed
himself in yellow and danced with the ladies of his court, like
one mad with delight. There was no doubt the relief. was
intense, for tardy justice might still have overtaken him under
a system in which temporal princes were supposed to be
bound to defend public morality and the respect due to
Holy Church against outrageous conduct such as his.
The emperor, too, who was just returning from Tunis and
on his way to visit the pope in Rome, might have been
moved at last, if not by the ties of blood (which could hardly
have touched deeply so cold a politician's heart), at least by
the ties of honour, to demand justice to his aunt, even

1 68 A TIME OF SORE TRIAL chap, ix

for the sake of his own estimation. But the king knew the
emperor well enough : Katharine was dead, and it was no
use troubling himself for her sake any longer. She was
dead, and it was apparent that theoretical justice, declared at
Rome after very long delays, was of no practical value even
when it came. She was dead, and it may almost be said
that an old system had died with her, of which she was the
victim. The guarantees for religion and morality were not
likely to be found henceforth in any visible monarchy over
Christ's Church on earth.

Authorities. — The Calendar of Henry VIII. vols, viii,, ix. (see Preface to
vol. viii. and further references there for the affair of Lubeck) ; also Spanish
Calendar, vol. v. part i., and Venetian Calendar, vol. v. (see particularly
no. 54, Carlo Capello's Report). Ba^a de Secretis in Report III. of Deputy
Keeper of Public Records, App. ii. p. 239 ; Archceologia, xxv. 61-99 ! the
authorities cited in last chapter for the Carthusians and for More and Fisher ;
Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camden Society) and Stow's Annals (for the
Anabaptists) ; Wright's Letters relating to the suppression of monasteries
(Camden Society) ; Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries ;
Spelman's History of Sacrilege (ed. 1853, p. 206).

CHAPTER X

THE NORTHERN REBELLION

It might well be supposed that if Henry was delighted at the
death of his first wife, Anne Boleyn was no less so. " Queen
Anne wore yellow for the mourning," says the chronicler
Hall, dishonestly concealing from his readers the fact that
this was done by the king as well. And we cannot doubt
that she shared the sentiments of her father and her brother
(whose position at court was entirely due to her influence
over the king), who said it was a pity the Princess Mary
survived her mother. Often before had she herself
said of the princess, "I will be the death of her, or ^"^^^i^tt^"
she of me." So great, indeed, were the fears for ^jjj"^^
Mary's safety under a despotism swayed by such
influence, that she herself had listened to plans that had been
seriously considered, with the sanction of the emperor, for
secretly carrying her off to Flanders ; but after Katharine's
death she was more strictly guarded, and the thing, which of
course had been diflficult always, became absolutely impractic-
able. So she still remained in her father's power, yet refusing
to pass a stigma upon her birth by acknowledging the Act of
Succession ; and in this refusal, as Anne Boleyn knew too
well, she had the sympathies of all outside the court.

The consciousness both of the king and of Anne Boleyn
that their union was really regarded by the public as mere
concubinage, with a spurious ecclesiastical sanction confirmed
by a servile parhament, had begun to produce very natural
effects upon both of them. It was now three years since
the king, to make good his old promises to Anne, and

169

17 o THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

justify the extraordinary steps he had taken to fulfil them,
had secretly gone through a ceremony of marriage with her,
and afterwards owned her as his wife. But both knew very
well what the world thought of it, and the king was beginning
to feel that it would be a serious political obstacle to him if
no foreign prince would support him in maintaining the
validity of his matrimonial changes. For the emperor would
be at Rome in the spring of 1536 ; and if the pope succeeded
in composing differences between him and Francis I., the
bull of deprivation would be published, and the English king
„ . would have the whole of Europe asjainst him.

Henry IS i • i i i • i /-

tired of Henry was, besides, already tired of a woman
whom he had never really respected. Even in
January he was heard to say in private in the strictest
confidence that he had been seduced into marrying her by
witchcraft, and considered it no marriage at all. At that
time it was observed that he scarcely spoke to her ten times
in three months. And, to make matters worse, on January
29, the very day of Katharine's funeral, she miscarried,
and her long-cherished hope of giving the king a son was
extinguished.

The fact that not even the Lutherans of Germany were
prepared to pronounce Henry's first marriage invalid was
perhaps the last straw that made the burden of the second
insupportable. Suddenly a blow was struck which showed that
Anne was to be queen no longer. On May Day
she and Henry were present at a tournament at
Greenwich, when the latter left abruptly with six persons in
his company and went to Westminster. Next morning she
was conveyed from Greenwich by water to the Tower, accused
of adultery with her own brother Lord Rochford and with
four other persons, who were hkewise arrested and sent to
the same stronghold. So unpopular was she that many seem
to have believed even the monstrous charge of incest against
her. Indictments were found in Middlesex and Kent, and
she was tried in the Tower before Norfolk as lord high steward
and a body of six- and -twenty peers, who concurred in a
verdict of guilty. She was sentenced to be burned or be-
headed, at the king's option, on Tower Green. Her brother
was then sentenced by the same tribunal to suffer a traitor's

X ANNE BOLEYN BEHEADED 171

death at Tyburn. The case as regards herself had been
already prejudged, her alleged accomplices having been
sentenced three days before her, and one of them, who had
previously confessed the crime, no doubt under fear of torture,
had actually pleaded guilty. The accounts given by Sir William
Kingston, constable of the Tower, of her conversations during
her imprisonment will not lead many people to believe that
the accusations against her were just„ She was beheaded
on the 19th, and, shocking to say, a dispensation was granted
that very day by Cranmer to the king to marry Jane Seymour,
a lady with whom he had arranged a new match ^^^^
even before Anne's arrest. On the following marries jane
morning the pair were secretly betrothed to each ^y™^^'^-
other, and on the 30th they were married "in the queen's
closet at York Place."

It is remarkable that the king took steps to annul his
marriage with Anne even before she suffered. When she
was preparing for death, Cranmer was appointed to be her
confessor, and he visited her in the Tower on the i6th, the
day after her condemnation. To Cranmer the whole tragedy
must have been specially painful. On first hearing of her
arrest he had written to the king that he was " clean amazed,"
and hoped, with his grace's favour, that she might still prove
her innocence, as he had never had better opinion of any
woman ; but as he had loved her for the love which he
beheved she bore to the Gospel, even so, if she proved guilty,
he confessed that all men must hate her as a hypocrite just
in proportion to the love they bore to the Gospel. His
interview with her, we may take it, did not convince him of
her guilt, but apparently he did procure from her a confession
of something which served the king's purpose otherwise.
What this something was does not appear j but it enabled
him next day at Lambeth to declare, in presence of the lord
chancellor and a number of lords and gentlemen, of whom
Cromwell was one, that the marriage between the king and
her was null and void. The sentence given that day was
sealed on June 10, and submitted afterwards to both Houses
of Convocation, who subscribed it on the 28th; though
whether Convocation itself was informed of the particular
grounds on which Cranmer pronounced judgment seems very

172 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

doubtful. It might have been a pre-contract made by Anne
with the Earl of Northumberland, who certainly would have
married her at one time had not Wolsey interfered — and
though the earl himself had solemnly sworn that no such
contract had been made, matters had assuredly come very
near it — or it might have been the king's old intrigue with
her sister. But apparently it was convenient to keep silence
on the matter, and the world, which had been compelled
three years before to accept it as a fact, without any know-
ledge of details, that the marriage had taken place, was now
compelled in the same way to accept it as a fact that there
had been no true marriage at all.

Perhaps the world was the less careful to inquire because
it was heartily glad to get rid of Anne Boleyn on any terms ;
and there were great hopes now that Henry would outrage
Christendom no longer, but at length do justice to his first
marriage and to his own true daughter Mary. And so far
the general expectation v/as justified, that the king seemed
really willing, but only on certain conditions, to take Mary
back into his favour. She was put in hope of this, but was
told she must write very submissively to her father, using
Cromwell as the medium of communication. But when she
had written letter after letter, she still found she must express
penitence to her exacting parent for having offended him in
the past by refusing to acknowledge the laws by which she
was made a bastard. Deputations of lords wxre sent to her
(including one bishop, Sampson, newly made Bishop of
Chichester) to urge her to complete subm^ission, which they
did with the most unmanly threats. At length, by the
advice of the imperial ambassador, with whom she managed
,, , , by some artifice to communicate, she, as the only

Marys sub- ■' . .^.. ,. ', , "^

mission to mcaus of pacifymg her obstmate father, and even
her father, pj-gggj-y^j^g j^gj- j^fg fj-Qj^ danger, sigucd, without

reading it, a paper submitted to her, acknowledging, first, her
subjection to his laws ; secondly, his supremacy over the
Church of England ; and thirdly, that his marriage with her
mother was an incestuous union, against God's law and man's.
We need hardly be told of the deep dejection which Chapuys
informs us she suffered after compliance with this unnatural
demand. She could really do no better. Others about her,

X THE PRINCESS MARY 173

too, had been getting into danger owing to the king's sus-
picions that they had encouraged her to be refractory ; and
Lady Husee, the wife of her chamberlain, was severely
questioned about having sometimes called her princess by
mistake, when by Act of Parliament she was so no longer.

By this most painful submission Mary at length obtained
better treatment, and was even after a time restored to her
rightful place in the succession, although the legitimacy of
her birth was never recognised till she became queen herself.
But her place in the succession remained for some time
doubtful, when a new Parhament, which met on
June 8, entailed the crown on the issue of the king s^^g'^gfo^^
by Jane Seymour, declaring his issue by both of
the two previous queens alike illegitimate. The Act, more-
over, gave the king the unprecedented power of providing
himself by will for the contingency of his having no lawful
issue by Jane ; and it was generally beheved that in that event
he intended to name his bastard son, the Duke of Richmond,
to succeed before Mary. But the duke died on July 23,
five days after that brief Parliament had been dissolved ; and
it was now generally understood that Mary would succeed
after the issue of Queen Jane.

In this session some final legislation was passed against
papal authority, invalidating all papal bulls, and visiting with
the penalties oi prcEinunire any preaching or private persuasions
in favour of the pope. On the last day of Parliament, Crom-
well, who had shortly before been made lord privy seal and
then raised to the peerage, took his seat in the House as Lord
Cromwell of Wimbledon. But he had already taken a more
exalted position in another assembly, from which laymen had
hitherto been excluded — that is to say, Convocation.
On July 16 one Dr. Petre made his appearance Cromweiiin

,,. -I,. ,, Convocation.

there as his proctor, and claimed the right of pre-
siding ; for Cromwell, as the king's vicar-general, had a right
to occupy the king's seat, and he, in like manner, as Crom-
well's representative. The claim was a novel one, but this
Convocation had already been schooled, at its opening, by
two Latin sermons from Latimer as to what it might expect.
Some years before this, Latimer had been censured for his
preaching by Convocation, but it was his turn to lecture

174 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

Convocation now. He preached to the assembled bishops,
both forenoon and afternoon, from the parable of the Unjust
Steward. In the morning he inveighed against purgatory and
images and the lack of preaching ; in the afternoon he asked
them what one single thing they had done these seven years
past for the good of the people? They had only, he said,
burned a dead man (Tracy) and tried to burn a living one
(himself). If the people were better instructed than in times
past, was it due to them or to the king, who had admonished
them to preach oftener ? Had they not been compelled to
permit the sale of good books made by lay persons ? And
he went on to point out that there were abuses in spiritual
courts needing reform ; that the number of holy days led to
idleness and drunkenness ; and that images, pilgrimages, and
relics served only to encourage superstition.

The clergy, however, proceeded to discuss what things re-
quired reform from their own point of view. Dr. Gwent, the
prolocutor, laid before the bishops a catalogue of sixty-seven
mala dogmata, of which the Lower House had complained as
having too much currency, and which Fuller, who first pub-
lished them, considered to contain, amid many extravagances,
" the Protestant religion in ore." They were mainly of the old
Lollard type, creating disrespect for the sacrament of the altar,
denying some other sacraments, questioning the authority of
the priesthood, insisting on communion in both kinds, object-
ing to the honouring of saints, and declaring Our Lady to be no
better than another woman. There was a Lutheran denial of
the freedom of the will j and among other articles impugning
Church authority were one against fasting in Lent, and one
against the observance of Church holy days. Some of these
views, especially the last, were not unlike what Latimer had
inculcated in his sermon ; but Convocation condemned them
all. Indeed, the Lower House went so far as to complain
that books which had been pronounced by a committee of
their own body full of heresies had not been expressly
condemned by the bishops, and some of them had been
allowed to go abroad cum privilegio, although they had not
been formally sanctioned by the king.

Many of the bishops undoubtedly would have taken action
as the Lower House desired; but, besides Archbishop Cranmer

X ARTICLES OF THE FAITH 175

himself, there were bishops of still more recent promotion,
like Latimer of Worcester, Shaxton of Salisbury, and Edward
Foxe of Hereford, now just returned from Germany. And as
the king was still feeling his way towards a union with the
German Protestants in defence of common principles, he
naturally relied upon such bishops to draw up a set of articles
setting forth the most essential principles of the Christian faith,
which it might be convenient to represent as the sum of all
that the Church of England really insisted on. A
book of articles, as it was called, was accordingly ^^tJJJgg?^
drawn up, which neither Catholic nor Lutheran
could greatly object to ; it was signed by Cromwell and the
bishops and other leading divines, and was immediately printed
by Berthelet and set forth by the king's authority. But this
apparently was not carried without some diplomacy in setting
apart certain nearly allied questions about the authority of
bishops and priests and the nature and number of the sacra-
ments. Here Cromwell availed himself of the services of a
Scots divine of the new school, named Alexander Alane,
better known as Alesius, once a canon of St. Andrews, whom
he had invited over from Belgium in the preceding year, and
tried to thrust on the university of Cambridge as a lecturer.
He took Alesius with him to the chamber where the bishops
were assembled, introduced him to them as the king's scholar,
and called on him to state his views as to the meaning of the
word sacrament. Alesius gave it freely, citing a number of the
fathers to show that there were no sacraments except those
instituted by Christ, and that a sacrament must necessarily
indicate forgiveness of sins. Bishop Stokesley strongly ex-
pressed dissent, and answered him with what Alesius called
"his old rusty sophistry and unwritten verities." But the
bishops, as a body, resented the intrusion of one who had no
natural right to take part in their debates ; and even Cromwell,
yielding to their remonstrances, forbade Alesius to appear
again in that assembly, where he had promised to prove next
day that the Christian faith rested only on the Bible.

Such being the external influences brought to bear upon the
divines, it is remarkable how little they prevailed.
The book of articles, neutral in tone as far as could ^ ^ ^ ^^*^ ^^'
be, made no distinct breach in the old theology. It affirmed

176 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

much and denied little. It still upheld transubstantiation;
set forth three sacraments (baptism, penance, and the eucharist)
without saying that there were no more ; declared that saints
should be honoured, but not as intercessors ; favoured the
continuance of old rites and ceremonies ; and recommended
prayers for departed souls, but objected to the speaking of
purgatory, a name which had favoured the superstition of
papal pardons. That it was not the intention to discredit
the four sacraments passed by in silence is clear from the fact
that a separate document was drawn up — originally intended,
no doubt, to have been incorporated in the book — in favour
of the sacrament of holy orders, with instructions how to
teach it to the people, and that this was actually signed by
Cromwell himself, as well as by most of the bishops and a
considerable number of divines. Thus, it would seem, it was
all but authorised ; but although it received Cromwell's signa-
ture, it was probably, on full consideration, not found desirable
for the king's purpose to set it forth, for there is no evidence
that it was printed at this time. Apparently the king found it
best, for the present, to keep theology as quiescent as possible ;
and on July 12, the day after the book of articles was approved,
he issued a circular to the bishops ordering that, with the view
of avoiding contentions, there should be no preaching in any
pulpits till Michaelmas, except by the bishops themselves, or in
their cathedrals by persons for whom they would be answer-
able, all previous licences being withdrawn.

Eight days later a judgment was obtained from the Convo-
cation in the king's behalf on the subject of general councils.
The " Bishop of Rome," it was declared, had no
•SiSlng i^ight to summon such a council without the
general consent of Other Christian princes — especially of

councils. ,-.,.,. ^ . •' .

such as had withm their own realms an imperiuin
menim, independent of any other supreme authority. This was
a sound principle, no doubt, seeing that it was impossible that
any so-called general council should be universally respected
without such consent of princes. But its enunciation was
not less certainly convenient; for Henry, having himself
appealed on one subject from the pope to a general
council, was now anxious to establish the principle that no
such council should meet without his sanction. Finally,

X INJUNCTIONS TO THE CLERGY 177

Convocation agreed to one point that had been touched upon
in Latimer's opening sermon — the restriction of the number of
holy days. To prevent these festivals ministering to idleness,
and especially to prevent their interfering with harvest work,
a certain number were abrogated, and the feast of dedication
of a church was ordered always to be kept upon the first
Sunday in October. On August 11, royal letters were
addressed to the bishops to give effect to this Act.

In the course of the same month Cromwell, as the kmg's
vicar - general, issued a curious set of injunctions to be
observed by the deans and clergy having cure of
souls. These refer first to the book of articles, Cromwell's

' injunctions.

of which it is observed one part sets forth articles
to be believed for our salvation, the rest being only con-
cerned with ceremonies and decent order in the Church.
Strange to say, the clergy are here ordered to preach (no
notice being taken of the previous inhibition) and set forth
what articles were necessary for salvation and what were un-
necessary but concerned order merely. They were to urge
people not to observe the " superstitious hohdays " now
abrogated ; they were not to extol images, relics, or miracles,
and they were to discourage pilgrimages. They were to enjoin
parents and others to teach the Paternoster, the articles of the
faith, and the Ten Commandments in English. And other
regulations were added affecting the clergy themselves, partly
to regulate their conduct, partly to burden them with imposi-
tions. A fortieth of their income was to go to the poor,
and a fifth part was to be bestowed on the repair of their own
churches and parsonages. Those of higher position were to
support a scholar at Oxford or Cambridge for every £,\oo of
their incomes.

These injunctions raise some difficulties, A copy printed
by Foxe contains an additional article, not apparently in the
copy on Cranmer's register, requiring "every parson or pro-
prietary of any parish church within this realm " to provide
before the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula next coming a whole
Bible in Latin and also in English and lay them in the choir
for any one to read. This might be taken for an interpola-
tion— all the more because as yet there was no authorised
printed Bible. And surely if a MS. Bible was intended, the

178 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

demand must have been difficult to meet, even when a year
was allowed for compliance ; for the feast of St. Peter ad
Vincula next coming would be August i, 1537. But there
is no doubt that the clause is genuine, for it occurs in a black-
letter copy of these injunctions printed by Berthelet/ though
perhaps the difficulty of compliance may have caused it after-
wards to be withdrawn. The authority at this time ruling
seems to have changed its mind continually. Orders to preach
and not to preach at the same time are a little perplexing. One
thing only seems clear, that while these injunctions were partly
founded on the articles agreed on by Convocation, the object
was to carry further than Convocation would have sanctioned
the lowering of Church ordinances and Church authority.
This, of course, also tended to increase at the same time the
power of the king's vicegerent. A warning, however, was
presently given of the danger of pressing matters too far.

The first steps towards the dissolution of the smaller

monasteries had already been taken in the spring soon after

. . the passing of the Act. A new survey was, in the

Commissions ^ , , t . i . •

touching the first placc, Ordered to ascertam by commissioners
monasteries. -^^ ^^^^ county the valucs of the different
houses, the number of the religious, the characters they bore,
and how many were willing to accept capacities to go to
other houses. The commissioners were also to take stock
of the plate in each house and value the woods belonging to
it. With some exceptions certainly, but not very numerous,
they found the inmates of good repute in the country — not at
all such characters as Cromwell's visitors had made them out.
Rough measures, however, seem to have been taken to turn
many of them out ; for the imperial ambassador understood
that thousands were wandering about without knowing how
they should live. The king's agents were stripping the fabrics
of their bells and lead, and leaving the solid masonry in
some cases to be used as a quarry for the sale of stones.

1 This I have seen myself bound up in the MS. volume 121 (p. 433) in
the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The date of issue of
these injunctions is not shown in the document except as regards the 5'^ear,
blanks being left for the month and day of the month. The same blanks
occur also in the copy on Crannier's register printed by Burnet and by
Wilkins after him. But a copy in the Record Office gives August as the
month of issue.

X THE FIRST TWO OUTBREAKS 179

Such sweeping measures v/ere dangerous. There were some
monasteries especially almost essential to the wants of their
respective localities ; and Archbishop Lee of York pleaded
hard that the priory of Hexham, in Northumberland, might
be allowed to stand. Situated in a bare country, there was
not a house between it and Scotland in some directions, and
in time of border warfare it was of special service. The
representation was unheeded ; and when the commissioners
came thither in the end of September, the town bell was rung,
and the canons, preparing to resist by force, compelled them
to withdraw.

In Lincolnshire, by the end of September, the monasteries
of Louth Park and Legbourne had just been dissolved when
commissioners for a parliamentary subsidy came into the
neighbourhood. This was felt to be a little too much.
Besides the dissolution of monasteries there were rumours
that a general confiscation of crosses and church plate was
contemplated, so that processions with the church cross
borne in front were to be discontinued, and holidays were to
be suppressed ; even parish churches, it was believed, would
be very much diminished. And now came the tax-gatherers as
well. Lincolnshire broke out into general insurrec-
tion and demanded the restoration of monasteries, Lincolnshire

' rebellion.

the removal of heretical bishops like Cranmer and
Latimer, and the punishment of wicked ministers like Crom-
well and Rich. The insurgents professed entire loyalty to
the king, to whom they sent two deputies to state their case.
Country gentlemen were compelled to take an oath to stand
by them, and perhaps felt no great reluctance. The king,
after some days of intense anxiety, during which he had
intended to take the field himself, was relieved to find that
the insurgents had shown signs of submission on a message
sent them by the Earl of Shrewsbury.

But before Lincolnshire was quite pacified Yorkshire was
up in arms, and the conflagration soon extended over all the
north of England. Robert Aske, the leader of^^ ., .

i^Tii- 1-1 • The pili^rnn-

the Yorkshire movement, obtained easy possession age of grace,
of York city. The Archbishop of York and the o<^^- ^536-
principal' gentry retreated into Pomfret Castle, which held
out for the king for a short time under Lord Darcy,

i8o THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

while in the west the Earl of Cumberland was besieged in
Skipton Castle. But Darcy presently gave up Pomfret to
Robert Aske ; and when Lancaster herald came thither
from the king with a proclamation to contradict disturbing
rumours, Aske would not let him read it, even when he fell
on his knees before him to desire leave to execute his com.-
mission. Aske told him they were going up to London to
insist on demands on which they were all agreed. They
would have the vile blood removed from the king's Council,
the faith of Christ respected, and the wrongs of the Church
redressed.

The Duke of Norfolk was at that very time marching
northwards to join Shrewsbury and other nobles in putting
down the rebellion. But on reaching Doncaster he found
that the rebel forces were overwhelming, and he was obliged,
very unwillingly, to make a truce with them (October 27),
promising a general pardon to induce them to disband, while
Sir Ralph Ellerker and Robert Bowes went with him to the king
to set forth their demands. These two were detained some-
what over a fortnight, during which time the men of the north
were impatient, and had nearly held a council or parliament
of their own at York; but at length they brought back an
answer from the king, studiously conceived to tide over the
emergency. In reply to their three chief points, Henry said
that he had done nothing to disturb the faith of Christ ; and as
to the Church of England, he had acted simply by law for the
benefit of his subjects ; nor was there less noble blood in his
Council than at the beginning of his reign.

While writing thus to the Commons, he at the same time

visited upon the bishops his deep mortification at these

The kin 's ^PP^^^^ being made to him about religion. He

letter to reminded them that he had admonished them before
IS ops. ^^ remedy diversity of opinions by preaching God's
word " sincerely," declaring abuses plainly and avoiding con-
tentions about things indifferent. Yet so little attention had
been paid to his warning that he had been obliged to " put his
own pen to the book," and conceive articles that were agreed on
by Convocation as catholic and meet to be set forth, and he had
imagined no one would have been remiss in setting them forth.
His object, however, had been defeated by seditious persons,

X DEMANDS OF THE NORTHERN CLERGY i8i

who had used contemptuous words and raised these insurrec-
tions. The bishops must, therefore, themselves read the articles
every holy day in their cathedrals or whatever churches they
attended, and must go in person through their dioceses,
declaring the obedience due by God's law to the sovereign as
supreme, whose commands ought not to be resisted, even
if they were unjust. They must also commend everywhere
all the "honest" ceremonies of the Church so that they might
not be contemned, and yet show how they were instituted,
that the people might not put too much trust in them.

On the return of Ellerker and Bowes to the north a council
was held at York to consider whether the king's answer was
satisfactory ; for Norfolk was coming down again
to meet the northern gentry at Doncaster, with a ^fthe^^
view to a final settlement, and the issues of peace p^^gf
and civil war hung in the balance. It was thought
well that there should be a meeting of the Commons at
Pomfret just before that with the duke at Doncaster, and that
the northern clergy should be summoned to a sort of con-
vocation at the former place to give their advice on matters
of religion. The meeting at Doncaster being ultimately
arranged for December 5, that at Pomfret took place on the
2nd. The grievances generally felt were, first, the Act of
Royal Supremacy, which seemed to cut off England from the
Church Catholic ; then the suppression of monasteries, the
declaration of the Princess Mary's illegitimacy, and the statutes
of uses and of first-fruits — things which seemed quite subver-
sive of old constitutional principles in Church and State.
The Commons wished to know from the clergy if there were
no just cause for fighting. The Archbishop of York took
alarm. He had already yielded to the Commons when
Darcy surrendered Pomfret, and must have been expected to
preside in the new Convocation. He went thither, and on
Sunday the 3rd preached in Pomfret parish church, declar-
ing that there was no cause to be alarmed about the faith,
which the king had safeguarded by the book of articles, and
that no man could ever be justified in fighting except by the
king's authority. His hearers were disappointed, and he
himself was subjected to some ill-treatment afterwards. The
Convocation proceeded to pass resolutions in favour of papal

i82 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

supremacy and papal dispensations, condemning the punish-
ment of clergymen by the civil power, and other recent
innovations ; demanding, also, the restoration of all clergymen
who had opposed the royal supremacy.

Such demands, involving as they did the repeal of some
Acts of Parliament, offered no great prospect of an easy
settlement. Norfolk could only make an interim
"^^cified^^ arrangement, and he was fully alive to the necessity
of doing so. He was empowered to promise that
there should speedily be a free parliament in the north of
England, in which all matters of complaint should be discussed ;
and meanwhile he and Fitzwilliam agreed that the monks
of suppressed monasteries should still obtain food and clothing
from the lands of their houses. It was said afterwards
that they had not promised this on the king's behalf, but only
promised to sue to the king that he would grant it. But
with these and some other supposed stipulations Aske and
his friends were satisfied. They had called their movement a
"pilgrimage for grace," and they now tore off their badges
and crosses marked with the five wounds of Christ, declar-
ing, " We will wear no badge nor sign, but the badge of our
sovereign lord."

Thus the danger at home was for the time abated. But
there was danger from abroad as well. It is true, Francis and
the emperor were at war, and an immediate combination against
England was not to be dreaded. One high-minded English-
man, however, who from his early days had been an object of
the king's particular favour, and who was even now his well-
wisher, though with feelings sorely tried, had obeyed a call
from the pope to come to Rome instead of returning to his
native country. For the pope had need of Reginald Pole,
and, though Pole himself would fain have been excused, made
him a cardinal on December 22. How this affected Henry
from the first moment that he heard of it, a fev/ words may
be required to show.

Pole, as we have already seen, had received a first-rate
education at the king's expense, for which he was sincerely
grateful. He was a renowned scholar, and Henry would have
been particularly glad to get his opinion in favour of the
divorce. But this he could not approve of, and he was not to

X POLES REMONSTRANCE WITH THE KING 183

be bribed by rich bishoprics into taking the king's part. So
he got leave to go abroad once more in 1532. Tiiree years
later Henry endeavoured to lure him again to England, through
a chaplain named Thomas Starkey, who had been with him
abroad, and through whom the king requested his opinion
on royal supremacy over the Church, He was asked to write
with perfect candour ; for even if he could not agree with the
king's views, the king would find worthy employment for him
if he would return to England, For his guidance, however,
Starkey wrote copious suggestions, and a copy of Dean
Sampson's book on the supremacy was sent to him. He deter-
mined to do as requested, but he could only express what he
thought upon the subject in an elaborate treatise, which took
more than a year to compose; and while Starkey
indulged in unwarranted hopes that he would give book!
the king satisfaction, Pole made no sign. During
that time occurred the martyrdoms of the Carthusians, of
Fisher and of More ; and even Starkey had misgivings as to
the effect they might have upon him. At length the work
was finished; and on May 27, 1536, he forwarded to the
king the MS. of his great treatise, afterwards published with
the title De Unitate Ecdesiastica.

He sent it in obedience to the king's own request, but
with very little hope of making him change his mind. He
informed him, however, by the messenger, that the MS. was
for his own eye merely, and he had not intended any of it to
get abroad till the king had seen it, though unfortunately two
sheets of the draft had been mislaid, which, however, were
soon afterwards recovered. In the book itself he expressed
the great difficulty he felt in writing when others had been
punished with death for their loyalty ; but he acknowledged
special obligations to the king, and would not write against
his conscience. He made a severe reply to Sampson's
argument, and set before the king's own eyes a picture of the
frightful cruelties he had inflicted upon the true defenders of
the faith within his kingdom. He hoped now, even against
hope, that the king might yet repent, and towards the end of
the treatise he warned him even of temporal danger that
might follow excommunication ; for he had continually
plundered his nobility, and never loved his people.

1 84 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

The few councillors to whom Henry submitted the book

for perusal were staggered at such a rebuke administered by

a subject. The kmg hunself concealed his indig-

How Henry natioH, and invited Pole to return and discuss

received it. '

their differences quietly in England. Pole replied
that the severity of the king's own laws made that im-
prudent, and he prepared to go to Rome on the pope's
summons. But he very nearly abandoned his purpose
when a messenger from England overtook him at Verona
with letters, not only from Cromwell, written in the king's
name, full of fearful threats, and from Bishop Tunstall,
suggesting that more obedience was due to the king than to
the pope, but, what was most heartrending, from his own
mother and brother, declaring that he would be the ruin of
his family, and threatening to renounce him if he gave more
offence. He was persuaded, however, by two Italian bishops,
whom he made his special confidants, that not even filial
love should divert him from a course which, they said, would
be all the more for the glory of Christ \i it involved a sacrifice
of feeling. And so he went to Rome, and became
cardinal a Cardinal. His advice had been desired by the
and legate, p^pg about the proposed general council, and he
was placed on a committee to draw up a scheme for the
reform of the Church's discipline ; for the impurities pre-
vailing even at the very centre of Church government were
notorious. But another great office was reserved for him,
and in February following (1537) he was created legate. In
this capacity he certainly inspired for the moment as much
terror in the king as the king could inspire in him, for the
embers of discontent were still smouldering in the north of
England. James V. of Scotland was in Paris, where he had
just been married to the French king's daughter, Madeleine \
and his trusty councillor, David Beton, who was with him, had
secret information that an invasion of England by the Scots,
if it were in the pope's cause, would be favoured by many
English lords. Let a legate pass through France and get near
the English Channel, and it would require but little suasion
to bring pretty strong coercion to bear upon Henry himself

In January 1537 the king, seeing that menaces had better be
dropped, made his Council write to Pole a letter, with all their

X FURTHER COMMOTIONS 185

signatures attached, reproaching him, indeed, with ingratitude
and unseemly language towards his sovereign, but taking up
a suggestion in one of his own letters that his points of
difference with Henry might be discussed by him with
deputies of the king in Flanders — a course which they said
they would favour if he would go thither of himself without a
commission from any one else. Pole received this letter at
Rome just before setting out on his mission, and wrote in his
answer a very complete justification of himself as a man
whose exile was really due to his regard for the king's honour,
certainly not from any desire to asperse it. He repudiated
an insinuation that as cardinal he had become councillor to
the king's enemy, for never pope had more regard to the
king and realm than this pope (Paul IH.). As to the pro-
posed conference, he was now cardinal and legate, and had
obtained the pope's leave to meet whom they would, either in
Flanders or in France.

Meanwhile there had been renewed disturbances in the
north of England, owing to serious mistrust of the king's good
faith. Aske, indeed, had been quite won over
by royal urbanity and condescension (the king, disturbances
after the pacification at Doncaster, having called ^"*^^^^^^^-
him up to a conference), and he tried to assure everybody
else that the king himself was most anxious to redress their
grievances, Henry, he said, would go a progress north-
ward, hold a parliament at York, and have the new queen,
Jane Seymour, crowned there. But there were evident
preparations to keep the country down by force of arms,
and the promises both of a general pardon and of a parlia-
ment, on examination, turned out rather unsatisfactory. No
time was appointed for the parliament, and a man could
only obtain the benefit of the general pardon by suing out of
Chancery a particular pardon for himself, in which he would
have to recognise the king as Head of the Church. The
change of government which the rebels had hoped for was as
far off as ever. Cromwell was as powerful as before, and the
stipulations of Doncaster had already been violated in one
point by the levying of a tenth upon the clergy.

So Aske, on his return from the king in January, could
do little to reassure the people. It was rumoured that

1 86 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

ordnance was being sent by night to Hull, and that
garrisons would be placed there and at Scarborough. A
plot was accordingly formed by Sir Francis Bigod and one
John Hallom for taking both these places beforehand. It
failed completely, and Bigod fled. Riots then broke out in
Westmoreland, and an attempt was made upon Carlisle. On
its failure, 6000 insurgents submitted to the king's mercy,
and Norfolk, who had again been sent to the north, at once
took seventy-four to be hanged by martial law, and dismissed
the rest without promise of pardon. This was the beginning
of a series of butcheries all over the northern counties such as
had never before been seen. The ordinary criminal law was at
the same time strained against abbots who had been reinstated
in their monasteries, or even mixed up unwillingly in the
movement. In Lancashire the Abbots of Sawley and VVhalley
were hanged. The Abbot of Furness found it prudent to
surrender his house. A number of the Lincolnshire rebels,
among whom were Dr. Mackerell, Prior of Barlings, and four
other priests, were sent up to London, where they were tried,
hanged, and quartered. Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey were
likewise sent up to suffer the penalty of treason, and so were
Aske, Sir Thomas Percy (the Earl of Northumberland's
brother), Sir Francis Bigod, and a number of prominent
Yorkshiremen besides. VVith them also were condemned and
suffered Adam Sedbergh, Abbot of Jervaulx, William Thirske,
quondam Abbot of Fountains, and William Wood, Prior of
Bridlington. London had seen in February the rightful Earl
of Kildare and his five uncles brutally despatched at Tyburn
under a special act of attainder ; in March it saw the
Lincolnshire rebels suffer; in May and June the principal
leaders of Yorkshire. But Aske, Hussey, and others were
sent back to their own districts to suffer there. It is needless
to say that the convictions were procured by intimidation, and
that quiet was restored by terror.

Unfortunately for the liberties of Englishmen, the rebellion

had already been crushed before Pole had left Italy on his

legatine mission. Words were treason, the old

Pole's immunities of the clergy were disregarded, and

mission. ^.}^gj.g ^2js> uo help anywhere. Moreover, Pole's

mission even in foreign lands was paralysed by the power of

X COLLAPSE OF REBELLION 187

Henry VIII. As he was going through France, Henry
demanded that Francis should give him up as a traitor. Such
a demand was simply monstrous. Francis could not affront
the Holy See and lay hands on an ambassador to please
Henry ; but he avoided receiving the legate himself, and
hinted to him that his presence in France was undesirable;
so that Pole, after making a public entry into Paris, withdrew
to Cambray, where he waited long for a safe-conduct from
Mary, Queen of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands. For
here, too, the English ambassador demanded his delivery if
he should pass through imperial territory ; and Mary, quite as
unwilling as Francis to offend the King of England, while
protesting that she could not refuse to see a papal legate, was
glad, nevertheless, to send an escort to convey him hurriedly
to Liege, where the peculiar jurisdiction of the Cardinal Bishop
of Liege protected him from any further demands for his
extradition, and, it may be added, from attempts upon his
life, which was openly threatened by agents of the king.
His mission was thus a complete failure, and in August he
set out on his return to Rome.

Is innocent blood ever shed in vain ? Is suffering as fruit-
less as it sometimes seems to be? Followers of the Cross
cannot suppose so. Henry VIII. was a despot who succeeded,
as few despots have done, in oppressing and slaughtering his
own subjects to gratify his own self-will, without interference
either from powers at home or from abroad. But even he had
to be cautious and make some retreats. He had been driven
out of his impossible attempt to obtain respect for his mar-
riage with Anne Boleyn ; he had been made to feel the incon-
venience of encouraging heresy ; and though he had crippled
the synodical action of the Church and had bishops of his
own making to support him, his desire to ally himself
with the Germans did not elicit from Convocation anything
whatever like a breach with old Catholic principles. In
theology the tide seemed rather setting the other way ; and
after all the restraints upon the action of the clergy, he found
it necessary to summon a meeting of bishops and divines at
Westminster to revise the book of articles passed in the pre-
ceding year, with a view to making good its deficiencies. The
bishops began to assemble in February and continued their

1 88 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

discussions till the middle of July. The question particularly
came up about the four sacraments left unnoticed in that book,
and presently it was announced that, after much discussion
among the bishops, those four sacraments were " found again. '
With this settlement, indeed, the work of that particular Con-
vocation came to a conclusion, the result of its
^^^^ok°^^' labours being a treatise called The Institution of a
Christian Matt. It was divided into four parts, being
expositions, first, of the Apostles' Creed ; second, of the Seven
Sacraments ; third, of the Ten Commandments ; and fourth, of
the Paternoster and Ave^ with two separate articles added from
the former book, the first on Justification and the second on
Purgatory. Justification was set forth as due entirely to the
merits of Christ, but involving an obligation to good works after-
wards ; and the Romish doctrine of purgatory was repudiated,
but prayers for departed souls were declared to be laudable.

Such was the result of no small controversy among the
bishops of the old school and the new ; for besides Cranmer
and Latimer, the king had of late years, under the Anne Boleyn
influence, raised to the bench Shaxton, Barlow, and Foxe,
distinctly on account of their Lutheran propensities. To Foxe
was committed by Cromwell the task of writing a preface to
the book ; in which he declared that it represented a final and
unanimous agreement of the bishops and divines assembled,
but that they submitted it to his Majesty's correction, in case
he found anything requiring further explanation. It was
hoped that it would go forth with the king's authority. The
king, however, had no desire to take the responsibility for
doctrine out of the hands of his divines, and informed the
bishops that he had no time fully to examine it, but, trusting
to their wisdom, was willing that it should be published and
read to the people on Sundays and holy days during the next
three years. It was accordingly issued in September, and
came to be known as "'the Bishops' Book."

Meanwhile, in August, a much more remarkable work — a
complete Enghsh Bible in print — had suddenly made its
appearance. Bishops and divines had not been
^ijj^'^s^ish consulted about this, and when it appeared they had
been detained longer than they liked in the neigh-
bourhood of London, where the plague was rife. Cranmer

X THE ENGLISH BIBLE 189

himself had got away down to Kent, where, apparently, a copy
of the new volume had been brought to him. He wrote to
Cromwell that he liked it better than any other translation,
and thought it ought to be licensed to be read by everybody,
till the bishops could set forth a better — " which I think," he
enthusiastically adds, " will not be till a day after doomsday !"
What version can this be that gives Cranmer such unqualified
satisfaction ?

Tyndale's New Testament had been denounced from the
first, and had been burned in St. Paul's churchyard — with the
result, as we have seen, that he was enabled to print new editions
with the money by which the copies had been bought up. The
attempt to suppress the book naturally strikes us as a ludicrous
and obvious mistake. Yet with hearty co-operation of govern-
ments abroad whole editions might really have been suppressed,
and apparently were so. Of the quarto the printing of which
was interrupted at Cologne, there remains at this day but a frag-
ment of one single copy ; of the second edition in octavo a
whole copy exists, but it is unique. Things took a new turn,
however, when it was seen that the king really encouraged the
sort of literature that he publicly denounced as heretical and
mischievous. In a proclamation aerainst erroneous _ .

1,. ^ . ^ ^ ..,, , Desire for an

books issued m June 1530, it is stated that there authorised
was a very prevalent opinion as to the necessity of ^^^^^°"*
having an English translation both of the New Testament and
of the Old, but that the king, after consultation with the two
primates and other divines, declared this to be unnecessary,
and, for the time at least, inexpedient. So strong, it was
said, was the tendency then to erroneous opinions, that Holy
Scripture had better be left for the present to the preachers
to expound, as hitherto. But hereafter, if the people should
" utterly abandon and forsake " these perverse opinions, his
Highness intended to provide that the Bible should be trans-
lated into English " by great learned and Catholic persons "
when it seemed to him expedient. Everything was thus left
to the Defender of the Faith, who, nevertheless, was reckoning
all the while on the services that might be done to him by
zealots bent on assailing those doctrines and ordinances of
the Church for which they could find no warrant in an
infaUible book.

I90 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

Tyndale's Testament was the work of an enthusiast possessed
by the idea that the Bible must be the one sole rule for
Christians, and that it must be expounded literally,
Tyndale's j^q^ ^\\}[\ thosc different kinds of meaning — allegori-
cal, anagogical, and so forth — in which scholastic
divines indulged. It was all simply and literally true, and had
but one meaning. Tyndale, moreover, quite set aside the
Vulgate and translated the book from its original language into
English, that he might make every peasant as wise as the
greatest divine. That, he said, was his express object ; and
it was an object intolerable to pious minds of the old
school. For we must remember, when reading More's
bitter attacks on Tyndale, that the arguments of biblical
devotees encouraged a spirit of irreverence and profanity
which not only shocked the devout Catholic world, but was
really dangerous to the peace of society. Crucifixes and
other images were spoken of as " idols " ; their destruction
even by private hands was a work of piety, and if men got
hanged for such enterprises they were martyrs. Lollardy
prompted men to outrage the consecrated host itself. This
dangerous spirit, moreover, received encouragement even
from the king ; and as the breach between him and the pope
went on, the public became accustomed to exhibitions of the
most disgusting ribaldry got up for his special satisfaction in
order to throw contempt upon popes and cardinals.

The boon of an English Bible is invaluable ; but we do
great injustice even to the bishops of those days if we regard
them as enemies to all novelty and freshness in biblical study.
The bishops generally, and Archbishop Warham in particular,
had regarded with the utmost satisfaction Erasmus's Latin
translation of the New Testament — a work which did quite
as great violence as that of Tyndale to mere old-fashioned
prejudice. But then it was a work for scholars, composed
without any special bias, merely to show what the best
criticism of the day could do to elucidate the sacred writings ;
whereas that of Tyndale was, even in the eyes of Sir Thomas
More, a mischievous perversion of those writings intended to
advance heretical opinions. Old English translations had
existed before Tyndale, and even before Wycliffe's day : but
when such familiar terms as "priests," "church," and

X CO VERBA LE'S BIBLE 191

"charity" were replaced by "seniors" or "elders," "congre-
gation," and "love"j when "do penance" had become
"repent," and a good many other changes of like character
had been introduced, it was evident that the design was to
depreciate the authority of an ordained priesthood and of an
organised Church. And Tyndale, having begun with the
New Testament, made some progress towards a complete
translation of the whole Bible; for in 1530 he published the
Pentateuch, and in 1531 the book of Jonah. In the midst
of his labours, however, he was deserted by his secretary,
George Joye, who in 1533 began to print a separate
edition of the book of Genesis, of which he sent one ^o°yf^
copy to the king and another to the new queen,
Anne Boleyn, hoping to obtain a royal licence for himself to
print the whole Bible. Next year, on a pretence which he
afterwards put forward, that Tyndale himself was dilatory
about the work, and that the Dutch printers were issuing
unauthorised reprints disfigured by bad typographical errors,
he corrected and revised a new edition of Tyndale's Testa-
ment, making some passages apparently more in accordance
with the Vulgate, but certainly altering some relating to the
Resurrection in a manner totally unwarranted by any authority
whatever. What made the matter worse was that he knew
that Tyndale was then engaged in revising the work himself.
No wonder, then, that the latter was indignant when he found
his design anticipated by a corrupt edition of his own version,
edited by one who knew no Greek, and acted merely as a
bookseller's hack. His own new edition, however, appeared
soon afterwards, and it was marked by a great advance in
accuracy as well as smoothness of diction on all that had
preceded it.

Yet another translator now entered the field, by name
Miles Coverdale. He was, hke Dr. Barnes, originally an
Augustinian friar of Cambridge, and had acted as
Barnes's secretary when he was accused before ^°Blbi?^
Wolsey. Encouraged, or perhaps commissioned, by
Cromwell, to whom he applied for books to assist him, he had
spent years upon the task abroad, and produced in October
1535 a complete English Bible, declared upon the title-page
to be translated "out of Dutch \i.e. German] and Latin into

192 THE NORTHERN REBELLION chap.

English," with a dedication to Henry VIII. It was apparently
a translation from the Vulgate made by comparison with
Luther's, and perhaps other translations ; for of the original
Hebrew and Greek Coverdale took no account. Its appearance,
if it had only been a satisfactory performance, ought to have
been opportune; for in December 1534 the Convocation of
Canterbury had petitioned the king not only for the suppression
of heretical English books, but for an authorised translation of
the Bible into English. But it evidently could not have given
satisfaction to the Convocation of 1536, which asked for a
new translation, and its sale does not appear to have been
authorised till 1537, when the name of Queen Anne had to
be awkwardly altered into Queen Jane in the dedication.

Cromwell's order to provide Bibles in churches, at first
inserted in the injunctions of 1536, was perhaps intended to
promote the sale of Coverdale's Bible. The Bible, however,
which pleased Cranmer so much in August 1537 was another
Bible yet. The printing of this seems to have been begun
abroad, but, after Isaiah had been completed, to have been

continued in London. Prefixed was a dedication
^Kbie!'''^ to the king from one Thomas Matthew, whom some

suspect to have been really John Rogers, the martyr of
Mary's reign. But it was not in fact a new translation at all.
The first books of the Old Testament, and the whole of the
New, were a reprint of Tyndale's ; the rest was Coverdale's
text with some alterations. Tyndale had by this time died a
martyr's death in Belgium, having been burned as a heretic at
Vilvorde on October 6, 1536, and his work still bore ill repute
in England. On Cranmer's recommendation, however, what
was once condemned was approved for publication under
another name. Richard Grafton, the printer, obtained a
licence to sell it ; and in the following year it was ordered
to be supplied everywhere in churches.

Authorities. — Calendar of Henry VIII. vols, x.-xii. ; Calendar (Venetian)
vol. v., interesting at this period mainly for its abstracts of Pole's letters,
which, however, are printed by Quirini ; Wilkins, vol. iii. For Anne Boleyn's
threats about Mary see Ortiz to Granvelle, Nov. 22, 1535, in Spanish
Calendar, vol. i. no. 231 ; Friedmann's Anne Boleytz ; Statutes 28 Henry
VIII. ; Latimer's Sermons (Parker Soc), Camb. 1844-45 ; his Latin sermon
to Convocation in 1536 was published in 1537. The account given by Alesius
himself (in his work Of the Aiictorite of the Word of God) of the part he

MATTHEW'S BIBLE

193

took in the debates in Convocation dates the occurrence "1537," but the
character of the debate, and the reference to Bishop Foxe as having then just
come from Germany, seem to prove that it really took place in 1536. Fuller's
Church History (Brewer's ed. ), iii. 128; Pole's De Unitate Ecclesiastica ;
Demaus's Life of Tyndale (Lovett's ed.) ; Anderson's Annals of the English
Bible, and Histories of the same by Westcott and Moulton. For the king's
encouragement of ribaldry see a passage in Du Bellay's account of the
relations of the pope and the King of England, printed in Hamy's Entrevue
(Documents, p. ccclxxviii. ).

CHAPTER XI

THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES

On October 12, 1537, Queen Jane Seymour gave birth to a
son at Hampton Court, who was christened on the following
Monday, the 15 th, before a comparatively small company of
nobles, on account of a prevailing epidemic. He
Edward VI ^^^cived the name of Edward, having been born
' on St. Edward's Eve. His mother died on the
24th after much suffering. The result of these two events
was, in the first place, to give Henry a son and heir of
undoubted legitimacy, and, secondly, to set him free to
negotiate or receive offers for a new matrimonial alliance, and
thus to hold the balance between Francis and the emperor by
inspiring each of them with jealousy of the other's advances.
This policy he pursued, keeping himself free of matrimonial
engagements for two years ; but the record of his dealings on
either side does not concern Church history. What is of
more importance is a renewed effort on the king's part to
arrive at an understanding with the Lutherans of Germany,
who, indeed, were now quite at one with him on the subject of
the proposed general council, and who, if only their agreement
could have extended to matters of doctrine, might have formed
an enduring alliance with him against both pope and emperor.
On October 12, 1536, Pope Paul III. had formally sum-
moned a general council to be held at Mantua on May 23
, , following. But to the delight of Henry and the

The intended ^ ° ^ , , i r ^ ^

general German Protestants, unlooked-ior obstacles arose.

council, rpj^g Duke of Mantua refused the council permission

to meet there unless he were allowed a military force to protect

IQ4

CHAP. XI PROPOSED GENERAL COUNCIL 19$

the city, with pay for its support. It was not quite easy for
the pope to meet such a demand at a time when Italy was in
fear of invasion from the Turk ; but there was even a stronger
objection to his doing so in the fact that it would have looked
like coercion of the council itself. A bull was accordingly
issued on April 20, 1537, proroguing its assembly to
November i. On this Henry published a manifesto in
English and in Latin, of which several German translations
appeared in that and the following year, throwing contempt
upon the whole project as one-sided, unjust, and ridiculous.
John Frederic of Saxony, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse,
endorsed this view with their warm approval. The council,
they said, was summoned only to defend papal authority, and
the pope must not be accepted as a judge in his own cause.
The pope changed the place of meeting to Vicenza, but the
German Protestants, who assembled at Brunswick early in
1538, found that place as objectionable as Mantua, and agreed
to send divines to England, who arrived in the summer, with
a view to a league in defence of a common faith.

How far were the people of England by this time imbued
with German heresies ? From the northern rebel-
lion one might be disposed to answer, not at all. EnliindiL
But though the northern rebels had their southern ^o^t^J^^"^
sympathisers, the more populous south, and par-
ticularly large towns like London and Bristol, undoubtedly
harboured a great amount of heresy. Mere abstract doctrines,
however, have always been slow to affect public opinion in
England; and while, doubtless, many minds were unsettled
about transubstantiation, more practical objections were found
to what many called "purgatory pick-purse," masses for the
dead, and prayers to saints, and pilgrimages — things which
involved action, or payments to the clergy. Discontent with
these things, as we have seen, received an additional stimulus
from the king's attitude towards the Church during Anne
Boleyn's time; and at Whitsuntide 1534, in obedience to
State policy, Cranmer issued a pastoral to his clergy, declaring
these doctrines and practices (together with the marriage of
priests) to be so far doubtful that he enjoined them to keep
silence on such subjects for a whole year, during which time
he intended to give a decision concerning them. It does not

196 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

appear that he redeemed his promise — certainly not within
the time. Matters seem to have remained in suspense till
the death of Katharine of Aragon in January 1536 ; shortly
after which the king, being inclined, apparently, to change his
policy, issued orders against the preaching of novel opinions.
But four days later he changed his mind again, and gave an
order to the contrary effect, encouraging particularly preaching
against the pope, and all kinds of lampoons and caricatures
to bring his Holiness into contempt. Then came the fall of
Anne Boleyn and a brief expectation that it would lead to a
reconciliation with Rome ; but, as we have seen, it only led
on to the book of articles, and a year later to the Institution
of a Christian Man, the responsibility for which the king left
with the bishops, till he was assured which way the wind blew.
\j On the whole, however, the tendency was to the maintenance
,; of the old beliefs, which he had no desire to set aside
gratuitously. But the dissolution of the monasteries, already
authorised before Anne Boleyn's fall, and unpopular as it
certainly was, found a justification in many minds on the
ground that belief in purgatory was a superstition ; for on that
belief these houses to a large extent depended for support.

The dissolution of the small monasteries being authorised

by Parliament (under whatever pressure the Act was passed),

e . , had of course to be carried out. But the northern

hpecial

licences given rebellion had stayed the process for a while over
monasteries a Considerable part of the country, and policy
to continue, guggcstcd a good number of exemptions from sup-
pression, for which considerable sums were paid into the
exchequer. Founders had sometimes prepared their own
tombs beside those of their ancestors in these sacred
retreats, and were willing to pay gratuities that the houses
might stand. A no less touching appeal was made for the
priory of Pentney, because the prior relieved such a number
of indigent poor. But appeals without gifts to back them up
were not favourably received, and Pentney was suppressed.
Even in August 1536, however, the king had begun to grant
to particular monasteries licences to continue, on payment
of substantial fees, and the granting of such licences went on
for nearly a whole year after. Two monasteries he actually
refounded, the nunnery of Stixwold in Lincolnshire and the

XI SURRENDERS 197

monastery of Bisham in Berkshire, the former in July and the
latter in December 1537; the Abbot of Chertsey having been
induced to surrender his house that its lands might go to
the augmentation of the new abbey of Bisham, which had
hitherto been only a priory. As yet there was no talk of a
general suppression of monasteries ; or if such a thing was
hinted at it, was denied to be in contemplation.

It may, indeed, be true that at first the king really intended
to content himself with the suppression of the smaller
monasteries — the new foundation of Bisham seems evidence
to that effect — but a course of confiscation, once begun,
carries a despot further than he himself anticipates. And the
very mode in which the new foundation of Bisham was
effected — by the surrender of the great monastery of Chertsey
— suggested a more insidious process of obtaining ^

II -1 /- 1 1 • 1 • (^ Surrenders of

the abbey lands without further legislation. bur- larger monas-
renders could be effected with comparative ease,
for, under severe regulations imposed at royal visitations, the
old monastic life had really become difficult to maintain.
And however little men loved royal authority over the Church,
it was certainly a question which perplexed some consciences,
whether resistance was even justifiable ; for if the king took
upon him this responsibility of supreme headship and had so
much power to make his position respected, was it not, after
all, a right thing to obey ?

A stricter view, no doubt, had been taken by the Car-
thusians. Of all the orders of monks (not including the
friars) it was they who had met the new tyranny
with the greatest steadfastness. Not even the ing charter-
martyrdoms of 1535 had quenched the spirit of the ^°"^^ '"°"^^*
remaining brethren, and new measures had been adopted.
One or two of the monks, indeed, had been conquered,
and were willing to be released from the severities of an
order which, even when left unmolested, practised a rule
of life hard to be borne by most men. Cromwell set over the
London house as successor to the martyred Houghton one
William Trafford, who had been converted to royal supremacy
from his once outspoken declaration against it. Four of the
monks were transferred to other houses of the same order ;
but two of these, John Rochester and James Walworth, having

198 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES CH^v.

been sent to Hull, were found to have sheltered rebels (so
called) in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and, continuing to deny the
king's supremacy, were hanged at York in the spring of 1537.
A week later — on May 18 — Prior Trafford got twenty of
the remaining brethren in London to join him in an acknow-
ledgment of the royal supremacy, repudiating papal authority.
On June 10 he surrendered the monastery to the king.
Meanwhile ten of the monks who had been immovable in
their opposition to the supremacy had been cast into Newgate,
where they were bound in chains, and nine of them succumbed
one after another to starvation, disease, and dirt. The tenth,
who apparently had a stronger constitution, lived to be a
martyr four years later.

If the Carthusians could not hold their own against the
king, what body of " religious " could ? If resistance was sure
to be futile, why should men resist? Responsibility must
always rest with him who has absolute power, and dares to go
all lengths. Disregard of monastic vows was sad enough, but
a perpetual succession of martyrdoms was impossible, especially
when dear friends and relations urged the claims of another
allegiance and the justification of quiet submission. Con-
sciences were sorely troubled, and some of the most impartial
gave different verdicts. "Good fathers," said the aged John
Fewterer, confessor-general of Sion, to eight monks of the
London Charterhouse who had been sent to attend his
deathbed, " I implore your forgiveness, for I am guilty of the
blood of your reverend father-prior. I encouraged him in his
resolution to die in the cause for which he suffered, and to
which you still adhere. Now, however, I am of another
mind, and I perceive that the cause is not one for which we
are bound to suffer death." Father Fewterer had already
been won over to preach the king's supremacy, and that was
why the eight Carthusians were sent to hear his counsels;
but surely it is unnecessary to think with the Carthusian
Chauncey, who relates the story, that at such a solemn
moment the devil spoke by his mouth. An old system was
being wrecked by violence, and a better state of things was to
form itself gradually hereafter ; but it was needless throwing
away life to protect what could not be preserved.

In January 1538 Drs. Legh and Lay ton began, in different

XI A NEW VISITATION 199

parts of the country, a new visitation of the remaining
monasteries, finding, of course, abuses as before, but also
producing before the inmates of each house documents ready
drawn up for its surrender to the king. Even then, however,
it was denied boldly that any general suppression was intended.
Abbots were ordered to put in the stocks any who spread
such rumours, and were warned not to alienate their property
for fear of anything of the kind. Alarm, of course, would
have spoiled the game, which was to sweep everything
quietly into the king's net ; and as the process went on the
surrenders were represented as having all been purely voluntary.
To hasten the desired consummation, monasteries were
shown up as nurseries of superstition. They belonged to the
country rather than to the towns, where human intercourse
promoted more acute intelligence. It was a treat
for Londoners, therefore, to see the famous " Rood ^^j^o^i?^
of Grace " brought up from Boxley in Kent, where
it had performed childish wonders in past times for the edifica-
tion of rustics and pilgrims. By wires and mechanism inside it
the figure on the cross had been made to move eyes and Hps. It
was an old-fashioned toy, which apparently had been long laid
aside, for the king's agent who took it away spoke of " old
wire " and " old rotten sticks " at the back of it, and described
the rood itself to Cromwell as a thing to which the inhabitants
of Kent had shown great devotion " in time past." Yet now,
when removed first to Maidstone, only two miles off, and
exhibited in the market-place, it aroused, according to the
same agent, "wondrous detestation and hatred." In London
it was made to perform again outside St. Paul's, while Bishop
Hilsey of Rochester preached to the people and exposed the
abuse ; after which he broke up the mechanism and flung the
image among the people, who further broke it to pieces.

This sermon of Bishop Hilsey's also touched upon the
general subject of offering to images, and hinted that images
in churches would shortly be put down. He was evidently
set to prepare men for a coming policy, and he Avas not
ashamed to utter scandals told him, as he alleged, in confession
twenty years before by a miller's wife, who had been in too
close relations with the then Abbot of Hailes in Gloucester-
shire. This abbot, he said, had given her many jewels that

200 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

had been offered to the celebrated "holy blood of Hailes,"

and derided her awe for the venerable relic itself, telling

her it was but a duck's blood contained in a

of^HaUes^ phial. It was certainly no such thing, as Hilsey

himself was obliged to admit afterwards, though the

current belief that it was our Lord's own blood was, of course,

absurd. It seems to have been a relic obtained from the East

three hundred years before by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King

of the Romans. What ultimately became of it is uncertain,

though there seems to have been rather a careful examination

of it in October in the presence of numerous witnesses.

From this time the royal crusade against superstition went
on side by side with the process of taking surrenders of
monasteries. All the long-suppressed murmuring against
images and pilgrimages was now allowed free vent ; and, as if
to show that these abuses were to be put down first of all in
their remotest strongholds, a great image in North Wales,
called Darvell Gadarn, to which pilgrimages had been made,
and which, the saying was, had power to rescue souls out of
hell, was brought up to London in the spring to be burned in
Friar Forest Smithfield. lu the Same fire that consumed the
and Darvell image was bumed an Observant Friar named John
Forest, who had once been confessor to Katharine of
Aragon. His constancy in obedience to papal authority had
given way for a time under the trial of severe imprisonment ;
but afterwards, having been set free, on resuming his
functions as a confessor, he felt compelled by the questions
addressed to him to return to his old spiritual allegiance.
He was convented before Cranmer at Lambeth on May 8,
when he is said to have abjured as heresies certain doctrines
that he had taught, consisting mainly of a recognition of the
Church of Rome as the Church Catholic, of papal pardons,
and of priestly power to remit the pains of purgatory to the
penitent. But he refused the penance enjoined on him to be
done at St. Paul's on the following Sunday, and maintained
his old beliefs once more. On May 22 he was hung by a
chain over the burning mass of Darvell Gadarn until he died.
At his martyrdom Bishop Latimer preached a sermon to
persuade him again to recant, but he declared that an angel
from heaven could not persuade him then.

XI IMAGES AND SHRINES 20i

The visitations and suppressions of monasteries went on
throughout that year and the next. The famous image of
Our Lady of Walsingham was removed before the
priory was suppressed. The baths of Buxton were remo?ed.
shut up, and the image of St. Anne taken away,
with the " crutches, shirts, and sheets " hung up by grateful
patients who had received benefit from bathing there.
St. Mod wen, too, was carried off from Burton -on -Trent
with a Kke array of votive offerings. Our Lady of Ipswich
also was secured, and a violent blow was dealt at the
belief in papal authority by the spoliation of g oi;at;on
the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, the ofBecket's
marvel of all Europe for its costly magnificence.
What booty other shrines had yielded was nothing to the
waggon-loads of gold and silver, precious stones and vest-
ments, carried off from the chapel of St. Thomas, the shrine
containing no material of less value than pure gold. To
complete the business, the bones and relics of the saint were
contemptuously burnt. The news of this outrage, when it
reached Rome, filled the pope and cardinals with a peculiar
horror. Even after all that Henry had done, they were not
prepared for such an act of irreverence, and how to denounce
it adequately was perplexing. Sentence of excommunica-
tion had already been fulminated against the king; but its
execution had been suspended, simply because no prince
would assist to carry it into effect. What better hope of
secular aid there might be now remained to be seen ; but, in
the meantime, all that the Sacred College could do was to
reissue the bull with additions, declaring that the hopes of
the king's amendment, which for three years the pope would
fain have cherished, had been so completely falsified that
nothing now remained but to cut off a rotten member from
the Church.

Henry was, no doubt, aware that the possibility of a
Continental alliance against him was greater now than it had
been in 1535; but he was on his guard. His
negotiations with the Germans in the summer had TnJ the
not led to any positive result, but they had served jf^™^
to nourish hope in the Protestants of a more
complete understanding with him. Their divines were

202 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

naturally well pleased that Henry had cast off his spiritual
allegiance to the pope and was putting down monasteries,
but there were still three things in England that they wished
to see reformed — communion in one kind only, private
masses, and the celibacy of the clergy. On these subjects
the king himself wrote a very courteous reply to their
ambassadors, defending the ancient usage in each point,
but promising to take further counsel ; and the ambassadors,
after being detained till October, returned to their native
country with a letter from the king to the Duke of Saxony,
expressing great hope of good if he would send over Melan-
chthon and other learned men to England.

On September 5 a new set of injunctions was issued
by Cromwell as the king's vicegerent, ordering a large

English Bible to be set up in every church, which
jSicTions. the clergy were to admonish their parishioners to

read. Fresh directions were also given about
teaching the Paternoster, Creed, and Ten Commandments in
English. Images were at the same time to be taken down
wherever they induced pilgrimages or offerings, and lights
were no longer to be burned before them. Then, besides
a number of other regulations, the parochial clergy were
enjoined henceforth to keep registers of every wedding,
christening, and burial, an order which created much mis-
giving ', for it was feared the king would tax each wedding,
christening, and burial. The order for setting up a large
Bible in every church was, no doubt, issued to satisfy in some
measure the desire of the printer Grafton, who had petitioned
Cromwell a year before that every abbey might be compelled
to take six copies. He said he only wished "the papistical
sort " to be compelled to take them, but without compulsory
purchase on a considerable scale he did not see how he was
to be reimbursed his expenses in an enterprise which had,
no doubt, been suggested to him by Cromwell himself.
Moreover, he was afraid of being undersold by copies pro-
duced on worse paper. Encouraged by Cromwell's favour,
rr^x T,-i-i Grafton went to Paris, where the best of type

The Bible , , , ,, 11

printed in and paper were to be had, as well as the best

skilled printers, and he sent home specimens of a

fine, new, sumptuous edition, which seems to have been all

XI ANABAPTISTS 203

but completed in the house of the French printer Regnault,
when the work was stopped in December by a citation of
Regnault before the French inquisitor-general. The English
printers escaped, and succeeded by indirect means in re-
covering a portion of the impression. By the help of
Bonner, now Bishop of Hereford and ambassador in France,
they were ultimately able to convey away their plant and a
company of French compositors, by whose aid the work was
completed in London in April 1539. In November follow-
ing Cromwell received a commission forbidding the printing
of any English Bible not approved by himself during the next
five years, the pretext being to avoid diversity in translations.
Hoping for a religious union with Henry VIH., the
Protestant leaders in Germany, John Frederic of Saxony,
and the Landgrave of Hesse, wrote him a letter to warn him
once more of the spread of the Anabaptist sect, some of
whom believed that their principles were making progress in
England, and were anxious to go thithen But on this matter
the king required little prompting. A royal commission was
issued on October i to Cranmer and other bishops and
divines, including Dr. Barnes and Dr. Crome, to search out
these heretics and destroy their books, receiving back into the
Church those who would recant, and handing over to the
secular arm those who persevered in their errors. This was
followed by two proclamations in November, prociama-
mainly directed against heretical books and persons, tions against
In the second all who had been rebaptized, or books and
denied the sacrament to be the very body of p^'^^""^-
Christ, were ordered to leave the realm within twelve days,
whether they had recanted or not. But the first proclama-
tion, issued on November 16, was concerned rather with
things than with persons. No English books were to be
imported, sold, or published, without a licence from the
Council, and even licensed books must not bear the words
cum privilegio regali without the addition ad i7nj)rwiendum
solufn^ to show that they were not set forth by authority. No
" books of Scripture " were to be sold without special super-
vision. No persons were to dispute about the sacrament
except divines learned in the schools. A number of old
ceremonies, such as the use of holy bread and holy water.

204 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

kneeling, and creeping to the cross on Good Friday, setting up
lights before Corpus Christi, bearing of candles on Candlemas,
purification of women, and so forth, were to be observed till
the king pleased to change them. Married priests were to be
deprived, and those marrying in future to be imprisoned at
the king's pleasure. Church dignitaries in their preaching
were to show the differences between things commanded by
God and ceremonies used in the Church. Becket was to be no
longer esteemed a saint, as he was really a rebel ; his festival
was to be abolished, his services rased out of the books, and
his " pictures " (which meant mostly images) were to be
plucked down throughout the realm.

On the same i6th day of November on which this pro-
clamation was issued, London was edified by a heresy trial
conducted by the king himself at Whitehall, sitting in state as
supreme head of the Church of England, with an
death of John array of bishops and lawyers on his right, of peers
o'^Lamben ^'^^ gentlemen of the privy chamber on his left.
One John Nicholson, known also by the name of
Lambert, was brought before the court. He was a Norfolk
man, educated for the priesthood at Cambridge, who, under
Bilney's influence, had contracted heretical opinions for which
he more than once had got into trouble in past years. He
had been examined on forty-five articles by Archbishop
Warham, shortly before the aged prelate's death, when his
release from durance was probably owing to that underhand
favour with which, as we have seen, the king then regarded
heretics. In 1536 he was brought up before Cranmer, Shaxton,
and Latimer, and was bold enough to maintain in their pre-
sence that it was sinful to pray to saints. But his present
trouble arose out of some criticisms he had made on a sermon
of Dr. Taylor, the rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill, and he was
charged with heresy even by Dr. Barnes for denying the
corporal presence in the sacrament. He refused to recant, and
appealed to the king himself; before whom, accordingly, he
had a formal trial, and after much discussion in court between
him and the divines, was told that he must submit or die. Six
days later he was committed to the flames at Smithfield.

Henry had never professed any favour for heretics, even
when he found their services convenient ; and his zeal for

XI POLE'S SECOND MISSION 205

orthodoxy at this time had a purpose. His throne was really
in danger, as the emperor and Francis, through the pope's
mediation, had come to an understanding, and the ten years'
truce agreed to at Nice in June had been followed by a
personal interview between the two sovereigns at Aigues
Mortes in July. Cordial relations between the rivals seemed
to be developing with unexpected rapidity ; and it was
quite within the limits of probability that the two great
rulers of Europe would unite to deprive Henry of his
kingdom in accordance with the papal bull. But if Henry
was to be deprived, who was likely to be put in his place ?
There was royal blood in the two great families of the
Courtenays and the Poles. Henry Courtenay, Marquess of
Exeter, was the son of Katharine, a daughter of Edward IV.,
and was next in succession if Henry's issue were set aside.
Henry Pole, Lord Montague, and his brother the cardinal were
grandsons of Edward IV.'s ill-fated brother Clarence. Sud-
denly their younger brother. Sir Geoffrey Pole, was arrested
and plied with questions as to the intercourse which he or the
rest of the family kept up with the " traitor " cardinal. By fear
of torture much was by degrees dragged out of him, which under
the monstrous laws of those days might be accounted treason,
and in December both Exeter and Montague were Execution of
condemned and beheaded, while a number of their the Marquis
dependants were hanged and quartered. Sir and of Lord
Geoffrey Pole, who had endeavoured to commit ^°"^^s"^-
suicide to avoid revealing things against his family, received a
pardon when he had served the king's purpose, and was miser-
able for the rest of his days.

In 1539 the king's anxieties increased; for, seeing that
better terms were now established between the emperor and
Francis I., the pope ventured in December 1538 to send
Cardinal Pole on a second mission to these two sovereigns to
persuade them to forbid intercourse with England until Henry
could be brought to a better state of mind. Pole,
smarting under deep personal griefs in the judicial ^'^^^f^Jfo^"^
murder of one brother and the cruelty inflicted on
all his family (for even his mother was rudely questioned and
imprisoned), felt still that his own were but a part of the
grievances of all Christendom, and it w^as with a high sense of

2o6 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap

duty that he set out from Rome in mid-winter, and after a
bitter journey through Italy, the south of France and Spain,
reached the imperial court at Toledo in the middle of
February. In vain now did the English ambassador, Sir
Thomas Wyatt, demand his surrender as a traitor. Charles
said that if he had been a traitorous subject of his own he
could not refuse audience to a papal legate. But his
devotion to Rome carried him no further. He had enough
to do with the Turks and the Lutherans without provoking
England into the bargain, and cutting off commercial inter-
course was not much less than making war. Pole left the
imperial court disappointed, and did not feel it wise to go to
that of Francis until he could get assurance that Francis was
prepared to act independently against England. He retraced
half his journey toward Rome to rest with his friend. Cardinal
Sadolet, at Carpentras till he should hear from Francis ;
but the French king, though quite willing to have prohibited
intercourse with England if the emperor would have done the
same, did not see that he could prudently act alone.

Thus the plans of the pope were again disappointed. They
had included this time the publication of the bull of excom-
munication in Scotland close upon the English border. This
was to have been done by David Beton, Abbot of Arbroath,
whom the pope at James's request had just created cardinal
(December 20), a messenger named Latino Juvenale being
despatched to Scotland with the hat and with instructions for
the purpose. Henry would thus have had enemies against him
on all sides and very little goodwill from his own subjects.
But Francis not only would not move wdthout the emperor,
but he prevented Juvenale from going to Scotland, and Beton
came from Scotland to France to receive the hat. Henry now
gradually recovered his spirits. Pole's second legation had
been quite as unfruitful as the first, though its result was less
ignominious. But it created, for the time, very considerable
alarm, and the king continued to make active preparations
for war, fortifying the coast and setting beacons. General
musters were ordered through the kingdom, and serious
anxiety was aroused in the beginning of April by a Dutch fleet
supposed to be meditating invasion. Parliament was called
together at the end of that month, the elections being managed

XI THE SIX ARTICLES 207

by Cromwell in a way to make it specially tractable ; and when
it met it showed itself tractable indeed.

Its first business was to consider how to vindicate the
orthodoxy of a king and realm denounced everywhere abroad
as heretical. Its second was to pass a sweeping bill of
attainder against the noblemen and others recently executed,
and against Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, Cardinal Pole, and
a host of others mentioned by name, who were never heard in
their own defence. And thirdly, it passed an Act to give
royal proclamations the force of law, making the king and his
council even more absolute rulers than before.

The result of its deliberations on the subject of religion ^^
was the passing of the celebrated Act of the Six Articles, .^
reviled by the Protestant party ^ as " the Whip /

with Six Strings." And it was certainly severe Jy'^^f'^}^,^

9 . . ■' Six Articles.

enough. Denial of transubstantiation, or deprav-
ing the sacrament, was to be punished as heresy, by
burning of the person and confiscation of lands and goods.
Any teaching that communion in both kinds was necessary,
or that auricular confession was not necessary, and the
marriage of any priest, or man or woman who had vowed
chastity or widowhood, was made felony, and involved
the punishment of death. Even one conviction for the
proscribed opinions involved forfeiture of all a man's
property ; a second made him liable to the extreme penalty.
All clerical marriages hitherto contracted were dissolved, and
clerical incontinence was visited with the loss of all property
and benefices. To crown all, special commissions were to
be issued to hold sessions quarterly in every county for the ^
enforcement of the statute.

The title prefixed to this statute, "An Act abolishing
diversity in opinions," fills the modern reader with some
amazement. But the object really was to check that growth
of free-spoken heterodoxy which the king himself had in past
years surreptitiously encouraged for private reasons of his own ;
and the steps by which this law was enacted were characteristic

^ The expression "Protestant party" is used for convenience, though it
is scarcely historical at this period. The doctrines and practices condemned
were partly Lollard, partly Lutheran ; and though they were, no doubt, loosely
held by a large number of people, there was no distinct party in their Hivotu-.
(See Preface.)

208 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

of the new relations of Church and State. ParUament first
submitted six questions touching the faith to a committee of
bishops presided over by Cromwell, and Convocation also
took the matter into consideration. But old and new schools
of thought were so well balanced among the bishops that
diversity of opinions seemed likely to be more emphasised
than ever, and the Duke of Norfolk, on May 16, proposed
the Six Articles to the determination of the House of Peers,
urging that the decision of that House, apart from the clergy,
should be embodied in a penal statute. The lay lords were
quite unanimous. A minority of the bishops, however, still
held out, till the king took the pains to argue matters with
them himself, and, according to an anonymous contemporary
writer, "confounded them all with God's learning." Royal
theology was decisive, and it certainly was such as had the
sanction of time and consent of the world at large. But of
the bishops thus "confounded" in argument some were
perplexed what to do when the Act was passed. Shaxton
and Latimer resigned their bishoprics, and Cranmer had to
dismiss the wife he had married in Germany.

Severe as the law was, however, it led to but little severity
in practice. The first quest under it for the city of London
sat in what was presendy called the Mercers' Chapel, hitherto
known as the hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon, or " Becket's
house," as the vulgar named it. Here over five hundred
citizens were indicted in a fortnight, but received the king's
pardon, of course on their submission. The heretics were
effectually frightened, and were quiet for a time. " The
Whip with Six Strings" did not do anything like the cruel
injustice perpetrated by the Act of Attainder against some of
the chief adherents of the old religion.

Moreover, it was the old religion, and in the main the
religion of the people, which was now protected by such
severe penalties. It was the old religion, with the pope left
out. England was not to be treated now as an heretical
kingdom, and the emperor had a good excuse for not organis-
ing an expedition to dethrone the king. Henry, however,
had taken other precautions against this, and while showing
himself very Catholic at home, had been carefully cultivating
his relations with the Protestants of Germany in a way to

XI THE MATCH WITH ANNE OF CLEVES 209

make the emperor feel still more that he could not afford to
quarrel with him. The Protestants, indeed, were shocked at
the Act of the Six Articles, and even before it was enacted
some approach had been made to an understanding between
the emperor and them, in which, pending a fuller settlement,
the emperor had successfully insisted that they should admit
no new confederate into their league. But Cromwell, as if
unauthorised, had previously suggested to the Duke of Saxony
and the Landgrave of Hesse a marriage between ^^^^ proposed
the king, his master, and Anne, daughter of John mamageof
Duke of Cleves and Juliers, who died in February Inne^f '
of this year, 1 5 3 9, and was succeeded in the dukedom cieves.
by his son William. This lady's sister Sibilla was the Duke of
Saxony's wife, and, religion apart, the alliance suggested was
likely to strengthen considerably the Lutheran princes in
their dealings with the emperor. It was therefore favourably
received ; and though the project cooled for some time, a
treaty for the marriage was drawn up on October 6. By
this match Henry felt himself much more secure from the
possibility of a Continental alliance against him, and he
seems to have been less alarmed than his councillors when,
immediately afterwards, the emperor, at the French king's
invitation, passed through France on his way to the Nether-
lands.

Meanwhile, the process of dissolving monasteries had gone
so far that only a few of the larger ones were now left stand-
ing. The great majority of these houses, since the
smaller ones had been suppressed under the Act of ^Sf su^p-°^
1536, had been received by the king's agents by ^JJ^J^°^j°J
virtue of surrenders. One or two, like the priory of
Lenton in Nottinghamshire and Woburn in Bedfordshire,
were confiscated, as some of the northern abbeys had been
during the rebellion, by the attainder of their abbots — a
stretch of the principles of law which it would be hard to
justify, even if the abbots had really deserved attainder.
The story about Lenton is obscure ; but the depositions in
the case of the Abbot of Woburn show that it was for no
disloyal mind, but only for scruples as to the supremacy —
scruples which led him to express privately in his own chamber
a wish that he had died with More and Fisher and the

2IO SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap.

Carthusians — that he was condemned and hung at his own
abbey gate, with one or two of his monks. It must have
been clear enough from cases hke this that monasteries which
would not have come to the king by surrender were pretty
certain to come to him by attainder, and an Act was actually
passed in the Parliament of April which seemed really to
anticipate the complete extinction of monachism ; for it
confirmed the king's title in all monasteries already sur-
rendered or to be surrendered in future, placed the revenues
under the control of the new court, called the Court of
Augmentation (constituted in 1536, when the smaller
monasteries were suppressed, for the augmentation of the
king's revenues), and invalidated any conveyances of monastic
property by any abbot within one year of the dissolution of
his house.

The king and those about him had evidently lost all
respect for the sanctity of old endowments ; yet he felt the
need of a pious pretext to justify his proceedings, and this
appeared in another Act of Parliament, passed at the same
time, to enable him to apply the confiscated property to
better uses. This Act, which passed through all its stages in
both Houses in a single day, referred in its preamble to " the
slothful and ungodly life" led by those persons who were
called religious ; and in order that God's Word might be
better set forth, children better taught, students maintained
at universities, highways mended, and various other good
purposes promoted, the king was empowered to create new
bishoprics by letters-patent, and endow them with monastic
lands. Within a few years, accordingly, he created bishoprics
at Westminster, Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough,
and Oxford.

But it was found that the abbots of three great houses,
who had probably encouraged each other by secret messages,

were quite unwilling to surrender them. So in
^"^agalns"^"^ September the king's officers, who had already
'^abb^s^^' surveyed the property a day or two before, seized

Reading into the king's hands. A week later they
were at Glastonbury, where they took the abbot (Richard
Whiting) by surprise, and questioned him ; then searched his
study, where they found some papal bulls, with a book against

XI THREE ABBOTS PUT TO DEATH 211

the king's divorce from Katharine, and a printed life of
Becket. They secured the abbot's person, and sent him up
to London to the Tower, while even a first search in the
monastery brought to light over ;^3oo in money, and
quantities of plate which the abbot had hidden from the
view of previous commissioners. This was robbery of the
king in the eyes of the present agents, and they committed
to gaol the two treasurers of the convent and two lay clerks
of the vestry. Afterwards they professed to have discovered
certain treasons committed by the abbot, of which, unfortu-
natel)^, their account has not been preserved.

Memoranda in Cromwell's handwriting still existing show
that it was arranged beforehand that Hugh Cook, Abbot of
Reading, was to be sent down to Reading to be tried and
executed there, along with some "accomplices"; and the
Abbot of Glastonbury, with his "accomplices," was to be
tried and executed at Glastonbury. And so it was done.
Abbot Whiting suifered on Tor Hill close to his monastery ;
his head was placed upon the abbey gate, and his quarters
distributed for exhibition at Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgwater.
Two monks of his abbey suffered along with him, and the
very same day Abbot Cook was hanged at Reading, along
with two priests of the neighbourhood. The third of the
three abbots was Thomas Beche of Colchester, who was now
in the Tower. Depositions had been taken against him,
showing that he objected to the pulling down of houses of
religion, and had said that the king could not lawfully sup-
press those above the annual value of;£^2oo; also that he
sympathised with More and Fisher, and even with the northern
rebels, and had spoken about covetousness in a way which
was taken to point at the king. He must have been tried in
November. He was executed on December i.

After this there was little spirit of resistance left. Abbeys
and priories surrendered rapidly towards the close of the year,
and the few that were left, including Westminster, which it
was proposed to convert into a bishopric, easily came into
the king's hands in the following spring. The last to sur-
render was Waltham Abbey on March 23, 1540, unless we
include a few colleges and hospitals which surrendered later
in the year.

212 SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES chap, xi

Authorities. — Calendar of Henry VIII, vols. xiii. and xiv. , and, as to
purgatory and preaching, vol. vii. nos. 463, 464, 871, vol. ix. no. 704 (vol.
vii. no. 464 should apparently have been placed about Whitsunday, May 24) ;
Wilkins ; Hall ; Foxe ; Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries ;
Statutes 31 Hen. VIII. For the general council see Baronius, vol. xxxii.
For the Charterhouse monks see authorities cited in chap. viii. For the
Rood of Boxley see Bridgett's Blunders and Forgeries. As to the spoliation
of Backet's shrine see Sanders ; also The Relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury.,
by John Morris, S.J. On the Enghsh Bible, as in last chapter.

CHAPTER XII

LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH

The match with Anne of Cleves was purely a political one,
and had been arranged cunningly enough to increase the
emperor's anxieties at a very critical period, so as poUticai
to deter him from the thought of uniting with character

TT 1 • ir e J of the match

France agamst England. Henry himself confessed with Anne
afterwards that he had agreed to it as a means of
protecting him against the emperor, Francis, and the pope :
and in that we may undoubtedly believe him. But he found,
as time went on, that matters took a different course from
what he had anticipated, and it would almost seem that he
cast about for means to extricate himself from this marriage
from the very day it was solemnised. That he was disgusted
with the lady's appearance at the first sight of her was his own
statement afterwards, accepted ever since in all simplicity by
grave historians. But he had seen Holbein's portrait of her
before he saw herself; and that portrait, which still exists at
Paris, certainly does not represent a woman of extraordinary
beauty. There were, in fact, much deeper reasons for his
dissatisfaction with the match, which it did not suit his pur-
pose to make known.

Anne of Cleves landed at Deal on December 27, 1539,
and the king, after paying her a furtive visit at Rochester on
New Year's Day, married her at Greenwich on January 6,
1540. Months passed before the world knew that anything
was wrong, and the king, no doubt, for some little time
regarded his new matrimonial alliance as a security against
that European combination which he dreaded. But the
clouds soon cleared away. Francis had been over-chivalrous
towards his old rival, and ere long found out his mistake. He

213

214 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

had allowed the emperor to pass through France to quell a
revolt at Ghent, and had given him a kindly reception at Paris
almost at the very time that Anne was landing in England.
But he got nothing from Charles in return for his magnanimity ;
he had only discouraged old allies and friends of his own, while
the emperor by his generosity had secured his hold upon the
Netherlands and was daily growing stronger. The Protestants
of Germany were left to settle matters with their own sovereign
as they might, without the aid of Francis, who at this time,
guided by the Constable Montmorency, would have no deal-
ings with heretics.

Now the Protestants of Germany, while they still looked
upon Henry as a useful political ally, were disgusted with the
passing of the Act of the Six Articles, and had no further
hopes of him in the matter of religion. In England, however,
it was not certain for some time that a really Catholic settle-
ment would ensue. In spite of that severe statute. English-
men who favoured Lutheran principles expected toleration
from the king's latest marriage ; and as Henry was even now
completing the destruction of the monasteries, their hopes
seemed not unreasonable. The Six Articles had not yet been
severely enforced, and a king who had winked at so much
heresy in past days in spite of his own proclamations might
possibly be expected to encourage it even now. No wonder,
then, that Dr. Barnes, the chief of the Lutheran party in Eng-
land, who only a year before had been sent as ambassador to
King Christian of Denmark, and had received promotion from
Cromwell since his return, believed himself to be still in
favour. He was, moreover, appointed to preach at Paul's
Cross on the first Sunday in Lent (February 15); but, to his
gj^j^^ discomfort, the arrangement was set aside in order
Gardiner that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, might occupy
the pulpit in his place. Now Gardiner, the most
determined opponent of heresy, had for some time been out
of favour, Cromwell having succeeded in excluding him from
the privy council ; and his appointment to preach at Paul's
Cross was ominous. In his sermon he denounced Lutheran
doctrines in a way that irritated Barnes extremely ; and
Barnes, a fortnight later, being permitted to preach in the
same place, took the same text as Gardiner had done, contra-

XII CROMWELL'S GREATNESS AND FALL -zi'^

dieted what he had said, punned upon his name as one who set
evil herbs in the garden of Scripture, and ended by flinging down
his glove before the audience as a defiance to the bishop.

Gardiner complained to the council of this indecency, and
desired, as his doctrines were impugned, that he and Barnes
might hold a discussion before indifferent judges. This was
arranged, and Barnes was obliged to confess that the bishop
had conquered him in argument, and to ask his forgiveness.
But two other preachers of the new school, William Jerome,
Vicar of Stepney, and Thomas Garret, whose escape from
Oxford in 1528 had excited so much alarm, followed Barnes
at Paul's Cross with equally objectionable utterances, and,
being summoned before the king, the whole three were
enjoined to preach recantation sermons in Easter week.
They did so, but in such an unsatisfactory way that all three
were committed to the Tower.

It was no secret that the chief patron of heresy was Crom-
well, and after this men doubted whether his influence with
the king was not on the decline. In the beginning of April
Gardiner was again summoned to the council. But Cromwell
not only opened, on the 12th, a new session of the ^ „,

1-1 T 1 • 1 1 -1 1 1 • , Cromwells

Parliament which had been prorogued since last further
June, but was created Earl of Essex on the 17 th, so ^ ^^'^^^^^"^ •
that he seemed to be in higher favour than ever. Parliament,
at the opening of that session, presented a novel appearance.
At its last prorogation, on June 28, 1539, seventeen abbots had
been present ; now there was not one. When the Lords met
they were first addressed by the lord chancellor in a speech full
of platitudes ; but he was immediately followed by Cromwell,
the real mouthpiece of the king's intentions. His Majesty,
he said, desired nothing so much as concord for a firm bond
of the Commonwealth. He knew that tares had sprung up
in the field of religion. Some called others papists, and these
called them heretics in return. Such discord was not to be
endured, and still less that when the king of his benignity had
granted that the Bible might be read in the vernacular, the
privilege was wretchedly abused, some turning it to the sup-
port of heresies and some of superstitions. The king was
therefore determined to promote true doctrine, to separate
pious from impious ceremonies, and to teach their uses ; and

ceremonies.

2i6 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

further, to prevent abuses and punish irreverent treatment of

the Bible. For these objects he had selected certain bishops

and doctors who should set forth quce. ad i7istitutioneni viri

Christiani attinent, and another set of bishops to

?n d^c'trfnl deal with the question of ceremonies. The former

^"<i . of these two committees was a weighty one, con-
sisting of the two archbishops, the Bishops of
London (Bonner), Durham (Tunstall), Winchester (Gardiner),
Rochester (Heath), Hereford (Skipp), and St. David's
(Barlow), with Doctors Thirlby, Robinson, Cocks, Wilson,
Day, Oglethorp, and others of very considerable name. The
second committee consisted of six bishops only, almost all of
the new school, and of comparatively recent nomination.

The king certainly took a strong interest in the proceedings
of the first committee, and drew from its members a number
of definite opinions on the sacraments, although some guarded
themselves by the statement that they gave them with submis-
sion to better judgment. Archbishop Cranmer himself gave a
diffident opinion, referring the final decision of the questions
proposed entirely to the king. What sort of religion was to
be upheld was evidently not yet clear. The scales moved up
and down. Towards the end of May, Sampson, Bishop of
Chichester, was nominated to a new bishopric created under
the Act of last year by letters-patent — the bishopric of West-
minster ; but two hours later he was arrested and sent to the
Tower, accused of treason.

Henry was coming gradually to the conclusion that no

further use could be made of Protestantism abroad, and that

he must not encourage it again at home. The

Cmmw°en. whole policy of Cromwell must be laid aside, and the

minister himself, of course, must be sacrificed to that

clamour which, as in Wolsey's case, was quite ready to break

out as soon as the support of the king himself was withdrawn.

The king, indeed, still made use of his services, especially in

managing still further the very tractable Parliament prorogued

from last year. New subsidies and new Acts of attainder

were procured ; and even before these an Act was passed for

the complete suppression of the great military order of the

Knights of St. John in England, and the transfer of its vast

revenues to the Crown. As this order was international and

XII ANNE OF CLEVES DIVORCED 217

subject to a grand master at Malta (where, since the capture
of Rhodes by the Turks in 1522, the knights had been given
new headquarters by the emperor), serious differences among
them had already arisen from Henry's peculiar ecclesiastical
pretensions ; and English knights who acknowledged the king's
supremacy over the Church at home found themselves deprived
of their offices and imprisoned at Malta, to the great disparage-
ment of their sovereign in foreign lands.

The king had virtually got all he wanted out of Parlia-
ment before the YvTiitsuntide recess in May ; and though the
arrest of Bishop Sampson at the end of the month tended to
confirm the belief in Cromwell's continued ascendency, it was
very soon seen that his power was at an end. On
June 10 he was arrested and committed to the ^heXmver.^
Tower, where he had still to do the king a very
peculiar service before he was finally despatched under a new
Act of attainder. He was required to furnish written replies
to a number of interrogatories written in the king's own hand
as to the circumstances of the marriage with Anne of Cleves.
To these he not only gave categorical answers, but wrote
a long letter to the king telling the whole story in detail,
and revealing a number of disgusting conversations between
his sovereign and himself which might be used for a suit of
nullity. On July 6, the Lords and Commons having peti-
tioned that the matter should be inquired into, a commission
was issued to the two archbishops and the whole clergy of
England to investigate the question of the king's marriage, and
whether he might lawfully marry again. Next day a joint con-
vocation of the two provinces sat in the chapter -house at
Westminster, and appointed a committee out of their number
to visit the palace and take evidences. On the 9th
a decision was arrived at that the marriage was null, with A^nL'^lf
partly on account of a precontract between Anne (Jire?nun
and a son of the Duke of Lorraine, and also because
it had not been consummated, as the king had not entered
into it willingly and his mind had been always against it.
Anne herself had been waited on and her consent obtained to
the procedure ; and after the judgment was passed she con-
fessed she was a maid, and was given two houses to live in,
with an endowment of ;^4ooo a year.

2iS LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

The sudden change startled, amused, or shocked men of
the world according as it affected their interests. It at once
produced a more cordial understanding with the emperor, who
had been anxious all along as to the support Henry might give
to the Duke of Cleves. On the other hand, Francis and his
ministers received the news with dismay. But even those who
were pleased at it were moved to cynicism, like the imperial
secretary Covos in Spain, who said Henry had assumed
spiritual jurisdiction to some purpose, when he could get
married or unmarried as he pleased. At home it was seen at
once that the king was about to take a new wife, Katharine
Howard, the young and beautiful niece of the Duke of Norfolk,
the leader of the Catholic reaction, who became his fifth queen
on August 8. Before this, on July 28, Cromwell was brought
to the block ; and on the 30th a greater tragedy was enacted.
Six victims were dragged from the Tower to Smithfield, three
of whom were the preachers Barnes, Jerome, and Garret.
These were burned for heresy, while the three others, Richard
Fetherstone, Dr. Edward Powell, and Thomas Abell, were
hanged and subjected to the usual brutalities for treason in
denying the king's supremacy.

Thus three Protestant and three Catholic martyrs were put

to death at the same time and place ; and it would really be

difficult to sav which set of victims suffered the

Executions. . . .•' „ , « , i i i

greater mjustice. For the first three had been
attainted during the session by one special Act of Parlia-
ment, and the other three by another — all without being
heard in their own defence. The first three were simply
declared in the Act to have openly preached heresies, which
two of them had before abjured; the other three to have
refused the king's supremacy. Abell, a devoted chaplain of
Katharine of Aragon, had been in the Tower eight years
with one brief interval. Fetherstone, another of the same
queen's chaplains, had been schoolmaster to the Princess Mary.
Dr. Powell, an active opponent of Lutheranism, had written
against the king's divorce. These two-fold executions showed
clearly the king's determination alike to vindicate his own
catholicity in doctrine, and to maintain as firmly as ever his
supremacy over the Church of England. And he had no great
opposition now to fear on either point. Doctrinal heresy seemed

XII HENRY'S ANXIETIES 219

to be utterly stamped out. An English Calvinist, writing to the
Swiss reformer, Bullinger, nearly two years after Cromwell's
death, laments that over the length and breadth of England
not a single true preacher was any longer to be found. Only
in one direction was the severity of the penal statute relaxed,
and that was as regards the incontinency of priests, which v/as
no longer to be a capital offence.

Henry's anxiety to show himself a good Catholic was doubt-
less due to a feeling that the pope's bull might even yet be
executed ; and he certainly felt some uneasiness next year
(1541) lest the emperor, though he had difficulties enough
elsewhere, should succeed in conciliating the Protestants at
the diet of Ratisbon. If it were to come to that, he might
even have to go one step further backwards and get the
emperor to make his peace with Rome ; which good office he
knew well the emperor would be glad enough to do even now,
and he thanked the imperial minister, Granvelle, for offering
to procure it. But such an acknowledgment of error could
only have been wrung from him by dire necessity ; and it very
soon appeared, not only that the emperor's attempt to conciliate
the Protestants was a failure, but that he might have quite
as much need of the king's help as the king was likely to have
of his. Henry, however, had his difficulties also. The
tyrannical government which he had established in the north
had almost provoked a new rebellion there this spring ;
and though it was immediately quashed, it suggested to
him the necessity of his making a progress into those parts
in person, accompanied by a considerable armed force for
safety. But before he could leave London he must guard
against disaffection in the south by clearing the Tower of
prisoners. The aged Countess of Salisbury was^

^ . " . ^ f^ . Execution of

privately beheaded on the mornmg of May 28 m the Countess
presence of a select body of witnesses — for no crime °^ ^""^^ '''^''
whatever, except that she had been attainted in Parliament
two years before without having been brought to trial. Other
victims followed, of whom the most notable was Lord Leonard
Grey, late deputy of Ireland.

About this time also occurred another pitiable case, not
arising directly from State policy, but from recent legislation,
Richard Mekins, a youth of eighteen, was burned in Smithfield

220 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

for heresy. A second commission for putting in force the
Act of the Six Articles had been issued in January ; but the
citizens of London, this time, at first dechned to make any

presentments at all. They had desired the advice
Mekfn? of their parish clergy on the subject ; which was,

for good reasons, refused. At last they presented
this lad, who had rashly maintained consubstantiation. That
doctrine, which he had learned from Dr. Barnes, was quite
as much against the statute as denying the corporal presence \
and as no abjuration under the Act admitted such an
offender to pardon, there was but one way with him. He
died very penitent, regretting that he had ever known Dr.
Barnes, from whom his heresy was derived. But though it was
impossible to save him under a law of such severity, he was
visited in prison by the Bishop of London, who ministered
to him all the consolation that one doomed to die could
receive from a spiritual father \ and the poor lad at his death
confessed the great kindness and humanity shown him by
Bishop Bonner.

There are, indeed, other evidences that Bishop Bonner
was by no means the heartless persecutor that history, on

the faith of Puritan writers, has taken him to

Bonner's^rue be. He was a man who had his faults, but they

character. ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^j^^ yya^ represented. A man of high

culture and great accomplishments, he could wink at vice in
high places, and he could outrage all conventionalism to do
his king a service. He could insult another king to his face,
or irritate extremely the pope himself, in order to advance his
sovereign's policy ; but to prisoners in his hands he was really
kind, gentle, and considerate. Over their ultimate fate, it
must be remembered, he had no control, when once they
were declared to be irreclaimable heretics and handed over
to the secular power ; but he always strove by gentle suasion
first to reconcile them to the Church, as it was his duty to
do. As Bishop of London he naturally had more heretics
to deal with than any other bishop ; but there is no appear-
ance of his straining the law against them. In this same
year a case is mentioned by Foxe in which, without expressly
charging Bonner himself with cruelty, he evidently wishes the
reader to do so. It was simply that one John Porter, " a fresh

XII

KATHARINE HOWARD 221

young man and of big stature," was committed by the bishop
to Newgate for collecting a crowd in St. Paul's Cathedral to
hear him read from one of the six large English Bibles newly
set up in the church, and discourse upon what he read — a
practice manifestly inconvenient, and forbidden by proclama-
tion. Foxe suggests, but does not venture to state, that he
died of certain tortures, which he describes, inflicted on him
in prison ; but whether this be accurate or not, Bonner clearly
was not answerable for his fate.

When the king reached Yorkshire in his progress he
received the very humble submission of Archbishop Lee of
York and of all who had taken part in the rebellion four
years before, large presents of money being made to him for the
assurance of his forgiveness. At York he waited some time in
the hope, as he afterwards gave out, that James V. of Scotland
would come thither to a meeting with him — a project which,
no doubt, had been suggested in secret diplomacy for years,
though James always wisely avoided falling into the trap. He
had returned by the end of October to Hampton Court, where,
on November 2, a dreadful piece of intelligence communicated
to the Council was laid before him by Cranmer. j^^^j^^j.jjjg
His new queen's life had not been pure before Howard's
marriage, and, as the inquiry went on, it was found
not to have been any better since ; indeed, even during the
recent progress in the north she had held secret interviews with
an old paramour, aided by Lady Rochford, the wicked sister-
in-law of Anne Boleyn. Henry was covered with shame and
confusion such as he had never known before. The queen's
plebeian accomplices were tried and executed in December.
She herself, with Lady Rochford, was attainted in the Parlia-
ment which met in January 1542, and they were both beheaded
on February 12, while the whole family of Norfolk were for
some time under a cloud.

From the time of Henry's quarrel with the pope additional
anxieties had arisen concerning the state of Ireland. That
country, it is true, had been a problem to him and ^ , ^

, . ^ V r 1 • 1 1 Ireland.

his father before him when as yet there was no
religious question to complicate matters. The method by
which Plenry governed Ireland had been generally to balance
one Irish party against another, or appoint an English ruler when

222 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap,

he could not get on with either. The Geraldine faction had
been generally in the ascendant ; but the rebelHon of " Silken
Thomas," tenth Earl of Kildare, in 1534, prompted apparently
by suspicion of foul play to his father in the Tower, terminated
all possibility of using that family again as governors of
Ireland. Silken Thomas was for two or three months actual
ruler of the land, and, declaring that he was on the pope's side
against the king, murdered Archbishop Allen at Clontarf, and
threatened to drive all the English out of the country.
Skeffington, a man who understood artillery, was sent to govern
Ireland ; and on his speedy death the deputyship was given to
Lord Leonard Grey, who had some success in reducing the
country, but was ill rewarded for his loyalty.

A new policy was then initiated under Sir Anthony St.
Leger, and it was not less a spiritual policy than a temporal
one. The pope's name must not be used henceforth as a
handle for rebeUion. The Irish Parliament, indeed, had
passed Acts similar to those passed in England ; ^ but
they were much more difficult to enforce. The Irish
monasteries might be pulled down — few comparatively
cared about them ; but a foreign enemy landing in Ireland
and making war on Henry's government because he was
excommunicated by the pope was a very serious prospect.
Even the Scots might combine with the northern Irish
with most unpleasant results. Yet what could mere legis-
lation against the pope's authority effect ? The English
were but a little garrison in Ireland, and their effectual
occupation of the country was limited to a mere fringe of
land on the eastern coast. Even there the king's spiritual
supremacy was virtually ignored. It was in vain for Arch-
bishop Browne of Dublin to publish the king's injunctions,
or to go about preaching the king's supremacy, which he could
get nobody else to do. It was impossible to get the pope's
name erased from mass -books, except when the archbishop
sent his own servants to erase it. Nay, Bishop Staples of
Meath, who had come over with Skeffington, denounced the
archbishop himself as a heretic.

St. Leger did not depend entirely on force ; he won Irish

1 Of course, by the Poynings law, all Irish legislation was ordered in
England beforehand.

XII HENRY KING OF IRELAND 223

chieftains to submission by granting them lands from the
Crown. Sir William Weston, the last prior of the Knights
of St. John in England, had died of a broken heart at
the dissolution of his fellowship and the confiscation of
their lands ; but the Irish prior of the order, Sir John
Rawson, easily gave up Kilmainham for a pension and the
title of Viscount Clontarf. Other Irish chieftains were en-
nobled besides, and there was a very general submission,
each individual chieftain declaring in an indenture that he
acknowledged Henry as king and renounced the pope's
authority. Moreover, the king's style was altered by an
Act of the Irish Parliament, which was confirmed after a
little delay by the English Council, though of course they
had agreed to it beforehand. Ireland had hitherto been
regarded as a lordship granted to Henry II. and his suc-
cessors by the pope, and the English sovereign bore the
titles " King of England and Lord of Ireland." Now, to
defeat any claim of feudal superiority on the part of the pope,
the royal style was altered to "King of England, France, and
Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and in Earth, immediately
under Christ, Supreme Head of the Churches of England
and Ireland." And Henry was so proclaimed on January
22, 1542.

Just after this, while Parliament was passing the Act of
attainder against Katharine Howard, Convocation was engaged
in discussing the merits, or demerits rather, of " the Great
Bible," the printing of which had been begun in France and
finished in England three years before. It was an enterprise
of Cromwell's which no doubt was profitable, as the churches
were compelled to purchase copies ; but since his
death there had been much outcry against the ^condemns"
translation, and Convocation declared that it could "fe^"^.^'
not be retained without scandal, and that it required
considerable revision. The work of revision was accordingly
entrusted to committees for the Old and New Testament,
which embraced the most competent scholars of the day,
both in Greek and Hebrew. But naturally questions arose
how to convey in English the full sense of many words
which in the Latin of the Vulgate were understood to have
a certain ecclesiastical significance, and Gardiner handed

224 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

in a long list of words which he thought it advisable to
retain in their Latin forms, or to translate, as he expressed
it, quajn accommodissinie fieri possit. That " accommoda-
tion " of some sort is absolutely necessary in translating
the Scriptures is a fact which does not strike the unlearned ;
but the New Testament itself was not written in classical
Greek, or the Vulgate in classical Latin. To appreciate the
thoughts in either language the mind has to become accus-
tomed to the medium ; and no greater delusion can exist,
though it seems to be a common one, than the idea that any
modern translation can be an exact equivalent for the original.
But when matters had advanced so far, the king sent a
message through Cranmer forbidding Convocation to proceed,
as he intended to submit the book to the two universities.
This was a mere pretext to stop the work, for two days
, . . later a patent was issued to Anthony Marlar, haber-

but It 13 , , '■ . ^ - . . , . , , . , -

nevertheless dasher of Londou, givmg huTi the sole right of
retained. pj.jj^|-jj^g ^-j^g Bible for four years to come. Vested
interests evidently carried the day against the authority of
the Synod.

Henry's insular position alone had enabled him to defy
the pope so long with impunity, and it was on the side of
Scotland that he was weak. The bull of excommunication,
which never reached England, might have -been published in
England itself with the most serious consequences if the
country had been successfully invaded by the Scots during
a war with France. For this reason Henry had made great
efforts to induce James V. to follow him in his anti-papal
policy ; while Paul IIL, in 1537, had sent James a consecrated
sword and hat, intending, as it was believed, to take away
Henry's title of Defender of the Faith and confer it upon
him. James accordingly was devoted to the See of Rome,
and it was simply for this cause, as observed by contem-
poraries, even by those unfriendly to the papacy, that Henry
made war upon him in 1542. In November the Scots
received a crushing defeat at the Solway Moss, which was
followed next month by the death of James V., just after his
queen had given birth to the ill-starred Mary Stuart who
succeeded him.

Now, many of the Scottish nobles had felt little sympathy

XII HE SEEKS SUPREMACY IN SCOTLAND 225

with their king's devotion to the Holy See, and looked upon
Cardinal Beton — the chief upholder of their country's
independence — with the same jealousy with which the
Enghsh lords had regarded Wolsey. Some of them even
inclined to heresy. The religious condition of the country
seems to have differed considerably from that of
England, where, since the exceptional days of Sir ^^QtfJnd"
John Oldcastle, heretics had commonly been ob-
scure persons. Patrick Hamilton, who was burned at St.
Andrews in 1528, was actually of the blood-royal of Scotland,
young, learned, and zealous for the new German theology;
and his death produced an effect, even beyond his own
country, which was not produced by the burning of many
heretics elsewhere. Frith had translated into English his de-
votional thoughts under the title of Patrick's Places ; and the
fervour of this true martyr, contrasted with the idle and dissolute
lives of too many of the Scottish clergy, produced much preach-
ing even among Scottish friars against abuses of the Church.

But, however the Scotch nobles might incHne to follow
Patrick Hamilton in his heresies, few of them were bright
examples, either of piety or of patriotism ; and when a
number of them fell into Henry's hands at the Solway Moss,
the king saw how to make use of them. He released his
prisoners on pledges that they would promote a ^^^ ,
marriage between their child-sovereign and his son Scottish
Prince Edward, acknowledging himself as superior '^°^^^'
lord of Scotland, and do their best to put him in possession
of the strongholds of the kingdom till the marriage could
take effect. In 1543, in the prostrate condition of Scotland,
the newly elected governor Arran agreed to carry out his
wishes by an anti-papal pohcy ; Cardinal Beton was for a time
made prisoner, and English Bibles were authorised in defiance
of the "kirkmen." A treaty for the marriage was actually
concluded. But Henry's demands for the delivery of the
child into his hands and the complete surrender of the
national independence were manifestly intolerable. Arran,
moreover, could not maintain an anti - papal policy ; he
became reconciled to Beton, and Henry, finding his designs
completely thwarted, prepared to deal a heavy blow at
Scotland, which he delivered next year.

226 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

In England, meanwhile, since the issue of "the Bishops'
Book," it was clear that a more definite religious settlement
was required under royal authority; and a new manual of
doctrine, for which preparatory questions had been circu-
lated in 1540, at last made its appearance in May 1543.
It was essentially a revision of " the Bishops' Book " issued
in 1537, to which the king had warily avoided giving
any direct sanction. But in this form it received
'■"^BoS"^^ such sanction, with a preface written in the king's
name, and it came to be known as "the King's
Book," in contradistinction to " the Bishops' Book." It had,
in fact, been very fully discussed, and had been approved by
Convocation in April. The title prefixed to it was, "A
Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man:
set forth by the King's Majesty of England." In style it was
decidedly an improvement on its predecessor, more condensed
in its exposition of the creeds, and more explicit generally
about the sacraments, a mere paragraph in the former
treatise on the Sacrament of the Altar being now replaced by
a long and elaborate exposition ; but the chief novel feature,
besides the preface, was a preliminary article on faith, prob-
ably due to Cranmer, setting forth the different acceptations
of the word.

It is to be noted that the way for the compilation of this
manual had been prepared about the time of Cromwell's
fall, by a set of seventeen questions on the nature and
number of the sacraments laid by the king before the bishops
and a number of divines, whose answers are on record.
To the same committee of divines, most hkely, was entrusted
the task of setting forth, and perhaps amending, the rituals
in current use, and the fruit of their labours in this matter
was a treatise entitled " Ceremonies to be used in the
Church of England, together with an explanation of the
meaning and significancy of them." This book, however, was
never authorised even by Convocation, and is now only an
antiquarian curiosity, though the fact that it was drawn up
deserves attention, as we shall find it referred to at a later
date.

On July 12, 1543, the king married his sixth and last wife,
Katharine Parr, a widow more than twenty years his junior.

XII ' HERETICS AT WINDSOR 227

It is remarkable that this lady was one who rather favoured
" the new learning " — that is to say, religious
ideas at variance with old standards. New formu- ^ PaJ?'"*^
laries of faith, however carefully drawn up, could
do little, even with the aid of the Six Articles, to repress
that underhand growth of heresy which the king himself,
for purposes now gone by, had once so greatly stimulated.
So the well-known story may be true, though no doubt
considerably dressed up by Foxe, from whom alone it is
derived, that Queen Katharine herself at some uncertain
date before the king's death once stood in serious danger
on account of her theology. What is more certain is that,
just at the time of her marriage, four men about the court
at Windsor were condemned as heretics under the Act of
the Six Articles.

Two of these, by name John Marbeck and Robert Test-
wood, were singing men, both probably of the Chapel Royal.
The former, who alone escaped death by a royal
pardon, was organist of St. George's Chapel, and ^^heSf°'
had made some progress with an English Concord-
ance to the Bible, of which Bishop Gardiner did not quite
approve. The other two were Anthony Pearson, a priest, and
Henry Filmer, a tailor. Marbeck's pardon may have been
due partly to his musical gifts, partly to the friendship of
Capon, Bishop of Salisbury. His offence mainly consisted
in having made extracts from the writings of Calvin before the
Act of the Six Articles was passed. Testwood, on the other
hand, a ribald jester who, to express his disbelief, would
pervert the anthem which he was singing with others, had also
mocked the services in honour of reHcs, and, while telling the
people they were worshipping stocks and stones, had broken
off the nose of an image of Our Lady. Pearson had inveighed
against the sacramental doctrine of the Church, and said it
converted the elevation of the Host to the simihtude of Christ
hanging between two thieves ; while Filmer, the tailor, said if
the sacrament was more than a sign, then he himself had
eaten twenty gods in his lifetime.

There were certainly indications, that notwithstanding the
Six Articles, heresy, and irreverence also, was getting bolder
than before. And who could wonder if, after past experience,

228 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

heretics expected some indulgence in high quarters in spite of
the law ? The king, indeed, was already alarmed at divisions
which touched the court itself; for at this time a number of
other gentlemen, some being of the Privy Chamber, with
Haynes, Dean of Exeter, were likewise in trouble for heresy,
and royal pardons had to be freely used to prevent inconvenient
consequences. The king, of course, was completely orthodox
now — he had never, indeed, professed to be otherwise — and
Bishop Gardiner was trying to restore that decent respect for
Church authority which had suffered so much discouragement
in Cromwell's day. But unhappily the old modes of heresy-
hunting were themselves demoralising, and an unpleasant
part was taken in the business by Dr. London,
Warden of New College, Oxford, who had become
a prebendary of Windsor. He had long ago been active in
the hue-and-cry when Garret escaped from Oxford ; more
recently he had been a monastic visitor under Cromwell, and
his bearing towards the heads of nunneries had certainly not
been delicate. His life, indeed, was disgracefully impure. But
now at Windsor, under a new regi7ne, he became a leading
heresy-hunter. In this he overdid his part, with the result
that he and two others, being brought before the Council, were
convicted of perjury, for which they were condemned to the
pillory, and also to ride with their faces towards their horses'
tails at Windsor, Reading, and Newbury, with papers over
their heads declaring their offences. Nor was this penance,
at least in Dr. London's case, the end of the punishment ; for
he was then remitted to the Fleet, and died in prison.

Matters were coming to a crisis, however, between the old
learning and the new. Every one felt that the latter had no
small sympathy from the Archbishop of Canterbury ; and while
there was much religious division in Kent, some of the preben-
daries of Canterbury and many of the gentry were moved to
Cranmer complaiu of the primate. A document was pre-
andhis sented to the king, who thereupon one evening,
pre en aries. ^^^-^^g rowcd past Lambcth, called the archbishop
into his barge, and said to him, with merry humour, "Ah, my
chaplain, I have news for you. I know now who is the greatest
heretic in Kent." Cranmer, on being shown the paper, begged
that commissioners might be appointed to investigate the

XII CRANMER COMPLAINED OF 229

matter ; but the king declared that he would trust the investi-
gation wholly to the archbishop himself, in whom he felt
perfect confidence. A commission was accordingly issued to
him and some of his functionaries. The result, of course, was
a foregone conclusion. Cranmer did enter into a pretty full
examination of the matter, the records of which are now on
the point of publication ; but the effect could only be to silence
clamour and to strengthen his authority.

Cranmer, in truth, was quite as necessary to the king as he *>
had been from the first ; and it was for the king's own interest
to maintain in his place an archbishop of so much real learn-
ing and subtlety of thought, who was sound on the one great
doctrine of royal supremacy. A change in the primacy was
not to be thought of, and the clamour against Cranmer
revealed a danger which it is not difficult to see
had become a source of unpleasantness to the ^nieTcr
king himself. When Parliament met in January ^^Jjj^ifg"'
1544, one of its most important measures v/as a
statute to modify the operation of the Act of the Six Articles.
In order to prevent malicious accusations for heresy taking the
accused unprepared, it was enacted (35 Hen. VIII. c. 5) that
none should be arraigned under the former statute except upon
a presentment found by the oaths of tv/elve men before the
commissioners ; that the offences charged must have been
committed within the preceding twelvemonth ; and that no
one should be arrested for heresy before indictment, except
by warrant of two of the Privy Council. Thus it is clear that
" the whip with six strings " had become rather inconvenient
to those who were expected to wield it.

Another measure passed by this Parliament was " a bill for
the examination of the canon law by thirty-two persons to be
named by the king's majesty." This was intended p^^ ^^^^
to give real effect at last to a project referred to in revision of
the Submission of the Clergy in 1532, when they ^^^"°" ^'''"
agreed to allow the canon law to be revised by that number
of persons, half clerical and half lay. Acts had already been
passed in 1534 and 1536 empowering the king to constitute
such a tribunal, but no use had yet been made of the powers
so given ; and this statute was not acted upon either. The
Church remained practically without law at all, though a draft ^

~^\

230 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

scheme called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum may have
been partly drawn up during this reign by Cranmer.

Meanwhile the king, in alliance with the emperor, had
made open war on France. He was already at war with
Scotland, and now in 1544 the English burned Edinburgh
and committed fearful ravages in that country. In June,
shortly before the king crossed the Channel to invade
France, an English litany was published by authority on
account of the wars in Europe. Litanies, it should be
observed, were at that time sung in procession, as had
always been the custom, and the words sung were often
called a "procession." The innovation of an English litany
was enforced by royal letters to the archbishop, in which it
was observed that the people came slackly to "processions"
because they did not understand the prayers and suffrages
used. Afterwards, however, a new litany was found desirable,
and Cranmer received a commission to compose one by
translating " processions " from the Latin. The result was a
noble office, substantially the same^ with that now in use,
which was printed with Henry VHL's Primer in 1545. It
was first sung in St. Paul's on Sunday, October 18, in that
year. Cranmer seems to have abandoned the intention to
add translations of some Latin hymns, such as the Salve festa
dies, feeling that his metric powers were not equal to the task.

The primer in which this litany was published was a
manual of English prayers for private use, set forth in order to
supersede all previous compositions of the sort, whether in
Latin or in English ; for there were Latin primers of old
standing, and the men of the new learning had not been slow
to put forth such manuals in English adapted to recent
changes.

In September 1544 the emperor made a separate peace
with France ; and next year, as Henry had no ally while at
war both with France and Scotland, his position had become
precarious — all the more so as the long-delayed Council for

1 It is almost verbally the same except that it contains, immediately after
the invocation of the Trinity, petitions to the Virgin, angels, patriarchs, apostles,
martyrs, and so forth, to " pray for us," and, later, a prayer to be delivered
not only from sedition and privy conspiracy, but also ' ' from the tyranny of the
Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities." This last is a painfully
jarring note in the most exquisite of English compositions.

XII THE CHANTRIES ACT 231

the extirpation of heresy met at Trent at the close of the
year. A common danger, however, brought the Protestants
of Germany once more, though unwiUingly, to
his aid, and chey were allowed to send representa- 'SoSsTa^ts"
tives both to Calais and to the French Court to "iYtwifn
promote peace, the emperor himself at the same Henry and
time receiving with the like view ambassadors both
from England and France. Henry, however, when he saw
himself so befriended, merely dallied with the matter and
chose his own time to end the war. But meanwhile, as he
was a most skilful opportunist, the prospect that he might
require Protestant aid from Germany undoubtedly affected
his tone on matters of religion.

A new Parliament met this year (1545) on November 23.
The main object, no doubt, was to obtain a heavy subsidy for
the war, which was done. But the Lords were occupied,
even on the third day of the session, with a bill "for the
abolition of heresies, and of certain books infected with
false opinions." This bill, after being read no less than five
times and much discussed, at length passed unanimously,
but was lost in the Commons. Another bill passed both
Houses constituting a commission for the settlement of
disputes about tithes in London — a subject which had been
left in much uncertainty by the non-appointment of the com-
mission of thirty-two on canon law. But the chief . ,

r -i • ,, . r 1 T -'^^ct for the

measure of the session was "an Act for the dis- dissolution
solution of chantries, hospitals, and free chapels." °f^h^"^"«S'
This was another measure to meet the drain on the exchequer
occasioned by war; and its enactment was pressed all the
more because founders, after the example of the royal visitors of
the monasteries, had been taking surrenders to reclaim property
given for pious uses by their ancestors. The Act accordingly
annulled such conveyances and gave all to the king. But it
was very wide in its sweep, and the heads of colleges at
Oxford and Cambridge were alarmed lest their endowments
also should be confiscated, till they received positive assur-
ances that these were to be respected.

Having obtained what he required, the king on Christmas
Eve prorogued the Parliament with a very remarkable speech,
in which, after thanking them for the subsidy granted, he

232 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap

assured them that, notwithstanding their liberaHty in the Act
just referred to, he was not going to impoverish colleges and
schools to the detriment of learning and increase of poverty.
But one thing he regretted to find, that there was a sad want
of charity among them ; for some called others heretics and
The kin anabaptists, and these again called the former
rebukes clergy papists, hypocrltcs, and Pharisees. This was greatly
^"wai't^f""^ the fault of the clergy, who themselves preached
chanty, against each other, some " stiff in their old ??iumpsi-
mus," others too much set on their " new siwipsimusP But
the laity, too, were in fault, who railed at bishops and spoke
slanderously of priests instead of complaining to him, the king,
when a bishop or priest preached perversely. They, moreover,
abused the permission given them to read the Scriptures, and
disputed, rhymed, and '-jangled" that precious jewel, the
Word of God, in every alehouse. And so, with an exhortation
to both clergy and laity to mend their manners, and consider
what St. Paul wrote about charity to the Corinthians, he
dismissed Parhament till next November.

One occasion of this extraordinary reproof we know with
tolerable certainty ; for it must have been in this session, if
not in the last brief Parliament which met in the preceding
Januar}^, that Sir John Gostwick, the king's treasurer of first-
fruits and tenths, who was also knight of the shire for Bed-
Cranmer ^o^dshire, complaincd in the House of Commons of
again com- Craumcr's preaching at Sandwich and at Canterbury,
plained o . j^ ^^^ apparent that in doing so Gostwick spoke for
others besides himself, for he had no particular interest in Kent ;
and we may believe that the king's speech in proroguing
Parliament was virtually in defence of Cranmer. At all events,
it is evident from the account of the archbishop given by his
secretar)^ Morice, that the king regarded Gostwick's complaint
as evidence of a confederacy against him ; for he asked in
reference to it, " What will they do with him if I were gone ? "
And to Gostwick himself, whom he called a " varlet," he sent
an angry message that if he did not acknowledge his fault to
the archbishop and seek reconciliation, he would make him
"a poor Gostwick," and punish him for an example to others.
Another case in which the king interfered to protect
Cranmer is well known because it has been dramatised by

XII THE KING PROTECTS CRANMER 233

Shakespeare. It could not have been later than this year,
and was probably earlier — indeed, it was not improbably
connected with the affair of the prebendaries in 1543. The
king certainly in that year had encouraged accusers to speak
freely, no matter how high in station the person accused
might be. But the Council on this occasion observed that it
was dangerous to proceed against so influential a member of
their body as the archbishop, unless he was first committed to
the Tower. On this they obtained leave to call him before
them and commit him if they thought proper. But the king
sent for him the evening before to put him on his guard, and
gave him a ring to show them, if they proposed to make him
a prisoner, that he recalled the matter out of their hands for
a hearing before himself. In the morning, while the arch-
bishop was made to wait outside the Council-chamber, his
secretary, Morice, called Dr. Butts, the king's physician, to
witness his treatment, and Butts informed the king. Cranmer,
being called in, desired to see his accusers, but was told he
must first go to the Tower ; on which he appealed from the
Council to the king, exhibiting the ring. Thereupon they all
repaired to the king's presence and received a severe rebuke for
their uncourteous treatment of the archbishop. The best com-
mentary on the incident was that made at the time by Lord
Russell in a remark to the Council : " Did not I tell you,
my lords, what would come of this ? I knew right well that
the king would never permit my lord of Canterbury to have
such a blemish as to be imprisoned, unless it were for high
treason."

— Notwithstanding the king's rebuke to Parliament, there
were abundant cases of heresy next year (1546). On Passion
Sunday (April 11) Dr. Edward Crome, a famous
preacher, preached at the Mercers' Chapel a sermon ^^- Cromes
on the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice, the tendency
of which was considered dangerous. Referring to the Act of
last session concerning chantries, he used an argument which
Latimer had used before him about the suppression of the
smaller monasteries. Applauding the Act as well done, he
observed that it could not be justified if trentals and masses
benefited souls in purgatory. The logic was indisputable, but
innovation in doctrine so soon after the king's book was not to

234 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

be tolerated, and Crome, whose name had of old been associated
with those of Bilney and Latimer, was a man whom it was
thought necessary to keep within bounds. On the 20th he was
required to sign a paper and to preach afterwards at Paul's
Cross to clear himself of heretical imputations. He preached
there accordingly on Sunday, May 9 ; but it was a sermon in
self-defence, in which he said distinctly, " I am not come
hither to recant, nor yet am commanded to recant." He
was called next day before the Council, and declared, laying
his hand upon his breast, that he considered that he had
redeemed his promise ; but witnesses who heard his sermon
convinced the Council that he had not, and he was committed
to custody till he should make a true recantation, which he
did in another sermon at Paul's Cross on June 27.

Crome's examination led to that of others of like tendencies.

The chief of these was Latimer, and besides him were four

persons, named Huick, Lascelles, John Taylor

Other heretics /Qj-hej-^ise Cardmakcr), Vicar of St. Bride's, and a

examined. ^ . '' . '

Scottish friar unnamed. Latimer, who for six years
had been living in enforced retirement, was committed to
prison and his house in the country searched. Of the others,
John Lascelles shortly afterwards suffered martyrdom. Card-
maker at this time escaped the like fate, merely, it would
seem, for want of courage to hold out ; but he was a martyr
under Mary. The unnamed Scottish friar showed no constancy
either. What became of Huick we do not know.

In May, shortly after Crome's examination before the
Council, one Thomas Kyme of Lincolnshire and his wife were
summoned to appear before them. The couple did
not agree well together, and the husband was soon
sent home ; but the lady, who was generally known by her
maiden name of Anne Askew, was sent to Newgate for denying
the received sacramental doctrine of the Church. For this
matter she had already, in March of the preceding year, been
questioned by the lord mayor and committed to the Counter ;
and she herself has left a painfully ridiculous account of her
examination on that profound subject by civic authorities,
who certainly were no match for her in disputation. With
a good deal of trouble she was then put to bail after some
meetings with the Bishop of London (Bonner), whose patience

XII EXAMINATION OF ANNE ASKEW 235

she severely tried ; for, having agreed, as he thought, to an
orthodox declaration, she refused to sign it, but only wrote
that she believed everything contained in the faith of the
CathoUc Church. But her liberation was arranged at that
time. Now, however, she had become obtrusive again.
Before she was committed to Newgate she was examined by
the Council, especially by Gardiner, to whom she rephed
with a curious kind of insolence, not uncommon in heretics
examined by bishops in those days, taking her stand on texts
of Scripture. Thus, when Gardiner said he wished to speak
to her " familiarly " — that is to say, not authoritatively as a
bishop — she replied, " So did Judas, when he unfriendly
betrayed Christ." Gardiner then proposed to speak with
her alone; but she refused, and gave as her reason "that in
the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter should
stand." The lord chancellor then took up the examination,
when she asked him " how long he would halt on both sides ";
and being asked where she found that, she replied, "in
Scripture." All her tongue fence was in the words of Holy
Writ, and Bishop Gardiner declared that she was a parrot.

Her examination by the Council at Greenwich lasted two
days, and occupied five hours the first day. She was ill and
in great pain when sent to Newgate. On June 18
she was arraigned at the Guildhall for heresy in^^^'^^^J'^^'^^^
company with Shaxton, late Bishop of Salisbury, one
Nicholas White of London, and John Hadlam, a tailor of Essex.
They all confessed their heresies (which were in each case
Zwinglian), and were sentenced to the fire. But being visited in
prison by Bishop Bonner, Heath, Bishop of Rochester, and
other divines, Shaxton and White were next morning persuaded
to recant, and in the case of Shaxton at least the change seems
to have been sincere and permanent. But Anne was more
steadfast. On the Tuesday after her conviction she was taken
from Newgate to "the sign of the Crown," where both
Bonner and Sir Richard Rich tried to induce her to change
her mind, but in vain. Then Shaxton, the newly converted,
did the same ; but Anne told him it would have been good
for him never to have been born. Rich then committed
her to the Tower, where she was questioned again who were
of her sect or had encouraged her in her opinions ; but she

236 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

refused to implicate any one. She was then put on the
rack, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich
actually turning it with their own hands to conquer her
obstinacy. The atrocity seems unparalleled even in those
rough days. But she was still firm, and, according to her
own narrative, she afterwards " sat two long hours reasoning
with my lord chancellor upon the bare floor," and would
not be persuaded to give up her opinion.

The end came on July i6. The Lord Mayor, the Lord

Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, and most of the nobles were

seated under St. Bartholomew's Church in Smithfield,

}^^J to see the dreadful sentence executed on a little com-

martyrdom.

pany of saints considered as perverse disturbers ot
the faith. They consisted of Anne Askew, John Lascelles, a
priest named Hemsley, and a tailor of Colchester. As usual, a
divine was appointed to preach to the condemned, and make
a last effort to reclaim them ; and the divine appointed by
the king for this function was Dr. Shaxton. There cannot
be a doubt that his preaching was most earnest and sincere.
Anne, however, criticised his sermon as he went on, approving
some things, but calling out at times, "There he misseth,
and speaketh without the book." Letters of pardon were
offered to Anne at the last moment if she would recant, but
she said she had not come thither to deny her Lord. Then the
lord mayor cried, *'Fiat justitia," and the faggots were lighted.
How little is it understood, in any age, that the world is
governed by spiritual influences and not by mere brute force !
If disbelief in transubstantiation was an error so very
poisonous to the community, the poison was now spread ten-
fold ; for men could not well believe that the faith in which
Anne Askew died was antagonistic to Christian life. Just
nine days before she suffered there had been a proclamation
against erroneous books, and people were required every-
where to deliver up to the bishops or the Lord Mayor of
London, to be burnt, all copies of Tyndale's and Coverdale's
New Testaments, or of the writings of Frith, Tyndale,
Wycliffe, Barnes, and other known heretics. A great bonfire
of English books was accordingly made at Paul's Cross on
September 26. But the burning of books was futile, for the
burning of martyrs read a deeper lesson.

xri HENRY AND THE GERMAN PROTESTANTS 237

The reign of Henry VIII. was now near its close. But
we must not pass over in silence the death of the Scottish
martyr George Wishart and the murder of Cardinal Martyrdom
Beton. There are certain unpleasant controversies of wishart

. _ . , and murder

concernmg the connection of these two events; out of Cardinal
the suspicions raised touching Wishart are not ^^^*^""
justified by the evidence, and are hard to reconcile with the
character given of him by a devoted pupil. He was a
travelled scholar, and seems to have been a man of sweet
and self-denying disposition ; but he made himself amenable
to ecclesiastical law by preaching, even in spite of inhibitions,
against the received doctrines as to the sacraments, images,
purgatory, and so forth. He was burned at St. Andrews on
March 28, 1546. But a faction devoted to England declared
that his death should be avenged, and the threat was carried
out on May 29. Henry VIII. had undoubtedly, for years,
been anxious to see the Cardinal assassinated, and had
approved of projects to take him off.

But now we must look once more abroad, for several
things have been taking place on the Continent which concern
us not a little. The Protestants of Germany regretted their
failure to make peace between England and France;
and all the more so when the dreaded General "^of Ti°en""'
Council, after many delays, actually held its first
sitting at Trent on December 13, 1545. On the last day
of the year the princes and cities of the Smalcaldic League,
by their representatives at Frankfort, agreed to support each
other by arms, if necessary, in defence of the Augsburg
Confession against both pope and emperor. The Council,
however, after a mere formal opening, adjourned over the
Christmas season, and was occupied at first mainly with
questions of order. Our English cardinal, Pole, was one of
the three papal legates who opened it; in preparation for
which he had already written his treatise De Concilio. On
February 2, 1546, the representatives of the Protestants wrote
from Frankfort to Henry VIII. to urge him to declare before
all the world that he did not acknowledge its authority. As
the year went on the princes were anxious again for a
defensive league with Henry VIII., which even the Duke
of Saxony now thought expedient ; and Henry in reply was

238 LAST YEARS OF HENRY THE EIGHTH chap.

quite willing to entertain the idea if they would send com

missioners declaring how much each member of the league

would contribute. He proposed to call it "the

ieagu°elgarn League Christian," and along with their commis-

proposed. sJQjjgj.s j^g desired that they would send him
the names of ten or twelve of their learned men, of
whom he would choose a few to confer with upon
religion.

No doubt he was considering what he could still do with
the Protestants of Germany, though in the end he left them
to fight their own battle with the emperor. At this time he
had made peace with France, and a French embassy, under
Admiral d'Annebaut, arrived in England in August to receive
his oath to the treaty. On this occasion, if we may really
trust a strange report, which, though later, seems to come
from a very good source, secret communications passed
between the king and the ambassador, in presence of
Cranmer, about turning the mass into a communion and
putting an end to the pope's authority in both realms.
Cranmer was certainly contemplating a considerable change
of ritual; and about the beginning of the year, taking ad-
vantage of Gardiner's absence in the Low Countries, he had
nearly persuaded the king to sign letters to himself

ce?emonL ^ud the Archbishop of York for the abolition of
£''aboHshed ^^"^^^^^ ^^^ ceremonics, namely the ringing of bells

^ "" ° '^ ^ " on the Vigil of All Hallows through the night, the
covering of images in churches during Lent, the lifting up of
the veil that covered the Cross on Palm Sunday, and the
kneeling to the Cross at the same time. These changes
apparently had been recommended to the king by Cranmer
after conference with Bishops Heath of Worcester and Day
of Chichester ; but in the draft letter which he prepared for
the king to send to him and the Archbishop of York, orders
were further given for the cessation of "creeping to the Cross,"
a ceremony used on Good Friday, which, being an act
of adoration, was declared to be against the Second Com-
mandment as expounded in the book of "Necessary Doctrine."
The king, however, declined to sign the letters, being warned
by Gardiner that any innovation in religious matters in
England at that time would imperil those peace negotiations

XII INTENDED RITUAL CHANGES 239

on which he was engaged, and leave him, perhaps, without a
friend upon the Continent.

Authorities. — State Papers, vols. i. , iii., v., x. , and xi. , and Calendar
of Henry VIII. {Letters and Papers), vols. xv. and following ; Hamilton
Papers ; Foxe ; Burnet ; Wilkins ; Gardiner's Declaration against Joye ;
lournals of the House of Lords, vol. i. ; Wriothesley's Chronicle, and
Nichols's Narratives of the Reformation (Camden Society) ; Cranmer's
Letters (Parker Society) ; Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (printed by
Day, 1571 ; reprinted by Cardwell, 1850). For the "Ceremonies to be
used in the Church of England" see Collier, v. 106-124 (8vo edition).
For George Wishart see Tytler's Hist, of Scotland, Knox's Hist, of the
Reformation in Scotland, and other authorities cited in the Dictionary of
National Biography. For the communications with d'Annebaut touching
the mass see Foxe, v. 562-4, 692 (Cattley's ed.). For Irish history see
Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors.

CHAPTER XIII

EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET

The revolution effected by Henry VIII. was a thing with
out a parallel in history, and it is hard to realise it all at
the present day. Professing to the last a zeal for religion,

which in early days was not altogether insincere, he

^Ken^° had destroyed the old autonomy of the Church,

^oHc ^ suppressed the monasteries, confiscated an enormous

mass of property, and hanged, beheaded, or intimi-
dated all who looked for the restoration of the system he had
broken down. In his proceedings he had, to a large extent,
gratified zealots who were enemies to all Church law and
discipline, and of course he had won over to his side the
grantees of monastic lands. At the same time, notwithstanding
the superabundant wealth left him by his father, which was
very soon dissipated, he had ground down his people with taxes
in order to strengthen himself against possible combinations
abroad ; he had twice been absolved by Parliament from the
repayment of his loans ; he had levied illegal benevolences,
and, as a final step, had debased the currency more than once.
Yet, after all, the exchequer was ill able to bear the strain
of his last wars in France and Scotland. So what was to
become of government during the long minority of his successor
was an anxious prospect from the first.

For some time before Henry's death the event had been
anticipated, but that had not made things better. The Duke
of Norfolk and his son had appeared a little too forward, with
the result that Surrey had been sent to the block, and Norfolk
himself would have suffered the same fate but for the death

240

CHAP, xiii THE NE W REIGN 241

of the king. Henry died early in the morning of Friday,
January 28, 1547, and the sentence was not carried out,
but the duke was kept in prison. Heavy and
perplexing responsibilities rested vath the Council, ^^deJtk ^'"^
and the king's death was kept secret nearly three
whole days. Nothing was said about it even on Sunday the
30th, when the church of the late Grey Friars was re-opened,
and after mass was sung Holbeach, Bishop of Rochester,
announced in his sermon that the king had given to the city
of London, by patent, the hospital of St. Bartholomew's and
the church of the Grey Friars, with two other city churches,
which were henceforth to form one parish named Christ-
church, with an endowment of 500 marks a year for relief of
the poor. Next day, however, the king's death was publicly
announced ; and young Edward VI., whom his uncle,
the Earl of Hertford, had brought up from Hertford, arrived
in London. The Council in the Tower had the will of
the deceased king read over to them, and declared their
determination to stand by it. Most of them, indeed, were
expressly named as executors, and charged with the govern-
ment till young Edward attained the age of sixteen. But the
name of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was left out; and
though Henry had always made much use of his services, it
was said that he had left him out on purpose. The Earl of
Hertford was appointed Protector.

Just after the royal funeral Paget declared to the Council
the names of certain persons whom he said the late king had,
in secret conference with him as his secretary, declared his
intention to raise to higher honours, and the Council
acted on the suggestion. Hertford was created Duke
of Somerset; his brother. Sir Thomas Seymour, was made Lord
Seymour of Sudeley ; William Parr, Earl of Essex (the queen
dowager's brother), was created Marquess of Northampton ;
Dudley Viscount Lisle, Earl of Warwick ; and the lord
chancellor, Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Sir Richard
Rich also became Lord Rich, and two other peerages were
conferred. Hard upon this followed the coronation (February
20), and according to precedent a general pardon was granted.
But some notable persons were excepted from the pardon by
name, viz. (i) the Duke of Norfolk ; (2) Cardinal Pole, who

242 EDWARD VL AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

was still unjustly treated as a traitor beyond sea ; (3) Edward
Courtenay, an innocent prisoner in the Tower, son of the late
Marquess of Exeter; (4) Dr. Pate, a refugee, on whom the
pope had conferred the empty title of Bishop of Worcester.
Two other persons, named Fortescue and Throgmorton, com-
pleted the list of exceptions.

Government was thus placed entirely in the hands of men
who had risen to prominence in the latter part of the late
reign, and who were interested to maintain, and even carry
further, the revolution that had taken place in Church principles.
The one great leader of a more conservative policy, the Duke
of Norfolk, was in the Tower, thankful that his head was still
on his shoulders ; Bishop Gardiner was excluded from power ;
and on March 6 the lord chancellor (the newly created Earl
of Southampton) was compelled to deliver up the great seal,
which was given to the custody of William Paulet, Lord St.
John. Thus every obstacle was removed to a progressive
policy in Church matters, for which, in fact, a foundation had
been laid a month before Wriothesley's resignation, when the
bishops were required to take out fresh commissions under the
new king for the discharge of their spiritual functions. In this
Cranmer set a willing example, as it was a means in his case
to strengthen his authority. But it was certainly distasteful to
others ; and in their name, as well as in his own, Gardiner
made an ineffectual remonstrance.

It is interesting, however, to note the state of matters ten

days before the coronation. On February 10 the Council

^ _ . , were compelled to listen to the complaint of Bishop

St. Martin s, ^ ,,,-■ • ^ • i

Ironmonger Bonncr and the lord mayor agamst the mcumbent
^^"^" and churchwardens of St. Martin's, Ironmonger
Lane, who, without authority to do so, had taken away the
images in their church and set up the royal arms in place of
the crucifix, painting the walls with texts of Scripture, " whereof
some were perversely translated." The excuse was that, nearly
a year before, the roof was in such a state of decay that it was
in danger of falling in, while the crucifix and images were so
rotten that they fell to dust in removal, and the churchwardens,
having spent so much money on the roof, could not afford new
images. They confessed, however, that they might have erred
in setting up the king's arms, though they had done it out of a

XIII VIOLATIONS OF OLD ORDER 243

good zeal, and that they had taken down other images in the
chancel because to some of the parishioners, as they considered,
they were objects of idolatry. The case is curious as showing
the tendency towards Protestantism in the city even in the last
year of Henry VIII. The Council, however, were not yet pre-
pared to condone such proceedings, and would have committed
the rector and churchwardens to the Tower, but on their very
humble submission simply bound them in recognisances of
;£"2o apiece, with four sureties each, to answer any further
charge, and that meanwhile they should erect a new crucifix
in two days' time.

Very shortly after this, however, during Lent, sermons were
preached at Paul's Cross by Barlow, Bishop of St. David's,
and by Dr. Nicholas Ridley, a chaplain of Cranmer, against
images and other ceremonies ; while at court Cranmer's com-
missary, Glazier, preached against the observance of Lent itself
as obligatory. These things could not pass without protest ;
and Gardiner, who had submitted loyally to every-
thing done by authority under the late reign, felt ?eTts agaS'
bound to speak his mind about them. If my Lord revolutionary

, ■'• . -' preaching,

of St. David's, he said, and others of the same mind,
had a new order of things in view, by all means let them plan
it out, and present the fruit of their labours to the young king
when he came of age ; but there was no authority at present
to make such changes. By the beginning of May, however,
images were pulled down and wilfully mutilated at Portsmouth
within Gardiner's own diocese, and he wrote not
only to the Mayor of Portsmouth, but to Captain mutilation
Vaughan, who commanded the garrison there, to °^™^s^^-
learn what amount of sympathy there was with such outrages ;
for if the spirit of iconoclasm was strong, preaching against it
might make matters worse. Scripture warned him, he said,
not to cast precious stones before hogs, and such offenders
were, if possible, worse than hogs, and had always been so
regarded. Even Luther reproved such doings, and Gardiner
himself had seen images standing in the Lutheran churches
in Germany. Captain Vaughan sent the bishop's letter to
Somerset, who made a very subtle but not very ingenuous
reply. The Protector began by professing to agree with the
bishop in disliking innovations, but feared that the bishop

244 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

might himself bring them on by too much outcry. He then
descanted on the analogy between images and books as
teachers, asking why it was worse to burn a wooden image
than the book of God's own word. Images, too, were always
liable to abuse, and it was a pity the bishop had not removed
them himself, before the captain had occasion to do it. " If
your lordship be slack in such matters," Somerset wrote, "he
that removeth false images and idols abused doth not a thing
worthy of blame." This showed pretty clearly that an act
which was at the time quite illegal, besides being offensive
to old notions of reverence, was upheld, if it had not been
actually stimulated, by those who held the reins of government.
The removal of all images, whether " abused " or not, was
evidently in contemplation, and there was no great intention
of punishing those who did the work unauthorised.

It looked like another sign of the times that Dr. Richard

Smith, master of Whittington College, preached at Paul's

. , , Cross on May i K. revoking some of his past opinions.

Dr. Richard , . •'. ^' , ^ ° 1111,1

Smith;s and committmg to the names two books that he had
retractation, published not long sluce on the mass and on ecclesi-
astical tradition or "unwritten verities." The act seems to
have been one of weakness ; for in preaching again shortly
after at Oxford he endeavoured to explain it away, saying that
it was a retractation, not a recantation, and he continued
afterwards to maintain much the same position that he had
done at first ; for which it was found desirable to remove him
from his preferments. On June 19 Dr. Feme, another dis-
tinguished preacher, recanted in the church of St. Andrew
Undershaft what he had preached on St. George's Day just
before in favour of the worship of images.

It was fortunate for the new government that they did

not receive at this time much trouble from abroad. At first,

indeed, there was no likelihood of this. In March

trouble from the Couucil made fresh treaties with France; the

abroad. ei^ipej-Qr was well occupied in his war with the

German Frotestants, and the Government were cautious

enough not actively to interfere between them. But the

death of Francis I. in the end of March made a great change;

for the new French king, Henry II., was well known to be

quite opposed to his father's policy, an enemy of heretics, un-

XIII SIEGE OF ST. ANDREWS 245

friendly to England, and anxious for the recovery of Boulogne.
In April, moreover, the German Protestants were completely
crushed by the decisive battle of Miihlberg. Still, it did not
suit the new King of France to make war for the recovery of
Boulogne, and England was left in peace to work out her own
problems unmolested by foreign powers. It was only vital to
make sure of Scotland ; for the French king and the Guises
would naturally aid the governor of that country in stamping
out rebellion. And already in March a treaty had been
made with the murderers of Cardinal Beton to ^^^^^ ^.^^
maintain them in holding the castle of St. Andrews Beton's
against the governor — a policy which the English ™"'' ^^^^^'
Council pursued all the more steadfastly after the accession
of Henry XL

Ever since the cardinal's murder in May 1546 the
murderers had been besieged in St. Andrews Castle by the
forces of the Scottish government ; but their communications
by sea were not effectually cut off, and as, besides receiving at
intervals supplies from England, they held the governor's son
a prisoner, they for some time would not listen to terms which
the government were only too anxious to offer them. But in
December, victuals falling short, they were more anxious to
treat, and terms were at length arranged. The besieged agreed
to give up the castle, or give pledges for its delivery, as soon as
the governor could procure for them a papal absolution for the
cardinal's murder ; and the governor agreed to let them keep
possession till then, and that they should be wholly relieved
from the legal consequences of their crime. Favourable as
these terms might well appear, the besieged had no intention
of keeping them. It was enough that the siege was raised
for the time, and before the end of March they refused to
surrender. Immediately afterwards (for he says
himself it was at Easter) John Knox, then a tutor at St.
to the sons of some heretical Scottish lairds, trans-
ferred himself and his charges for security into the castle, and
by and by began, in the town, his extraordinary- career as a
preacher. Sheltering among a company of murderers and
treaty-breakers, he propounded what he had fully convinced
himself was the true Gospel of Christ, and he quite approved
of the crime which had brought them together.

246 EDWARD VL AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

The Protector might accordingly, it would seem, have
reckoned on the devotion of a little band of Scotsmen in a
Scottish stronghold by the sea to assist him in enforcing a
union of the two kingdoms under English government by the
future marriage of their two young sovereigns ; but a French
fleet came to the aid of the Scottish government, landed men
at St. Andrews under Pietro Strozzi, and reduced the castle
on July 30. This was a most serious blow to English pohcy,
and doubtless strengthened Somerset's determination to make
Scotland once more feel the weight of his powerful arm in a
new invasion, for which he was preparing.

Meanwhile, in May, an inhibition was served on the bishops
forbidding them to exercise their powers of visitation, in view of
a proposed royal visitation ; but within a fortnight the order
was relaxed, and the royal visitation was deferred. In June
the Council's attention was called to the fact that some men,
formerly Carthusian monks, who had escaped beyond sea and
resumed their habits abroad, continued to draw their pensions
through friends at home, and steps were taken to put a stop
to the practice. In the following month two men were
arraigned at the Guildhall for having conveyed over the sea
the Carthusian John Foxe, intending also to send to him the
left arm of the martyred prior Houghton, which he had kept
in England as a relic.

On the last day of July there issued from the press of the
king's printer, Richard Grafton, two important publications, the
The Ro ai ^^^^ being the well-known " Injunctions " of Edward
Injunctions VI., thc sccoud thc cqually well-known First Book
Book of of Homilies. These Injunctions were addressed to
Homilies. ^^ king's subjccts generally, both clergy and laity,
and their general tendency was to maintain periodical preach-
ing against " the Bishop of Rome's usurped power and juris-
diction," to destroy images which had been abused with
pilgrimages, and all shrines, pictures, and monuments of
superstition. The Gospels and Epistles were to be read in
English, and the litany no longer to be said or sung in
procession, but kneeling. Perhaps one of the most significant
provisions was for an alms-chest to be set near the high altar,
in connection with which the incumbent was to remind his
flock that as they had formerly bestowed much substance,

XIII INJUNCTIONS FORCED ON THE BISHOPS 247

" otherwise than God commanded, upon pardons, pilgrimages,
trentals, decking of images, offering of candles," and other
"blind devotions," they should now be more ready to help
the poor and needy. At the same time, as there was much
uncharitable abuse of priests, the people were ordered to
remember that the priestly office was appointed of God, and
to treat them with due respect. The Book of Homilies was a
collection of twelve discourses, the preparation of which had
been suggested as early as 1542, and a first draft laid by
Cranmer before Convocation next year at the time the book
of " Necessary Doctrine " was published, the object being to
check the extravagance of ignorant preachers ; but it had not
been authorised by Convocation, and it was now put forth
simply by authority of the Council.

Early in September the Protector set out with an army
into Scotland, and met with little resistance till he came
within a few miles of Edinburgh, where he won the
bloody battle of Pinkie on the loth. After ravaging ^"{5°*"
the country he thought it well to return southward.
Meanwhile on the 20th his victory was celebrated in London,
the Bishop of Lincoln (Henry Holbeach, just translated from
Rochester) preaching at St. Paul's, "with a solemn procession
\i.e. litany] kneeling, with their copes in the choir, and after
that Te Deum sung." Next day all the parish churches in
London also ^'kept a solemn procession on their knees in
English, with Te DeumP

It should be remarked, however, that the bishop of the
diocese had been committed to the Fleet Prison two days
before the " procession " at St. Paul's. The general
visitation had begun at Westminster on Septem- Bonner °«>m-
ber 3, where Bishop Thirlby met the royal visitors, th? pfj°
and received the new Injunctions and Homihes.
But two days later, when they came to St. Paul's, Bonner
declared to them, desiring the fact to be registered, that he
received those Injunctions and Homilies under protest that he
would observe them if they were not contrary to God's law
and the ordinances of the Church. For this he was called
before the Council, where he frankly acknowledged that, on
better consideration of his duty of obedience, he considered
his protest unreasonable and of bad example, and desired

248 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

that his revocation of it might be registered as the act itself
had been. It was thought necessary, however, to place such
a dangerous bishop in confinement, where he remained for a
few weeks, till delivered by the general pardon. Meanwhile
all images in St. Paul's and in the London parish churches
were taken down and broken by order of the visitors. The
churches were at the same time white-washed, and the Ten
Commandments written upon the walls.

Bonner's old rival, Gardiner, was also sent to the Fleet just

one week after him, on September 2 5. He, too, was opposed

to the royal visitation, althousrh as yet it had not

Bishop ,,/.,. -1 , 1 1

Gardiner reached his diocese ; and he was also opposed to
^^°' the war with Scotland. He considered for one
thing that the Council were going beyond their powers in
taking steps like these during a minority. Even the Scots
might be left alone till the king came of age. But in matters
of religion, at least, till that time came, " the King's Book "
was the only binding authority. " The King's Book " had
been authorised by Parliament ; the Injunctions were at vari-
ance with it, and Gardiner had seen, to his sorrow, many cases
in which even comphance with a royal command could not
be pleaded in justification of the violation of an Act of Parlia-
ment. The prcBmunire brought to bear, first on Wolsey, and
then on the whole clergy of England, was a strong example.
The Injunctions had no vahdity in law. This was the ground
on which Gardiner mainly took his stand; but he offered frankly
to submit if his objections could be fairly met, repeatedly pro-
posing to discuss the matter in conference. Free discussion,
however, was not intended by the Council. The bishop was
arbitrarily sent to prison, and remained for several weeks in
stifling air, ill fed and out of health, cut off from all inter-
course with the world, and denied, for some time, even the
comfort of a physician to attend to his ailments. Yet even
from his prison he addressed repeated letters to the Protector,
perfectly submissive and respectful in tone, but strongly urging
the danger of the new policy, and criticising the contents of
the Book of Homilies. He found fault chiefly with the homily
on salvation, which was of Cranmer's composition ; on which
Cranmer got him fetched out of prison one day to a confer-
ence at the deanery of St. Paul's. He also criticised very

XIII DISPUTES ABOUT IMAGES 249

severely a translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase on the New
Testament, which was issued along with the Injunctions for
use in churches. He declared it to be simply an abomination,
a bad work in itself, and badly translated besides. Yet it was
to be forced on the country at an expense of thousands of
pounds to its purchasers, the clergy and churchwardens !

To return to the Injunctions. The order for the removal
of images was framed on the same lines as former injunctions.
It was only such images as led to superstition that ^^^ ^^
were to be removed. But there had always been a
strong iconoclastic feeling among certain sections of the com-
munity, and the attempt to observe the distinction between
" abused " images and others was not long kept up. Orders
were indeed given to set up again images that had been
removed, wherever they could be shown not to have been
abused ; but in September, when the Protector was in Scot-
land, this order was suspended till his return, lest the rein-
statement of the images should " engender contention among
the people whether they were abused or no." And disputes
really did take place, though in some places, as at St. Neot's,
it was for not setting the images up again that the king's
commissioners met with rough usage. Nevertheless these
disputes became so frequent — "almost in every place," as we
find it stated — that an order was issued in Council on
February 21 following, for the removal of all images whatever;
and the bishops were enjoined to give effect to a decision
which was declared to be the only way of allaying contention.

Meanwhile Parliament had met in November 1547, while^'^
Bishop Gardiner, who should have attended it, still
remained in prison. It was opened by Lord Rich,
who had recently been made lord chancellor. One of the
first subjects that came before it was the necessity of repeahng
a number of severe laws passed in the late reign. By a large
and comprehensive statute it was ordained that, with some
exceptions contained in the Act itself, nothing g^^^^^
should henceforth be accounted treason that was enactments
not so defined in an Act of Edward III. ; all heresy
Acts from the days of Richard II. were repealed, and all the
new felonies made in the last reign were to lose that character;
the Act of Proclamations too was repealed. But the royal

250 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

supremacy was still guarded by the pains of treason, though
mere words against it no longer incurred the extreme punish-
ment except on a third offence. Further, the horrid Act for
boiling poisoners alive was done away with ; so that really
a very considerable advance was made towards liberty and
humane government.

Then came an Act touching the sacrament, .which stands
first among the statutes of the year. It contained first a
provision against irreverent speaking or disputations on the
subject, which had become very common, enacting that after
May I following these things should be punished with fine
and imprisonment. Then it was ordained that henceforth the
Communion communioH should be administered under both
in both kinds kinds, and denied to no one without lawful cause.
An Act was also passed for the appointment of
bishops by letters-patent without the mockery of a conge d'elire^
and for the holding of bishops' courts henceforward in the
king's name.

One other bill bearing on things ecclesiastical was a natural
sequel to the Act touching chantries passed at the end of the
A new preceding reign. That Act had given King Henry
Chantries' all coUcges, chantries, guilds, and so forth, charge-
able with first-fruits, which had been dissolved by
the acts of alleged founders or patrons taking the property
back into their own hands, and the king was empowered
during his life to direct commissions under the great seal to
take possession. But now that king was dead, and many of
these foundations had not yet been acquired by the Crown.
A more sweeping measure, too, seemed requisite to relieve an
embarrassed treasury, and meet the expenses of the Scottish war
and the danger of hostilities with France. Such, as we know
from an express statement in the Acts of the Privy Council,
was the real object for which the new enactment was pressed.
The preamble, however, says nothing of such purposes, but
refers to the superstitious uses to which chantry funds were
put, suggesting that they might be turned to much better
account in the erection of grammar-schools, augmentation of
universities, and relief of the poor — objects to which, of
course, they were never really applied. The new bill gave to
the Crown all colleges, free chapels, and chantries existing

XIII PARLIAMENT AND CONVOCATION 251

within the last five years, with all their lands and rents, all
endowments for obits or anniversaries, and the property of all
guilds and brotherhoods, from Easter following. It excited
very strong opposition in both Houses, most of the bishops,
including Cranmer, speaking against it in the Lords, while in
the Commons it ran considerable risk of being shipwrecked
altogether, until the burgesses of Lynn and Coventry were
promised by the Protector that, if they would withdraw their
opposition, the important guilds in their constituencies should
have new grants of their lands from the Crown. The bur-
gesses acquiesced, and the Act passed. Moreover, the
government fulfilled its promise. Indeed, we may judge that
they could hardly have done otherwise, seeing that the guild
lands of the town of Lynn were given to maintain the pier
and seabanks, and prevent inundation of the neighbouring
country ; while as to Coventry, the confiscation of the guild
lands of Corpus Christi would simply have been the ruin of
an already decaying city.

The Convocation of Canterbury had met at St. Paul's one
day after the Parliament at Westminster, and its acts, though
in many things fruitless, had undoubtedly no small
bearing on the legislation. Cranmer, in his opening
address, urged the two Houses to consider some mode of
reforming the Church according to scriptural rules. This led
to the remark that the Six Articles stood in the way, and
the repeal of that statute presently met the objection. The -'
Houses set to work in a very admirable spirit, and the arch-
bishop received from the Lower House four petitions of very
weighty import. The first was that, in accordance with the
Statute 35 Hen. VIII. c. 19, the long-deferred commission
of thirty-two persons should be constituted, so that the
Church might no longer remain without definite laws. The
second was that the clergy of the Lower House might be
associated with the House of Commons according to ancient
custom, or else that Acts concerning religion or the interests
of the clergy might not pass in Parliament without their being
heard in the matter. The third was that the books made by
certain prelates and doctors by command of Henry VIII. for
a revision of Church services might be submitted to them ;
and the fourth was that some relief or allowance should be .^,

252 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

made to new incumbents charged with first-fruits. No answer
is recorded to any of these petitions ; but in their fifth and
sixth sittings the Houses agreed unanimously to communion
in both kinds, thus preparing the way for the parliamentary
Act. At their seventh sitting (December 9) the Lower House
became clamorous to know what the bishops were doing with
their petitions, and further, to learn what assurance they
might have for freedom of discussion with a view to the
formation of new canons, seeing that the liberty to make any
had been denied them ever since their submission in 1531.
In their last sitting, which was on December 1 7, they passed
a resolution by 53 to 12 that all laws and canons against the
marriage of the clergy should be declared void ; and a bill to
that effect was actually carried through the Commons, but came
too late before the Lords to pass into a statute this year.

The general visitation which continued while Parliament
was sitting was of course carried on in the spirit of the In-
junctions. The visitors took oaths of allegiance and
"SsitSn renunciation of papal authority, sold the Homilies
and the Paraphrase, and inquired into many things.
Whether the bishops had been too severe in excommunication,
whether the English "procession" was used in churches,
what images, shrines, and monuments of idolatry were left,
and whether the parsons had " the Bible of largest volume "
in their churches, were the principal points. The visitors
doubtless exercised their discretion about some matters, and
there were probably local variations in the injunctions they
gave to clergy and people. Those for the deanery of Don-
caster have been preserved. They order, among other things,
that wakes and " plough Mondays " should be put down
as encouraging idleness and drunkenness, that abrogated
holidays were never to be announced, and that the clergy
should teach their parishioners that fasting in Lent was only
a human institution which might be forborne on account of
sickness or by licence.

In London one result of the labours of the visitors was
that, apparently after they had got rid of other images, one
of Our Lady, " which they of Paul's had lapped in cerecloth "
and hidden in a corner of the cathedral, was brought to light
and placed before the pulpit at Paul's Cross to give effect to

xiii GROWTH OF IRREVERENCE 2-53

a sermon which Bishop Barlow preached against idolatry on
November 27, the first Sunday of Advent. This image,
however, formed but a secondary object on the occasion ; for
the bishop was able also to exhibit for general execration " a
picture {i.e. image) of the Resurrection of Our Lord made with
vices, which put out his legs of sepulchre, and blessed with
his hand and turned his head " — something of the same old
childish kind as the Rood of Boxley. The day, no doubt,
had come for putting away childish things, and "after the
sermon," as the chronicler goes on to say, " the boys broke
the idols in pieces."

Another result of the visitation, which was not confined
to London, seems to have been to stir up a great deal more
questioning and disputation in the community than the
government found it easy to deal with. High and low views
of the sacrament were declared from different pulpits ; curious
and by no means reverent questions were raised as to the
manner of the Presence in the Eucharist ; the matter was
further discussed in alehouses ; the host was nicknamed by
some "Round Robin" and " Jack-in-the-Box" ; rhymes,
ballads, and every form of vulgarity were used to degrade the
most sacred rite of Christianity. The London 'prentice boys,
too, hustled priests in the city and Westminster Hall, and
plucked from them their caps and tippets. Orders in council
were issued against these abuses; and on December 27 a
proclamation was issued that neither party should preach
about the sacrament anything not contained expressly in
Scripture till the king, by the advice of his council and clergy,
should define the doctrine, and what forms of words might be
safely used about it.

On New Year's Day 1548, which was a Sunday that year,
Latimer's voice, long silenced, was heard once more at
Paul's Cross, and he continued to preach there on .
other Sundays that month. He also preached on preaches at
Wednesday the i8th, in the place called " the ^^"^'' ^'■°''-
Shrouds " outside the Cathedral, his famous sermon " of the
Plough." In this he denounced the evils of the time, one
of which he considered to be "unpreaching prelates," and
declared the devil to be the most industrious preacher in
England. But he also inveighed very strongly against the

254 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap

widespread corruption and fraud which were undermining
social life and government. Nor was he less outspoken on
this subject when in the following Lent he was invited to
preach before the king at St. James's, and had a pulpit set
up for him. But while Latimer's tongue was loosened, Bishop
Gardiner was not so free to speak his mind. On January
8 he was brought before the Protector and Council and
informed that his offences were remitted by the general
pardon. But it was not without " a good lesson and admoni-
tion " that he was discharged from prison ; and his libera-
tion, after all, was only temporary, as it was not intended,
apparently, to give him real freedom.

There now came a rush of proclamations touching religion,
partly conservative in tendency, but mainly otherwise. On

January i6 one was issued in view of the coming
Prociama- Lent, regretting that the king's subjects, now that

they had a more perfect and clear light of the
Gospel, did not increase in good works, but despised fasting,
prayer, and alms ; for though the king did not wish them
to regard days and meats as differing in holiness, yet he
desired the old days and times to be observed, both that
men might subdue their bodies and that the industry of
fishing might be maintained for the good of the common-
wealth. All persons, therefore, unless excused by law or
licensed by authority, were enjoined under pain of imprison-
ment to observe the old fast days. On the 27 th, however,
Cranmer intimated to the Bishop of London that it was

ordered in council that no candles should hence-
abio ated ^^^^^ t)e bome on Candlemas Day, nor ashes on

Ash Wednesday, nor palms on Palm Sunday. But
immediately following this, on February 6, came another order
in council forbidding other innovations in church services
which individual clergymen had introduced on their own
responsibility. Nothing was to be changed or omitted by
any clergyman on pain of imprisonment, except the candles,
ashes, and palms just mentioned, and the old ceremonies of
creeping to the cross and taking holy bread and holy water,
the omission of which had been authorised by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Then came on February 2 1 the order,
already mentioned, for the complete removal of images, which

XIII ORDER OF COMMUNION 255

the archbishop intimated by a letter to the Bishop of London
on the 24th.

On March 8 was pubKshed a little book (or pamphlet, rather,
for it consisted of ten leaves only) setting forth the " Order of
Communion " as it was henceforth to be administered
under the new Act of Parliament. This was pre- commun?on.
faced by a royal proclamation to give it validity, as
it was to come into use at the approaching Easter, that is to
say, on April i ; on which day, accordingly, English services
began at St. Paul's and other churches. The Latin mass,
however, was neither abrogated nor superseded ; it was for the
present to go on as usual, the new ritual being only for the
communion of the laity, and the book itself expressly enjoin-
ing the priest to use the old office as heretofore " without the
varying of any other rite or ceremony," except that he was to
bless "the biggest chalice" or some "cup or cups full of wine
with some water put into it ; and that day " {i.e. when there was
a communion) " not drink it all up himself." In short, the
new "order" consisted simply of prefatory exhortations and
a general confession and prayers to be said after the priest's
mass, with a form for administering to the laity in English
whenever there was a general communion. And of every such
occasion notice was to be given beforehand on the first Sunday
or holiday preceding, or at least one day before, with a set
admonition to the congregation how to prepare themselves for
it. The most notable feature in the new service was the
general confession, which was intended, as declared in the
book itself, to supersede the necessity of private confession
and absolution of the individual, wherever he himself was
content not to be shriven. The new order was thus calcu-
lated to cause the least possible disturbance in the minds of
persons content with the old ritual, while making an important
concession to those who disliked the confessional. The form
was essentially that laid down in the celebrated Co7isultation
of Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, which had just
recently been translated into English.

Cranmer was no doubt preparing the way for something
more than this about the time that he got Parliament to
sanction communion in both kinds ; for it must have been
then, or immediately after, that he circulated among some

256 EDWARD Vl. AND PROT'ECTOR SOMERSET chap.

leading bishops and divines a set of eleven questions bearing
upon the sacrament of the altar, judiciously arranged so as to
obtain as large a basis of agreement among different schools as
possible. On the first question, for instance, Bonner, Heath,
Thirlby, and Tunstall were quite in agreement with him, that
the sacrament was not instituted to be received by one man
for another. On the other points, especially the third question,
concerning the nature of the oblation of Christ in the mass,
there was naturally some divergence of views ; but the later
questions were mainly historical and questions partly of ex-
pediency as to special customs, such as priests receiving alone,
masses satisfactory, and reservation. The first series of ques-
tions was then followed by a second, and afterwards by a third ;
which at least revealed to Cranmer how much sympathy he
might expect in promoting changes.

Shortly after this the general order for the removal of

images produced a revolt in Cornwall, where one of the royal

agents named William Body was stabbed by a priest

Comwin. i" taking them down. Disaffection had further been
promoted by rumours of new taxation on weddings,
christenings, and burials. The disturbance, however, was
easily quelled, and a general pardon was issued to the rebels
on May 17, on the ground that they had been misled by
false rumours. Over thirty persons, however, were excepted by
name, and their fate was a warning against rebellion. But the
Council, too, had received a warning not to proceed too fast,
and further proclamations seemed to show that they had taken
it to heart. On April 24 one was issued inhibiting all preach-
ing, except that of the Homilies, by other than licensed preachers,
the reason given for its issue being that indiscreet and mali-
cious priests had spread the rumours just referred to. But on
May 23 the Protector found it necessary to address a circular
letter even to the Hcensed preachers, exhorting them not to
stir the people to further innovations, but to rebuke those who
would make changes of their own mind without authority.
It was no easy matter, however, if such was really the inten-
tion, to keep all the licensed preachers within the

^eJchiS^ bounds of law. One of them, named Thomas

Hancock, has left a written account of himself, by

which it seems that in the first year of King Edward he preached

XIII PREACHING AGAINST ORDERS ENCOURAGED 257

at his native place of Christchurch (in Bishop Gardiner's
diocese, and probably when the bishop was in prison), using in
his sermon a favourite argument, that the host could not be God
because God was invisible, and that to kneel before it was
horrible idolatry. This argument he repeated at Salisbury after
the proclamation against giving nicknames to the sacrament;
but in spite of warning he declared the host to be an idol. At
the assizes the lord chief justice compelled him to find ten
sureties of ;^io apiece with his own recognisance oi £,^0 for
future obedience to the law ; but he immediately rode from
Salisbury to the Duke of Somerset at Sion and persuaded him
to give an order for the discharge of his sureties. He took
the letter in triumph to the chief justice at Southampton, and
would have mounted the pulpit there, but the chief justice
objected, and the mayor persuaded Hancock to allow another
to preach. This substitute, whose name was Griffith, challenged
the chief justice to his face for allowing images in the church,
and ^'the idol," meaning the host, to hang as of old by a
string over the altar.

One might have supposed that cases like this fairly justified
a new proclamation issued on September 23, inhibiting even
the licensed preachers from preaching anything but the en-
joined Homilies till some further order should be taken for the
settlement of controversies ; with which object, it appears,
there was then a conference of bishops and divines going on
at Chertsey Abbey. But what good was it ordering fanatics to
keep within bounds ? It may not, indeed, have been for them
that the proclamation was intended. Hancock soon after
settled at Poole, where he again, after interfering with the ser-
vices on All Souls' Day, got a letter from the Protector " for
his quietness in preaching of God's word " ; and at Poole he
remained a "minister" till the end of Edward's reign.

In short, it was Henry VIII.'s old policy over again,
pursued a little further. Heresies were encouraged under-
hand ; and bishops, who ought to have restrained heretics, were
themselves restrained if they wished to fulfil the old notions of
episcopal duty. Most of them, indeed, were not eager to do
so further than they were permitted ; for the greater number
now had been appointed under royal supremacy, and all were
naturally disposed to yield much deference to those who ruled

258 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

the State. But there was one among them who at least
required legality as his guide and not mere arbitrary
Gardiner, commands ; and the attitude of Gardiner continued
to be a source of perplexity to the Council. On his
release from the Fleet in January he was given to understand
that he would now be expected to conform like others to the
Injunctions and Homilies, and a paper was delivered to him
on which he was required to give his opinion a few days
after in writing, being told at the same time that he must not
think of altering the form, as it was agreed to by other learned
men. He wrote his opinion accordingly, and as it was not
the opinion wanted he was committed this time to his own
house as a prisoner. To influence him, Nicholas Ridley, who
had not long before been made Bishop of Rochester, was
sent to him, and afterwards Master Thomas Smith and one
William Cecil, whose great abilities Somerset had already
detected. In Lent he was allowed to visit his cathedral
city, but soon after was forced to surrender his master-
ship of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He then received a new
summons to appear before the Council, but ill health pre-
vented his compliance till Whitsuntide, when he came up
to London in a horse-litter. It was alleged afterwards, though
the charge was utterly untrue, that on returning to his diocese
he had caused his servants to be secretly armed ; and further
(which was rather more plausible), that he had forestalled some
preachers sent to his diocese by going into the pulpit himself
and warning the people in his sermon against unknown
preachers of novelties. But it was not for these things that
he was now to answer before the Council. A number of other
charges were brought against him, chiefly of disobedience to
new orders touching ritual and preaching. Some of these he
declared to be untrue, saying that the Council had been mis-
informed, while in other cases the thing complained of was
not against any positive order at all. He had at once, when
so ordered, discontinued the use of candles on Candlemas
Day, the bearing of palms on Palm Sunday, and the creeping
to the cross on Good Friday ; but he had kept up the
" sepulchre " at Easter, and said he thought it would be wrong
to do otherwise, as it was even against the king's proclamation
to make any unauthorised change.

XIII GARDINER'S SERMON 259

Other charges were then brought up against him, which he
seems to have answered not less effectually — one of them
being that he had said in preaching, with a too significant
emphasis, that " the Apostles went from the presence of the
Council — of the Council — of the Council." This iteration he
absolutely denied, declaring it was not his habit of preaching.
But the Council were not satisfied, and the Protector told him
he must tarry in London. He said he was willing to obey
their pleasure, but hoped, as he was no offender, that he
might have some country house not far off to retire to,
suggesting that he might borrow the use of Esher, a former
residence of the Bishops of Winchester within their diocese,
which he had been compelled to surrender to the rapacity of
Henry VIH. The Protector said if he had a country house
he would willingly lend it him. In the end he was required
to make a written statement of his views about ceremonies
and send it to the Protector. Dismissed for a time to his
own house, he was afterwards desired, through Cecil, who visited
him on the part of Somerset, to preach before the king, and to
give in a written copy of his sermon beforehand. To this he
objected, as it was treating him like a culprit, and the Council
had not convicted him of anything wrong. He was then
called to a conference with Somerset on the Hmits of episcopal
authority, and told the duke he was willing to discuss the
matter with his legal advisers. To this, however, Somerset
objected j and that same afternoon, when Gardiner complained
to Mr. Smith of the demand that he should write his sermon,
the latter told him it was only desired that he should speak of
the subjects specified. Gardiner agreed to do so willingly,
adding that he thought he could conscientiously say what ought
to give satisfaction ; and Somerset himself, to whose presence
he was brought again, agreed to this understanding. There
were, indeed, minor subjects in the programme which Gardiner
said that he should pass by ; but to this no objection was
made, and the Protector gave him leave to choose the day
on which he should preach.

He chose St. Peter's Day, June 29 ; but some days before
he received visits from Cecil, who tried to extract pledges from
him as to what he would say, and urged him particularly not
to speak of the sacrament or the mass. " At least, not doubtful

26o EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

matters," he added, when he saw that Gardiner was displeased
with the suggestion : and on Gardiner asking what doubtful
matters, he replied, " Transubstantiation." Gardiner
troubiedTn told him hc had specially promised to speak of
to^^each • ^^ Hiass and would fulfil his pledge ; as to transub-
stantiation, Cecil evidently did not know what he
meant, but he would speak of " the very presence " of Christ's
body and blood in the sacrament which was the Catholic
faith, and no doubtful matter. Next day, which was the day
before that appointed for the sermon, he received in the after-
noon a letter signed by Somerset which gave him great
disquietude. It was an express command to forbear from
treating of matters which remained in controversy among the
learned about the sacrament, as it might occasion disturbance,
and it was proposed ere long to settle them " by public
doctrine and authority." The bishop neither ate nor drank
that night, nor rested in bed, nor broke his fast next day till
he had delivered his sermon before the king. There was
really little controversy then among learned Englishmen on
such matters ; but after painful study the bishop believed he
had found a way to do what was required of him,
and he had a very patient hearing from a large
assembly. Then he returned home and dined at the late
hour of five, persuading himself that he had given satisfaction ;
but on the afternoon of the following day, while
?o the Tower, making merry with friends, he was waited on by
two gentlemen and a company of the guard, who
conveyed him to the Tower.

The justification for this arrest given by the Council, for
their own satisfaction and that of foreign courts, appears in
, their records under date. Briefly it was — first, that
defence of Gardiner alone had refused obedience to the king's
their conduct, ^.g-^^^-^^ and iujunctious, which might have occa-
sioned trouble in the realm ; for this, however, he had only
been for a time " sequestered to the Fleet," where (it was most
falsely declared) he had been as much at ease as if he had been
in his own house. Then he had been set at liberty to repair
to his diocese, where he began to set forth matters again to
engender strife, and had caused more contention " in that one
small city and shire than was almost in the whole realm." Next

XIII GARDINER COMMITTED TO THE TOWER 261

came the stories of his arming his servants and forestalling
the preachers sent by the Council. Afterwards, being sent
for, the Council had left him at liberty on a second promise
of conformity, only willing him to remain in his house in
London, because they thought it meet to sequester him for a
time from his diocese. At his house he began " to ruffle and
meddle in matters wherein he had neither commission nor
authority." Then he offered to declare his conformity to the
world in a sermon, but on the day appointed he "most
arrogantly and disobediently, and that in the presence of his
Majesty, their grace and lordships, and of such an audience
as the like whereof hath not lightly been seen," spoke of
certain matters contrary to an express commandment given to
him on the king's behalf, and used such a manner of utterance
as was like to have stirred a great tumult. So, to check his
arrogance, as past clemency had been fruitless, it was deter-
mined that he should be committed to the Tower.

At this time there were troubles within the kingdom and
without. Somerset's commission about enclosures on June 2
was an attempt to remedy crying grievances, which apparently
brought upon its author the illwill of some of his fellow-
councillors. In Scotland the war was again active, and little
Queen Mary was conveyed securely away to France to be
married ten years later to the Dauphin. But it concerns our
purpose more to remember the famous Interim imposed at
this time by Charles V. on his German subjects as a temporary
settlement in religious matters until controversies should be
more fully decided by the Council of Trent. It was pro-
mulgated in July, the very month of Gardiner's committal to
the Tower, and was resented by both parties. One result
was that many Lutheran divines migrated from Germany into
England, where they v/ere received with favour and influenced
the Protector's counsels. But of this hereafter.

With Cranmer's aid the Protector was already intent on
bringing about a change in the whole of the Church's ritual.
This was evidently the thing foreshadowed in his letter to
Gardiner the day before Gardiner's sermon, and we can to
some extent trace the progress of the idea. On September 4
the Protector wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,
commanding him, until such time as a general order could be

262 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

taken for the whole realm, to use in college chapels the same
ritual in mass, matins, and evensong as was used in the king's
chapel. Thus it would seem that the Chapel Royal had already
adopted an order of its own, in which compline was omitted,
and perhaps the other services were not unlike those of the
First Book of Common Prayer, the preparation of which, if
not already begun, was set on foot very soon after.
^Book oF'^ As the young king himself noted in his journal, " a
Edward \ I. j^^j^i^gj. Qf bishops and learned men gathered
together in Windsor " composed a uniform order of prayer,
which was soon afterwards laid before Parliament and received
the sanction of law. The bishops and divines, however, seem
to have met first at Chertsey Abbey. For a new proclama-
tion was issued on September 23 inhibiting all preaching
whatever on account of the violent controversies then raging,
until " certain bishops and learned men " assembled by the
king's command had taken order therein ; and the Grey
Friars^ Chromde says that those bishops met at Chertsey
Abbey. It was time to do something, for there was actual
fighting inside St. Paul's and other London churches on the
question whether there should be any mass or no.

Parliament met again after prorogation on November 24,

and soon proceeded to discuss bills for the marriage of

priests, one of which passed the Commons with ease,

of^riS! but only got through the Lords in Februar}^, when

authorised. -^ receivcd the royal assent. On December 14,

however, the draft of the new prayer-book was brought into

the House of Lords, and a long and fervid discussion arose,

to listen to which the Commons flocked to the galleries. In

this discussion it was revealed for the first time that Cranmer

had given up the belief in transubstantiation. The book was

finally authorised by a statute — the first Act of Uniformity —

which was passed on January 21, 1549.

Just before this, on January 18, the Protector's brother,
Lord Seymour of Sudeley, was committed to the Tower
ioT treason, and Parliament was called on, before
Lord Seymour it was prorogued, to pass an Act of attainder
of Sudeley. ^g^jj^gt him. Under which he was beheaded on
March 20. A bold and reckless character, his ambition had
already led him on a dangerous course when, within a few

XIII FOREIGN DIVINES COME TO ENGLAND 263

short weeks of the death of Henry VIII., he secretly married
the king's widow, Katharine Parr. But the story of his
turbulence, profligacy, and corruption need not be reported
here.

In April there arrived from Strassburg, unable to endure
the Intei'-im^ the German theologians, Bucer and Fagius,
who were welcomed by Cranmer to Lambeth. Fagius, an
eminent Hebraist, died shortly afterwards at Cambridge ; and
there Bucer after a time was made regius professor .

^ c js Forei£;n

of divinity. The hke professorship at Oxford was divines in
already held by another foreigner, the Italian "^^" "
Vermigli, better known by his first two names of Peter
Martyr, who had come over in 1547 at Cranmer's invitation
with his countryman and ally, Bernardin Ochino. To Ochino,
who had once been a Capuchin friar, the archbishop gave
a prebend in his cathedral at Canterbury. Cranmer was
constantly inviting foreign divines to England to assist in
a new religious settlement. Peter Alexander of Aries, who
had been chaplain to Mary of Hungary, came also in 1547
to share his hospitality at Lambeth, and to receive English
benefices. Next year came John a Lasco, the Pole, on his
first visit. Nor was it for want of pressing that Melanchthon
himself was not induced to make his abode in England.
Several other Germans besides Bucer and Fagius came over in
1549. These foreigners differed from each other even on the
sacrament, about which Bucer maintained a higher view than
Peter Martyr. But Bucer's aid against transubstantiation was
much wanted, and Peter Martyr himself, before Bucer came
to England, wished for his presence there, confessing in
private correspondence that those who possessed any learning
in the country were almost entirely opposed to what he called
religion. The real theologians in England still stood upon
the ancient ways ; and it may be remarked that Peter Martyr's
predecessor in the chair of divinity at Oxford was Dr. Richard
Smith, whose recantation at Paul's Cross had been followed
by a return to the old theology, and he had, in consequence,
been ousted from his professorship.

In fact, the measures taken at this time to revolutionise
religious teaching at the universities were most energetic, x^
royal visitation of both universities was ordc:red in the spring

264 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

and summer. The commission for the Cambridge visitation

had been issued as early as November 12, 1548; that for

Oxford only on May 8, 1549. But both visitations

Visitation , .,, -,1, rj

of the began m May, and the very large powers conferred
universities. ^^^^ |.j^g visitors for Converting endowments to
other uses were such as to amaze even Bishop Ridley, who
was one of their number, and whose name was on both
commissions.

At Oxford, the heads of houses forbade their scholars to
attend Peter Martyr's lectures; and when he came to the
subject of the Lord's Supper, papers were set on church doors

challenging a disputation with him. This he
^itSfolT^ affected, at first, to be quite willing to encounter ;

but when pressed after his lecture, he required time
to prepare, though the subject was precisely what he had
been lecturing about, and then said he could not undertake it
without the king's leave, as it would tend to sedition. At
last matters were arranged in a form that he could agree to.
On May 17 he set up a "provocation" at St. Mary's,
supported by the presence of the university visitors, who
appointed the 28 th for the disputation. Dr. Smith mean-
while, suspecting unfairness, had absconded; but his place
was taken first by Dr. Tresham, and on subsequent days by
Dr. Chedsey and by Morgan Philipps. The disputation was
concluded by an oration of the chancellor on the 31st, and
the general impression seems to have been that Peter had the
worst of it, but that he was supported by authority ; for he
would have broken down more than once had he not been
backed up by Dr. Cox, Dean of Christchurch. Of course,
it would have looked ill if Peter Martyr had been silenced,
for he had just before preached the opening sermon at the
visitation on May 24, the visitation itself having been
suspended till the disputation should be got over ! It was
resumed on June 4, and resulted in the imposition of \vhat
are known as the Edwardine Statutes, "whereby," as the
university historian tells us, " the whole frame of the govern-
ment was altered." There was also a plentiful expulsion
of orthodox preachers and scholastic disputants, whose places
were filled by Calvinists.

At Cambridge, on the other hand, there was certainly

XIII GREAT CHANGES AT THE UNIVERSITIES 265

much to amend, if the visitors were so indined. " It would
pity a man's heart," said Latimer, preaching before the king
on April 6, just before the visitation, "to hear what I
hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I
cannot tell. There be few that study divinity, but so many
as of necessity must furnish the colleges, for their livings be
so small and victuals so dear that they tarry not there, but
go everywhere to seek livings, and so they go about. Now
there be a few gentlemen, and they study a Uttle divinity.
Alas ! what is that ? " Poor men required aid to study, for
there were only great men's sons in colleges, and these were
not intended to be preachers. On the 8th the king gave the
university a body of new statutes, but they were only pro-
mulgated just before the visitation, which was begun on
May 6 and continued through the month. Dis-
putations were appointed to show that transub- Cambridge.
stantiation had neither scriptural nor patristic
authority in its favour, and that the Lord's Supper was no
sacrifice but only a remembrance of His death. These
took place on June 20, 24, and 25 ; and on the 30th
Bishop Ridley, who had given most able support to Dr.
Madew in the intellectual combat, preached on the same
subject at St. Mary's. The visitation terminated on July 4,
the visitors leaving behind them a set of injunctions. Bishop
Ridley, it may be observed, wrote during this visitation to the
Protector protesting against an instruction to unite Clare Hall
with Trinity Hall, as it would divert to the study of mere
human lav/ a college founded for the study of God's Word.
But he received a sharp answer, and after some correspondence
consented to the disendowment of Clare Hall. The proposed
fusion, however, was averted after all, apparently on the re-
monstrance of the imprisoned Bishop Gardiner, who was still
Master of Trinity Hall, though soon afterwards deposed.

Such were the means used to degrade university teaching,
and to set forth new doctrines supported by royal authority.
Some, indeed, declined to acknowledge as royal authority the
formal acts affecting religion passed during the king's minority.
But there could be no doubt of the effect on the religion of
the people when doctrines of scholastic origin were discredited
at the universities, and the government used other means to

266 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

promote the revolution than those which they could openly
avow. English books and pamphlets which had been printed
abroad, and forbidden at home during the reign of Henry
VIIL, began to be imported not long after his death.
From Zurich came translations of the confession of Zwingli ;
from Bale violent attacks upon the mass. The press in
England, too, was free — at least to the enemies of old
beliefs. Tyndale's New Testament was widely spread by
the efforts of the Privy Council, v/hile pamphlets of the
most scurrilous kind against the old religion had the freest
possible vent. On the other hand, the votaries of that
religion had generally to go abroad to find printers, for at
home they might meet with interference. The government
really wanted argument on one side only ; and it is past a
doubt that they favoured indirectly the spread of a kind of
literature which they professed openly to condemn.

If his own reckless brother had been a danger to the
Protector, there was no lack of other dangers besides. The
alliance of France and Scotland was never more menacing to
England, with the infant Queen of Scots now in France,
betrothed to the Dauphin, and the French king, Henry 11. ,
intent on the recovery of Boulogne. The country, too, was
still unquiet about enclosures, and the new prayer-book
furnished an additional grievance. Yet the Protector was at
this very time building his magnificent palace of Somerset
House out of the materials of a cloister at St. Paul's and the
church of St. Mary-le-Strand, both of which he demolished
for the very purpose. Popular commotions took

Insurrections . ;. ^ . ^ . . '■ . ^^ . , , .

in various place m districts wide apart — m Hertfordshire,
Somerset, and Lincolnshire ; then in Devonshire
and Cornwall ; in Gloucestershire, Wilts, Hants, Sussex,
and Surrey ; in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckingham-
shire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire ; in
Norfolk, Sufi"olk, Essex, and Kent, and also far away in
Yorkshire. Special watch had to be kept at the gates of
London itself, and special orders given for the defence of the
city. Then, in addition to domestic troubles,
France France declared war upon Endand in August and

declares war. r o o

won Ambleteuse, called by the English Newhaven,
near Boulogne.

XIII COMMOTIONS 267

The domestic disturbances arose chiefly from social causes.
Enclosures were an old evil, but they had much increased
since great lords had received large grants of abbey-lands, and
sought to make the utmost profit of them by enclosing
commons on which tenants had been wont to pasture their
cattle. This alone had helped to increase the cost of living,
for poor tenants were forced to sell the cattle which they
could not graze, and the grantees made further profits in
selling the fed animals to the butchers. Somerset's proclama-
tion and commission against enclosures had evidently been of
little effect, except to show that grievances had some chance
of a hearing. These movements were animated by no disloyal
spirit. Even Kett's rebelHon in Norfolk, the most
formidable of them all, was really a very orderly ^gbeiUon.
movement, seeking redress for injustice and ad-
mitted hardships. How Kett made his camp on Household
Hill, overlooking Norwich; how he kept his court there
for the discussion of grievances at "the Oak of Reforma-
tion"; how he drove the Marquess of Northampton and
his forces out of the city, and how at last Warwick quelled
the movement, with the aid of Italian mercenaries, in
the bloody battle of Dussindaie, may be read in other
histories. The rising in the West, which was earlier in
date, was more distinctly connected with religion, and
demands more special treatment here ; for Kett's followers
accepted the religious innovations, and many of them wanted
more. But it was otherwise in Devonshire.

By the Act of Uniformity the new prayer-book came into
use on Whitsunday, June 9 ; and however unpleasing the
change may have been to many, there was really
little in it to which even good CathoHcs could ^hej^gton
object, except things omitted, unless it was the
authority by which it was imposed. But on Whitmonday,
the day after its first use at Sampford Courtenay, the
parishioners compelled their parish priest to return to the
old ritual. They would have no alteration of religion till the
king was of full age. Local justices remonstrated, but to
no effect. The men of Sampford Courtenay advanced to
Crediton, while a rising took place in Cornwall besides. The
gentry, half sympathising with the remonstrants, did nothing

268 EDWARD VL AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap,

to check the movement. The Protector ordered two gentle-
men of the west country, Sir Peter and Sir Gawain Carew, to
go down and pacify the people by forwarding their complaints
to the Council. He also commissioned Coverdale and other
preachers to go down and preach obedience. The Carews
reached Exeter and hastened to Crediton, where they found that
the malcontents had barricaded the roads and fortified them-
selves in barns. The barns were set on fire and the men
driven off, but the burning of the barns and the menacing
speeches of some against old religious usages only increased
the mischief. Clist St. Mary next offered a troublesome
opposition, and by and by the country-people formed the siege
of Exeter. Lord Russell had been sent after the Carews to
strengthen them, but Sir Peter had to go to him in Somerset
and warn him of the state of the country, and Russell sent
him on to the Council to represent matters to them. The
Protector, who had expected gentle measures to suffice,
was angry at the burning of the barns ; and though Sir
Peter justified what he had done by his commission signed
by the king himself, Chancellor Rich declared it was no
sufficient authority, as it was not under the great seal. Sir
Peter, however, protested against this unreasonable contention,
and was sent back by the Council with promise of effective
support. Exeter stood a five weeks' siege, and was at last
relieved by Russell on August 6.

The malcontents, meanwhile, had sent up their demands

to the Council, as required. They were drawn up in sixteen

^ , articles, all showing a dislike of innovation and

Demands .'^. . , ,

of the distrust of the existmg government. ihey would
insurgents. ^^2^1^ ^^ dccrces of all general councils observed ;
the Act of the Six Articles revived ; the Latin mass celebrated
by the priest without any one communicating along with
him \ the sacrament hung over the high altar as before,
and delivered to the laity only at Easter, and then only
in one kind. Priests should administer baptism at all
times, week-days as well as holidays. They would have
holy bread and holy water, palms and ashes as before, and
images set up again. They would not have the new service
in English, as it was " but like a Christmas game " ; souls
in purgatory should be prayed for ; the English Bible should

XIII DEMANDS OF THE WESTERN INSURGENTS 269

be called in again. Two of their divines, who seem to have
then been in custody, they desired to be sent down to them
in safety. They wished Cardinal Pole to be sent for from
Rome, and admitted as first or second of the king's council.
Then followed articles for limiting the number of servants a
gentleman should keep according to his income j for refound-
ing two chief abbeys in every county ; for a safe-conduct to
Humphrey Arundel and the Mayor of Bodmin to show the
king further ; and for four lords, eight knights, twelve esquires,
and twenty yeomen to remain pledges with them till these
petitions were granted by Parliament.

These were bold demands, and in some things tended
really to the perpetuation of old abuses ; for it is clear that
lay communion was at this time very rare, and that the people
left their religion too entirely to the priesthood as a thing to
be done by deputy. To demand that the priest should
receive alone except at Easter was really a violation of old
Church principles, which required laymen to communicate at
least three times a year. On the other hand, strange as it
may seem to the modern reader, the revival of the Act of
the Six Articles would have been welcomed as tending to
religious quiet. And this, no doubt, was the feeling of many
good men, and, among the rest, of Cardinal Pole, whose
recall from Rome was so eagerly desired ; for Pole considered
that Act the very best thing that Henry VHI. had ever done.
The articles of the insurgents, in fact, expressed such a wide-
spread feeling that Cranmer was called upon to answer them,
which he did with the skill and clearness of view that might
have been expected, but not without some browbeating and
lecturing of the petitioners on their folly and presumption.
~ - The reference to Cardinal Pole in their demands suggests
a word or two about his position in exile. We have seen
that he was excepted from the general pardon
at the beginning of the reign. He had been one ^p^j'^''^'
of the three legates appointed by Paul HI. to
open the Council of Trent, but had been obliged by
his health to withdraw to Padua, and afterwards to return to
Rome, where he heard of the death of Henry VI H. His
first desire was to reclaim his native country from schism, for
which object he hoped the pope would send legates to the

270 EDWARD VL AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

emperor and to France ; and he wrote to the Privy Council
urging that reconciliation with the See of Rome was a first
condition of stable government. Henry VIII. , he urged, would
have been deprived of his kingdom by the pope if other
princes had agreed to execute the sentence, and the possibility
of such a thing seemed greater now if his son were trained to
walk in the same paths as his father. The Council, however,
would not even see Pole's messenger; but in spite of this
and further discouragement he wrote again on April 6 of this
year, 1549, by special messengers, both to Somerset and to
Warwick, offering, if they would not admit his return to
England, to repair to the neighbourhood of the English
Channel to a conference on points of difference. The Pro-
tector sent him a rude reply, taxing him with presumption in
offering a place of conference to his own king or to his com-
missioners, showering contempt on the papal authority which
England had so long forsaken, and making light of the
national dangers of which Pole had warned him. Somerset,
at the same time, sent the cardinal a copy of the new prayer-
book approved by Parliament, to show that religion was by
no means despised in England, but was well cared for by the
government. Pole replied in a very long letter on September 7,
to which he added a postscript on hearing of the rebellions
in Norfolk and the West of England, which seemed to him an
ample justification of all that he had written.

The Council, no doubt, felt that it would be expedient, if

possible, to use suasion as well as force to allay tumults ; and

they desired Bonner, as Bishop of London, to

Bonner aSced prcach at Paul's Cross on the unlawfulness of

^alafns"? rebellion. Bonner's authority would go for much,

rebellion. ^^^^ siucc his submission to the royal visitation, the

Council thought they might rely on his tractability. He had

acquiesced hitherto in all that was enjoined about candles

and ashes, the communion service, and the like ; and he had

lately received commandment to abate some services, named

the Apostles' Mass and Our Lady's Mass, still kept up in his

cathedral, and to forbid communion at any but the high

altar there, which orders he had duly passed on to the dean

for execution. He had also taken submissively a rebuke

addressed, not to him alone, but to the other bishops as well,

XIII PROCEEDINGS AGAINST BONNER 271

for negligence in enforcing the use of tiie new service-book.
Ot course, he could have no difficulty in preaching against
rebellion, but, as in the case of Gardiner, the Council insisted
on dictating to him beforehand what he should say. They
drew up in four articles " special points " that he was to treat
of in his sermon. Like Gardiner, however, he took his own
line. Preaching before a very large audience on September i,
he spoke much of the Real Presence ; and though he insisted
strongly on the duty of allegiance, he omitted entirely to speak
of one of the four articles laid down for him — namely, to
declare the king's authority of no less validity in his early
years than if he were thirty or forty years old. On this he
was at once denounced by John Hooper and William Latimer
(Master of the College of St. Laurence Pountney), and a
commission was issued to examine him. Cranmer, Ridley
(Bishop of Rochester), Secretary Petre, and Dr. May, dean
of his own cathedral, were the commissioners before whom
the case was opened; in addition to whom, at the second
sitting, appeared the king's other secretary, Sir Thomas Smith.
Bonner at once put in a protestation against the competence
of the tribunal. He knew both Latimer and Hooper to be
heretics, and that the latter, on the very day of
his public sermon, had dared to preach within his examination.
diocese an opposite doctrine of the sacrament pur-
posely to contradict him. It was something new appointing
heretics to examine bishops ; the contrary course had hitherto
been the custom. But, the doctrine of the sacrament being
thus mentioned, Cranmer interposed some remarks far from
reverent about it, which Bonner declared himself sorry to
hear. There are, doubtless, not many who have read through
the whole process of the examination in Foxe's Acts and
Momtments. But if any one, neglecting the martyrologist's
irrelevant gibes, will take the trouble to go through the whole
carefully, he will find the following conclusions pretty well
established. First, that Bonner was animated by no spirit of
disobedience, but fairly intended to comply with all that was
required of him. Second, that the article which he had omitted
was not at first included in the paper delivered to him, but
was a mere after-thought added to it by Sir Thomas Smith
by the Protector's command. Third, that his omission to

272 EDWARD VI. AND PROTECTOR SOMERSET chap.

touch upon the point was really accidental, for he had meant
to speak about it, and had collected a number of notes as to
historical cases of kings under age, and the allegiance due to
them ; but having accidentally dropped these notes, and being
asked further to declare from the pulpit the contents of a
lengthy bill put into his hands, reporting the victories gained
over the rebels in Norfolk and Devonshire, the point of the
king's authority during his nonage had slipped his memory.
And finally, it would seem that the real object of this
irregular and unjust prosecution was simply to deprive a
bishop who was so strong an upholder of the still recognised
doctrine of transubstantiation. The whole case was pre-
judged, and, in spite of several appeals which he made to
the king and the lord chancellor, sentence of deprivation was
passed against Bonner on October i, and he was committed
a prisoner to the Marshalsea.

Just four days after this, the Protector was taken thoroughly

by surprise. He issued letters in the king's name dated

October 5, calling upon all loyal subjects to defend the persons

of the king and himself against a dangerous conspiracy.

Warwick had just recently come back from subduing the

Norfolk rebels, and had the Council at his command. The

Council next day sent for the lord mayor and had London

at theirs. The Protector fled from Hampton Court to

Arrest of the Wiudsor. On the 7th he was proclaimed a traitor,

Duke of and the special watch at the gates of London,

which had been suspended since September 10,

was begun again. On the 14th Somerset was brought from

Windsor and lodged in the Tower.

Authorities. — Wriothesley's Chronicle; Grey Friars' Chronicle;
'^KchoXs % Narratives of the Refor?natio7t ; Pocock's Troubles connected with
the Prayer-Book of 1^49 (all these are Camden Soc. publications). Foxe's
Acts and Monuments ; Acts of the Privy Council (ed. Dasent), vol. ii, ;
Wilkins's Concilia, vol. iv. ; Statutes of Edward VI. ; Journals of the
House of Lords, and of the House of Commons ; Cardwell's Documentary
A?i?ials of the Church of Eiigland ; Proclamations of Edward VI., Order
of Communion ; Pole's Letters in Quirini's edition ; Calendars of State
Papers for the period. Domestic, Foreign, and Venetian ; Correspondance
Politique de Odet de Selve, published by the French Government ; Latimer's
Sermons ; Literary Remains of Edward VL (Roxburghe Club) ; Tytler's
England under Edward VL and Mary; Burnet's History of the Reforma-
tion ; Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii, pt. i. ; Gasquet and

XIII FALL OF SOMERSET 273

Bishop's Edward VI. and the Book of Common Prayer ; Frere's Revision of
Procter's Book of Common Prayer ; Cranmer's Letters (Parker Soc. ). The
above contain the principal sources. Some of the documents will also be
found in the Appendices to Collier's Ecclesiastical History and to Tierney's
edition of Dodd's Church History. For a modern Church History that of
Dixon may be referred to. For what was done at the universities, Wood's
History and Antiqzdties of the University of Oxford ; Cooper's Annals of
Cambridge; Dyer's History of the University of Cambridge ; Mullinger's
University of Cainbridge.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS

The Protectorate was at an end. Somerset had fallen from
power without a contest. He had, no doubt, weakened
himself by arbitrary conduct and unwillingness to hear
counsel — which was one of the matters charged against him
Accusations whcn hc was in the Tower. He had also set up
against a Court of Rcqucsts in his own house, and was
further accused of selling offices and the king's
lands, of using " multiplication " and alchemy to debase the
currency, of issuing a proclamation and a commission against
enclosures, of sympathising with rebels and not taking
prompt steps to put them down, of neglecting to amend
defects in the fortification of Boulogne,^ and of some other
things besides, which we may construe as we will. When he
was a prisoner he confessed to the charges, but that was
often done by prisoners of State to secure lenient treatment.
Their general bearings were clearly twofold : first, that he
sympathised too much with the people in the matter of
enclosures ; and secondly, that by arbitrary and illegal steps
he had forced on a revolution. In the former matter the
interests of other lords of the Council were touched ; in the
latter he had offended old conservative feeling.

His fall accordingly was believed at first to portend a

Religious religious reaction. Mass was celebrated again

reaction fn collcgc chapcls at Oxford. The imprisoned

expec . i^jgi^Qpg^ Bonner and Gardiner, looked for relief,

and men of the advanced party dreaded the result. "The

* Taken by the English in 1544.

274

CHAP. XIV COMPLAINTS OF THE BISHOPS 275

papists," wrote Hooper, ''are hoping and earnestly struggling
for their kingdom " ; and he added, touching Bonner, " should
he be again restored to his episcopal function, I shall, I
doubt not, be restored to my country and my Father which
is in Heaven." He might well have grounds for saying so;
for the religious changes which he favoured had been forced.
In the summer they had been pressed on the Princess Mary
herself, who flatly refused to use the new prayer - book,
authorised though it was by Act of Parliament, declaring that
such an Act was not worthy of the name of law, and her
father's executors had broken their oaths in passing it. She,
like Gardiner, considered that Henry VIH.'s laws as to
religion were binding till the new king came to years of
discretion. She was afterwards taxed with having encouraged
the Devonshire rebels by her obstinacy ; but she denied
having given the least countenance to their proceedings.

On November 4, Parliament resumed its sittings, and, not
unnaturally, it was a chief care of the government to pass
an Act against unlawful assemblies such as had just
taken place. It was to be high treason now for a knot
of even twelve persons if they sought the hfe of a privy councillor,
or if their aim was to alter the laws or to pull down enclosures,
to refuse to disperse when ordered. But a good deal was
done about Church matters. On November 14 the bishops
complained that their jurisdiction was no longer respected ;
they could neither cite nor punish any one, nor compel a
man to appear in church against his will. The Lords listened
to their complaint with regret, and desired them to draw up
a bill to remedy the evil. They did so ; but when the
measure was produced, the Lords considered that they
arrogated too much to themselves. A mixed committee of
laymen and bishops was accordingly appointed, and the
result of their labours was a bill which passed through three
readings in December, but in the Commons apparently was
superseded by a new bill, which only succeeded in passing
there before the prorogation, and never reached the House
of Lords.

After the Christmas recess a notable Act was passed.^
The scheme for the revision of ecclesiastical laws by a mixed
commission of thirty-two persons had already been three times

276 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

before Parliament in the preceding reign, and three different
statutes had been passed — in 1534, 1536, and 1544 — to
enable the Crown to give effect to it ; but all these
^or^r^vSion cfforts had been fruitless, as no commission had
a^ticaurws '"'^^^ issucd. Now, howcver, one more statute was
passed to the same effect, allowing three years
for the issue of a commission. On January 31, 1550, the
bill passed through its last stage in the Upper House, but
it did so under protests from Archbishop Cranmer, and from
Bishops Tunstall of Durham, Goodrich of Ely, Aldrich of
Carhsle, Heath of Worcester, Thirlby of Westminster, Day
of Chichester, Holbeach of Lincoln, Ridley of Rochester, and
Ferrar of St. David's — men of very different leanings in
theology. It then, however, successfully passed the Commons,
and took its place on the Statute Book. An Act appointing
six bishops and six other persons to draw up an Ordinal for
consecrations was also passed and became law in spite of
the opposition of five of the bishops. But the most violent
piece of legislation was an Act directed against books and
images.

As the use of the prayer-book was now to be enforced, all

the more ancient service-books were to be given up to be

, . destroyed, except Henrv VHI.'s Primer, which was

Act touching -n 11 1 -.•''• 1 1 • • r

books and Still allowcd ou couQition that the invocation of
images, g^jn^s Contained in it should be blotted out; and
all images which remained in churches were likewise to be
destroyed, except, as the Act said, monumental images "of
any king, prince, nobleman, or other dead person which hath
not been commonly reputed or taken for a saint." A
curious condition for tolerating an image in church ! This
bill, begun in the Lords on January 22, passed on the
25th with protests from six bishops and eight lay lords, but
was returned from the Commons in the afternoon of the same
day, having passed through all its stages. An attempt had
meanwhile been made by a royal letter to Cranmer dated on
Christmas Day to force the clergy to give up the books to
their metropolitan to be " defaced and abolished," the object
being, as therein stated, to disappoint those who expected,
in consequence of the Duke of Somerset's apprehension, a
revival of "their old Latin service, their conjured bread

XIV POLE NEARLY ELECTED POPE ^77

and water, with such-like vain and superstitious ceremonies,"
as if the new prayer-book had rested only on the duke's
authority and not on that of Parliament. Notice was also
taken of the tactics sometimes employed to defeat the Act ; for
Holy Communion was in many places omitted altogether, the
parishioners refusing to pay for bread and wine. The arch-
bishop was directed to convent such persons before him,
admonish them to keep the order, and, on their refusal, to
punish them by suspension, excommunication, or other
censures. But though this letter was dated December 25,
nearly a month before the bill was introduced into the House
of Lords, Cranmer seems to have felt it unsafe to act upon
it without parliamentary authority, and his letter to the clergy
in pursuance of it was only dated on February 14 follow-
ing, after the Act had become law.

While Parliament and the Council were thus making it
clear that there was to be no religious reaction in England,
things were done at Rome in secret conclave that
might have powerfully affected the future of religion, Pole and
both in England and in the world. Pope Paul ^^^p^p^^^-
III. died on November 10, 1549; and after the cardinals
had been shut up for a new election, Pole was informed one
evening by two of his colleagues that he had already two-
thirds of the votes, and they were assured they could make
him pope by "adoration." But Pole himself desired the
matter to be deferred till next morning that they might pro-
ceed deliberately. He felt quite as much the responsibility
of the position as its dignity, and so he lost his chance. On
February 8, 1550, the Cardinal de Monte was chosen, and
became Pope Julius UI.

In England on February 6 the Duke of Somerset was
released from the Tower on giving surety of ;£i 0,000 that
he would stay at Sheen, or at his own house of
Sion, and not seek to approach the royal presence ^ekase?
unless sent for. He was, however, at once restored xl5^;,er^
not only to liberty but to luxury ; and on April i o
he was readmitted to the Council, where his influence pro-
cured about that time the nomination of Hooper as Bishop
of Gloucester against the opposition of almost all the other
prelates. But a good deal had been doing with bishops and

278 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

bishoprics just before, as we shall see presently. Meanwhile,

as the government had its hands full at home, a useful but

, inglorious peace was made at Boulogne on March

Peace made , , . , i °. _,

with France 24, by which that towu was restored to France
and cot and. £^^ ^ ^^^ ^^ 400,000 crowns ; and the English
further agreed to surrender all the forts they held in Scot-
land, several of which the Scots had already recovered by
force of arms. With this ended the great project of uniting
the two kingdoms by marriage.
^^ The new EngHsh Ordinal for consecrations was published
by Grafton in March, in good time before the date, April i,
on which it was to come into use. Hosts of elaborate
Ordinar ccremonies authorised by the old pontificale were
abolished, and no place was found for the ordination
of ostiaries, lectors, exorcists, acolytes, or sub-deacons. These
minor orders disappeared, all at once, from the Church of
England. Bishop Heath of Worcester, refusing his consent
to the new book, was called before the Council on Febru-
ary 8 and sent to the Fleet on March 4. Something now
Q had to be done about Bonner's vacant bishopric of London ;
and first it was a little improved by the abolition
Westminster (April i) of the newly established bishopric of
^"me^°ed°" Westminster, Thirlby being conveniently trans-
ferred to Norwich, where, as eager reformers re-
marked, he could do less mischief, and where a vacancy
had been made by the retirement of old Bishop Rugg.
Thus a more extended sphere of activity was prepared for
Bishop Ridley, who was transferred from Rochester to London
on April i. But the woods of the See had been shamefully
ravaged during the voidance, and Ridley himself on being
made bishop had to consent to the alienation of the manors
of Braintree, Southminster, Stepney, and Hackney, with the
advowson of Coggeshall in Essex, in compensation for the
lands of Westminster; and those manors were immediately
afterwards granted away to three powerful noblemen.

Ridley determined on an immediate visitation of his
„ , diocese : but before he did so, a gloomy tragedy

Joan Bochei- ^ ■ , ^ , \

burned in was enacted on May 2, when a woman named

Smithfiei . Jq^jj Bocher, or Joan of Kent, was burned in

Smithfield. She had been condemned a full year before, on

XIV BISHOP RIDLEY'S VISITATION 279

April 29, 1549, under a commission issued a fortnight
previously for the prosecution of anabaptists, heretics, or
contemners of the new Book of Common Prajer. The
government of Somerset, to say the truth, was not much in
earnest about putting down heretics, but anabaptists were
an extreme sort who were then rather troublesome, and it
was important at the same time to protect the new prayer-
book from obloquy. The commission obtained some recanta-
tions of Unitarian and other opinions ; but Joan took the
extraordinary view that, though the Word was made flesh in
the Virgin's body by consent of her "inward man," Christ
took no flesh of the Virgin, who was born in sin like others.
She was quite convinced that she was right, and was fortified
in her resolution to suffer by the example of Anne Askew.
"It is a goodly matter," she told her judges, "to consider
your ignorance. Not long since you burned Anne Askew for
a piece of bread, and yet came yourselves to believe and
profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And
now, forsooth, you will needs burn me for a piece of flesh,
and in the end you will come to believe this also, when you
have read the Scriptures and understand them."

Ridley's visitation began on May 5, and a strong visitation
it was. The articles he laid down to be inquired of touched,
first of all, the purity of the lives and conversation ^.^^^ ,^
of the clergy, and whether they kept their houses and visitation of
chancels in sufficient repair and took care to have the
service properly maintained ; then whether dignitaries preached
at least twice a year; whether licensed incumbents were in
the habit of preaching, and unlicensed ones procured licensed
preachers ; whether the new services were used, whether any
spoke against the Book of Common Prayer or defended insur-
rection, sold the communion for money, or had trentals of
communions (like the old trentals of masses) ; also, whether
anabaptists or others separated themselves from their fellow-
parishioners ; whether masses were held in private houses,
whether any aboHshed usages were still maintained, and whether
any artificers refused to work on abolished holidays. These
were the principal points. But the injunctions he gave were
drawn up with a view to a radical change of usages, not mere
literal acceptance of things already ordered. The second

2bo THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chai-.

especially, insisting that no more ceremonies should be used in
communion than those appointed by the new prayer-book, for-
bade any minister to " counterfeit the popish mass," either by
" kissing the Lord's board, washing his hands or fingers after the
Gospel or the receipt of the holy communion, shifting the book
from one place to another, laying down and licking the chalice
after the communion, blessing his eyes with the sudary thereof,
or patten, or crossing his head with the same, holding his fore-
fingers and thumbs joined together toward the temples of his
head after the receiving of the sacrament, breathing on the
bread or chalice, saying the Agmis before the communion,
showing the sacrament openly before the distribution, or mak-
ing any elevation thereof, ringing of the sacring bell, or setting
any light upon the Lord's board."

Besides which, there was the following very significant
direction : —

" Item, whereas in divers places some use the Lord's board
after the form of a table and some as an altar, whereby dissen-
sion is perceived to arise among the unlearned ; therefore,
wishing a godly unity to be observed in all our diocese, and
for that the form of a table may more move and turn the
simple from the old superstitious opinions of the popish mass,
and to the right use of the Lord's Supper, we exhort the
curates, churchwardens and questmen here present to erect and
set up the Lord's board after the form of an honest
dowi aiterr table decently covered, in such place of the choir or
^"tlbfes"^ chancel as shall be thought most meet by their dis-
cretion and agreement, so that the ministers with the
communicants may have their place separated from the rest of
the people, and to take down and abolish all other by-altars or
tables."

This order to take down altars looks as if it marked a new
stage in the revolution that was going on ; but, in truth, the
practice had already begun as early as 1548, when a Swiss
student at Oxford, John ab Ulmis, wrote with great satisfaction
to Bullinger that, "by common consent of the higher classes,"
the privileged altars were put down and turned into pens for
pigsties {arce factcR swit hard). These, however, were no
doubt the private altars of abolished chantries, at which priests
had been hired to sing for departed souls, and the upper

XIV PULLING DOWN OF ALTARS 281

classes were very generally content to save the money for such
singing. But now altars in general were assailed ; and at the
same time the abrogation of old holidays — a process which
had begun the year before King Edward's birth — was carried
further than it had been. This, too, was favoured from two
different motives — by preachers like Ridley, as tending to
abolish superstition, and by rich men, because it enabled them
to demand from their labourers uninterrupted service. This,
it is true, they sometimes obtained without any edict, as the
Protector had done in the building of Somerset House, which
was carried on without cessation both Sundays and hoKdays.

In 1 549 Corpus Christi Day was kept holiday in some places
and not in others; in this year, 1550, it was not kept holiday
at all. Neither was St. Barnabas' Day, June 11, which, though
a prayer-book festival, was forbidden by the lord mayor to be
kept. St. Barnabas' Day at night was found a convenient time
for executing an order of the new Bishop of London to pull
down the high altar in St. Paul's Cathedral. On its removal a
veil was hung over a place beneath the steps where the new
communion-table was set ; and there, a week later, the com-
munion was administered in the form now enjoined. Dis-
putes then went on about the two feasts of Our Lady, the
Assumption (August 15) and the Nativity (September 8),
which some kept as of old and some would not. Then a
general pulling down of altars began, the Bishop of London's
orders first being backed up by letters from the Council, which
the Sheriff of Essex was sent down to enforce in July, and then
further steps were taken, till ultimately letters were issued in
the king's name to every bishop, dated November 24, ordering
the removal of all remaining altars and their being replaced
by tables.

Meanwhile, a stronger Calvinist than Ridley was raised
to the episcopal dignity, one to whom its trappings were
repulsive. John Hooper was the foremost of those
sincere enthusiasts who, without a thought of break- Hooper.
ing communion with the Church, wished to get rid
of pomp, and reduce its ritual to the most extreme severity.
He had already, in preaching before the king, inveighed against
the new Ordinal, and it seemed strange to make a man a
bishop who disapproved of the ritual by which he would have

282 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

to be consecrated. But he had done useful service otherwise.
His story, in brief, was this. He had been a monk till the
dissolution ; then became, as he himself confessed, too much
of a courtier living in the king's palace. But, being taken by
the views of Swiss reformers, he withdrew from court, and
afterwards, to avoid prosecution under the Six Articles, fled to
Strassburg, where he married, and then to Zurich, whence he
had not returned to England a twelvemonth before he was
offered the bishopric of Gloucester. Since his return the Duke
of Somerset had made him his chaplain, and he had already,
as we have seen, taken part in the deprivation of Bishop
Bonner, whose sermon at Paul's Cross he not only denounced,
but was set to answer three weeks later by another at the same
place. In the Lent following he had taken Latimer's place in
preaching before the king, and it seemed from his fervid words
that he was to carry the religious revolution farther than ever.
But when, on Easter Monday, April 7, the offer was made
to him by the lord chancellor of the bishopric of Gloucester,
His scruples ^^ declined it, both on account of the ' form of the
on being oath, which he considered impious, and on account
bishopric of of the vestments, which he called Aaronic. He
Gloucester. Q^jgcted also to the tonsure, which was still usual ;
but as this was not enjoined in the new Ordinal, the Council
did not insist on it. To discuss his other scruples he was
called before them on Ascension Day, May 15, and after facing
a battery of interrogatories he obtained terms which he thought
satisfactory. He agreed to accept the charge on the under-
standing that the oath would not be imposed upon him ; and
he consented, apparently, even to wear a white linen rochet
when he went to Parliament, until that superfluity was abolished
by lawful authority. But difficulties were not yet at an end.
On July 3 the bishopric was conferred upon him by patent
without conge d'elire under the new law. There was still, how-
ever, a legal question about the omission of the oath, and it
was not settled without another conference, on the 20th, before
the king himself in council, when Hooper so successfully
maintained his own view of the unlawfulness of appealing by
oath to God's creatures as well as to God Himself, that young
Edward, with his own pen, struck out the objectionable invoca-
tion of the saints. On the 23rd, accordingly, the Earl of

XIV HOOPER'S NONCONFORMITY 283

Warwick, who was now chief of the Council, wrote to Cranmer
"at the king's own motion," directing him not to press upon
the new bishop an oatli against his conscience. Cranmer,
however, required something more for his assurance against
the penalties of a pr(2munire if he should consecrate a bishop
in an unlawful form, and on August 5 a letter was sent to him,
signed by six of the Council, to warrant him against such conse-
quences. This, however, did not satisfy Bishop Ridley, who
was expected to join Cranmer in the function of consecration,
and Hooper remained unconsecrated till March of the follow-
ing year.

Hooper is called from this "the father of Nonconformity";
for the original nonconformists were a party within the
Church itself, who had no thought of separation, but
refused to comply with the statutory ritual. His ^°^^°'^'
scruples were founded on Scripture ; he would have
no ceremonies that were not authorised by the New Testament.
And in this view he had many followers, of whom numbers
in a later age rejected episcopacy altogether, and at last
separating from the Church were known by the name of
Dissenters. But at this time his scruples met with little or
no sympathy from other divines, the only learned man in
England who approved his attitude being the Pohsh noble-
man, John a Lasco.

This person was a man of great learning, of high birth, and
very distinguished family. His brother Jaroslaw had in past
years thrown himself into the cause of Hungary, ^ ,

•^ T . , „ . . . . ^ ■' . John a Lasco.

and negotiated at Constantinople the league of
the Waywode with the Turks against the Austrians. By
his brother's influence he himself is said to have been pro-
vided to the bishopric of Veszprim in Hungary ; but his name
does not appear among the bishops either of that See or of
Cujavia in his own country of Poland, which he is said after-
wards to have obtained. As a young man he was familiar
both with Erasmus and with Zwingli ; and he afterwards
married at Mainz and settled at Embden as superintendent
of the Reformed Churches of Friesland, whose principles,
however, were strongly anti-Lutheran. From Embden he came
to England at Cranmer's invitation in 1548, but only on a
visit. He returned in the spring of this year, 1550, to settle,

284 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

and obtained letters of denization for himself and his family

on June 27. His object was to establish in

hf London^^ London a church of Germans and other foreigners,

foreSSers^ of which he was named superintendent in the

foundation-charter granted to it on July 24. The

church of the dissolved monastery of Austin Friars was

given them to meet in ; and there a similar body, now known

as the Dutch Church, worships at this day.

This foreign community, not unnaturally, took a very great
interest in Bishop Hooper, with whom, indeed, their preacher
Micronius lived before he was appointed to that office. For
they desired to be independent of the Bishop of London's
jurisdiction, and not to be bound to use the ritual made
compulsory for Englishmen. Bishop Ridley, however, insisted
on their acknowledging his authority ; and as he had the
Council with him against Hooper, the German Church felt
its privileges to be in danger. Hence the cordiality with
which a Lasco approved of Hooper's action in the matter of
vestments.

About this time also, or shortly after, another company of
foreigners was settled by the Duke of Somerset at Glaston-
bury under one Valerand Poullain as preacher and
foreign com- Superintendent. They were mostly worsted-weavers
GiSonb^u ^^^"^ Strassburg, driven to England by the Interim.
In February 155 1 Poullain published in London
a Latin translation of the liturgy they had used at Strassburg ;
and Somerset, who had recently acquired from the Crown
the site of the suppressed abbey of Glastonbury, gave him and
his companions a refuge there, where they might carry on
their manufacture and maintain their own religion without
interference of bishops. The colony, however, had but a
brief and rather melancholy existence. The country-people
looked upon them as intruders, and some months later, when
their patron Somerset fell never to rise again, they were
subjected to various troubles. Soon afterwards the accession
of Mary, of course, put an end to the society.

The destruction of altars was certainly a revolutionary
proceeding, which sorely tried the consciences of most bishops.
But episcopal authority was well-nigh destroyed already, and
the complaints of the bench in the House of Lords had been,

XIV BISHOPS DA V AND GARDINER 285

as we have seen, entirely fruitless. There were constant frays
in St. PauFs, "and nothing said unto them," as the Grey
Friars' Chronicle remarks. Moreover, three bishops, Gardiner,
Bonner, and Heath, were already in prison, and the same
treatment was in store for others who should refuse to carry
out the Council's policy. One such, at least, was
Bishop Day of Chichester ; and the Privy Council ^f c^°?hS?er
records bear witness that the king's almoner, Dr.
Cox, was sent into Sussex on October 7, 1550, "to appease
the people by his good doctrine, which was troubled by the
seditious preaching of the Bishop of Chichester and others."
On November 8 the bishop appeared before the Council
to answer certain charges as to his preaching; and as he
denied the words imputed to him, he was commanded to
make his own statement two days later, which, it is to be
presumed, he did. A royal letter was sent to him im-
mediately afterwards commanding him not only to have all the
altars in his diocese demoHshed and replaced by tables, but
to preach in his cathedral and set forth reasons for so doing.
Having declared to Somerset his resolution not to comply,
he was called before the Council again to state his reasons,
which he did on December i. Of course they were declared
unsatisfactory, but he still requested to be excused obedience
unless arguments to satisfy his conscience could be produced.
On this he was desired to confer with the archbishop and
with Bishops Goodrich and Ridley, and to make
further answer on the loth. On the 7th he is committed

,...-, to the Fleet.

distmctly refused to comply ; but the Council, still

hoping to win him, gave him two days' further respite. Finally,

on the nth, he was committed to the Fleet.

On the 15th Bishop Gardiner was brought from the Tower
to Lambeth for a first sitting in what proved to be a long
examination. It was now nearly two and a-half
years since his last committal to the Tower, and, GardinS's
during all that time he had petitioned in vain for a ^'"P"'°""'^"^-
trial. After the lapse of one year all but a few days he had
been visited by the lord chancellor, the lord treasurer, and
Secretary Petre, who brought him the prayer-book authorised
by Parliament, requesting that he would look it over and give
his opinion of it, and promising that on his conformity the

286 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

Protector would be a suitor to the king to sliow him mercy.
Gardiner replied that he hoped to be relieved by justice, not
by mercy, as he had not offended, and, without disrespect for
the book, he declined, as he said, to go to school in prison.
A year later, in June of this year, 1550, he was visited again
in the same way by Somerset and the Marquess of North-
ampton (Katharine Parr's brother), with Lord Treasurer Paulet
(now Earl of Wiltshire), Russell, Earl of Bedford, and
Secretary Petre, to see if he would alter his tone. He de-
clined again to ask for anything more than justice, but
professed himself an obedient subject. He also again, at
first, declined to examine the prayer-book in prison, lest he
should seem to yield a forced conformity ; but afterwards he
consented to do so, and said that, though he would not have
drawn it up so himself, he saw nothing in the book against
his conscience, and was willing to set it forth. The Council
were not satisfied, and got the king to sign a letter to him on
July 8, desiring him to subscribe a set of articles, which
were brought him by a new deputation, headed this time by
Warwick. He received the royal letter on his knees and
kissed it, but regretted to find that he was expected to make
a confession which was against his conscience. Warwick
relieved his perplexity by telling him he might sign the
articles if he agreed with them, and write a marginal note
opposite the preamble, which alone contained the admission
that he had done wrong. He accordingly wrote in the margin
of the preamble that he could not conscientiously so accuse
himself; and he would have added marginal annotations
to some of the further articles, when he was stopped by
the privy councillors, and told that as he had agreed to sign
the articles he must do so without comment. He accordingly
signed them, the councillors adding their signatures in attesta-
tion ; on which he merrily remarked that they had made him
put his signature above all of theirs.

The lords had been most friendly, and Gardiner really

hoped he had given satisfaction ; but he received

^equSeSd^ two furthcr visits from other councillors, to whom,

momhr wh^^^ preserving all courtesy, he was obliged to

remark that a trial, however uncomfortable, would
at least have a definite conclusion. He was then brought,

XIV BISHOP GARDINER DEPRIVED 287

on July 19, before the lords of the Council at Westminster,
who said they had a special commission to proceed against
him. A long list of new articles was produced, which he
was required to sign. He said that they would need to be
studied at leisure, and particular answers given to each;
and he offered to consider them carefully even in prison.
But as he still declared some of the things to be against
his conscience, a decree was pronounced to sequester his
bishopric for three months, during which time he might
conform, or otherwise be treated as incorrigible. The three
months, however, were allowed to run on to five before the
commission which now sat in December had met for the
final proceeding.

The powers of this commission were extraordinary. They
sat in various places from the middle of December till the
middle of February (15 51) collecting an immense mass of
testimony for what, after all, seems to have been simply a
foregone conclusion. The depositions may be read in full,
but they show no more evidence of disobedience to the king
than what the reader can find in the facts already stated.
On February 14, notwithstanding an appeal put in that
morning by Gardiner against the commission itself and the
partiality of the judges (among whom were the archbishop
and others who had actually ordered him to prison), and the
irregularity of their procedures, a definitive sentence was
given for his deprivation. The grounds set forth
for this decision were that he had, in spite of many ^j/^^^j^J^j
admonitions, opposed "the godly reformations of
abuses in religion set forth by the king's authority," and
had disobeyed the king's commands. On this the bishop
made a further appeal to the king by word of mouth ; but, of
course, such appeals were useless. He was taken back to the
Tower, and on March 23 his bishopric of Winchester was
given to John Ponet, or Poynet, translated from Rochester.
A month later John Scory was made Bishop of ^

-r^ 1 • T^ 5 1 TT 11 Ponet made

Rochester m Ponet's place. How much the Bishop of
character of the episcopal bench was improved by '""^ ^^^^'^'
these changes was seen in July following, when Gardiner's
successor at Winchester was divorced at St. Paul's from
the woman he had called his wife, and adjudged to pay

288 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap,

a pension to her real husband, a butcher of Nottingham.
But Ponet, as HeyHn observes, was preferred "to serve other
men's turns,"' and made large alienations of the property
of his See " before he was well warm " in it. Nevertheless,
it was seen that the king's "godly reformations" did not
encourage unlimited laxity of doctrine; for on January i8
a commission was issued to Archbishop Cranmer and others
to try anabaptists. The result ere long was that
George van ^ Fleming, named George van Paris, a surgeon,

Pans burned. °', , ^ . , .

excommunicated by the foreign community at
Austin Friars, was burned in Smithfield (April 24) for
denying the divinity of Christ.

But in the midst of their high-handed proceedings, the
Council were made to feel once more that a rehgious revolution
was not unattended with danger. In January they were
informed that the English ambassador in Flanders was
forbidden to use in his household the ritual authorised in
England, and they warned the imperial ambassador to get the
restriction taken off, otherwise his own liberty would be
restrained. This, however, did not deter the imperial am-
bassador from urging the Council shortly afterwards to remember

a promise made to the emperor that the Princess
Mary and^^ Mary should be allowed to have her own religious
her mass, ^-^^g -^^ ^j^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ jj^ -^Qr father's time

until her brother should come to years of discretion. The reader
will remember Mary's refusal to use the new prayer-book in
1549, and the insinuations made against her of encouraging
the Devonshire rebels. At that time she was allowed to
continue her mass, the king, her brother, giving a special
dispensation to her and her chaplains. But after Somerset's
fall Edv/ard was persuaded to write her a letter saying that his
previous forbearance was not meant to encourage her to disobey
the laws, but rather that she should learn to obey them ; and
he warned her no longer to practise a forbidden religion by
which God, he told her, was really dishonoured. The Council
harassed her with letters and messages, and called away her
priests and other servants whom she could ill spare. In
April 1550 the emperor's ambassador requested that she
might have letters-patent allowing her still to have mass;
but the request was refused. In the summer a plot was

XIV PRINCESS MARY AND HER MASS 289

actually formed with the connivance of the queen-regent of
Flanders for carrying her away to Antwerp ; but the project
became known, and was, of course, hopeless. Towards the
close of the same year two of her chaplains were prosecuted
for saying mass in her house. In March 1551, the year that
we have now reached, the Council summoned her to London,
where she made her entry on the 15th, and proceeded two
days later to Westminster amid shouts of welcome from the
citizens.

She was received by her brother with formal salutations ;
then banqueted in the hall of the presence-chamber, and had
an interview with the Council They showed her .
how long her brother had suffered her mass in the with the
hope of her reconcihation, but now from her letters ^°""^^'-
it appeared that there was no hope, and he could not endure it.
She replied that her soul was God's, and her faith she would
not change or do anything to discredit. She was told that
her brother did not constrain her faith, but she must obey
as a subject and not give a bad example to others. She
was firm, however, rather to suffer death than to comply, and
was dismissed with gentleness, to return next day to Newhall
in Essex. That day the imperial ambassador came to court
with a peremptory message from his master, denouncing war
if they would not suffer his cousin, the princess, to have her
mass. No immediate answer was returned ; but next day the
case was referred to three of the most progressive bishops —
Cranmer, Ridley, and Ponet (then still bishop of Rochester)
— who came to the decision that, though giving a licence
to sin was sin, it might be tolerable, under pressure, to
wink at it for a time. On the 23rd, accordingly, considering
the very serious danger to English interests in Flanders, the
Council determined to send Dr. Nicholas Wotton to the emperor
" to deny the matter wholly and persuade the emperor in it " —
such are the young king's own words in his journal — " thinking,
by his going, to win some time for a preparation of a mart,
conveyance of powder, harness, etc., and for the surety of the
realm." And the emperor's ambassador, who came back on
the 25th for an answer, was told that some one would go to
his master within a month or two to explain the matter.

It was no doubt the fertile brain of Warwick that devised

290 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

this Fabian policy, and it proved quite successful. The
emperor had a civil war in Germany on hand (brought
on by his own Interim)^ which was enough for him without
making war on England. The Council understood their
advantage. On Palm Sunday, four days after Mary's appear-
ance before them, Sir Anthony Browne and others were
Arrests for Committed to the Fleet for hearing mass in Mary's
hearing and court at St. John's Priory, where she had rested in
^m'Sfa^'-r her visit to London. A month later, Dr. Malet,
household. ^^^ ^^ j^^^. ^^^ chaplains previously imprisoned,
was arrested again, and after examination sent to the Tower
on April 29. Mary indignantly remonstrated that his
saying mass, for which he was imprisoned, had been at her
command, and that, relying on the promise made to the
emperor, she had assured him none of her chaplains should
be in danger of the law for saying mass in her house. The
arrest, however, seems to have been on the pretext of an old
offence of this kind committed in one of her houses when she
was absent, and the Council alleged that he had been found
guilty already. Moreover, by the Act of Parliament, as they
pointed out, where such an offence was notorious it could
be punished without the finding of any jury.^ Such was the
gentle law of Edward VI. !

We shall hear more of Mary and her mass by and by.
Meanwhile, let us pass from the court to the universities. At
the end of the year 1550 the visitors of Oxford
of coUege ^ict again after prorogation in December, rifled the
at'oxfird ^<^l^^g^ libraries, and destroyed cartloads of valuable
MSS., many of them " guilty of no other superstition,"
as the university historian writes, "than red letters in their
fronts and titles." Works of controversial divinity — of school-
men especially — were all turned out. Merton, New College,
and Balliol were among the principal sufferers, and New
College would have lost its painted windows likewise, which
the visitors ordered to be removed, but the college preserved

^ The penal clause of the Act of Uniformity, 2 and 3 Edward VI. c. i,
made any clergyman liable to punishment for not using the services in the
prayer-book, or speaking against them, whenever he was "lawfully con-
victed according to the laws of this realm by verdict of twelve men, or by his
own confession, or by the notorious evidence of the fact."

XIV CRITICISM OF THE PRA YER-BOOK 291

them on the plea of poverty, promising obedience when they
could afford new glass. In the general spoliation of MSS.
many were sold to tradesmen, and many shipped abroad —
whole shipfuls — for the use of bookbinders. The infamy of
these proceedings rests chiefly with Dr. Cox, Dean of Christ-
church and chancellor of the university, who was one of the
leading visitors and also the young king's tutor. Men called
him " cancellor " of the university instead of chancellor.

At Cambridge a different interest was created by the death
of Bucer on the last day of February 155 1. He was buried
two days later in St. Mary's Church, and his funeral j^^^^j^ ^
was attended by the whole university. Eloquent Bucer at
sermons were preached and learned tributes were ^^ " ^^'
laid upon his grave. He had, just eight weeks before, com-
pleted his elaborate Censura of the English Prayer-book,
composed at the request of his diocesan, Goodrich, Bishop of
Ely. Peter Martyr at Oxford had been engaged on a like work
for Cranmer, who welcomed all suggestions for a revision of
the book ; but Peter found, after completing his task, that Bucer
had done the work much more thoroughly, and he regretted
that he had based his criticisms on an imperfect translation,
though Bucer also appears to have required help to under-
stand the English thoroughly. Never was greater deference
paid to foreign opinion than now in a Church
which had been emancipated from the jurisdiction ftom°abroar
of a foreign bishop. Calvin wrote from Geneva to
Cranmer to be active, while it was time, to eradicate the last
traces of superstition, and Cranmer urged him in return to ply
King Edward himself with letters on the subject. Bullinger
also wrote from Zurich to encourage Dr. Cox at Oxford
(who, it may be imagined, scarcely needed encouragement)
to use his influence in the university to put down popish
ceremonies.

As to the Prayer-book, there is no doubt a revision had
been contemplated for some time, and circumstances con-
nected with the deprivation of Bishop Gardiner ^

, . ^ . Preparations

probably forced it on all the more rapidly. In to revise the
1550 Cranmer had put forth a vindication of his ^^^'^^^' °°"-
own changed view of the sacrament as " A Defence of the true
and Catholic Doctrine," which Gardiner even in prison felt

292 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

it his duty to answer ; and he found means also to get his
answer pubHshed. It was entitled "An Explica-
between^^ tion and Assertion of the true Catholic Faith touch-
'^GaSlneT'^ ing the most blessed Sacrament of the Altar ; with
confutation of a book written against the same."
Calm and dignified in style, it was nevertheless calculated to
wound Cranmer deeply; for, affecting to doubt that such
novel heresy could really have been written by the primate in
whose name it was set forth, Gardiner declares that he pur-
posely refrains from attributing it to so high an authority, and
speaks only of "this author" in his argument. He points
out, moreover, that it is in conflict with previously published
views of Cranmer himself. The primate hereupon published
" An Answer unto a crafty and sophistical Cavillation devised
by Stephen Gardiner, late Bishop of Winchester, against the
true and godly doctrine of the most holy Sacrament." And
at the end of this appeared an answer to another antagonist
on the same subject — Dr. Richard Smith, now a refugee at
Louvain. The primate was thus fully committed to a
repudiation of transubstantiation, and it was clear that this
doctrine was to be no longer upheld by the authorities.

On January 12, Hooper, the unconsecrated Bishop of
Gloucester, was brought again before the Council to answer
Hoo er still ^^^ ^ disobedience considerably worse than any
refractory imputed to Gardiner. There had been long discus-
sions about his case, and he had finally been
ordered to keep his house unless he desired to take counsel
with the archbishop, or with Bishops Goodrich of Ely, Ridley
of London, or Taylor of Lincoln, and neither to preach nor
read till he had further orders. Not only had he not kept his
house, but he had written and printed a book containing
objectionable matter ; for which the Council committed him
to the custody of Cranmer, either to be reformed or to be
further punished if obstinate. On the 27th the archbishop
reported that he had been unable to bring him to any con-
formity, and the Council committed him to the Fleet, with
orders to the warden " to keep him from conference with
any persons, saving the ministers of that house." This was
because, " persevering in his obstinacy," he " coveted to pre-
scribe orders and necessary laws of his [own] head " — the very

XIV INNOVATIONS AT COMMUNION 293

thing, of course, that a self-opinionated interpreter of an
infallible book might be expected to do. But the discipline of
confinement really made him more reasonable. After an appeal
to the Council, which was not accepted, he wrote to Cranmer
from prison on February 15, protesting that he yielded from
no selfish motive, but for the sake of the Church, and that he
now acknowledged the freedom of the children of God in
matters merely external. He was willing, therefore, to defer
to Cranmer's judgment while preserving his own ^^^ ^^ .^^^^
opinion. This unlocked the door of his prison, at last and is
and he was consecrated at Lambeth on March 8 ^°"''^'^^^
by Cranmer, Ridley, and Ponet, three weeks after Gardiner
had been deprived, and a fortnight before Ponet was trans-
lated to Winchester.

So now the chief places in the Church of England were
pretty strongly held by men who could act together in lower-
ing the standard of ritual and of sacramental doctrine. There
were still bishops to be dealt with who would not favour the
revolution, and they were dealt with very soon. Meanwhile,
with Cranmer as primate, London was under the ^,

1 /- T^-11 1 •»«- , ,r^ , . Changes made

rule of Ridley, who on March 24 (Tuesday m by Ridley
Passion week) caused the iron gratings on the
north and south sides of the choir at St. Paul's to be closed
up with brick and mortar, to exclude the public even from
looking in at the time of communion. Then on Easter Eve
the table was removed and placed " beneath the steps in the
midst of the upper choir," with the ends east and west. On
Easter Day itself the dean (Dr. William May) performed the
service, standing on the south side of the table, a veil being
drawn round the communicants after the Creed was sung.
After this, innovation not unnaturally was carried further.
"When your table was constituted," said Bishop White to
Ridley at his trial four years later, " you could never be con-
tent in placing the same, now east, now north, now one way,
now another, until it pleased God of his goodness to place it
clean out of the Church." And no doubt Bishop White gave
but too true expression to a very general feeling when he
coarsely added, " A goodly receiving, I promise you, to set
an oyster table instead of an altar, and to come from puddings
at Westminster, to receive ! "

294 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap.

England was visited this summer with two great evils —
sweating sickness and dearness of provisions. To meet these
The sweating ii^Aictions a royal letter was addressed to the bishops
sickness and on Julv 1 8, attributing the epidemic to the wrath

the coinage. r r^ -, , ^ •^• • r

or God at the prevailmg sm of covetousness, agamst
which they were urged to caution the people, with exhorta-
tions, at the same time, to resort more diligently to common
prayer. Covetousness was, undoubtedly, the special sin of
the times. The greed of the rich and the plunder of Church
lands, many of which the new bishops were easily persuaded,
and the old bishops forced, to alienate, had disturbed still
further the economic conditions of the kingdom, which were
bad enough at the beginning of the reign. But the measures
taken by the Council only made matters worse. The debase-
ment of the currency had certainly been pushed to an
extreme ; but after a previous proclamation, the results of
which are confusing even to experts, the coins were suddenly
cried down by two other proclamations in July and August,
first to one-quarter and then to one-half the values at which
they stood before. Prices, of course, rose still higher to
meet the deteriorated values, and the misery inflicted on the
poor was past description.

In August it was thought safe to push still further the
coercion of the Princess Mary in matters of religion. Three

of her household officers were summoned before
coerciorof the Couucil and charged with a message to her,
'^^\iar"'^^^^ backed by a letter from Edward himself, requiring

her to discontinue her mass and accept the
authorised ritual. Her officers strove to be excused, but
the task was forced upon them. They took the order to
her at Copped Hall and prayed her to be patient while they
read it. Her colour came and went as she listened, and she
bade them on pain of dismissal not to declare it to her
chaplains and household. They had told the Council before-
hand that this would be the result, but the Council charged
them again not to leave, in spite of any dismissal, till they
had discharged their commission. This instruction, however,
they felt unable to carry out. They returned and were repri-
manded, but absolutely refused to go again and do it ; they
said they would rather go to prison. Other agents were

XIV PRINCESS MARY'S MASS FORBIDDEN 295

therefore employed. Lord Chancellor Rich, Sir Anthony
Wingfield, and Secretary Petre went to her with a similar
message and a new letter from the king. She received the
letter on her knees and kissed it, in honour, as she pointedly
said, of his Majesty whose signature was attached to it, and
not of the contents, which she was sure did not proceed from
him. As she read it to herself she was heard to say, " Ah,
good Mr. Cecil took much pains here." In reply, she told
them that she was the king's subject "and poor sister," but
would rather lay her head on a block than use any other
service than what was used at her father's death, though she
owned she was unworthy to suffer death m so good a quarrel.
The envoys, however, delivered the message to her chaplains
and household, and the chaplains, after consulting together,
promised obedience.

Just at this time the aged Bishop Voysey was induced to
resign his See of Exeter, and Coverdale was appointed in his
room on August 14. There was also an attempt to „. ^

1 ^ / Bishop

fasten on the venerable Bishop Tunstall a charge Xunstaii
of treason, for which as yet the apparatus does not '"^p"^°"^ •
seem to have been fully matured. On May 20 he had been
committed prisoner to his own house on the hearing of certain
matters between him and his dean and a person unnamed
in the Privy Council register, who apparently was an accuser
named Ninian Menville. The case, however, seems to have
slept for months, and on August 2 the bishop had licence
given him to walk about in the fields ; but future trouble was
still in store for him. On September 22, Heath, Bishop of
Worcester, was fetched from the Fleet Prison and called before
the Council, who told him that he was a very obstinate man,
but might still recover favour by signing the new Ordinal.
He replied by acknowledging the cause of his imprisonment,
and that he had been very gently used ; but he was of the
same mind as before, and, though he would not disobey the
book, he declined to subscribe it. This the Council told
him was an inconsistent position, and they laboured hard to
remove him out of it, but their efforts were unavailing. He
declined also to confer about it with other learned men,
stating in the course of the discourse that there were other
things to which he would not agree if commanded, such as

296 THE CHURCH UNDER NEW MASTERS chap, xiv

the order to take down altars and set up tables. He was
allowed two days to make up his mind on pain of depriva-
tion; but he remained firm. On the 27th a commission was
issued to three lawyers and three civilians to take
'"^and Day^ proccedings against him and Bishop Day, his fellow-
deprived. pj-jg^^er in the Fleet. On October 8 they were con-
vented before the commissioners at the Bishop of London's
house, and on the loth they were deprived " for contempt."

On the 1 6th of the same month — two years and two days

exactly since his former arrest in 1549 — Somerset was again

arrested, just after dining with the king his nephew,

Somerset's ^^^ asjaiu scnt to the Tower. It seems evident

second fall. ° . r ^ • • i ^ ^

that a conspiracy for his ruin had been maturing
for some time, and that, though he had long been uncom-
fortable about the ascendancy of his rival Warwick, he had
only taken serious alarm a few days before. Already a great
change had taken place on the nth, when the master spirit,
Warwick, was created Duke of Northumberland at Hampton
Court. With him the Marquess of Dorset was promoted to
be Duke of Suffolk ; Paulet, Earl of Wiltshire, to be Marquess
of Winchester ; and Sir William Herbert to be Earl of Pem-
broke : while William Cecil, who was now Secretary of State,
and John Cheke, the king's tutor, were made knights. The
only man among these from whom Somerset could expect
much friendship was his old secretary, Cecil, to whom he wrote
on the 14th when he suspected things were going wrong; but
the coldness and formality of Cecil's answer showed him that
even he now stood aloof and would not help him.

Authorities. — Mostly the same as in last chapter. Beccatelli's Life of
Pole in Quirini's edition of his Letters ; Acts of the Privy Council (Dasent),
vols. ii. and iii. ; Krasinski's Reformation in Poland. Bucer's Censura will
be found in his Scripta Anglicana ; Glocester Ridley's Life of Ridley ;
Hooper's Early and Later Writings (with biography) and Works of Ridley,
and Cranmer's Writings oji the Lord's Si/pper (Parker Society). For what
relates to Hooper and the Germans, and also Hooper's controversy with
Ridley, see Original Letters (Parker Society), pp. 572-573. For the royal
letter on covetousness, see Tytler, i. 404.

CHAPTER XV

LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI,

We cannot expect to unravel the whole story of Warwick's
intrigues. At the beginning of the reign he was accounted
Somerset's close ally, yet it was he who procured
his overthrow in 1549. Next year, however, he ^JJJue^s'f
not only appeared again most friendly, but married
his eldest son. Viscount Lisle, to Somerset's daughter Anne.
Yet again, in spite of this aUiance, he was now at work for
his final destruction in 155 1. On October 7, as he informed
the king. Sir Thomas Palmer (a personal enemy of Somerset's)
had come to him with a chain to be delivered to Jarnac, the
new ambassador just arrived from France, and had told him
of a conspiracy formed by Somerset in the previous April, in
which it was designed to raise the people, and also to invite
Warwick, Northampton, and others to a banquet and cut off
their heads. This monstrous charge, however, is not sustained
by the indictment, which turns it into an intention merely to
imprison Warwick and seize the great seal and the Tower
of London, with a view of securing the king's person and
depriving him of his royal dignity.

What ground there may have been even for this last accusa-
tion we need hardly trouble ourselves to inquire. Warwick had
undoubtedly been studying his own game and watching his
opportunity for years. He had profited once by the re-
sentment felt by many at Somerset's religious pohcy ; but
Somerset's policy was moderate in comparison with his. For,
to all appearance, Somerset would have had Gardiner out of
prison and allowed the Princess Mary her mass ; nay, it would

297

298 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

seem he had been considering about restoring the mass, holy
water, and some other rites to the people to avoid disquiet,
while Warwick with his two aUies, the Marquess of North-
ampton and Lord Herbert, now Earl of Pembroke, had
been insisting on putting down the mass in a way to create
estrangement between the king and his own sister. But
Warwick, as we have seen, had his own idea how to temporise
and how to avoid retrogression. His eyes were fully open
to what was doing abroad, and he saw safety for the new
regime in the balance of contending interests on the Continent.
To explain the situation there it will be necessary that we
should go back a few years.

The Council of Trent, which had formally opened at the
end of 1545, had been removed to Bologna in April 1547 in
consequence of an epidemic. The emperor was much dis-
pleased, and insisted strongly on its being restored to Trent.
He knew that a council in Italy — and especially in the States
of the Church — would have less authority with his German
subjects than one only upon the confines of Italy,

Religious , , . , . J r ji

affairs in and his great object, to put an end to dissension,
Germany, ^^^j^ ^^ further olf than ever. So he took the
problem for a time into his own hands, and in May
1548, at the diet of Augsburg, he promulgated the Interim^
which Magdeburg and a number of other cities of the
empire refused to accept. In September 1549 the Council at
Bologna, which after all had not been able to do anything, was
suspended just two months before the death of Paul III. ; and
his successor, Julius III., elected in February 1550, agreed to
meet the emperor's wishes and restore it to Trent. Mean-
while, in Germany, Maurice Duke of Saxony was made elector
in place of his cousin, John Frederic, and was commissioned
to reduce Magdeburg, which had been placed under the ban
of the empire. Maurice laid siege to it for a year and more ;
during which time, while he seemed to be the instrument of
the emperor's policy, he had views of his own. The siege
was still going on when he made a secret treaty with France
on October 5, 155 1, just eleven days before the date of
Somerset's second arrest. That Warwick could have known
of this is hardly to be presumed ; but he had been knitting a
firm alliance between England and France, and he no doubt

XV WARWICK'S ASCENDANCY 299

saw far enough into the future to reckon on the emperor's
failure to coerce the whole German nation into acceptance of
the Interim and the revived General Council. Charles had
believed a great deal too much in force ; he had John
Frederic of Saxony and the Landgrave in his hands — the latter
detained a prisoner by treachery ; he had surrounded a diet
with an imperial army to secure adhesion to the Council ;
he had taken very unjust advantage of the Protestants, and
was now outwitted by Maurice, who next year surprised and
put him to flight at Innsbruck.

Alliance with France, therefore, was a great protection for
England against the emperor, as France was then playing its old
game in Germany of assisting the Protestants to resist him.
For Maurice, before his secret treaty with France, had allied
himself in like manner with Denmark, Mecklenberg, Branden-
burg-Anspach, and the Landgrave's sons ; and it was, as we
have seen, from a sure expectation that the emperor would
have his hands full at home that Warwick was encouraged to
disregard his threat of war and go on persecuting the Princess
Mary. Warwick was the one bold, daring spirit to whom the
rest of the Council now gave way.

On October 16, the day of Somerset's arrest at West-
minster, Sir Thomas Palmer was likewise apprehended walking
upon the terrace ; and during that and the next few
days there were other arrests, including Sir Ralph arrestS
Vane, the Duchess of Suffolk, the Earl of Arundel, gomSset.
and Lord Grey. Sir Thomas Palmer, on the 19th,
made a "confession," as it was called, giving details of
Somerset's alleged conspiracy. Parliament, which should
have met again in October, was prorogued till January, and
steps were taken to set up an autocracy. It was ordered
that warrants should henceforth pass under the boy-king's sole
signature without those of any of the Council ; and other
prisoners in the Tower were tortured or menaced with torture
in order that they might accuse Somerset. In the Tower the
fallen statesman remained awaiting his trial, when, towards the
end of November, his rival, now Duke of Northumberland,
wrote to Sir Phihp Hoby and the lieutenant of the Tower
complaining that he himself would confess nothing, and order-
ing them forcibly to strip him of the Garter and Collar of the

300 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VL chap.

Order, with an intimation that he was to be tried on the follow-
ing Tuesday, December i.

^ Meanwhile, an important Church question came under
consideration. Two years had nearly run their course since
the passing of the last statute for the revision of the canon law,
and still no royal commission was issued to give practical effect
to the project. Cranmer had, no doubt, been drafting, even
during the last reign, a scheme of his own for consideration
when the measure should once take practical form. But
the more the subject was considered by the Crown or its
agents, the more difficulty there seemed to be about the
issuing of the commission. At length, on November ii, a

commission really was issued, but not one in

^iTelSon'ot accordance with the provisions of the statute. It

^^k^\v"°" ^'^'^ ^^^y ^ preparatory commission — to eight

persons out of the thirty-two, who were in the
meanwhile to make a beginning, and, after a survey of the
old ecclesiastical laws, report a scheme of codification to the
Crown. The full commission, which was to include twenty-
four other names, was to be appointed afterwards, but mean-
while these eight were to do the essential work, to be
criticised, and perhaps perfected, by the larger commission
later on. These eight consisted of two prelates — Cranmer
and Bishop Goodrich of Ely ; two divines — Richard Cox and
Peter Martyr ; two doctors of law — William May and Roland
Taylor of Hadleigh in Suffolk ; and two common lawyers —
John Lucas and Richard Goodrich. This was a very one-
sided commission, as the reader may well imagine, remem-
bering Dr. Cox's doings at Oxford, and that Dr. May
was Dean of St. Paul's. Dr. Roland Taylor had been
Cranmer's chaplain. However, they proceeded to elaborate
among them the remarkable document called Refot-matio
Legiun Ecclesiasticaruju^ which was no doubt adopted by the
statutory commission afterwards. For the whole thirty -two,
it appears, were really appointed on October 6, 1552, before
the expiration of the third year allowed by the statute ; and
when they set to work they divided themselves into four
companies of eight, each composed, like the first, of two
bishops, two divines, two civilians, and two other lawyers.
The scheme, however, never became a working code of

XV SOMERSET SENTENCED TO DEATH 301

canon law after all; for it lay in manuscript till 1571, when it
got the length of being printed, but was finally laid aside.

In November two matters of political importance deserve f
notice. First, the good feeling between England, France,
and Scotland was marked by the public reception in London
of Mary of Guise, Queen Dowager of Scotland, on her way
back to that country from France after she had been enter-
tained by young Edward at Hampton Court and Whitehall.
Secondly, an ambassador came from Duke Maurice of
Saxony to ask Edward to join the league now formed by the
Protestant princes against the emperor; to which, however,
the young king, under Northumberland's guidance, declined
to commit himself till he knew the exact names and numbers
of the confederates. On December 20 the aged Bishop
Tunstall, who had been kept prisoner ever since Bishop Tun-
his committal to his own house in May, was sent stall sent^to
to the Tower on a charge of concealment of
treason. His dean, whose name was Hugh Whitehead,
was implicated along with him. Whitehead was bound
over on November 3 in a recognisance of 200 marks for
his appearance before the Council on the first day of next
term, and is supposed to have died a few days later, for
his deanery was given to Robert Home on the 20th. The
case against the bishop arose out of a charge made against
him as far back as July 1550, when Ninian Menville
accused him of having consented to a conspiracy for raising
a rebellion in the north, but evidence had been wanting to
support the charge, till a letter in his own hand was found
in a cask of the Duke of Somerset's. The whole affair is
certainly very obscure, but the bishop remained in captivity
during the remainder of Edward's reign, as did also Bishops
Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, and Day.

Somerset's trial took place on the day appointed. The
charges against him were partly of treason, partly of felony.
He denied every one of them, and in vain asked
to be confronted with his accusers. After nine somers^e't.
hours' pleading he was acquitted of treason, but
condemned for felony. He received sentence, therefore, not
to be beheaded as a traitor, but to be hanged. As he
left the Court, acquitted of treason, the axe of the Tower, ^_

302 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap

which would otherwise have been carried with its edge
towards the prisoner, was turned down ; and the people in
Westminster Hall, taking it for a complete acquittal, tossed
their caps in the air with a great shout, which was taken up
outside and heard at Longacre. Somerset was undoubtedly
in high favour with the people ; but that made him all the
more dangerous to his rival.

At the end of the year the great seal was resigned by
Lord Chancellor Rich, owing to illness. It was delivered
just before Christmas to Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, as keeper
during his illness ; but with a view to the impending Parlia-
ment, the bishop was in January made chancellor in his place.

The execution of Somerset was arranged to take place
when few expected it, just before the reassembling of Parlia-
ment. The ignoble death prescribed in the sentence
^Somerse"t.°^ was changed ; and between eight and nine in the
morning of January 2 2 he was beheaded on Tower
Hill. Shortly afterwards, on different days, Sir Ralph
Vane and three others implicated in his proceedings were
condemned for felony, and suffered together at Tower Hill
on February 26, two by hanging and two by decapitation —
all four, however, maintaining to their deaths that they had
committed no offence against the king or any of his Council.
During the rest of Edward's brief reign, Northumberland, of
course, was supreme.

Parliament met again on January 23, 1552, the day after

Somerset's execution. It was still Edward's first Parliament,

The second ^"<^ ^^ "^^^ ^^^j ^^^^^ ^ longcr prorogation than

Act of hitherto, for a fourth and last session. That very

ni ormi y. ^^^ ^ ^^ ^^^ ^^.^ bcforc the Lords for compelling

people to attend church services. After three readings it
went to the Commons, and was there read a first time,
but advanced no farther. On March 9, however, a new
Bill of Uniformity was introduced in the Lords, and on the
30th another bill "for the due coming to common prayer
and other services of God in churches." This last would
seem to have been intended to replace the bill introduced on
the first day of the session. It was combined with the Bill of
Uniformity, and passed both Houses in April — not without
protests in the Lords from three lay peers and two bishops

XV THE SECOND PRA YER-BOOK 303

(Thirlby of Norwich and Aldridge of Carlisle). It accordingly
became law, and is known as the Second Act of Uniformity.
But this amalgamation of two bills had a rather curious
eifect. The preamble of the Act, which apparently belonged
to the first bill — " for the due coming to common prayer " —
declares that although a very godly order had been set
forth by Parliament for common prayer and for the administra-
tion of the sacraments in English " agreeable to the Word of
God and the primitive Church," yet "a great number of
people in divers parts of the realm do wilfully and damnably
refuse to come to their parish churches." As a cure for this
evil it is enacted that such defaulters shall be liable to
Church censures, and the bishops and other ordinaries are
exhorted to enforce such censures. Episcopal authority, so
sadly impaired and discredited of late years, was now, it was
felt, the only power which could compel respect for the new
services. But, strange to say, it was not the order hitherto
set forth as agreeable to the Word of God which was to be
maintained after all ; for, as the Act further showed, that prayer-
book had been subjected to some revision, and a revised
edition of it was annexed to the Act and was ordered to be
generally used from the Feast of All Saints (November i)
next.

The reason given in the Act for the emendations thus
authorised is, that doubts had arisen in the use of the book
" rather by the curiosity of the minister and
mistakers than of any worthy cause." And there ^ayer-boot.
can be little doubt who the so-called " mistakers "
were. They were the men who accepted the book in the
way it was intended at the time to be accepted, as a com-
promise. As already remarked, there was nothing in it
really offensive to old doctrines. It is true, the Latin mass
which was still enjoined for the use of the priest in the Order
of Communion in 1548 was abolished in the Prayer-book of
1549; but the service was entitled "the Supper of the
Lord, and the Holy Communion, commonly called the
Mass"; and even Gardiner, as we have seen, was willing to
accept the book himself and promote its reception. But
Cranmer had been labouring for a year or more on such a
revision as would meet the criticisms of German and Swiss

304 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

reformers, and satisfy his own altered view of the sacrament.
In a letter which Peter Martyr wrote to Bucer from Lambeth
on January lo, 1551, he says that the archbishop had
recently held a meeting with the bishops, who, he was
thankful to say, had accepted an admonition from himself
and friends, and it was decided that several changes should
be made. What those changes were to be Martyr did not
then know or dare to ask ; but he was much comforted by
what he heard from Sir John Cheke, the young king's tutor.
" If the bishops," Sir John told him, " will not change the
things that ought to be changed, the king wiU do it himself,
and when the matter comes before Parliament he will inter-
pose his own royal authority." And so, in fact, it was done.
In the prayer of consecration stood the words — "to bless
and sanctify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine,
that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most
dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ " ; and on these words
Gardiner had founded an argument in his book against
Cranmer, to show that transubstantiation was still set forth
in the Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer replied with a
receptionist interpretation, showing that the words "may be
unto us'' were not a prayer that the elements might be
changed in substance. The object now, however, was to get
rid of ambiguities which allowed any foothold for the old
doctrine ; and so the passage was altered to the form with
which we are all familiar, in which the memorial character
of the rite is fully indicated, with the prayer that we " may
be partakers " of His blessed body and blood.

We cannot dwell minutely upon the further legislation of

this session, even where it bears on Church matters. A

bill of treasons which passed the Lords was

legSSfon. rejected by the Commons, who drew another in

its place, and this was passed into law. It was a

severe Act against calling the king heretic, schismatic, tyrant,

or usurper ; but it contained a proviso, manifestly suggested

by the case of Somerset, that none should be attainted of

treason unless two witnesses would aver the facts to his face.

A bill about holidays and fasting-days became law, with a

curious preamble setting forth abstract reasons for making

days holy, that people might not judge them superstitious ;

XV SEIZURE OF CHURCH GOODS 305

also an Act for poor relief, and an Act touching the marriages
of the clergy, to relieve such marriages from the discredit
that still attached to them as mere licensed evils, and to
declare the children legitimate. There was also an Act
reuniting the See of Westminster to London, but preserving
the exempt jurisdiction of the Abbey Church. An Act
against fighting in churches and churchyards revealed the
bitterness of the times, and the results of spiritual jurisdiction
being in abeyance. The evil, however, was to be dealt with,
first by spiritual methods ; and if these failed, by loss of an
ear or branding the cheek with red-hot iron. A bill against
simony also passed, but did not receive the royal assent.

Further, an Act was passed prolonging for three years the
existence of the commission on ecclesiastical laws ; but events
made this fruitless.

Parliament was dissolved on Good Friday, April 15. The
king was ill of measles and small-pox, and this Parliament had
opposed some designs of Northumberland, partly v/ith refer-
ence to the estates of the late Duke of Somerset, and partly
for a partition of the See of Durham with a view to make
himself count palatine ; so he was glad to end it.

On April 21, as Edward records in his journal, it was
agreed to send out commissions to seize all superfluous Church
plate for his use, and to inquire how any had been ^ . .

T, 1 1 1 „ , ^ ^ ^ , Commissions

"embezzled or conveyed away. Some of the to seize
commissions issued in pursuance of this resolution ^^"^ ^^^^'
are preserved, with the certificates returned by the commis-
sioners. Two of these commissions are undated, one is dated
May 6 following, and a still later one January 16 in the fol-
lowing year. But even those which were ordered in April
1552 were not the first of their kind; for reference is made
in the documents themselves to previous orders to take inven-
tories of Church goods, and there is an actual order of the
Privy Council on the subject dated March 3, 1551. The
churches were stripped of all plate except what was necessary
for divine service, and all rich copes, vestments, and altar-
cloths ; and inquiry was pushed as far as possible to discover
who had been beforehand with the Crown in the plunder of
church ornaments.

On the 22nd Lord Paget, who had been imprisoned in the

3o6 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

Tower since November as a friend of Somerset, had his
Garter and George taken from him by Garter King of Arms
" for divers offences," as the young king wrote, " and chiefly
because he was no gentleman of blood, neither of father's side
nor mother's side." A change was also made in the constitu-
tion of the Order with new statutes on the 24th, but was only
ratified apparently on March 17 following. Among other
things, the Order was henceforth to be called of the Garter,
not of St. George, " lest the honour due to God the Creator
might seem to be given to any creature," and the masses
hitherto said for deceased companions of course could not be
sanctioned any longer.

On the 26th Hooper surrendered his bishopric of Gloucester,

and a month later. May 20, he was appointed Bishop of

Hooper made Worccster, with his former See annexed to it. In

Bishop of July he began a visitation of his new diocese,

Worcester , hi ^i

and but was Compelled soon to return to Gloucester,
Gloucester, f^j^^jjj^g )^^^ ^^ clergy had relapsed into a number
of superstitious usages which he had prohibited. The clergy,
in truth, must have been somewhat perplexed with a set of
injunctions so entirely opposed to previous orders that among
other things they were commanded " that none of you main-
tain the Six Articles." So it was now insubordination to
uphold doctrines which twelve years previously it had been in
the highest degree penal to oppose.

On June 13 following, the Princess Mary rode through
London to Tower Wharf, and took her barge to visit her
brother the king at Greenwich. The perverse and
^^^faJy!"^^^ intolerant policy of the Council had not succeeded
in creating a rupture between them. Her house-
hold servants had been released and sent back to her on April
14, just before Easter, and the Council were probably con-
scious by this time of the danger of continually outraging the
feelings of one who stood next in succession to the throne.
Her mass, indeed, was still prohibited, but she contrived to
have it said in secret, and the authorities perhaps did not care
to inquire too closely about it. Mary paid but one more
visit to London and to her brother before he died ; but on
her part, at all events, there was no lack of kindly feeling.
In September Bishop Ridley paid her a visit at Hunsdon,

XV KNEELING A T COMMUNION DISLIKED 307

which passed off very pleasantly till he offered to preach
before her. This, however, she declined, teUing him that the
adjoining parish church would be open to him when he
came, but neither she nor any of her folks should be among
his hearers. On leaving, the bishop blamed himself for
having drunk wine in her house, instead of shaking the dust
off his shoes as a testimony against it.

On October 3 Bishop Tunstall was called before a lay
commission, of which Sir Roger Cholmley, the chief justice,
was the head, at what was formerly the Abbey of ^j^j^^
Tower Hill. After further examinations on the 8th Tunstaii
and 13th, he was deprived and committed again to ^^"""^ '
prison. How a chief justice could have accepted a commission
for such a very irregular proceeding is not easily explained, except
by the generally unconstitutional character that government
had now assumed. Four bishops had already been deprived
unjustly, and now a fifth was added. It was next proposed
to dissolve the bishopric of Durham and divide it into two
separate bishoprics of Durham and Newcastle, the former of
which it was intended to give to Ridley.

On November i the new Prayer-book came into use by
the express provisions of the Act. Yet as late as September
27, Grafton the printer was ordered to stay the issue of the
book till certain faults had been corrected, and Cranmer was
written to as to the advisability of leaving out a new rubric, by
which it was for the first time enjoined that communicants
should kneel in receiving. Custom had hitherto ruled the
matter without a rubric, but Hooper had long objected to the
custom ; and a new preacher who had just come from the
north, a Scot by birth, lately made chaplain to Northumber-
land, had denounced the practice of kneeling in a sermon
delivered before the king, which had given rise to vehement
disputes among the bishops. This preacher was . j^^ ^^^^
John Knox, whose history, since we last met with and the new
him, had been full of change. On the surrender of ^^^^^'
St. Andrews he had been committed to the French galleys,
from which he was released, apparently at the demand of
Somerset, early in 1549. He came to England, and was
employed by the Council as a preacher for nearly two years
at Berwick, and for a similar period at Newcastle. He had

308 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

argued before the Council of the North and Bishop Tunstall
that the mass was idolatry, and had administered the sacra-
ment to sitting congregations. But it was found expedient to
withdraw him from the north, and he was now in London,
where this sermon of his delighted the foreign congregations
and produced the results just mentioned. Cranmer replied
to the Council in a very judicious letter, expressing his willing-
ness, at their request, to consult with Peter Martyr and others,
but deprecating the discussion of a matter which had been
fully weighed already. Knox, however, was at this time
favoured by Northumberland, who proposed to make him
Bishop of Rochester ; and on October 2 7 an order was issued
by the Council that the declaration on kneeling (which we
have now, though in a shortened and materially modified
form) should be inserted in the prayer-books already printed.
The declaration, commonly called "the black rubric," was
accordingly inserted in the bound volumes on a separate slip of
paper, without authority either of Parliament or Convocation,
to satisfy the over- scrupulous. And even Knox now coun-
selled his congregation at Berwick to obey it and to kneel.

This business was closely connected with another very
important subject. As far back as 1549 Cranmer had drawn

up a set of articles of religion which he required
of^reHgi^n. cvcry prcachcr to sign before granting him a licence

to preach. He seems to have laid these articles,
two years later, before a meeting of bishops ; for on May 2,
1552, he was required by the Council to send them "the
articles that he delivered the last year to the bishops, and to
signify whether the same were set forth by any public
authority or no." On September 19 following he wrote to
Cecil that he had revised them and sent them to Sir John
Cheke, with whom he desired Cecil to examine them and
consider about pressing them on the king's attention. A
month later (October 21) the Council ordered them to be
examined by six persons, of whom Knox was one (all of them,
probably, royal chaplains) ; and as the 38th article declared
the ritual of the new Prayer-book to be agreeable to the
liberty of the Gospel, their reply (drawn up undoubtedly by
Knox) took exception to the posture of kneeling, and was the
more immediate cause of the declaration. Their criticisms.

XV CHANGES IN THE NEW PRA YER-BOOK 309

however, seem to have extended further, and on November 20
the Council sent back the articles to Cranmer with amend-
ments for his consideration. He returned the draft revised
on the 24th, with a statement of his own opinions, and an
earnest prayer that the articles might now be authorised for
subscription by the clergy. c

So it is clear that before these articles received King
Edward's signature, which, it appears, was only on June 12,
1553, they had undergone a very large amount of criticism
and discussion, in the course of which their number was
reduced from forty-five to forty-two. At a later period these
forty-two were again reduced to our familiar thirty-nine. As
to the leading changes in the new Prayer-book a few words
may suffice. The old vestments were forbidden, and at com-
munion a bishop was to wear a rochet, and a priest or deacon
a surplice only. The alterations in matins and evensong were
not very vital. Each began in 1549 with the Lord's Prayer;
to which, in 1552, were prefixed for the first time
the sentences of Scripture now used (though from a praye'r-books.
different translation), the exhortation, general con-
fession, and absolution. In the communion service the table
was ordered to be placed in the body of the church, or in the
chancel, and the priest, instead of " standing humbly afore the
midst of the altar," was to stand " at the north side of the table "
to begin the service. The Gloria in Exceisis, which stood at
the beginning of the office in the first book, was relegated to
the end. The Ten Commandments were introduced for the
first time, and some rubrics were suppressed — among others one
enjoining the minister to add a little water to the wine. The
canon was divided into three parts, forming, by redistribution,
the prayer for the Church mihtant, the consecration prayer,
and the first of the two alternative prayers after reception.
The effect was to make communion follow at once on con-
secration. There was also suppressed a thanksgiving for the
grace and virtue declared in the Virgin Mary, and for the
example of "patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs,"
along with a beautiful commendation to God's mercy of souls
departed " with the sign of faith." The change in the words
of consecration has already been mentioned. The manual acts
were omitted, and the formula of administration was altered.

3IO LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

It consisted in each book of only part of the words used at
present ; in the first book it was the first clause only, in the
second it was the second clause only. The general aim of the
alterations was undoubtedly to lower the old sacramental view.

A further object was no doubt in Cranmer's mind — the
formation of a new Catholicism by establishing such broad
and general formularies as might be accepted by all European
Christians not bound to the papacy. His own mind had
for some time given up transubstantiation as an impossible
doctrine, and his travelled survey of foreign communities
convinced him that a less exclusive standard of belief was
necessary than that which was insisted upon by old scholastic
divines. He strongly upheld the scriptural basis of religion,
and he desired by correspondence with the most acute
theologians abroad, as well as by conference with those at
home, to set up a ritual free from reasonable objection. Un-
fortunately the authority on which he relied was not altogether
safe. Royal supremacy had been fairly established in Eng-
land, and was accepted even by men like Bishop Gardiner.
But innovations which Henry VHI. had not dared to make
could scarcely be cordially accepted under the sway of a
minor, who, however acute in mind, had none of the wary
thoughtfulness of his father, and might even have been led
to disown them when he came of age.

Now, however, the suspicion must have been growing
daily that the seeds of death were in the young lad already,
and they who had been training him up as the head of a new
religion must have trembled at the prospect of the speedy
succession of his sister Mary.

In 1553 Northumberland had to summon a new Parliament

to carry on the government ; for the debts of the Crown had

not been met by the money received from France

Padiam'^nt ^^"^ Bouloguc, the salc of lauds, and the plunder of

church ornaments. The Parliament, of course, was

to be packed, as usual ; but the writs were issued for this

election with barefaced intimations in some cases that the

sheriffs were to elect persons recommended to them by the

Privy Council. The session was to be opened by the king

in person on March i, but he was too unwell to face the

outer air in a ride to Westminster, and the lords, knights,

XV DESIGN TO CHANGE THE SUCCESSION 311

and burgesses assembled before him at Whitehall. The
Bishop of Ely as lord chancellor declared the causes of its
assembly. Northumberland demanded and obtained a large
subsidy, rendered necessary, as he said, by the " unskilful
government " of Somerset. The bill for dividing the bishopric
of Durham was brought in and passed. The other measures
were not very important. Parliament was dissolved, as last
year, on Good Friday, which was this time the last day of the
month.

Convocation had met at St. Paul's on the 2nd, the day after
the meeting of Parliament, when it was addressed by Scory,
Bishop of Rochester, in a Latin sermon. The
registers, which are now destroyed, are said to have'^^^^9Jg*^°
been almost blank. The Forty-two Articles published
in June following bear upon their title-page the statement
that they were agreed upon in this Convocation ; but it has
been fully proved that this is an official fiction. Cranmer
himself, in Mary's reign, said the title had been prefixed
without his knowledge, and that when he complained of it to
the Council he had been told that it meant only that they
were set forth in the time of Convocation. Yet even this was
untrue ; for the utmost that could be said was that the printing
of Ponet's Catechism, along with which these Articles appeared
in some editions, was authorised by letters-patent of March 25,
which would be during the sitting of Convocation.

Although the king was now visibly growing weaker, Northum-
berland caused reports to be spread of his recovery, which
were eagerly believed and made the occasion of
thanksgiving in churches. The duke, however, was Northumber-
preparing for the inevitable event, and his mode of
preparation was audacious beyond all precedent. He was a
desperate man, with little claim to mercy from the sovereign
who was to succeed, and his project was to get the young
dying king to alter the succession. First, however, he ar-
ranged three marriages, which took place simultaneously on
Whitsunday, May 21, at Durham House, late the town-house
of Bishop Tunstall, which he had appropriated. It should
be observed that by the will of Henry VHI. the issue of his
sister Mary by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, had a
contingent interest in the succession to the crown in the

312 LAST YEARS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

event of Edward and his two sisters dying without issue.
Henry, who had stigmatised both these ladies, his own
daughters, as bastards, had nevertheless arranged that they
should both succeed in the natural order of birth, and the
elder, Mary, was not looked upon as illegitimate by the
people generally. Northumberland, however, proposed to
exclude both her and her sister from the succession and
convey it at once to the line of Suffolk. Charles Brandon
had left two sons by Mary, promising young men ; but they
were both carried off in one day by the sweating sickness,
and the dukedom of Suffolk had been conferred, in October
1 55 1, on Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, who had married
Charles Brandon's daughter Frances. This new Duke of
Suffolk had by her an accomplished daughter, Lady Jane
Grey, who would inherit all the possibilities of a royal
succession, and Northumberland arranged with her father
that she should marry his fourth son, Guildford Dudley.

That was the first match and the most important. After
the manner of the age it was settled between the parents
without much consideration for the inclination of the parties
themselves, who were expected simply to obey. The second
was of Lady Jane's sister Katharine to the eldest son of the
Earl of Pembroke. The third was that of the duke's own
daughter, Katharine, to Lord Hastings, eldest son of the Earl
of Huntingdon. Three weeks lat^r, on June 1 1, Sir Edward
Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, received an
order to repair to court next day and bring with him Sir John
Baker, Mr. Justice Bromley, the attorney -general, and the
solicitor-general. They came, and the king himself, surrounded
by his Council, unfolded the design to which Northumberland
had won him over. He told Montngue that he had been led
by his serious illness to consider deeply the state of the king-
dom, and that he was determined that the crown should not
go to his sister Mary, who might marry a foreigner and change
the law and religion. He therefore desired him to draw up
a deed for altering the succession in accordance with some
written articles he showed him. By these it was to go to the
heirs-male of Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, if she had any
before Edward's death ; or, failing them, to Lady Jane Grey
and her heirs-male ; or, failing them, to her newly married

XV THE KINGS DEATH 313

sister and her heirs - male, with provision for yet further
contingencies. The chief justice and other lawyers were
staggered, and said that the proposal was illegal ; but on being
further pressed, they begged time for consideration. They were
sent for again next day and told the matter was urgent, but
they informed the Council that they adhered to their opinion ;
to attempt to convey the crown in such a fashion would be
treason in all concerned. Northumberland presently burst
into the room, and, trembling with anger, called the chief
justice traitor, swearing that he would fight in his shirt with
any man in that quarrel.

Next day the judges were again summoned, and the king
himself demanded sharply why they had not drawn the deed,
commanding them on their allegiance to do it at once and
he would have it ratified by a new Parliament. On this,
Montague, unable to withstand the threats of the Council,
asked for a commission under the great seal for his justifica-
tion and a pardon at the same time. This was agreed to,
and the document was drawn up in accordance with articles
signed by the king "above, beneath, and on every side."
Northumberland now required the signatures of the judges
and of the Council, all of which he obtained except that of
Sir James Hales. Then Cranmer's signature was required,
but he pleaded that he was sworn to the will of Henry VHL,
which this would set aside. On being brought, however, to
the young king himself, and shown how the judges and
Council had already concurred, he too acquiesced and set
his signature in its due place above the others. The thing
was accomplished, and archbishop, council, and lawyers had
committed themselves to a scheme to cut off Mary from the
succession.

Just after this, on July 2, Dr. Hodgkin, Suffragan Bishop
of Bedford, preached at St. Paul's, and it was noted that he
prayed for neither of the king's sisters. On the following
Sunday, the 9th, Bishop Ridley himself preached, and pained
his hearers by declaring both these ladies bastards. ^^^^^^ ^^
But by this time King Edward was dead, for he Edward vi.,
died at Greenwich on the 6th ; and though his ^^ ^ ' '^^^*
death was concealed for two days, the fact had been intimated
to the lord mayor and some leading citizens, who were sent

314 LAST YEA'RS OF EDWARD VI. chap.

for to court on the afternoon of Saturday the 8th, and
informed both of the event and of the arrangements for the
succession, which they were sworn to keep secret. On
Monday the loth, at three in the afternoon, Lady Jane Grey
was conveyed down the river to the Tower, where she was to
hold her court, and two hours later was proclaimed queen in
the city.

Edward VI. has left a name in connection with charities
and education which critical scholars find to be little justified
by facts. It is true that at the close of his reign
Md^choorJ^ he not only founded Christ's Hospital for poor
children and St. Thomas's for the indigent sick,
but gave up his own palace of Bridewell to the city of
London as a house of correction for vagrants. But Christ's
Hospital was merely his father's gift to the city of the Grey
Friars at Newgate, converted now to a special purpose, and
endowed by an appeal to private benevolence. It was filled
with poor children for the first time in November 1552.
Bridewell, which was likewise given to the Mayor and
Corporation of London, was at first poorly furnished out of
the resources of the hospital of the Savoy, a charity founded
by Henry VII., which, though it relieved 8000 people in
the year, had exceeded its income, and was surrendered to
the king on June 10, 1553, just a month before his death.
For Bridewell also a public subscription had to be raised
a few years later to make it really useful. St. Thomas's
Hospital in Southwark was an old foundation, of which the
celebrated Sir Richard Whittington had been one benefactor.
It had fallen, like other hospitals, to Henry VIIL, and was
likewise granted by his son to the citizens of London, though
not without their paying for it. The grant was made in the
fourth year of Edward's reign, and the buildings were repaired
and received patients in his sixth year, not a twelvemonth
before his death.

Similarly the schools to which Edward VI. gave his name
were not one of them originally of his foundation. They
were mostly very old schools refounded with poorer endow-
ments. Educational resources had already been seriously
impaired under Henry VIIL, and the schools which bear the
name of Edward VI. owe nothing to him or his government

XV HIS HOSPITALS AND SCHOOLS 315

but a more economic establishment. A good many of them
had been chantry or guild schools ; for if the chantry priest of
old wasted his time in singing for souls, he not unfrequently
did good work as a schoolmaster. Such work, indeed, the
Chantries Act did not profess to interfere with. On the
contrary, it was suggested, as we have seen, in the preamble,
that the endowments of chantries should be applied to
grammar-schools ; but amid the more pressing interests of the
day, the heavy taxation of the people, and the greed and
covetousness of great men, educational institutions undoubt-
edly fared badly.

Authorities. — Sleidan's Commenta?-ies ; the Chronicles and the Calendars
of State Papers referred to in chap. xiii. ; Dasent's Acts of the Privy Cou7icil,
vols. iii. and iv. ; Tytler's England under Edward VI. and Mary ; Card-
well's publications, Documentary Annals, Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum,
Synodalia, and The Two Books of Covimon Prayer Compared ; the Statutes ;
Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, II. ii. 50, 64, 112; Strype's Cranmer,
App. nos. 61, 68 ; Cranmer's Works, "On the Lord's Supper " (Parker Soc.) ;
Report VII. of Dep. Keeper of the Records, 22, App. ii. no. 10 ; Hooper's
Life, prefixed to his later writings (Parker Soc); Journal of Edward VI.
(in Burnet or, better, in Nichols's Literary Remains of Edward VI. , published
by Roxburghe Club) ; Lorimer's John Knox and the Church of England ;
Original Letters from Zurich Archives, 71 (Parker Soc). With regard to
the publication of the Forty-two Articles and the evidence that they were not
laid before Convocation, the reader may be refered to the lucid footnotes of
Dixon in vol. iii. pp. 513-517. Fuller's Chu7'ch History (ed. Brewer), iv.
137-146, contains Sir Edward Montague's account of the way he was
drawn into the plot in favour of Lady Jane Grey. Concerning Edward's
foundation of hospitals see Grafton's Chronicle, ii. 529-531 (ed. 1809),
Stowe's Sm-vey of London, and Maitland's History of London. As to his
founding of schools see Leach's English Schools at the Reformation. In the
Appendix to The Chronicle of Quee7i Jane and of Queen Mary (Camden Soc.)
Nichols has printed the documents touching Edward's device for altering the
succession. On the state of religion and morals under Edward VI. see Pocock
in the English Historical Review for July 1895, and articles therein referred
to in the Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1892 and i893.

CHAPTER XVI

LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT

Of course Northumberland had been busy during those two,
or rather three, days during which King Edward's death had
been kept secret. Experienced soldier as he was, it was on
military tactics alone that he depended to give effect to his
desperate conspiracy ; and having already implicated in his
designs the Council and the judges, his next step was to secure
the Tower, which he at once placed under a new custodian
and filled with ordnance. Mary, the true heir, was then
Hving at Hunsdon. She was summoned to court in her brother
Edward's name, and the duke hoped to get possession both
of her person and that of her sister Elizabeth before either
knew of his death. But Mary was warned of the trap — by
„ , some accounts, even before her brother died — and
flight to rode off at full speed to Kenninghall in Norfolk,
^^° ' where the Earl of Bath and some other important
persons speedily joined her. On the 12th the Council in the
Tower received intelligence of this, and appointed that Jane's
father, the Duke of Suffolk, should go with other noblemen
to bring Mary up to London. Jane, however, besought with
tears that her father might remain with her, and Northumber-
land was persuaded to undertake the dangerous mission
himself. Having obtained a formal commission, he left
London on the 14th, not without misgivings as to his
confederates in the Council, and, passing through Shoreditch,
remarked to his old companion-in-arms. Lord Grey, " The
people press to see us, but not one saith God bless us." As
he proceeded, it became more and more evident that his

316

CHAP. XVI A CCESSION OF MARY 317

expedition was hopeless. Mary was gathering forces far
greater than his. Six vessels had been despatched to lie
off Yarmouth to prevent her leaving the country. They
were driven by stress of weather into the harbour, and the
crews, hearing that Jerningham was raising forces for Mary,
offered to throw their captains into the sea if they would
not serve her as queen. On this the captains put the ships
and ordnance at her disposal. It was the same elsewhere ;
noblemen's tenants would not serve their lords against
Mary. Sir John Williams proclaimed her in Oxfordshire, Sir
Thomas Tresham at Northampton. Sir Edward Hastings
held Buckinghamshire at her command.

The duke, who had advanced as far as Bury, fell back
upon Cambridge, where he was ere long taken prisoner.
The councillors in the Tower prepared for a change.
On the 1 9th Queen Mary was proclaimed in London, proclaimed
with much ringing of bells, lighting of bonfires, and i"^^"-
throwing up of caps. The nine days' wonder was over. On
August 3 the true queen entered the capital in great state,
her sister EHzabeth following in the procession. That day
certain State prisoners met the queen at the Tower gate — the
Duke of Norfolk, who had been in durance nearly seven years ;
young Edward Courtenay, who had been nearly fifteen ;
Bishop Gardiner, and the widowed Duchess of Somerset.
They kneeled before the queen, and she kissed them and said,
"These are my prisoners." About the same time Bishop
Bonner was delivered out of the Marshalsea, and Dr. Cox
was put there in his place. The State prisoners in the
Tower were discharged next day. Meanwhile a good
company of very real traitors had already been sent thither.
Condign punishment, indeed, soon followed the chief of
these criminals. But even before the question of justice to
rebels, a question of religion required consideration in con-
nection with the funeral of the late king. He had lived, of
course, a heretic in the eyes of Mary's Church, but Mary had
a mass sung for his soul by Gardiner in the Tower. His
body, however, was borne by Cranmer from Whitehall to
Westminster on August 7 "without any cross or light," as
the Grey Friars' chronicler remarks, "and buried next day
with a communion, and that poorly; and the Bishop of

Dr. Bourne's
sermon.

318 LAD YJANE, QUEEN MAR V, AND WYA TT chap.

Chichester preached a good sermon." The Bishop of
Chichester was George Day, just hberated from his unjust
confinement ; but his function was hmited to preaching.
The public rites could only be celebrated according to the
English Prayer-book.

A week later, on Sunday August 13, there was a disturb-
ance at Paul's Cross, on occasion of a sermon preached by
Dr. Gilbert Bourne, once Bonner's chaplain, now
the queen's. It was just four years since Bonner
had preached in the same place and from the same
text (the day in both cases being the eleventh Sunday after
Trinity) that sermon for which he had suffered unjust imprison-
ment ; and the preacher alluded to the fact. He was met with
cries of " Thou liest " ; one in the crowd threw a dagger at
him, and others hustled him from the pulpit, and threatened
his life. He was, however, safely got through the church into
the schoolhouse, while one of the prebendaries named Brad-
ford, a man of opposite views, who had drawn him back, spoke
to the people and tried to pacify them. On this the lord
mayor and aldermen were at once summoned to confer with
the Council in the Tower, and were ordered to call a common
council on the morrow, in which they should charge every
householder to keep his children and 'prentices in order,
informing them how the queen, the very day before the riot,
had declared with her own mouth her intention not to
constrain men's consciences, but to trust to the persuasions of
learned preachers to bring men to her own way of thinking.

That this was Mary's sincere intention at the outset of
her reign there is no reason to doubt. Intolerance did not
begin with her. She expressed her feeling on the
to£tio^n. subject again in a proclamation issued on the i8th,
in which she urged her subjects to live together
" in quiet sort and Christian charity," avoiding the " new found
devilish terms of papist and heretic." Being now settled on the
throne, she declared that she could not hide that religion which
she had professed from infancy, and wished others to observe
it also ; but she would use no compulsion till further orders
were taken by common consent, and she warned any would-
be disturbers of the peace that they would be severely dealt
with. In consequence, moreover, of the means much used to

XVI THE DEPRIVED BISHOPS RESTORED 319

propagate sedition, she forbade unlicensed preaching or
printing, or playing of interludes.

On the same day Northumberland and his son John, Earl of
Warwick, with William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, were
brought to their trial at Westminster before the
Duke of Norfolk. Northumberland in vain pleaded Nonhum°ber-
his commission from the usurper whom he had set 'o'J^g^"^
up. Finding this plea useless, he pleaded guilty,
and was condemned. It was arranged that he, with some
others, should have suffered on the 21st, but the execution
was respited till next day. On the 2 1 st, however, he attended
a mass in the Tower, along with the Marquess of Northampton,
Sir Andrew Dudley, and others, after which he asked forgive-
ness of the marquess and each of the company, who then asked
mutual forgiveness of each other on their knees, and all came
before the altar professing that they would die in the Catholic
faith. The duke, in particular, confessed that he had been
seduced by false preachers for sixteen years past, and desired
all present to bear witness that he believed the sacrament to
be his Saviour. He made a similar confession next day on
the scaffold, and called his confessor. Bishop Heath, who was
present, to testify to his conversion. Two others suffered
along with him. Sir John Gates, late captain of the guard,
and Sir Thomas Palmer, both of whom had likewise joined
in the mass of the day before.

But, on the whole, Mary was liberal of pardons. She desired
to proceed gently, as, indeed, she was advised by the emperor \
for it was a serious task to restore religion to its old footing — even
more difficult, in fact, than she was at first aware. Some Acts
of the late reign, however, were speedily undone, as
not only unjust but unconstitutional. The appeals restoS.
to the Crown which Bishops Bonner and Tunstall
had hitherto made in vain against their sentences of depriva-
tion were heard at length, and, on inquiry, they were restored
to their Sees. No commission, perhaps, was required to restore
Gardiner, Heath, and Day, who were recognised again as the
rightful Bishops of Winchester, Worcester, and Chichester.
Voysey was restored to Exeter by patent on September 28. on
the ground that he had been compelled to resign " by just fear
both of body and soul." Meanwhile Ridley was sent to the

320 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARYLAND WYATT chap.

Tower ; Ponet, perhaps conveniently, disappeared for two or
three months ; but Coverdale and Hooper were called before
the Council and committed to prison, till it was seen what
should be done with them.

On the 23rd Bishop Gardiner was made lord chancellor.
Next day (St. Bartholomew's Day) the Latin service and the
mass were sung in " the Shrouds " at St. Paul's and some of
the London parish churches, not by order, but simply in re-
sponse to the feelings of parishioners. On Sunday the 27th
the old Latin service was used in the cathedral itself. It was
only on December 21 following (St. Thomas' Day) that it
was used again in all churches by an Act of the Parliament
which had sat meanwhile in October.

But before Parliament met, and before the coronation which
preceded it, some other important things had taken place.
The state of the universities required immediate attention.
Gardiner was Chancellor of Cambridge — an office from which
he had been removed in the late reign, and to which he was now
restored — and Sir John Mason of Oxford. Both chancellors,
in obedience to letters from the queen, proceeded to restore the
ancient statutes and religion. Peter Martyr, after being shut up
in his house for six weeks, escaped from Oxford and found his
way to his old patron at Lambeth in the beginning of Sep-
tember. Cranmer had just been disturbed by the fact that
mass had been said in his own cathedral at Canterbury, and still
more by a report that it had been done by his order, and that
he had promised to say mass before the queen herself. To
clear himself he drew up a manifesto, offering, with
offerrS the queen's leave, to prove that the Communion
dispute, ^qq]^ Qf j^ing Edward was agreeable to the order
laid down by Christ himself, and that the mass had no apostolic
or primitive authority. And as Peter Martyr's name for learn-
ing was disparaged, he offered to hold a public disputation
upon the subject, supported by Martyr and four or five others
whom he would name. This, of course, was written with
Martyr's approval \ and Cranmer professed that he meant to
have had the document written out at greater length and
posted, with his seal attached, on the door of St. Paul's Church,
when it was divulged by accident through a copy given to
Scory, the deprived Bishop of Chichester. Presently, every

XVI CRANMER COMMITTED TO THE TOWER 321

scrivener's shop was full of copies, and Cranmer was summoned
before the Council on September 13. There were more
serious things against him, however, than the publication of
a document, and next day he was committed to the Tower
for treason.

Just before his committal Peter Martyr dined with him, and
Cranmer advised him to do his best to procure a passport out of
England, for he was sure he should never see his face again.
FaiUng a passport, he must betake himself to flight. In a
few days, however, Martyr obtained a very honourable passport
from the queen, who had no desire to persecute ; and he sailed
to Antwerp, whence he afterwards made his way ^ . ^

, r>. 1 1 -I- 1 T-. • Foreign Pro-

to Strassburg. So also the rrench rrotestants m testants leave
London were expressly allowed to depart, with "^^'^ '
letters written in their behalf to the mayors of Dover and Rye.
A Lasco, too, with his Dutch and German friends, was allowed
to sail for Denmark (a company of 175 souls in two ships),
but from their ill repute as sacramentaries they had almost as
great difficulty in finding a resting-place on the Continent as
in England. Finally, Somerset's colony of Flemings at
Glastonbury was broken up, and they also had passports for
their departure abroad.

It was now determined that the coronation should take
place without delay, notwithstanding a religious difficulty which
might seem more theoretical than practical. Coronation was
a religious rite, and could not properly be performed while
a kingdom lay under excommunication. There was no help
for it, however. Even reconciliation to Rome must be pre-
ceded by the repeal of unjust laws. By one of these the
queen's own title to the crown was affected, unless she was
content to be recognised as a bastard succeeding only under her
father's will. By others papal supremacy had been abolished,
mass had been made illegal, and a form of worship established
which was deemed by many to be heretical. If anti-papal laws
were to be repealed, Parliament must meet, and before Parlia-
ment met Mary must be crowned. She herself took no pleasure
in her royal dignity except that the fact of her succession
would enable her to repeal injustice and restore true religion.
But she must await a legate from the Holy Father to reconcile
the realm to Rome.

322 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT chap.

Of course the pope had already seen the importance of

sending one promptly, and whom could he send on such a

, mission but Cardinal Pole ? Mary and Pole were

Pole named . _ .,. ... "^ ■f-r-»i

legate for quitc of ouc uimd m religious matters, and Pole
England, j^^^ suffered exile now for one -and -twenty years
for no other cause than for upholding the legitimacy of her
birth and the authority of the Roman pontiff. At the time of
Edward VI.'s death he was at the monastery of Maguzzano on
the Lago di Garda, to which he had withdrawn himself shortly
before by leave of Julius III. The pope at once sent him a
commission as legate, not only to Mary in England, but also
to the emperor and Francis II. of France, as he might have
to pass through both their territories ; and Mary awaited his
coming with eagerness, that papal authority might be restored,
and her kingdom reconciled to the Holy See.

But Pole's coming was anticipated by another envoy.
Cardinal Dandino, papal legate to Charles V. at Brussels,
was a good deal nearer England than Pole, and despatched
thither secretly a young man named Commendone to
learn the state of the kingdom. Commendone
^°m7ss"on."''' performed his mission with great ability. He was
in London on August 13, and saw the dagger
thrown at Dr. Bourne at Paul's Cross, and before leaving he
also witnessed Northumberland's execution on the 22nd. He
contrived to get private interviews with the queen, who
declared to him her intention of sending ambassadors to
Rome, and annulling the laws passed against the ancient
religion. Meanwhile she desired a pardon from the pope
for those who had yielded to tyranny in rejecting his authority.
On his return, Commendone was sent by Cardinal Dandino
to the pope, who was moved to tears by his information.
On his way to Rome he, by the cardinal's instructions,
visited Pole, telling him that England was yet in too unsettled
a condition to receive a legate, and he also stopped Richard
Pate, whom Pole was sending to England in advance.
Pate's arrival in England might indeed have been a little
awkward for reasons which were not those of Cardinal Dan-
dino. He had been Henry VIII. 's ambassador to Charles V.,
and, being recalled in 1540, instead of returning to Eng-
land, had fled to Rome, and was soon after appointed by the

XVI CORONATION AND PARLIAMENT 323

pope to the bishopric of Worcester, vacated, according to the
view taken at Rome, by the death of Cardinal Ghinucci,
whose deprivation by Act of Parliament in 1534 was not
recognised there. Of course Pate was attainted and had no
real possession of the See of Worcester, which was meanwhile
held under Henry VIII. by Bishop Heath, and under Edward
VI. by Hooper. But Hooper was now ignored and Heath
again recognised as bishop ; so that the claims of Pate could
not have been immediately allowed, even by a queen so
devoted to the Holy See as Mary.

Pole was thus interrupted in his mission, and was disap-
pointed to find that Mary herself was governed by practical
considerations which he, would fain have ignored. She in
fact had sent a message to the pope desiring absolution, not
only for herself in allowing herself to be crowned before the
kingdom was reconciled, but also for Bishop Gardiner who
was to perform the ceremony, and for other Catholics that
they might administer the sacraments without sin before the
general absolution could be had. Relying on this, she pre-
pared for her coronation. In September the two chief justices
and some other prisoners were released from the Tower, and
Cranmer and Latimer were conveyed thither, the latter being
committed for "seditious demeanour." At the end of the
month she took up her abode there herself for two nights, and
from thence made a royal procession through the city on the
30th, when, besides pageants and choirs of children on the
route, an acrobat amused the crowd by strange performances
on the top of St. Paul's steeple. Next day she was
crowned at Westminster, Bishop Gardiner proclaim- ^crowiid^."^
ing at the same time her general pardon to all
except prisoners in the Tower and the Fleet, and a few others.
She had carefully considered beforehand the terms of her
coronation oath, in which she promised, not only to preserve
the liberties of the realm, but to maintain the rights of the
Holy See.

Parliament met on October 5 — four days after the coro-
nation. Whether it was, like most of its predecessors, a
Parliament elected under undue influences, cannot
well be ascertained ; it certainly differed greatly in
its composition from the last, and was not in all things quite

324 LAD YJA NE, Q UEEN MARY, A ND W YA TT chap.

subservient. It was opened with a mass of the Holy Ghost ;
the queen was present, and Gardiner, as chancellor, made a
speech on the necessity of returning to the unity of the
Church, confessing that he himself, with the bystanders, shared
in the guilt of schism. The queen was uncomfortable about
her inherited title of " Supreme Head of the Church of Eng-
land," and by what was doubtless a royal message, though a
contemporary diarist calls it an Act passed in the Parliament,
men were allowed freely to discuss whether that title was
appropriate, or whether the pope should not be again acknow-
ledged. In a first session, which extended to Saturday,
October 21, an Act was passed declaring in its preamble the
mild spirit in which the new sovereign desired to reign,
regretting past severities, and trusting that her subjects would
obey her for love rather than for fear; in conformity with
which sentiments all treasons were abolished that had been
defined as such since the 25th year of Edward III., and
all enactments were repealed by which new offences had been
made felony or liable to prcemunire since the beginning of
Henry VIII.'s reign. On the 24th the Houses resumed,
and much important legislation was carried reversing that of
past years. First, the queen's legitimacy was declared, and
the validity of her father and mother's marriage. Then
the whole of the Edwardine legislation concerning the sacra-
ments, uniformity, and priests' marriages was repealed, the
services authorised by those acts being tolerated only till
December 20. Then an Act was passed against disturbing
divine service and irreverent handling of the host, permitting
any constable or churchwarden to arrest such offenders,
who might then be committed to prison by any justice
for three months, to be afterwards brought up at quarter-
sessions, when they might be liberated on repentance. These
were the principal Acts that touched the Church. Among
others may be noted a new Act against unlawful assemblies.

Within a fortnight after the first meeting of parliament the

Convocation of Canterbury also met, under the presidency of

Bishop Bonner, as the archbishop was in prison.

onvoca ion. ^ curious fact is Stated by Heylin, that in the

writ of summons to this Convocation the queen was styled

" Supreme Head of the Church of England " — a title which

XVI MARY URGED TO MARRY A SUBJECT 325

had been dropped in the writs for Parliament. On the open-
ing day, October 18, Dr. Weston, the prolocutor, conveyed a
message from the queen that they should debate matters of
religion, and lay down laws for it which should be ratified in
parliament. This was the more necessary as Ponet's Cate-
chism had been put forth as authorised by Convocation,
which in truth it never was. Besides, there was the Book of
Common Prayer, " very abominable " in the eyes of good
Catholics. The sacramental teaching of the Catechism was
accordingly first discussed, and its defenders were invited to
declare their arguments. Much of this discussion has been
preserved. But in the end the arguments against transub-
stantiation were declared unsatisfactory, and that doctrine was
formally approved. Theology was brought back to the old
standard without any reference to the pope. "^^

Parliament was dissolved on Wednesday, December 6, by
the queen in person, after she had given her consent to thirty-
one statutes. Convocation was only dissolved on the 13th.
Parliament might have lasted longer if greater difficulty had
not been found in restoring papal authority than in the
abrogation of the Edwardine innovations in religion. The
House of Commons, especially, viewed the prospect of a
return to papal jurisdiction with anything but satisfaction.
That House also gave special offence to the queen in
November, having been moved by agents of the French
ambassador to petition her to marry an Englishman and not a
foreigner. She had already decided that question privately
on October 29, when, in the presence only of the imperial
ambassador and one of her female attendants, she threw her-
self on her knees before the Holy Sacrament, reciting the
Veni Creator Spiritus, her two spectators doing the
like, and on rising gave her royal word to the "Engaged"
ambassador that she would marry the emperor's JJl^^-jf
son Philip, Prince of Spain. And the fact that
this marriage was in prospect was already known when the
Commons attempted to interfere.

Meanwhile, on November 13, Cranmer, Lord Guildford
Dudley, and the Lady Jane, with Ambrose and Henry Dudley,
brothers of Lord Guildford, were indicted of treason at the
Guildhall, and, pleading guilty, received sentence of death.

326 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT chap.

Their attainders were confirmed by Parliament just before it

was dissolved. Cranmer sent an appeal to the queen for

Sentence ^ercy, as he had been dragged into the plot un-

passed on willingly ; and for the present neither he nor the

Cranmer, . ^ ^ \. ^ . . ^ ,

Lady Jane, othcrs Suffered anythmg worse than imprisonment,
and others, ^j^^ j^^^^ j^^^^ being evcn allowed to walk about

"in the queen's garden and on the hill." By Cranmer's
attainder, however, the See of Canterbury became void, and
the jurisdiction was given to commissioners by the dean and
chapter. On December 15 proclamation was made for re-
establishing the mass.

But while everything marked a return to old principles
and doctrines, some sensation was created by the appear-
ance just before Christmas of a book professedly
oTcarlTine^s pHutcd at " Roane " {i.e. Rouen). It was an Eng-
book against j^gh translation of Bishop Gardiner's treatise De

the pope. ^

Vera Obedientia., written in 1535 to repudiate papal
jurisdiction in England, with a preface, ostensibly composed
by Bonner, now Bishop of London, at a time when he was
only Archdeacon of Leicester, though he was then also Henry
VIIL's ambassador to Denmark. The object of this publica-
tion, which bore at the bottom of the title-page the quotation,
" A double - minded man is inconstant in all his ways,"
was to make both Gardiner and Bonner uncomfortable by
reminding them that they had both committed themselves to
the view that the lady who was now queen was a bastard,
and that the pope had no authority in England. It was a
very clever hit, ushered into the world with an extremely
virulent preface by the translator, whose name was given on
the title-page as Michael Wood. But there is no doubt that
this name was fictitious, as also was the date, " From Roane,
xxvi. of Octobre, mdliii." Another edition, certainly printed
in London, professed to be printed ''in Rome before the
Castle of St. Angel, at the sign of St. Peter, in Novembre,
Anno do. mdliii." And each of these editions, curiously,
referred on the title-page to the original Latin work as
printed at Hamburg, "in officina Francisci Rhodi, mense
Ja. MDXXXVi." This is certainly a very suspicious date, as
Hamburg does not seem in those days to have possessed a
printing-press at all. Moreover, the genuineness of Bonner's

XVI BALE'S SARCASMS 327

preface is also doubted, and weighty reasons have been
alleged against it. But perhaps these objections lose their
force if we suppose it to have been written, even if not
pubhshed, abroad to win foreign Protestants to the doctrine
of royal supremacy, Bonner was actually at Hamburg at
the date in question, and the imputation would not have
hurt him if it had been wholly false.

The real significance of this publication, however, is shown
in the scurrilous preface of the translator, which is liberal of
taunts to other bishops, such as Tunstall of Durham and
Sampson of Coventry and Lichfield, on the very same
subject, as men who had upheld other views than they liked
now to acknowledge. This is one of the earliest of the bitter
pamphlets, afterwards so common, in which a bishop is called
a "bite-sheep," and it abounds with other epithets equally
shameful. Bishop Gardiner himself is spoken of as "now
lord chancellor and common cut-throat of England," though it
does not appear to whose death, even for heresy, he could at
this time have been accessory. In short, the style of this
preface alone might make one suspect that the "Michael
Wood" by whom it was written was no other than the
notorious ecclesiastic known as "foul-mouthed Bale," who,
writing abroad, found the means at this time to get several
pamphlets printed in London, and had issued under the
same pseudonym of Michael Wood, on October i, an equally
characteristic "Admonition to the Bishops of Winchester,
London, and others."

John Bale, a Suffolk man, at this time fifty -eight years of
age, had been prior of the Carmelite Friars at Ipswich, but he
adopted new views, broke the rule of his order by . , „ ,

^ . J r J 1 • BisisopBale.

marrymg, and found a patron and protector m
Thomas Cromwell ; after whose fall he fled abroad. Upon
the accession of Edward VI., however, he came to England
again, and obtained the living of Bishopstoke in Hamp-
shire. In August 1552 he went to see the young king at
Southampton, no long journey from his parsonage ; and, much
to his surprise, Edward then and there gave him the bishopric
of Ossory in Ireland, and ordered his appointment to be
made out by letters -patent. He crossed to Ireland in
January following, and has left a graphic account of his

328 LAD YJANE, QUEEN MAR Y, AND WYA TT chap.

journeyings and experiences there, till, after Mary's accession,
the restoration of the old religion compelled him to leave the
country ; when, with a good deal of trouble, he got conveyed
over to Holland. In that year he published the story of
his adventures entitled The Vocacyon of John Bah to the
Bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande, and it is remarkable that
this tract also professes to be " Imprinted in Rome before
the Castell of S. Angell at the Signe of S. Peter, in Decembre
Anno 1553." Of its contents, interesting as they are, all
that need be said here is, that they exhibit no small pertinacity
on the part of the author in setting forth an unpopular
religion, while they also bear witness to great depravity and
demoralisation among the Irish.

In the matter of her marriage it was certainly unfortunate,
not only for Mary herself but for her subjects also, that she
had no English counsellor on whom she could
withPhiHp. ^ely so fully as she did upon the emperor. A
queen-regnant was then a novelty in England, and
no one supposed she could maintain her position without a
husband. Gossip had spoken of young Edward Courtenay,
whom she had liberated from the Tower and restored to
ancestral honours as Earl of Devon. Nor was her other
cousin, Cardinal Pole, altogether an impossible match, for, as
yet, he had only taken deacon's orders, though he had so
narrowly escaped being made pope. But Pole himself did
not aspire to be the queen's husband ; he only desired most
eagerly to fulfil his legatine mission and reconcile his country to
Rome. In spiritual matters, indeed, he had the queen's entire
confidence. But in temporal matters she had been continually
guided in times of cruel adversity by the advice of her cousin,
the Emperor Charles V. ; and though his son Philip, a widower
and father of a child of eight, was eleven years younger than
herself, she of her own mind thought him the most suitable
person for a husband. Gardiner had done what he could to
direct her choice otherwise, but Paget took care to flatter her
own inclination ; and Gardiner, finding her mind made up,
acquiesced, and used his best diplomacy to save the interests
of the nation from being made subordinate to those of Spain.

This match was a great advantage to the emperor, and
he caused his son to break off an engagement with the

XVI THE SPANISH MARRIAGE 329

Infanta of Portugal in order to effect it. Ever since the
peace of 1550 France had been reheved from her old dread
of England, for Edward VI.'s government could not afford
to add to domestic difficulties by quarrelling with a power
which had the young Queen of Scotland in its keeping ; while
England, for her part, having France for an ally, had been
able to brave the threats and indignation of Charles V. pro-
voked by the treatment of Mary when she was princess. In
case of war, England and France together could have made
communication between the emperor's dominions in Spain
and in the Netherlands well-nigh an impossibility. But now
all was changed. The emperor, too, was actually by this
time at war with France, and England, even if she could not
be got to join in that war, would certainly befriend him
rather than his enemy.

Of course this alarmed the French as much as it gratified
the emperor ; and though Mary gave them the most sincere
assurances that the resources of England should not be
employed against them, it was no wonder that, while
politely accepting those assurances, they were not by any
means satisfied. Moreover, the French ambassador, Noailles,
thought it his duty not only to inquire closely about the
dispositions of the English people, but to intrigue, and
encourage conspiracy among them~a business in which the
Venetian ambassador likewise assisted. It was certainly no
secret that the match was very unpopular. On New Year's
Day, 1554, the London boys pelted with snowballs some of
the retinues of the Flemish envoys sent over by the emperor
to arrange it. The men were but harbingers who landed a day
before their masters to secure quarters for them ; but when
the ambassadors themselves landed next day at the Tower
Wharf, though they met with a splendid official reception, the
people in the streets hung their heads and showed no sign
of satisfaction. On January 12 the marriage treaty was
signed at Westminster. On the 14th the queen's intentions
were intimated officially by Gardiner, as chancellor, to a
number of lords and gentlemen in the presence-chamber,
and next day to the mayor and sheriffs of London, and others
of the city sent for by the Council.

Within six days after came news that Sir Peter Carew and

330 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT chap.

others were up in Devonshire in opposition to the Spanish
marriage, and had taken the city of Exeter. But this was

only the first outcome of a conspiracy with many

■ ramifications, of which Gardiner at this time dis-
covered the clue by a conversation with Courtenay, the new
Earl of Devon. That unsteady young man, disappointed of
the queen's hand, had listened to evil counsellors, who pro-
posed to marry him to the Princess Elizabeth, their original
design having been to effect risings in different parts of the
country on Palm Sunday, March i8. But the secret was not
kept, and the conspirators moved too soon. After the news
of Carew's rising in the west came tidings that Sir Thomas
Wyatt had risen in Kent, and also that Sir James Croftes had
gone to Wales to raise the country there ; while the Duke
of Suffolk, pardoned already for his attempt to set up his
daughter as queen, departed hastily from his house at Sheen
and tried to raise the Midlands.

It was, in truth, an heretical conspiracy with a political
pretext. After Wyatt was executed there were heretics that

spoke of him as a martyr stirred by " the zeal of
rSion God's truth." And it will be easily understood that,

just as Mary's chief object in marrying was to secure
the old religion on as firm a basis as possible, the political
and religious factions which had so long ruled had now set
themselves to withstand it. Nor were they particularly scrupu-
lous about the means. Thejplan was to work upon the Enghsh
prejudice against foreigners, to declare that hosts of strangers
were coming, that Spaniards were haughty and would enslave
the English people, and would send Englishmen to the galleys
or the mines of New Spain. In Kent, Wyatt said to an
adherent who hoped he would restore "the right religion,"
" Whist ! ye may not so much as name religion, for that will
withdraw from us the hearts of many ; you must only make
your quarrel for over-running by strangers. And yet to thee
be it said in counsel, as unto my friend, we mind only the
restitution of God's word." And Wyatt, who had been
brought before the Council in Henry VIII.'s time as an
associate of the late Earl of Surrey in breaking windows at
night with stone-bows, had no doubt that the sacred cause
would best be promoted by rebellion.

XVI WYATT IN KENT 331

Some time before this he had come to London to stir up
the newly pardoned Duke of Suffolk and his brothers, but
found it inadvisable to go further, and returned to Kent. It
was not possible, however, long to cultivate sedition and defer
overt rebellion, so he issued a proclamation at Maidstone
on January 25. On that very day Suffolk's futile movement
in the Midlands collapsed. And, indeed, there was no
formidable movement anywhere but in Kent, a county specially
noted for rebellions ; for the attempt of the Carews to raise
the west country was equally a failure. But in Kent Wyatt
prevailed wonderfully, assuring the people most untruly that
he was perfectly loyal to the queen, and that almost all the
nobility, and the Queen's Council likewise, were in sympathy
with him against the marriage. His proclamation was read
elsewhere than at Maidstone, and a loyal gentleman at Milton
who opposed the reading of it was forced out of the market.
He made himself master of Rochester, where he met a herald
from the queen upon the bridge, and prevented him from
proclaiming aloud, within general hearing, her Majesty's pardon
to those who would withdraw. He spread alarming tales of
the landing of an army of foreigners at Dover. Lord Aber-
gavenny and the Sheriff of Kent, whom he had falsely declared
to be sympathisers, would have marched on Rochester, but
found their presence necessary to stop mischief elsewhere.
The Duke of Norfolk and Sir Henry Jerningham were sent
down thither by Gravesend; but at Strood, when about to
turn his ordnance against Rochester on the opposite bank
of the Medway, the duke found that Captain Bret, with the
company of Londoners in his rear, had revolted and taken
up the cause of the enemy, crying out, " We are all English-
men ! " Rochester was spared a battery, and the duke felt
it necessary to withdraw.

This was on January 29, 1554. Wyatt next stormed
Cooling Castle, and then, flushed with success, pressed onward
towards London. Matters were so alarming that the queen
sent messengers to him on the way. She was surprised, she
said, that a subject should rise against her marriage, for even in
that matter she wished only to consult the good of her people,
and desired to know if he would discuss the matter with delegates
sent from her. He replied insolently that he would rather be

332 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT chap.

trusted than trust, and for his security he must first have the
Tower and the queen's person handed over to him, and four
of the Council placed in his hands as hostages. On the 31st
he had brought his followers up to Greenwich and Deptford.
On February i the queen went to the Guildhall

The queen ,,,.,•■ -, /- , ,

at the and, addressmg the citizens, made a powerful appeal
"' ^ ■ to their loyalty and sense of duty, declaring that
she had negotiated the marriage by the advice of her Council,
who thought it both honourable and for the weal of her
subjects, and that if it was not likewise approved by Parliament
she was content to remain unmarried. This she was free to
say, as she had not yet ratified the treaty. Musters were
taken next day of 1000 men. and the Candlemas service was
omitted in St. Paul's. On the 3rd, Wyatt and his men
entered Southwark and entrenched themselves at the foot of
London Bridge, setting two pieces of ordnance against the
gate. But he was kept out of the city by Lord William
Howard, the lord admiral, and on the 6th he withdrew and
went up the river to Kingston, where he crossed in the night,
though the bridge had been partly broken down.

The Londoners, who had been relieved in the evening on
learning that he had withdrawn from Southwark, were rudely
awakened at four in the morning by the roll of drums warning
all to arm themselves and repair to Charing Cross ; for scouts
had brought the news that he was at Brentford. His progress,
however, was delayed by the breaking of the wheels of a gun,
and some of his followers deserted him, while others counselled
him to leave the gun lying and march on. Among these was
the worthy Dr. Ponet, lately called Bishop of Winchester, who,
when Wyatt hesitated to take their advice, counselled Captain
Bret and others to shift for themselves, as he would do ; and
he thereupon made his escape to the Continent.
End of the There, doubtless, he composed his Short Treatise of

rebellion. ' ,,.,■■ , i i i

Politic Poiver, published two years later, remarkable
not merely for some scurrilous passages but for principles
tending to stir up subjects against their sovereigns. But
Wyatt, notwithstanding the delay and the warning which the
Londoners had received, met with little resistance till he
got to Ludgate, where he was refused admittance ; on which
he fell back on Temple Bar, and was compelled to surrender.

XVI SEVERE MEASURES 333

Next day, or a day or two later, the Duke of Suffolk and
his brother, Lord Thomas Grey, were committed to the Tower,
and on the loth the Kentish rebels were brought up for trial.
Eighty-two were condemned at the Old Bailey and thirty-two
at Westminster, and many executions took place a few days
later. Mary had been warned by the imperial ambassador,
Renard, that she had been too lenient at the outset, and this
rebellion seemed to show it. Severity was now necessary
for the stability of the Commonwealth. Unhappily, among
the sufferers was the innocent Lady Jane, who had been
forced into treason and usurpation against her will. She had
already been tried and pleaded guilty in November, but Mary
had not intended to let the sentence be executed. Her
father's late attempt, however, was significant that the old
project might be revived ; and on the 12th she was beheaded
in the Tower, having seen her husband that same morning
led out to be beheaded on Tower Hill, and the cart also
return with his headless body. Her father, the Duke of
Suffolk, was beheaded there on the 23rd. But Mary was far
from being merciless even then, and over four hundred rebels
who had been taken were brought out of the London prisons
to the court at Westminster on the 22 nd, coupled with collars
and halters about their necks, and kneeling before the queen
for mercy received her pardon. As for Wyatt, he was tried
and condemned on March 15, and was beheaded on Tower
Hill on April 1 1 .

Wyatt had confessed soon after his apprehension that a
plan had been entertained, set forth by French agents, for
marrying the queen's sister Elizabeth to Courtenay,
the restored Earl of Devon, and even for puttinsr ^^f.^l'"<i^^s

1 1 , 111/-, i" o Elizabeth.

the queen to death ; and that but for the premature
action taken by the conspirators, the French would have
supported them by attacks on England from Scotland,
Guienne, and on the side of Calais. How far Elizabeth
herself was accessory to these schemes cannot clearly be
ascertained. She could hardly have known much of the
whole design, but some things looked rather suspicious against
her. She was then ill at Ashridge in Hertfordshire, thirty-
three miles from London ; but it is not true, as Foxe has
made people believe, that men were sent for her with rude

334 LADY JANE, QUEEN MARY, AND WYATT chap.

instructions, rudely carried out, to bring her up alive or dead.
On the contrary, the queen sent her own litter for her by
Lord William Howard, her grand-uncle ; and the journey was
planned beforehand in five easy stages, though in reality,
owing to the patient's weakness, she was eleven days upon
the road. On entering Whitehall she loudly asserted her
innocence, and desired to be taken to the queen. On Satur-
day, March 1 7, two noblemen came to convey her by water
to the Tower, but she persuaded them to delay while she
wrote a letter of remonstrance to the queen ; and, a tide
being thus lost for the dangerous shooting of London Bridge,
it was only on the morning of Palm Sunday, the i8th, that
she was conveyed to that grim fortress, making renewed pro-
testations of innocence.

At his trial Wyatt had confessed some things, but strongly
denied having consented to the queen's death — a thing which
he admitted had been proposed by one WiUiam Thomas, a
clerk of the Council under Edward VI., who had written a
shameless defence of Henry VHL's atrocities. But Wyatt
declared that he himself had altogether opposed it, and
apparently his declaration was quite honest. On the scaffold
he also exculpated Elizabeth and Courtenay from the charge
of being privy to the rising. And in this, too, he may per-
haps be believed ; for though Courtenay's head was turned
by designing men, it does not follow that he was aware of
the means they intended to employ. As for William Thomas,
he was naturally called to account, and, after a futile attempt
to commit suicide, suffered condign punishment at Tyburn on
May 18.

Before concluding this chapter we must mention the sad
case of Sir James Hales, the one only judge who had with-
stood to the last the demand of Edward VI. for
Case of Sir j^jg signature to the instrument for altering the

James Hales. o. _ , . , i i i i i i

succession. By this conduct he had doubtless
earned Mary's gratitude ; but presently holding assizes in Kent,
when some priests were indicted for saying mass, his view of
duty led him to charge the jury to find a verdict according to
the laws of King Edward, which were still unrepealed. This
offended the queen, who expected her prerogative to secure
toleration for her co-religionists until the laws could be altered ;

XVI SUICIDE OF A JUDGE 335

and, although she renewed his patent as judge on October 4,
Gardiner, as chancellor, refused to administer to him the oath
of office. He was also committed to prison, where, being
visited by Bishop Day and others, he was won over to a
profession of the queen's religion. But he was ill at ease,
and attempted suicide with a penknife. He recovered after a
while and was released from prison, but a few months later
succeeded in drowning himself.

Authorities. — Chronicle of Queen lane and Queen Mary, Wriothesley's
Chronicle, Grey Friars' Chronicle, and Machyn's Diary (all Camden
Society publications) ; Nicolas' s History of Lady lane Grey. An interestin^j
Italian letter of July 24, 1553, with additions on the 27th and 28th touching
Lady Jane and Queen Mary's accession, will be found in Lettere di Principi,
iii. 222-226 (ed. 1577) ; see also Rosso's compilation, Historia delle cose
occorse nel regno d' Inghilterra, published at Venice 1558 ; Florio's Historia
de V Illustriss. Sa. Giovanna Graia, 1607 ; Guaras's Narrative of the
Accession of Mary (privately published), edited by R. Garnett ; Noailles's
Ambassades ; Tytler's England under Edward VI. and Mary ; Papiers
d Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. iv. (Documents In^dits) ; Original
Letters (Parker Soc), 370-374, 512; Calendar of Venetian State Papers,
especially Pole's Letters, Penning's Report, no. 813, and Soranzo's
Report, no. 934 ; Gratiani Vita Commendoni. For Pate, Bishop of
Worcester, see Calendar of Henry VIII. vol. xvi. For the Parliament see
Statute-Book and Lords' and Commons' Journals. For the disputation in
Convocation see Foxe, vi. 395-411, who also gives at p. 414 Mary's speech
at the Guildhall ; Collier, App. no. Ixviii. For Cranmer's appeal to the
queen see his Remains, p. 442 (Parker Soc). For Bale see his Select Works
(Parker Soc.) and Maitland's Essays on the Reformation. For Wyatt's
rebelhon see Proctor's Narrative in Grose's Antiquarian Repertory, iii.
65-105 ; Holinshed's Chronicle, and Wiesener's Youth of Queen Elizabeth;
Tridon's paper on Simon Renard and his embassies in Mdmoires of the Soci6t6
d' Emulation du Doubs, series 5, vol. vi. (for his English embassy see pp.
S69-237). Heylin's Ecclesia Restaurata may be consulted for some points.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME

Wyatt's rebellion caused but a temporary interruption of
those proceedings which were to bring back England to the
bosom of the Church of Rome. Much more,
the old order doubtlcss, could have been done if domestic peace
of things, j^^^ i^^gj^ preserved ; but the very mildness of
Mary's beginnings had encouraged both heresy and treason.
On Sunday, January 14, just before the outbreak, the old
procession before high mass was revived at St. Paul's, " the
lord mayor and aldermen going in procession in their violet
gowns and cloaks furred as they used every Sunday in King
Henry VIII. 's time, afore the sermon began." On March i,
after the rebellion had collapsed and quiet had been again
established, the married clergy of London were cited to appear
at St. Paul's, and were deprived of their benefices, those who
had belonged to religious orders being separated from their
wives as well. On the 4th, royal letters were sent to the
bishops to correct these and other disorders of the last reign.
On Palm Sunday, the i8th, the old service after the use of
Sarum was begun again, and palms borne as before ; " creeping
to the cross ' was renewed on Good Friday, and the sepulchre
lights and resurrection on Easter Day. " Scriptures " painted
on rood lofts with the arms of England were washed out
before the solemnity of Easter in most churches of the diocese
of London. Dr. May was deprived of the dennery of St.
Paul's, which was given to the eminent preacher. Dr. Fecken-
ham. On April i six new bishops " after the old sort " were
consecrated at St. Mary Overy's by Gardiner, assisted by

336

CHAP. XVII DEPRIVATIONS AND PREFERMENTS 337

Bonner and Tunstall. These were Dr. White, made Bishop
of Lincoln; Dr. Bourne, Bishop of Bath; Dr. Morgan, of
St. David's ; Dr. Brooks, of Gloucester ; Dr. Cotes, of Chester ;
Robert Warton translated from St. Asaph to Hereford, and
Maurice Griffin made Bishop of Rochester. The last See had
been left over three years vacant ; the other five had all been
rendered void by deprivations.

In fact, there had just occurred seven deprivations, effected
by Gardiner and other royal commissioners under two separate
commissions ; for three of the bishops now replaced
had been appointed only by letters-patent of Edward among a?^
VI., and held their offices merely during good '^ °^^'
conduct, while four others had been married. But among
the Sees voided by the latter cause were two which were not
immediately filled ; and Bath, which had also been held by a
married bishop. Barlow, seems to have been already resigned
by him to save trouble. Indeed, in addition to the seven
deprivations, there were actually six Sees at this time
already vacant ; so that within a twelvemonth half the
bishoprics in England found new occupants. Throughout
the kingdom also the married clergy were deprived, not-
withstanding the Act of Edward VI., and the number thus
driven out has been supposed to be one in five, or probably
one in six ; in the diocese of London, which was no doubt
exceptional, it was nearly one in four. But a certain not
inconsiderable number received new livings after doing penance
and parting v.'ith their wives — so strong was the feeling in
favour of the old Church law.

A Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, but by
new writs was ordered to Westminster, where it met on April 2.
The main objects, as it would seem from the first
two Acts passed, were to strengthen the royal ^'^and'^'^*
authority (declaring that the regal power was as ^°°'^''''^'^°"-
complete in a female sovereign as in a male) to confirm
the marriage treaties, and to set forth the conditions under
which Philip and Mary would be king and queen without
involving England in the war between Spain and France.
The Convocation of Canterbury, in like manner, was
summoned first to Oxford for April 3, but by a second writ
to St. Paul's, where it commenced proceedings on the 5th,

338 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chaf

Its first business, which seemed to be the most important,
was to select out of its members a set of divines to dispute
with Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer at Oxford on the subject
of the mass ; for it was unanimously resolved that a disputa-
tion should be held to counteract an impression which had got
abroad that in past disputations these heretics had prevailed
over all the Catholics. The queen's government, how-
ever, had anticipated this resolution before Convocation had
met, and as early as March 8 orders were given to the
lieutenant of the Tower to deliver the three prisoners to Sir
John Williams to be conveyed to Oxford. Three pro-
positions were drawn up in Convocation to be subjects
of debate, and delegates were sent also from the University
of Cambridge to aid in maintaining them. We cannot
describe the disputation, which occupies nearly a hundred
pages in Cattley's edition of Foxe. The proceedings
lasted from April 14 to 20, but the result was a foregone
conclusion. The arguments of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley

were finally condemned, but whether this satisfied
^t^oiford" P"t)lic opinion better than before may perhaps

admit of question. That there are paradoxes in
religion all Christians must admit, but such a paradox as
transubstantiation can only retain its hold on common minds
by the belief that all wiser heads are agreed upon it ; and
the day when this could plausibly be said was certainly
passing away.

Of the three disputants whose opinions were condemned it
was said by one of the commissioners (Brooks, Bishop of
Gloucester) : " Latimer leaneth to Cranmer, Cranmer to
Ridley, and Ridley to the singularity of his own wit." Ridley
undoubtedly led the way in repudiating transubstantiation.
He was the most directly combative of the three. Cranmer
perhaps had the most academic mind, and was complimented
by his antagonists on his gentleness and moderation. Latimer,
now old and feeble, declined to dispute, but would not sign
the required formulae. The result was reported by the
delegates to Convocation on April 27, and on the 30th
Walter Philips, Dean of Rochester, a sympathiser hitherto
with the condemned opinions, made a retractation first before
the Lower and afterwards before the Upper House. On

XVII DANGEROUS SYMPTOMS 339

May 4 the clergy agreed henceforth to allow voting by proxy.
On the 25th the Convocation was prorogued by Bonner till
October.

On April 2 the Apostles' mass ^ began again at St. Paul's ;
but on Sunday morning, the 8th, some unknown person was
found to have contrived a public insult to the
religion which the queen was endeavouring to ^^3^^^^"
restore, A dead cat was hung on the gallows in
Cheap, habited in garments like those of a priest. It had
a shaven crown, and held in its fore-paws a round piece of
paper to represent the wafer. At six o'clock in the morning
it was taken down and carried to the Bishop of London, who
caused it to be shown openly at the sermon-time at Paul's
Cross to the rebuke of irreverence. Such a thing could not
be thought lightly of in that age. Five days later a reward
of 20 marks was offered for the discovery of the author of
the outrage, but it was quite ineffectual.

There was concealed fire underneath the smoke, and on
the 1 7th the Court was still more distressed by the acquittal of
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, tried for treason at the
Guildhall. The case against him was certainly ^'V^j-og?'^'
suspicious, for he had sent messages to Wyatt before ™°[,'j°{'af
his outbreak, and he undoubtedly sympathised with
him in his hatred alike of the Spanish match and of the
restoration of the old religion ; but his wonderful power of
tongue fence, and his effective appeal to the recent humane
changes in the law as to treasons, induced the jury to bring in
a unanimous verdict in his favour, which was hailed with cheers
outside and throwing of caps in the air. The queen was ill
for three days after ; and Sir Nicholas and the jury that
acquitted him were brought before the Star Chamber on the
25th and committed to prison. Four of the jury afterwards
confessed to having done wrong, and the other eight were
heavily fined. Alarm produced rough measures after the old
style, and in May a number both of men and women had
their ears nailed to the pillory in Cheap for speaking against
the queen and Council. But the dangerous spirit was not
easily laid. On Sunday, June 10, as Dr. Pendleton was

1 The editor of the Grey Friars' Ch?'onicle misreads the ' ' apostylle masse "
as the " epestylle masse."

340 THE RECONCILIA TION TO ROME chap.

preaching at Paul's Cross, a gun was discharged at him from
a house in Foster Lane, and the pellet hit the church wall
close to where the lord mayor sat. By no subsequent
inquiry could the malefactor be ascertained. Then there was
a mysterious bird or spirit that spoke and whistled through a
wall at Aldersgate Street ; but it turned out to be a maid who
was employed to utter unpleasant things about the queen
and the Prince of Spain, the mass, and confession. These
were bad preparations for the prince's arrival and the queen's
marriage.

The prince, however, landed at Southampton on July 12,
and the queen was married to him at Winchester on the 25 th.
. The marriage service was performed by Gardiner

phiHp?nd in his own cathedral, and after the ceremony he
^^^' announced that the emperor, to make his son, who
was only as yet Prince of Spain, a more equal match for his
bride, had resigned to him the kingdoms of Naples and
Jerusalem. The couple then bore each other's titles, and
were immediately proclaimed by heralds as King and Queen
of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Defenders
of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria,
Dukes of Milan, Burgundy, and Brabant, and Counts of
Habsburg, Flanders, and Tyrol. On August i they were so
proclaimed also in London ; and after Philip had been
installed as a Knight of the Garter at Windsor on the 5th,
they entered London on the i8th. We can read of the
brilliant pageantry, and the wealth brought with them to
England by Spanish visitors, when the riches of the new
world displayed themselves in London streets ; but the under-
currents were sad. The marriage itself was a political marriage,
entered into on both sides from a desire to bring an erring
nation back into the unity of Christendom. It was by this
means in the first place, as the emperor had persuaded Mary,
that the thing was to be done ; Pole's legation from the pope
might follow when the knot was tied. But from the very
first there were symptoms of bad feeling between the English
and the Spaniards, and before many weeks were over there
were Spaniards hanged for killing Englishmen and English-
men for fighting with Spaniards.

An episcopal visitation held by Bonner in September

XVII BONNER'S VISITATION 341

seems to have been to many as exasperating as the influx of
Phihp's countrymen. The articles of inquiry were
numerous and most exhaustive ; for they not only Conner's

\ •' ■' visitation.

aimed at correcting irregularities, but treated as
simply null all that had been done even by Acts of Parliament
under the late reign affecting religion. Was the parish clergy-
man married, or not yet separated from his wife ? Had any
received schismatical and irregular ordination? Had any
used services in English since the queen's proclamation ?
Was the host reserved in a pix hung over the altar? Was
the Church supplied with a water-stock, and was holy water
renewed every week? Was there a proper stone altar, and
did the parishioners supply all the necessary books, chalice,
vestments, vessels for incense, sanctus bell, and so forth?
Were there still a crucifix and a rood-loft? Questions like
these, only far more numerous and minute, formed the subjects
of investigation, and several parishes protested that it was
impossible to carry out what was required of them ; so that in
the end the bishop had to give way, and defer execution of
them till November i. Royal authority, indeed, seems to
have been appealed to, and Bonner was actually asked how
he had taken upon himself to publish such articles without
the knowledge of the king and queen or of the Council ; on
which he boldly replied that it belonged to his office to do
so, and he knew well that if he had communicated them he
should have been hindered in the service of God.

Of course such a spirit roused the wrath of the reactionary
party, and "foul-mouthed Bale," from his exile at Basle,
wrote a characteristic pamphlet, entitled "A Declaration of
Edmund Bonner's Articles." Whether this was printed at
the time does not appear. It was certainly written then ; but
the first known edition was printed in London seven years
later in the days of Queen Elizabeth, when Bonner was in
prison. And clearly there were men in 1561 who were glad
to read Bale's comment on those "most wicked articles" and
his abuse of "bloody Bonner," that "limb of the devil" and
" butcherly bite-sheep," though the much-reviled bishop had
not yet, when this pamphlet was composed, won mucli of
a name in connection with the burning of heretics. Such
virulent abuse only shows the bitter spirit which opposed

342 THE RECONCILIA TION TO ROME chap.

itself to Bonner's visitation ; and this in itself should warn us
not to accept too easily the colouring given to some of the
incidents of that visitation in Foxe's pages, for Foxe was quite
as prejudiced and unfair as Bishop Bale. It is likely enough
that Bonner was angry when the bells were not rung at
Hadham on his approach, when he found no pix hanging and
no crucifix in the rood-loft , and also that he refused to stay
and dine with the disobedient vicar, and went on to Ware.
But that he flew into a passion, swore, struck out with his
arm, and boxed the ear (by mistake) of a bystander instead
of the incumbent, are statements which, though undoubtedly
picturesque, require to be received with caution.

As to Pole's legation, it had been deliberately kept back
by the emperor till the marriage was secure. Charles V., no
Deia of <ioubt, felt himself a true son of the Church, hating
Pole's Lutheranism and heresy (which he always found
very inconvenient), but he was quite persuaded, as a
ruler of this world, that the Church must wait the convenience
of earthly potentates to smooth the way for her. And though,
perhaps, there was no danger that the legate, once started on
his mission, would supplant his son as the bridegroom of the
queen to whom he was accredited, yet Pole's counsel would cer-
tainly be for the formal reconciliation of the kingdom to Rome
before anything else was done. That would never suit
Charles V. Pole had already been stopped in his mission by
another papal legate, who, residing at the emperor's court,
saw the matter very much as the emperor did. The pope
himself, too, not unconscious of causes which might delay the
restoration of his authority in England, had given Pole an
additional mission to occupy his enforced leisure on the way.
He withdrew his two legates from France and Flanders, and
committed to Pole the task of mediating for peace between
the two belligerent princes, Henry 11. and the emperor. On
this mission Pole started, and had got little farther than
Dillingen when he was met by a messenger from the emperor
telling him that it would be wasted labour to go forward. The
emperor, indeed, did all he could to interrupt Pole's com-
munications with England, while Mary herself found evidence
at home that his speedy coming would alarm all the new
owners of Church property.

XVII POLE WAITING TO COME 343

In December 1553, however, the emperor had relented
and invited Pole to Brussels, where he received him in
January. But his efforts as mediator were fruitless, jjj^ ineffectual
Charles and his ministers insisted that the French mediation
alone were answerable for the prolongation of the emperor
war, and Pole bent his steps in February to the ^"'^ ^'^"^^•
French court, where he was detained till April and returned
to Brussels. The emperor then told him he might as well
have remained in France, and evidently wished him to be
recalled. He remained, however, at Brussels, as the pope
could not recall him without loss of dignity, and Mary was
already dependent on his advice about the new bishops whom
she was obliged to appoint by that very royal supremacy
that she detested. Even after the marriage had taken
place in England there were further difficulties about Pole's
mission. Parliament had not yet reversed his attainder,
holders of Church property were not comfortable ; and though
he had powers from the pope to allow them to retain it, the
emperor was not satisfied that they were large enough to give
full assurance. In September he wrote a long
letter of remonstrance to King Philip. He had Spim"
been a whole year, he said, kept knocking at the
palace gate, which no one would open to him. And who was
it knocked? One who, to prevent the queen from being
excluded from the succession, had been expelled from home
and country for twenty years. And in Pole's person Peter
too had been knocking at the gate, delivered anew, it might
be said, from Herod's prison. Was it fear or joy that pre-
vented Mary from opening the door? Pole knew that Mary
rejoiced, but she must also have fears, to delay so long. The
delay, however, he presumed, was to enable Philip to aid her,
and surely the time was now come. In answer to this appeal
Philip sent over the imperial ambassador Renard to confer
with him and arrange matters. The difficulty was still about
lay impropriators of Church property, with whom Pole did
not feel justified in making any bargain ; for though it was
plain enough that immediate or even general restitution was
impossible, and he did not mean to press the matter, he felt
that it was a duty for every one to restore by degrees what he
could. At Rome, indeed, a more practical view of the matter

344 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chap.

was taken ; and it was held that as the Church might alienate
her property for the redemption of prisoners, she might also
frankly give it up for the recovery of a realm to the faith.
But Pole's assurances satisfied Renard, and Lords Paget and
Hastings were sent over to conduct him to England.

Meanwhile, a new Parliament — the third of the reign —

had assembled on November 12, summoned by writs in an

unwonted form. The title of Supreme Head of the

Pariiamfnt. Church was now omitted; it would have been absurd

in the case of two Sovereigns, of whom, moreover,

only one was a native. The object of the summons was

declared to be to withstand the malice of the devil's ministers

in maintaining heresies and seditions ; and the sheriffs were

directed to choose knights, citizens, and burgesses "of the wise,

grave, and Catholic sort." The first business of the legislature

was to reverse Pole's attainder in view of his coming. The

bill went through the Lords in two days, and then went down

to the Commons, where it was read three times in one day and

sent back ; and the king and queen came to give it the royal

assent on November 22.

Meanwhile, Pole, who had been received in Calais with

salvoes of artillery, crossed to Dover, not as legate but only as

Pole at cardinal, and, travelling by Canterbury to Rochester,

last reaches receivcd there a message by Pate, whom he had

England; . . .u ^' L' ^

sent on to the queen, requestmg hmi to come to
her in his legatine capacity, for the exercise of which a patent
had been made out. Then at Gravesend a noble deputation
informed him of the reversal of his attainder, just two days
before. So, all obstacles removed, he embarked in a royal
barge with his silver cross in the prow, and reached London
with a favourable tide even before he was expected. Landing
at Whitehall, he received a cordial welcome from the king and
queen; and on the 28th, the Houses having been summoned
to the palace for the purpose, he declared to them in the
royal presence the object of his legation.

This the Speaker declared again next day to the Commons,
, , , and the two Houses agreed in a supplication to the

and absolves ^ ,11 t -i

the realm king and queen to procure through the cardinal

romsc ism. ^^^.^ pardou from the pope, and reunion with the

Church of Rome. This supplication was adopted unanimously

xvii THE REALM ABSOLVED 345

by the Lords j in the Commons only one member, Sir Ralph
Bagnall, objected, on the ground that he had sworn to the
laws of Henry VIII. On St. Andrew's Day, the 30th, the
document was presented, and the queen besought the legate
to absolve the realm for its long-continued schism and dis-
obedience. Pole then rose and, after an appropriate address,
pronounced the desired absolution, while all, even the king
and queen, knelt before him. Two days later (December 2)
was the first Sunday in Advent, when the king and queen,
and the legate also, heard mass at St. Paul's, and a very
remarkable sermon was preached by Bishop Gardiner from
the epistle of the day — " Now it is high time to
awake out of sleep" (Rom. xiii. 11). The preacher sermon^ ^
lamented the heresies in which England had slept for
twenty years, and expressed regret for the part he had him-
self taken in upholding Henry VIII.'s supremacy. He also in-
formed the people, which he could do as one who had special
knowledge, that even Henry had twice been on the point of
seeking reconciliation with Rome, and that once the Council
of Edward VI. had been moved in the same direction. The
report of what he said on these points must be inaccurate in
detail ; but the fact that once, at least, Henry very nearly
commissioned Gardiner himself to ask the emperor to make
his peace with Rome, can be shown by other evidence.

The joy of the queen and of the nation generally was
increased by the belief that she was at this time with child,
and orders were given by Bishop Bonner for thanks-
giving services throughout the diocese of London \e1ieved"
on November 29. Unhappily, the symptoms w^ere ^^chijlj'^^
mistaken, and as time went on the anticipation
proved groundless. But Parliament, aided by Convocation,
proceeded to fulfil her most ardent wishes in other things.
Convocation, which had met on November 13 (again under
Bonner's presidency), made its own submission to the legate
on December 6, and received its own special absolution for
past sins and heresies. On the 7th, after much consultation^^
on the relations of Church and State, the Houses agreed
upon a protestation to be addressed to the king and queen for
the restitution of the old jurisdiction of the clergy, but with-
out desiring restoration of Church lands, which they agreed

346 THE RECONCILIA TION TO ROME chap.

would be both difficult and dangerous. In later sittings they
craved, among other things, that the Church might have the
full liberties allowed her by Magna Charta; that Cranmer's
book on the sacrament and the English service-books author-
ised in the last reign might be destroyed ; that the limits of
prccmmiire might be defined, so that ordinaries should not
incur it by inadvertence ; and that the old canon law should

0 be restored.

As for Parliament, it was not long in taking steps to redeem
a promise made to the legate to repeal past enactments against
the See of Rome. A committee of the Lords was appointed
on December 6 to confer with another of the Commons with
a view to drawing a bill for this purpose ; and the measure
ultimately became law. But before it was even drafted,
another Act which left a deeper mark in history slipped easily
through all its stages in both Houses. It was a very
^ the heresy short Act — simply to revive three old statutes for the
^^^^" punishment of heretics, seeing that they had lately
made themselves so dangerous. For his own purposes Henry
VIII. had circumscribed the scope of the heresy laws. The
Protector Somerset had abolished them altogether. But since
then England had been a prey to faction and intrigue, religious
and political, both during Edward's reign and Mary's, and
things seemed growing continually worse. For these reasons
it was that methods once potent to restrain what was con-
sidered to be religious disorder were again brought into
operation. No new force was invoked ; there was simply to
be a renewal of old things. And no one seems to have sug-
gested that the embankment which had once held in a lake
would be insufficient to keep out an ocean. So the heresy
laws of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V. were called back
into life. The bill passed through the House of Commons
in three days (Dec. 13-15), and in three days it also passed
the Lords (Dec. 15, ry, and i8). It was in the Lords, how-
ever, that it met with most opposition, partly because it in-
creased the authority of bishops, and partly because the
severity of the old punishment for heresy was disliked. For
men had human feelings even in those days; but strong
measures were thought necessary, even for the public quiet.

^ The bill for repealing enactments against the See of Rome

XVII THE HERESY LA WS REVIVED 347

required very much more discussion. It was introduced in
the Lords on December 20, read a second time on
the 24th, and passed there on the 26th, Bishop enaSmems
Bonner being the only dissentient. But in the ^J^'f
Commons, after a first reading on the 27 th, and a
second on the 29th, it was debated on two separate days,
December 29 and January 2, before it was passed on the 3rd.
It was by no means a pure Act of repeal, and we can have no
doubt as to the causes which created most discussion when
we read the double title by which it took its place on the
Statute Book : — " An Act repealing all statutes, articles, and
provisions made against the See Apostolic of Rome since the
twentieth year of Kmg Henry VIIL, and also for the estab-
lishment of all spiritual and ecclesiastical possessions and
hereditaments conveyed to the laity." There was no great
objection felt to a return to the old regime if it were made
quite clear that the owners of monastic lands were perfectly
secure in their titles.

On New Year's Day 1555 — a fortnight after the heresy
bill had passed both Houses (though it was only to take effect
from January 20) — a secret assembly of men and
women was broken up by the authorities. They EngSler-
were holding an English service by night in a house ^J.^pied^'^"
in Bow Churchyard, with prayers and a lectern.
Those present were arrested, and the minister, Thomas Rose,
was committed to the Tower. This Thomas Rose had a
curious history. Two-and-twenty years before he had been
confederate with four men who burned the rood of Dover-
court in Essex. The others were hanged for it, but he
himself escaped, and afterwards got a licence to preach from
Cromwell. After the Six Articles, however, he fled abroad till
Edward VI. 's time, from whom he got a benefice ; and he was
now organising secret services at which the prayer was used —
"God turn the heart of Queen Mary from idolatry, or else
shorten her days ! " To avoid suspicion he and his friends
had several meeting-places in and about London, where they
had collections " for Christ's prisoners," and would sometimes
gather £,\o at a night meeting — a sum equal to £,^00 now.
But it was considered that such prayers about the queen
should henceforth be made treason, and an Act was passed

348 THE RECONCILIA TION TO ROME chap.

to that effect before the session closed. So much considera-
tion, however, was shown to misguided bigotry, that the Act
contained a provision that any persons who had been guilty
before it was passed and expressed penitence before the judges
should merely be awarded some corporal punishment and dis-
charged.

Parliament was dissolved on January i6 ; and on the i8th,
by a royal Act of clemency, political prisoners were pardoned

Liberation ^^^ released from the Tower. Among these were
of State four Dudleys, sons of the late Duke of Northumber-

fromthe land, and Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. The lord
Tower, chancellor and other lords of the Council went to
the Tower to deliver them, and the event was proclaimed
abroad by great firing of guns. But there remained in
city prisons offenders of another kind, heretical preachers
of the last reign, for v%-hom no mercy was to be expected
unless they relinquished those opinions which endangered
the stability of the new reconciliation with Rome. Among
^^^ these were three of the deprived Edwardine bishops

imprisoned — Hooper of Glouccster, Ferrar of St, David's,

preachers. ^^^ Coverdalc of Exetcr— Dr. Rowland Taylor,
John Philpot, John Bradford, Dr. Edward Crome, John
Rogers, and other notabilities. Although imprisoned, as they
complained, in the King's Bench, the Fleet, the Marshalsea,
and Newgate as if they had been rebels, traitors, thieves, or
law-breakers, their confinement could not have been very
strict, for they circulated writings among themselves, and had
found it possible to prepare and sign, on May 8, 1554, a joint
declaration on religious matters, occasioned, as it would seem,
by a report, just after the disputation of Cranmer, Latimer,
and Ridley at Oxford, that they too would be conveyed to one
of the two universities to dispute. This they declared they
had no mind to do, unless it were before the queen and her
Council, or before the two Houses of Parliament. The de-
clarations of both universities, they said, were directly against
God's word, and even against their own determinations in the
late reign ; and they gave five other reasons besides why they
should not dispute, especially as the Oxford disputation, they
maintained, had been conducted unfairly. But they were
willing to discuss doctrines in writing, and would maintain to

XVII APPEAL OF THE PREACHERS 349

the death certain common principles which they set forth, ad-
mitting the authority of the CathoHc Church and the creeds,
upholding justification by faith only, and objecting to Latin
services, purgatory, and transubstantiation, the adoration of
the sacrament, and the inhibition of priests' marriages. At the
same time they professed entire loyalty to the queen and de-
precated any kind of rebellion or sedition.

Such was the attitude of these prisoners in May 1554.
But about the end of that year, or the beginning of the year
1555, on which we have now entered, a second declaration, as
it is called, of the nature of an appeal to Parliament, had been
drawn up in their name, it is supposed by John Bradford, the
tone of which was a good deal bolder, and scarcely that of
suppliants. "We, poor prisoners for Christ's rehgion," it says,
"require your Honours, in our dear Saviour Christ's name,
earnestly now to repent for that you have consented of late to
the unplacing of so many godly laws set forth touching the
true religion of Christ before, by two most noble kings."
These laws, they alleged, had only been passed after much
discussion among the most learned men at Windsor, Cam-
bridge, and Oxford, and with the willing and general consent
of the whole realm ; so that not a single parish in England, they
maintained, really wished to return to " the Romish supersti-
tions and vain service " which had now been restored. These
superstitions, moreover, had been restored in contempt of
God and the Bible, "with such open robbery and cruelty as
in Turkey was never used " ; and the petitioners ended by
asking leave to justify the homilies and services of King
Edward's days as truly Catholic, and to prove that the services
since used were not so, offering their bodies to be burned if
they failed to estabhsh their case.

If this challenge was really preferred in public — a thing
which it is hardly safe to presume — what wonder if the poor
prisoners were taken at their word ? But it is quite untrue,
as Foxe and his school have made the world believe, that the
authorities were savage or ferocious. The prisoners
were summoned before the lord chancellor (Bishop of^pl^S??
Gardiner) and the Council sitting at the bishop's qI^^}^\
house by St. Mary Overy's on January 22, and
were formally arraigned for heresy. But the only thing to be

350 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chap.

ascertained that day was whether they could be brought, in
conformity with the rest of the kingdom, to return to the
unity of the Church CathoHc by acknowledging the pope's
supremacy. It seems that ten persons were brought out of
Newgate before the Council, only one of whom, at that time,
gave in his submission, and the rest were remanded to prison.
Two prisoners besides, whose names were down for examina-
tion, were not called, apparently because the Council were
so much occupied with the others. For the conversation
between the Council and some of the prisoners opened up
very serious questions, as appears by the records left of it,
which in some cases have been supplied by one or other of
the prisoners themselves, describing his own examination.

Of these the most remarkable is John Rogers's account of

what was done in his case. We cannot recapitulate fully

a testimony which even Foxe has condensed too much. The

lord chancellor began by presuming that Rogers

^^^^^' was aware of the state of the realm as the result of
what had lately taken place ; and when Rogers said he had
no information to go upon, having been kept close prisoner,
the lord chancellor told him about the reconciliation of the
realm to Rome, and asked him, " How say ye ? Are ye
content to unite yourself to the faith of the Catholic Church
with us ? " Rogers replied that he had never dissented from
the Cathohc Church ; but as to the new state of matters, he
could not acknowledge " the Bishop of Rome " as head of the
Church, or any other head but Christ. He had, indeed,
acknowledged Henry VHI.'s supremacy, but not in spiritual
things, and he reminded Gardiner that he and all the bishops
of the realm had twenty years ago repudiated papal supremacy
and written against it. This was an awkward fact certainly,
as the lord chancellor himself had written the most effective
of all the treatises. But now the truth came out. " Tush ! "
he said, "that Parliament was with most great cruelty con-
strained to abolish the primacy of the Bishop of Rome."
"With cruelty?" said Rogers in reply; "why, then, I
perceive you take a wrong way with cruelty to persuade men's
consciences. For it should appear by your doings now that
the cruelty then used hath not persuaded your consciences.
How would you then have our consciences persuaded by

xvn EXAMINATIONS OF THE PREACHERS 351

cruelty?" The chancellor could only reply that Henry
VIII. 's Act was forced on the Parliament by strong intimida-
tion, whereas in this Parliament the acceptance of reconciliation
was free and unanimous.

Another prisoner, Dr. Rowland Taylor, parson of Hadleigh
in Suffolk, gave an account of his examination that day in a
letter to a friend. The lord chancellor told him : " You,
among others, are at this present time sent for, to
enjoy the king and queen's Majesties' favour and ^'"•^^^JjJ^"^
mercy if you will now rise again \vith us from the
fall which we generally have received in this realm ; from
which (God be praised !) we are now clearly delivered
miraculously." Thus it was that Gardiner put the matter,
including himself among those who had experienced a fall
and rejoiced in a great deliverance. Nor is there any
reason to think otherwise than that his words were both
sincere and kindly meant. Under Henry VIII., it is true, he
had acquiesced in royal supremacy, since the king had taken
such a responsibility upon himself, and had written in support
of it. But the arbitrary and unjust proceedings under Edward
VI. had brought home to him the feeling that the constitution
had been unhinged in Church and State, and he believed the
realm now to have recovered from a great abasement. Not
so, however, thought Taylor, who answered "that so to rise
should be the greatest fall that ever he could receive ; for he
should so fall from Christ to Anti-Christ" He considered the
religion set forth in Edward's days to be quite in accordance with
Scripture, and apart from Scripture he acknowledged no other
rule. Secretary Bourne on this asked him which religion of
King Edward's days he meant, as there were divers books set
forth. Would he stick by my lord of Canterbury's catechism ?
Taylor said that catechism was not of Cranmer's own making,
but it did good for the time. He meant, however, the whole
Church service authorised by Edward's Parliament, which had
only once been amended, and was now, in his view, perfect.

The prisoners were all remanded except one, who was
liberated on promising to "be an honest man as
his father was before him." Their trial was arranged General

o procession.

for the 28th. Meanwhile, on the 25th (St. Paul's

Day), there was a general procession of every parish in

352 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chap.

London, eightscore priests and clerks singing Salve festa
dies, with ninety crosses borne through the streets, in honour
of the reconversion of the realm to the ancient faith. The
children of Grey Friars and St. Paul's School led the way.
Eight mitred bishops proceeded to the cathedral, Bonner
bearing the sacrament under a canopy, followed by the lord
mayor and aldermen and all the city crafts. Presently the
king came, and the cardinal, and the Prince of Piedmont —
Duke of Savoy, as he had now become, who was on a brief
visit to England ; and at night there were bonfires and
ringing of church bells everywhere. Another great procession
from Westminster to Temple Bar was headed by Dean Weston
on the 27th.

On the 28th, Pole, as legate, issued a commission to

Gardiner and a large number of bishops and others for the

trial of the imprisoned preachers, who were accordingly

brought that day before their judges, not in

^tded'wJhf Gardiner's house as before, but in the church of

legate's S|-^ Mary Overy's hard by. The church was filled,

commission. ■' -' , "^ . , n 1 i

and there were crowds outside, attracted by the
extraordinary interest of the proceedings, which occupied
three consecutive days. It was not long before one of the
accused, John Taylor, otherwise named Cardmaker, made a
recantation, though some time after he retracted it and died a
martyr. But his example and that of Bishop Barlow, who
had likewise recanted, were urged in vain upon the others.
The first day and part of the second were mainly occupied
by the examinations of Hooper and Rogers, who, on January
29, had sentence pronounced against them to be degraded
from the priesthood and delivered over to the secular power.
On the third day (January 30) John Bradford, Rowland
Taylor, and Laurence Saunders were Hkewise excommuni-
cated. Dr. Crome, who desired two months' respite to
consider his submission, was allowed one month.

It is impossible here to record much of what is known of

these men personally, interesting as their individual histories

are. And this is the more to be regretted because

account of that which is known comes mainly from a source

^^^™' notoriously prejudiced, and therefore requiring to be
used with some discrimination. Foxe's narrative has indeed

XVII CONFLICT OF RELIGIOUS VIEWS 353

been exposed as untrustworthy by reason of its bias, but has
not even yet been subjected to complete and thorough
criticism. But we have only to keep our eyes open, and
make allowance for the colouring, in order to find in his
statements a very credible account, generally speaking, of
what actually took place. We need not suppose, for instance,
that Sir John Mordaunt, " a councillor to Queen Mary," who
overtook Laurence Saunders going to London and endeavoured
to dissuade him from violating the queen's proclamation by
preaching at Bread Street, was moved by "an uncharitable
mind " in warning Bishop Bonner of his intention. But we
may feel a certain sympathy with the enthusiastic preacher, to
whom all royal mandates on such a subject were indiiferent.
Nor should we forget that Queen Mary's government took
much the same view of the Edwardine ordinances for religion
as the Edwardine preachers did of Mary's. There was right
divine in either case, superior to the laws of the land ; but in
Mary's case it was simply an old right divine restored, and
even enforced as soon as might be by Parliament. The old
right divine apart from the law of the realm was the canon
law, of which the clergy were the authorised interpreters, and
whose authority the laws of the land had respected till the
days of Henry VIII. The new right divine was the authority
of the Scriptures interpreted by the individual judgments of
men who were ready to defend their positions by logical
syllogisms.

Preachers of this sort dared the fire, and were prepared
for it. The experience of twenty years had encouraged them
to believe that papal authority was no authority at all. The
experience of twenty years, on the other hand, had convinced
Mary, and no doubt her subjects generally, that defiance of
papal authority had shaken the foundation of all other
authority whatever. Rebellion and treason had been
nourished by heresy — nay, heresy was the very root from
which they sprang. And it was really more important in
the eyes of Mary to extirpate the root than merely to lop off
the branches. She had all possible desire to show indulgence
to the misguided if they could be brought to a better state
of mind ; and the bishops might be trusted, especially Bishop
Bonner, to do their very utmost to dissuade the obstinate

354 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chap.

from rushing on their fate. But there was to be no more
toleration for incurable perversity, for the heresy laws were
now revived.

On February 4 was enacted the first of a long succession
of tragedies. John Rogers was taken from Newgate and

burned at Smithfield. His fate excited general
mSjrdoms. Sympathy. His wife and children met him on the

way and witnessed the painful spectacle, while
the crowd cheered him in such a fashion that the French
ambassador wrote that he seemed to be going to his marriage.
Such a death was in keeping with the severe religion he had
professed ; for his views were like those of Bishop Hooper, with
whom he quite agreed about vestments. The law of Scripture
was his only rule, and it was he who is believed, under the
name of Thomas Matthew, to have edited the Bible in 1537,
with a dedication to Henry VIH. Under Edward VI. he had
been a prebendary of St. Paul's, and divinity lecturer there ;
so he bore witness in his death to what he had persistently
taught. Before he left his prison that morning he had been
degraded from the priesthood by Bishop Bonner, who did
the same office also to Bishop Hooper, and then went from
Newgate to the Counter in the Poultry to degrade Dr.
Taylor. Next day Hooper was despatched to Gloucester to
suffer there, and Laurence Saunders to Coventry to suffer
there. On the 6th Dr. Taylor was carried down into
Suffolk, and was burned on Aldham Common, beside Had-
leigh, on the 9th. Six other heretics from Essex and from
Suffolk were arraigned on the 9th at St. Paul's before the
lord mayor and sheriffs, the Bishop of London, and some
members of the Council, and were condemned likewise to
be burned in different places. On the 19th Bonner, in
accordance with general directions given to the bishops by
Cardinal Pole, issued an earnest appeal to the laity of his
diocese to be reconciled to the Church during the coming
Lent, and four days later gave orders to his clergy to certify
the names of those who did not confess and receive the
sacrament at Easter.

But the violence of the heretics soon after mani-
fested itself in various ways. First, a new stone image
of St. Thomas of Canterbury, over the door of the

XVII RELIGIOUS OUTRAGES 3S5

Mercers' Chapel, was wilfully mutilated at night on March
14, and the culprit could never be discovered. A far worse
outrage followed on Easter Sunday, April 14.
While the priest at St. Margaret's, Westminster, thi°he"reti^^.
was holding the chalice in his left hand, one
William Branch, otherv/ise named Flower, struck him
on the head with a wood -knife, so that his blood fell
both on the chalice and on the consecrated host.
The man had been a monk of Ely, who on the royal
visitation got leave to forsake his habit, and afterwards
married. He had long premeditated the crime as a protest
against idolatry, to which he was "compelled by the Spirit."
On Christmas Day he had even got up early to do it at
St. Paul's, but his heart failed him on that occasion, and
now he was ready " to die for the Lord." An act so hideous
was felt to require very special punishment ; but it was not
as a civil crime, but as heresy, that the case was to be dealt
with. And atrocious as the outrage was, it was all the
more important that Bonner, as a good bishop, should urge
the unhappy man to repent and be reconciled to the Church
before he suffered. Flower thanked him for his attentions,
and after being called before the bishop, and exhorted more
than once, at length confessed that he had done ill in
striking the priest ; but the reason for which he struck him
he still maintained was right. To mark the enormity of his
offence, the Council ordered that before he died he should
have his hand struck off This was done on April 24, and
he was immediately afterwards burned in the churchyard of
that church which he had profaned. His story is given by
Foxe as that of a "faithful servant of God."

Can it be wondered at that the age considered " erroneous
opinions " dangerous ? The burning of heretics was a barbar-
ous, old-fashioned remedy, but it is not true that either the
bishops or the government adopted it without reluctance.
Cardinal Pole, at the breaking up of Convocation in January,
had exhorted the bishops to use gentleness rather than rigour
towards heretics in their efforts to reclaim them. King
Philip was of the same mind, and his Spanish confessor,
Alfonso a Castro, preached before the court, on February 10,
a sermon to the same effect, even blaming the bishops, if

356 THE RECONCILIATION TO ROME chap.

Foxe may be trusted, " for burning of men." The Spanish
ambassador, Renard, also urged upon PhiKp the extreme
danger of severities which the heretics might plead as the
occasion of new troubles, while there were undoubted abuses
in the Church which called for reform. But the dangers of
heresy itself could not be overlooked ; and if stable govern-
ment was to be attained under the reconciliation with Rome^
it must cost many lives yet.

In February an embassy was despatched to Pope Julius
III., to intimate officially that the reconciliation had been

achieved in Parliament. The ambassadors sent
^"Romr° were Bishop Thirlby, Anthony Browne (Viscount

Montague), and Sir Edward Came, representing
the Church, the nobility, and the people. But they had not
gone far before news reached them that Julius III. was
dead ; and they spent so much time in France, and afterwards
in the north of Italy, that not only was a new pope, Marcellus
II., elected, but, as he happened to die in three weeks, on
April 30, yet another papal election had taken place, and
Paul IV. was pope when the embassy reached Rome. Of
this embassy more remains to be said hereafter. As to
the two papal elections, what most interests us here is, that
Pole was again spoken of at both conclaves as well worthy
to occupy St. Peter's chair; and on the second occasion,
both Queen Mary and Henry II. of France would have used
their influence on his behalf, but they were too far off.
Meanwhile Mary had formed a resolution in her own mind,
which she communicated to her Council on March 28, to
give back again to the Church such possessions as the Crown
had unlawfully taken from it in time of schism ; and
she charged them to consult with Cardinal Pole, as legate,
as to the best means of giving effect to her purpose. The
titles of other owners, of course, were not to be disturbed ;
but Mary and Philip agreed that Church lands should no
longer be detained by the Crown.

Authorities. — Chronicle of Jane and Mary ; Grey Friars' Chronicle,
Wriothesley's Chronicle, and Machyn's Diary ; Noailles ; Granvelle Papers,
vol. iv. For Philip's coming see English Historical Review, vii. 253-280. For
what concerns Cardinal Pole see authorities in Diet, of National Biography ;
Lords' nnd Commons' Journals ; Heylin ; Collier ; Burnet, pt. iii. bk. v.

XVII CHANGES IN THE PAPACY 357

nos. 33, 34 ; Strype's Cranmer, nos. 80, 81 ; Ridley's Works (Parker
Soc. ) and his Brief Declaration of the Lord' s Supper, edited by Dr. Moule
{now Bishop of Durham) with biographical introduction. Foxe, of course, is
the great authority on the Marian persecution, but, as stated in the text, must
be read with caution ; see corrections of his narrative in Chester's John
Rogers. Foxe is also the authority for Alfonso a Castro's sermon (vi. 704,
Cattley's ed. ), and for Mary's declaration to the Council of her determination
to give back lands to the Church (vii. 34) ; on which last point compare
Venetian Calendar, vi. pt. i. 154.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION

John Rogers was the first of a great company of nearly three
hundred martyrs who were burned in England in the three
and a-half remaining years of Queen Mary's reign. It is
impossible to dwell on individual cases, but one or two
others require a few words of notice, especially among those
,, , , earliest victims. Robert Ferrar, late Bishop of St.

Martyrdoms : .

Bishop David's, after being examined by Gardiner and his
fellow - commissioners and condemned, was sent
down to Carmarthen, the chief town of his diocese, where he
was burned on March 30. Originally an Austin friar at
Oxford, he had been one of those suspected of heresy in old
days at the time of Garrett's escape. Afterwards he had been
befriended by Bishop Barlow, his predecessor at St. David's.
He was promoted to that bishopric by the Protector Somerset,
but even in Edward's days he had no easy time of it, for
his own canons of Carmarthen, two of whom afterwards
became Elizabethan bishops, raised up factious complaints
against him. He was one of the few bishops who, in
Hooper's opinion, entertained right views on the Eucharist;
and in other things, certainly, he was constant to his principles.
For he declined positively to accept reconciliation with Rome,
on the ground that he had taken oath, both to Henry VIII.
and to Edward VL, never to admit papal jurisdiction in Eng-
land. He was also a married man ; but, as he told the com-
missioners, he had violated no oath in that, for the vow he
took was only to live chaste, not to live single.

358

CHAP. XVIII THE EARLIER MARTYRDOMS 359

Another notable victim, who suffered three months later,
was John Bradford. He, too, w^as of Edwardine promotion,
and was firmer on some points than Bishop
Ferrar, whom he persuaded in the King's Bench Bildfbrd.
prison to revoke a promise he had made to receive
the sacrament in one kind at Easter. It was Bradford's pen,
apparently, that drew up the declaration of the imprisoned
preachers on May 8, 1554. A true child of the new age, he
had once been too much devoted to the things of this world,
and, serving as paymaster under Sir John Harington, Henry
VIH.'s treasurer of camps and buildings at Boulogne, had
been guilty to no small extent of that peculation which was
rife among officials and courtiers. Just after Edward's acces-
sion, however, he became a student of law in the Temple, and
was deeply impressed by a sermon of Latimer's urging " restitu-
tion of things falsely gotten." He consulted Latimer through
the medium of a friend, and by instalments, as it was in his
power, he at length made good the whole amount embezzled,
fearing, all the while, lest he should die before he had done
so. The task was the more difficult because his master, who
did not admire his scrupulousness, withdrew from him an
allowance which he had continued to him after leaving his
service. He laboured, meanwhile, in publishing translations
of Artopseus and Chrysostom, and went to Cambridge to
study divinity ; v/here, with less than one year's residence, he
obtained the degree of M.A., and not long afterwards a fellow-
ship. He was a disciple and great friend of Bucer, He was
ordained deacon by Bishop Ridley, was made a prebendary of
St. Paul's, and was one of the six royal chaplains appointed
by Edward VI. in 155 1. It was he who, after Edward's
death, protected Bourne the preacher at Paul's Cross (since
made Bishop of Bath) from the violence of the people. But,
the people being friendly to Bradford, it was conceived that
he had incited them in the first place, and he was committed
to the Tower, from which he was afterwards removed to other
prisons. His honesty, however, told upon his very gaolers,
one of whom allowed him once to leave his prison to visit a
sick man, on his promise to return at night. He was also
allowed, when in the King's Bench prison, to communicate
freely with Laurence Saunders, who was confined in the

36o THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

adjoining prison of the Marshalsea, on ground that lay at the
back of both prisons.

Sentence of excommunication, as already stated, was given
against him by the commissioners on January 30 ; on which
he was delivered to the sheriff, and placed first in the Clink
and afterwards in the Counter in the Poultry. But it was
supposed that he could be talked over to conformity, and on
February 4 Bishop Bonner, having gone to the Counter to
degrade Dr. Taylor, afterwards called for Bradford and put off
his cap when he appeared, reaching out his hand to him in a
most friendly manner ; for the bishop was informed that he
desired a conference. This, however, Bradford declared that
he had not sought, and after a few words the bishop left him.
He told others that he would not ask for such a favour, as
he was " most certain " of the doctrine he had taught. He
was willing to confer with any one if the bishop proposed it,
but for himself he did not desire it, as it would merely
defer that which must come at last. The climax, however,
was deferred, evidently in the hope of saving so sincere a man
from the execution of the law. He was visited in prison by a
gentleman of the lord chancellor, by a chaplain of Bishop
Bonner, by an old acquaintance, by Archdeacon Harpsfield
of London, by Archbishop Heath of York, and Bishop Day of
Chichester, by Alfonso a Castro and another Spanish friar,
with whom he conversed in Latin ; then by Dr. Weston, Dean
of Westminster, who came to him twice, by Dr. Pendleton,
and by others besides — all desiring either to offer their ser-
vices to procure his pardon, or by conference to set right his
theology. But all these kindly efforts were unavailing. He
was at last burned at Smithfield along with one other victim,
on July I ; and there can be Httle doubt that his heroism
animated many others to defy the revived heresy laws.

Yet, as we have seen in one case, there were heretics
whose acts — if the opinions which prompted the acts had not
been regarded as the greater evil — would have deserved very
severe punishment indeed, even in days like our own. An-
other example of the way these things were looked at may be
seen in a case where the culprit was unhappily executed
before his heresy could be brought before a spiritual tribunal.
On April 26 three men were hanged at Charing Cross "for

XVIII HERESY AT THE GALLOWS 361

robbing of certain Spaniards of treasure of gold out of the
abbey of Westminster." One of them was John Tooley, citizen
and poulterer of London ; and while the halter was
about his neck he desired the people to pray for heretic.^
him. He confessed that he had stolen and robbed
from covetousness, just as " the Bishop of Rome," he observed,
" did sell his masses and trentals for covetousness." And he
added, with great appearance of anger, " from the tyranny of
the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities ; from
false doctrine and heresy and from contempt of thy word and
commandment, good Lord, deliver us." He was quoting
from Henry VHL's litany, which he read from a printed
book, and he told his audience that he hoped to be saved by
Christ's Passion, not by masses or trentals, images or saints,
which were but the idolatry and superstition of Rome. Two
days later the Council took notice of the case in a letter to
Bishop Bonner, and desired him to inquire into it. The
bishop, accordingly, had a citation affixed to the door of St.
Paul's Cathedral, depositions were taken, and when the facts
were fully authenticated the dead man was excommunicated.
His body was then dug up and burned on June 4.

On the loth of the same month seven men were delivered
out of Newgate to be taken into Essex and Suffolk to be
burned ; and one of these was Thomas Haukes,
who suffered at Coggeshall. He was a handsome HaukS
young gentleman, very well read in Scripture, who had
been in the service of the Earl of Oxford, but had left it after
Mary's accession rather than conform to the queen's religion.
A child was then born to him, whom he left unbaptized for three
weeks rather than have the rite done " after the papistical
manner"; for which being brought before his old master, the
earl very naturally sent him up to Bishop Bonner. How the
bishop received him, and with what gentle persuasions he tried
to overcome his objections to Church ceremonies, appears in a
report of the dialogue written by himself, which can be read
in Foxe ; and really the account both of that and of further
proceedings is highly creditable to the bishop's patience.
For Bonner kept him for more than a week in his house at
Fulham, and not only had frequent interviews with him him-
self, but caused him to be visited by Archdeacon Harpsiield,

362 T'HE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

by old Bishop Bird, who, though deprived of his See of Chester
for marriage, had conformed, and by Dr. Feckenham and
Dr. Chedsey. But all would not do, and on July i, 1554,
the bishop ordered him into confinement at the Gatehouse.
On September 3 he called him up again for examination ;
but it was only in February 1555, after the Heresy Acts had
been revived, that he received his final sentence, and even
then he was spared for four months longer. He was resolute,
and before his death friends who seemed to covet the like
martyrdom obtained from him a promise that if the flames
were endurable he would show it by lifting up his hands in
the midst of them. He did so, and clapped his hands three
times together before he expired.

Some less marked cases, moreover, present features that
should be noticed. Along with Haukes five other heretics
of Essex and Suffolk were tried in February before Bishop
Bonner sitting with some members of the Council and the lord
mayor and sheriffs at St. Paul's. Their names were Tomkins,
Pygot, Knight, Laurence, and Hunter. These also received
sentence, and were despatched into the country to be burned

in different places ; but of the five it is needful only
T^mSns ^° speak of two. Thomas Tomkins, a pious

weaver, is represented in Foxe's pages as a special
example of Bonner's cruelty. We are told the bishop beat
him about the face till it swelled, then caused his beard to
be shaven against his will, and finally held his hand over
a burning taper "to try his constancy." Of these matters
we do not quite know all the details ; but it should be
remarked that Bonner kept the man more than half a year
with him "in prison," as Foxe says — that is, in his own
palace at Fulham, set him to work for him as a haymaker in
July, and, whatever may be the case about the beating and
the shaving, used strong persuasions with him to save him
from a fate on which he appeared to be rushing. As to the
story of the candle, we have a contemporary report in a letter
of Renard to the emperor which puts the matter very differ-
ently. Bonner asked Tomkins if he thought he could endure
the fire, and Tomkins himself held his hand over the flame
without flinching. He was not one to be appalled, and having
received his sentence he was burned in Smithfield on March 1 6.

XVIII RESTITUTION OF CHURCH PROPERTY 363

William Pygot, a butcher, was burned at Braintree on the
28th of that month; but his bones were carried about the
country afterwards and shown as relics, to the
annoyance of the Council, who on May 3 issued PygSS
an order for the apprehension of two men who had ^"as^'re^j^cT"
so exhibited them for the encouragement of others
to persevere in heresy. The changes made in religion under
Edward had been upheld long enough to have taken pretty
firm root in some places, and it was found in June that four
parishes in Essex still used the English service. But to
prevent that fire spreading farther, a proclamation was issued
the same month against the importation from abroad of the
works of a number of well-known English and foreign heretics,
and for the suppression of the English service-books pro-
mulgated in the last reign.

It may be presumed that the ambassadors despatched to
Rome to intimate the reconciliation of the kingdom had
private instructions sent after them to make known
at the Vatican the intention which the queen had '^^^ gj^^^^y
intimated to her Council on March 28 to restore the
Church lands in the possession of the Crown. The statement,
indeed, is made, and may be true, that the new pope, Paul IV.,
after receiving the embassy, expressed himself in private con-
ferences dissatisfied that restitution had not already been made
of such property, the retention of which, he said, would be
dangerous to the souls of its possessors. But Mary herself
required no urging in this matter, and the Holy See had already
given assurance to the grantees of Church lands that they would
not be interfered with. The pope, however, while he highly
approved of all that had been done in England, gave the
ambassadors three bulls for promulgation there, one of which
was rather calculated to renew anxieties that had been allayed,
by declaring at least the abstract principle that alienations of
Church property were invalid in the eyes of the Church.
The other two were — -the first, the renewal of a jubilee
published by Julius III. on the first news of the reconciliation,
and the second, for the erection of Ireland into a kingdom,
a thing which had been done already by Henry VIII., but
required, it was conceived, the sanction of the Church to
give it validity ; for, as the pope had originally given the

364 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

"lordship" of Ireland to Henry II., the kings of England
could not take more than he gave without usurpation.

The ambassadors (except Carne, who was left resident at
Rome) returned to England with these three bulls among
others, and their contents were notified in September. The
one about alienations of Church property was certainly ill
advised, whatever it meant. It seems, indeed, to have been
a general bull, not applying to England specially; but on
Pole's remonstrance, the pope felt it necessary to issue another
expressly exempting England from its operation.

Meanwhile some bright prospects had been clouded. The
queen's hope of issue had turned out a delusion. Pole had
gone to Calais in May to initiate peace conferences between
Spain and France, but these proved futile ; and the continu-
ance of war was the more uncomfortable as the new pope's
sympathies were by no means with the Spaniards. At the
end of August Philip took leave of Mary and crossed to
Brussels, where, on October 25, his father resigned to him
the government of the Low Countries. Before leaving he
desired the Council in his absence to do nothing without
reference to Cardinal Pole, who, however, only consented to
receive reports of their proceedings, and dechned to interfere
himself in secular business, except where his judgment might
be desired in cases of dispute.

And now the persecution was seeking out its highest
victims. Since the disputation at Oxford in April 1554
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had remained prisoners there,
and nothing further had been done about them (in England,
at least) till September of this year 1555. A scholastic
disputation in a realm which had not yet been reconciled to
Rome was not a sufficient ground for further action,
cited to But now a citation was first served on Cranmer on

Rome. September 7 to appear at Rome, personally or by
proxy, within eighty days, to answer matters which should be
laid against him by the king and queen. He was not ex-
pected, however, either to go himself or to send any one
thither* for Cardinal du Puy (de Puteo in Latin), who had
the pope's commission to hear the case, had appointed as his
sub-delegate in England Dr. Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester,
and Cranmer was to appear before him at St. Mary's Church,

XVIII TRIAL OF CRANMER 365

Oxford, on the 12th. On that day the court was opened
for his trial. Bishop Brooks was seated on a scaffold raised
over the high altar, the king and queen's proctors,
Drs. Martin and Story, having lower seats on either ^Q^f^J^^^
side of him. Cranmer bowed to each of the
proctors, but not to the bishop, as he had sworn to Henry
VI 1 1, never to admit papal authority in England, which he
considered to be opposed alike to divine and to human law.
He said the king of a realm was head of the Church in it, and
he did not shrink from the conclusion pressed upon him that
in that case Nero, who put St. Peter to death, was head of the
Church at Rome — nay, that the Turk was head of the Church
in Turkey ; but under protestation he made answer to the
royal proctors on sixteen articles objected to him. These
contained charges which, in clerical language, amounted to
adultery, perjury, and heresy — adultery, not only as having
been a married priest, but, what was more shocking, having a
second wife when archbishop ; perjury for having broken his
vow to the pope ; and heresy for denying the flesh and blood
of Christ to be in the sacrament. The mere facts, for the
most part, did not admit of dispute, but he denied that they
bore the character assigned to them. His defence, however,
was certainly weak as regards the oath he had taken to the
pope, which he had really made a falsehood by his protestation
beforehand.

Eight witnesses besides himself were called to answer the
sixteen articles against him. He objected to their testimony
being received on the ground that they were all perjured, inas-
much as they had sworn to royal supremacy and had since
admitted the Roman pontiff's authority. But as he had no
other objection to allege, their testimony was taken, though
the case for the prosecution might very well have rested on his
own confessions. Bishop Brooks, however, had no commis-
sion to pronounce sentence, and sent a certified report of the
whole process to Rome ; while Cranmer, on his part, wrote a
striking but laboured appeal to Queen Mary in justification of
the ground that he had taken up in ignoring the authority of
the court. " Alas ! " he wrote, " it cannot but grieve the
heart of any natural subject, to be accused of the king and
queen of his own realm, and specially before an outward judge,

366 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

or by authority coming from any person out of this realm ;
where the king and queen, as if they were subjects within their
own reahTi, shall complain, and require justice at a stranger's
hands against their own subject, being already condemned to
death by their own laws. As though the king and queen could
not do or have justice within their own realms against their own
subjects, but they must seek it at a stranger's hands in a strange
land ! " This is the most powerful passage in the letter, which
labours afterwards to prove that the pope's laws and the laws of
the land are hopelessly at variance, and that loj^alty to both is
an impossibility. It was certainly a curious plea to be urged
by one already condemned by the laws of the land as a traitor,
whose life would have been forfeited on that ground but that
he was treated as a spiritual man awaiting sentence on the
graver charge of heresy. Yet there was real force in the
words. The temporal sovereign must have spiritual power
also ; and for all Mary's attempt to revive the old theory of a
supreme universal bishop governing the whole spiritual world
from Rome, with a right even to depose disobedient princes,
that theory had already received a shock from which it could
not possibly recover.

It was not likely that Queen Mary would pay high regard
to such a remonstrance from a condemned criminal, who like-
wise ventured to tell her that the oath of obedience to the
pope which she had taken at her coronation was inconsistent
with that which she had sworn at the same time to maintain
the laws and liberties of the realm. The queen handed his
letter to Cardinal Pole, who answered it at great length.

As regards Cranmer's two fellow-prisoners, Latimer and

Ridley, on September 28 Cardinal Pole sent three bishops to

Oxford to examine and, if possible, to reconcile them to the

Church ; or else to hand them over to the secular arm.

These bishops were — White of Lincoln, Brooks of Gloucester,

and Holyman of Bristol ; and on the 30th Latimer

Ridley and and Ridley were brought before them in the Divinity

Latimer, g^hool. The examination of Ridley was taken

first, doubtless because he was a D.D. (which Latimer, indeed,

is believed to have been also, though they did not recognise

him as such) ; and by a mistake of the bailiff, which Bishop

White regretted, the aged Latimer, who had a sore back, was

XVIII RIDLEY AND LATIMER MARTYRED 367

left " gazing upon the cold walls " until Ridley was dismissed
for the day into the custody of the mayor of Oxford. This
precedence of Ridley as a doctor was marked again on the
second day by the removal of the "carpet" or table-cloth
which lay on the table before him when Latimer was to take
his place. Briefly, the result of their examinations was that,
notv/ithstanding very gentle exhortations from Bishop White,
they both refused to be reconciled to the Church of Rome,
while both acknowledged a true Catholic Church within which
alone was salvation. Both persisted in their former denial
of transubstantiation, and refused to acknowledge the mass as
a propitiatory sacrifice. Sentence was accordingly pronounced
on each successively on October i. Latimer only demanded
if he might not appeal "to the next general council which
shall be truly called in God's name " j to which Bishop White
replied that he had no objection, but it would be a long time
before such an assembly as Latimer intended could be con-
voked.

On the 1 6th they were both brought to the stake, to which
they were first fastened by a chain of iron made to go round
the middle of both. Ridley's brother brought him
a bag of gunpowder, and tied it about his neck ; ^urLT
after which he did the same for Latimer. "Be of
good comfort," the latter said to his fellow ; "we shall this
day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I
trust shall never be put out." Latimer died first, apparently
with little pain ; but Ridley lingered for some time till the
explosion of the gunpowder ended his sufferings. Cranmer
witnessed, from a tower on the top of his prison, the execu-
tion of his friends, and complained that Ridley's sufferings
had been prolonged by mismanagement.

A new Parliament assembled at Westminster on October 21,
and the Convocation of Canterbury met next day at St. Paul'S:
An urgent cause for both these meetings was the ^ ,.

, , ^ . T /- 1 1 Parliament

queen s need 01 money, mcreased, of course, by the and Convo-
self- denying policy she had in view of restoring '^^'^°"*
abbey lands. The clergy voted a large subsidy, and there was
some talk in Convocation about a revision of canons, when
that body was merged in a national synod, convoked by
the legate, which met in November. At the beginning of

368 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

these meetings Bishop Gardiner, the chancellor, was labouring
with mortal illness, but his energy in setting forth the queen's
necessities at the opening of Parliament seemed to triumph
over all infirmities. Only for two days, however, was he able
to take his place in the House of Lords ; and though it was

partly on his account that the legatine synod was
GardbeJ convcucd at the Chapel Royal at Westminster on

November 4 (for both he and Pole were lodged in
the royal palace), he died on the 1 2th of the month.

His loss was severely felt. Seditious tracts had kept pour-
ing from the press in spite of the proclamation of June, and

just at this time one appeared entitled " A Warning
"^frait.^^^ for England," particularly calculated to promote

disloyalty. It described how the Spaniards, by
intrigue, had taken the whole government of Naples into their
hands and imposed an oppressive tariff on the inhabitants. It
suggested that the queen herself would be got rid of by foul
play, now that it was seen she would be childless, in order that
Philip might marry a younger woman — or at least that the
emperor would get him to divorce her and marry the King of
Portugal's daughter, to whom he was before contracted. It
went on to insinuate, in spite of explanations given by the
preachers, that the pope's late bull for the excommunication
of holders of Church property was meant specially to apply to
England, and that the bishops were only waiting their time to
press it home, when the gentry would either have to restore
the abbey lands or be burned as heretics. This dangerous
tract was said to have been printed at Strassburg. The lord
mayor was ordered to make diligent search as to its origin and
suppress all copies. The House of Commons at the same
time showed itself intractable and was not easily got to vote a
subsidy. The Lords brought in a bill to punish those who
escaped beyond sea without licence ; but this appears to have
been lost in the Commons. And it was in the Commons that
the most sturdy opposition was raised to the queen's policy
with regard to first-fruits and tenths, which she would fain
have given back to Rome. A bill for this object, indeed,
was set aside by the Lords, and was replaced by a new one
to bestow them on the laity. But after a stormy career in the
Lower House, it was ultimately passed in a very much altered

XVIII SYNOD FOR CHURCH REFORM 369

form by a majority of 193 to 126, viz. as a bill for the total
extinction of first-fruits, and for the disposal, at the queen's
pleasure, only of such impropriate livings and such tenths as
actually remained in her hands.

St. Andrew's Day, November 30, being the anniversary of
the great reconciliation, was kept this year with much solemnity,
the intention being to have an annual celebration of
the event for ever after. Pole's legatine synod, '^'^synod!'"^
which met on December 4, among its other busi-
ness decreed this commemoration. It continued its sittings
at intervals into the February following, meeting first at West-
minster, then at St. Paul's, and afterwards at Lambeth. Its
aim was to effect a reform of Church government and put an
end to past anarchy. The Institution of a Christian Man — the
" Bishops' Book " of Henry VIII. 's time — was examined ; pre-
parations were made for a new English version of the New
Testament, which raised again the old question of phraseology
in many of the expressions ; the compilation of a new book of
homilies was entrusted to Dr. Watson and the queen's secre-
tary, Boxall ; and a Catechism, translated from one composed
in Spanish by Cardinal Carranza, was authorised for use in
England. But the main work of the synod was the enact-
ment of a new code of constitutions, which was published on
February 10, under the title Reformatio Anglice ex decretis
Reginaldi Poli.

By the end of the year 1555 no less than 75 martyrs are
known to have suffered in different parts of England. The
last was John Philpot, sometime Archdeacon of
Winchester, who was burned in Smithfield on ^^f ^^^.°"^ of

' John Philpot.

December 18. His case was a special one, and
the story of his numerous examinations as written by himself
is so voluminous that it is impossible to do more than glance
at it. He was not one, however, to complain of intolerance,
and he did not ; for he thoroughly approved of the burning
of Joan Bocher, and not only once spat upon an Arian but
wrote a tract to justify his doing so, which was published
after his death. He had been of the forward party during
the last reign, and of course, at Winchester, had been a
particular source of trouble to Bishop Gardiner. But he was
not only a man of birth and breeding (his father being a

2 B

370 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

Knight of the Bath), but was devoted to learning, a good
Hebrew scholar, and a leader of the new scriptural school ;
a travelled man, too, who had been in Italy and had seen the
world. He had been imprisoned a year and a-half when
examined on October 2 before a set of royal commissioners.
His offence apparently had been that by his vehemence in the
Convocation of 1 5 54 he had abused the queen's licence to every
one to speak his mind freely. When he appeared before the
commissioners one of them said he looked well fed ; to which
he replied that it was natural after being stalled up eighteen
months. He was committed to the charge of Bishop Bonner,
to whose jurisdiction he objected that he was not his ordinary,
though the Convocation house was certainly in Bonner's
diocese. He was confined in the bishop's coal-house, but he
acknowledged repeatedly that Bonner treated him with much
kindness and consideration. There was, in fact, a very great
desire to save from the flames a man of so much mark. But
he steadfastly declined to be reconciled to the Church of
Rome unless Bonner could show him from Scripture that it
was the true Catholic Church ; and he considered that the
clergy deceived the people, both as to the Church and
the sacrament. He met his fate bravely as one bound to
suffer by the decree of an authority which he did not
recognise.

On January i, 1556, Heath, Archbishop of York, was
made lord chancellor. The body of his predecessor, Bishop
Gardiner, still lay in St. Mary Overy's Church, Southwark,
to which it had been removed in November, a week after his
death, and was only removed again on February 24 for the
first stage of a long and stately journey to Winchester, where
it was finally buried in his cathedral. Meanwhile, at Rome,
the eighty days allowed to Cranmer having expired, the
process against him in England was reported by Cardinal du

Buy to a consistory on November 2 9 ; and after the

igSr archbishop had been solemnly cited to appear,

Cranmer at seutcnce of cxcommunication was pronounced

against him by the pope himself on December 4.
One week later the pope "provided" Cardinal Pole to the
archbishopric of Canterbury, and on the 14th he addressed
a brief executorial to the king and queen notifying the

XVIII CRANMER SENTENCED 371

sentence against Cranmer. A papal commission was issued
to Bonner and Thirlby to degrade him ; and on February 1 3
they went down to Oxford for the purpose.

He was not at that time in prison. Shortly after the
burning of Latimer and Ridley a sister of Cranmer's had urged
Cardinal Pole to take opinions whether it was compatible
with canon law to put an archbishop and primate to death ;
and he was removed from Bocardo to the house of the Dean
of Christchurch, where, though still in custody, he was
allowed delicate fare, and was free to take exercise in the
grounds and on the bowling-green. He had not been much
moved by the exhortations of De Soto, the Spanish friar sent
to him in Bocardo ; but here he had much conference with
another Spanish friar in high esteem at court, who was
persuaded to come to him for the first time on December 31.
This was Friar Garcia, a rising theologian of great ability,
perhaps already nominated to the post of regius professor of
divinity at Oxford, which he filled this year on the resignation
of Dr. Smith. In their communications, if truly reported,
Cranmer was obliged to concede that there was more authority
to be found in the writings of the Fathers than he had been
willing to admit for prayers for the dead, for purgatory, and even
for papal supremacy itself. He wavered, and near the end of
January was on the point of recanting. He even attended
mass, sang dirges, and held a candle on Candlemas Day.
But he wore out his keeper's patience by putting off his
recantation. However, he wrote a declaration to
the effect that since papal authority had been Hissub-

1-11 11' Ti- missions.

admitted by the king, queen, and parliament, he
acknowledged the pope to be supreme head of the Church of
England as far as the laws of God and the kingdom permitted.
This confession a few days later he desired to modify by
another writing which has not been preserved ; but he after-
wards wrote and signed a third, the second of his published
Recantations, declaring simply his submission to the Catholic
Church and to the pope as its supreme head, and also to the
king and queen and their laws. Thus far had he committed
himself when, on February 14, he was brouglit before Bonner
and Thirlby in Christchurch to be degraded. When their
commission was read he protested against the statement that

372 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

he had had a fair trial at Rome as "shameless lying," foi
he had been all the while in custody and could never have
counsel or advocate at home. He forgot, however, that, until
his two submissions, he had all along repudiated papal
authority, whether at Rome or in England, and that sentence
could not but be passed upon him for contumacy.

The process of degradation was a curious one. He was

made to put on vile canvas clothing resembhng the vestments

of the different orders, with a mitre and pall likewise

His degrada- Qf canvas \ and a crosier was put in his hand.

tion. ' , , ^

The causes for degrading him were declared by
Bonner, not without some interruptions and protests from
himself. The crosier was taken from him, though he tried to
hold it fast, and he drew from his sleeve an appeal from the
pope's judgment to that of the next general council — a
document which he had got a lawyer secretly to prepare for
him while he was in prison. Thirlby told him this could not
be admitted, as they were commissioned to proceed omni
appellatione retnota. Cranmer declared that this was unjust,
as the cause lay between him and the pope ; on which
Thirlby received the appeal, saying, "Well, if it may be
admitted it shall."

Thirlby was moved to tears, for Cranmer had been of old
his personal friend and patron, and he now implored him to
consider his state, promising to be a suitor for his pardon.
But Cranmer bade him be of good cheer. The next step
was the removal of the pall, at which Cranmer again re-
monstrated. "Which of you," said he, "hath a pall to take
away my pall ? " They were, however, papal delegates, and
thus fully competent. They stripped him successively, w^ith
words and ceremonies prescribed in the papal bull, of the
vestments of an archbishop, priest, deacon, and subdeacon,
and degraded him even from the minor orders of acolyte,
exorcist, reader, and doorkeeper. A barber clipped all the
hair off his head, Bonner himself having previously scraped
the tips of his fingers to deprive him of the power to bless
and sanctify. In the end he was handed over to the secular
magistrate, whom Bonner requested (if he followed the pre-
scribed form, which was surely a fearful mockery) not to expose
" the miserable man " to any danger of death or mutilation.

XVIII CRAMMER'S SUBMISSIONS 373

Being now in Bocardo once more, further declarations were
extorted from him, but he showed great reluctance to enlarge
the actual extent of his concessions. In his third
submission he again put royal authority first, and His further

? ^ ^ . •' , , . submissions.

declared his willmgness to submit to all the kmg's
and queen's laws " as well concerning the pope's supremacy
as others." His fourth, which is distinctly dated February 16,
declares that he believes in all articles of the faith as held
by the Catholic Church from the beginning, especially as to
the sacraments. These two documents were both written by
his own hand and shown by him to Bonner. Then news
arrived in Oxford that he was to be burned on March 7, a
writ for his execution having been issued on February 24.
On this he begged Friar Garcia not to desert him. The
result was that in the presence of Garcia and one Henry
Sydall he signed a fifth submission, in Latin this time, in
which, after denouncing the heresies of Luther and Zwingli,
he made more expHcit declarations touching the pope and
the sacraments. With this he wrote to Pole begging for a
further respite that he might give the world more perfect
evidence of his repentance. This request the queen readily
entertained, believing that so notable an example of a penitent
convert would do much to arrest the spread of heresy. On
March 18 a sixth submission (also in Latin) was obtained from
him — a much more lengthy composition than the others,
expressing the deepest contrition for having persecuted the
Church, abused his office, stripped Christ of his honour and
the realm of its faith, but taking comfort from the example
of the penitent thief upon the Cross, while he acknowledged
himself unworthy of all favour and pity as having been the
cause of Henry VHL's divorce. For these things he besought
pardon of the pope and of the king and queen, but especially
from God.

It was, no doubt, his attempt to strengthen himself by an
appeal to a general council that had caused him to be
pressed for four further declarations of conformity. But
all that the unfortunate man could concede was evidently
in the way of submission to authority. His own mind had
got no nearer to a real belief in transubstantiation, though
his old favourite doctrine of royal supremacy was rather

374 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

stultified now under sovereigns who maintained papal juris-
diction. He seemed, however, constant to his last profes-
sion when, on March 20, Dr. Cole, Provost of Eton, visited
him to ascertain his state of mind. Next day he was to die,
and Dr. Cole was to preach at his burning. The morn-
ing was wet, and Cole preached inside St. Mary's Church,
where Cranmer was placed on a platform opposite to him.
That very morning he had renewed a request for the prayers
of some Oxford colleges after his death, and few could have
doubted the state of mind in which he was going to meet
his fate. Both before and after the sermon he knelt and
prayed fervently, with tokens of deep grief and shame, which
moved the spectators to pity. After the sermon he was called
on to address the people ; and it was expected that he would
read from a manuscript a seventh and final recantation.

He told the audience that one thing specially grieved his
conscience which he would presently declare. He poured
forth a prayer to the Trinity, acknowledging that he had
sinned most miserably against heaven and earth. But it was
not for light sins, he felt, that God became incarnate ; and
after many deep expressions of penitence he fell on his knees
and repeated the Lord's Prayer. It was noted, however, that
he omitted the Ave Maria which usually followed. On
rising he read an exhortation to his audience to avoid
worldliness, to obey the king and queen, to cherish mutual
love, and, those who had means, to relieve the needy, victuals
being then so dear. He passed over, perhaps for brevity, a
direction which was on his paper to declare the queen's title
to the crown, and said impressively that as he had come to
the end of his life, and heaven or hell immediately awaited
him, he must declare his faith without dissembling. This
he did in words to which no objection could be taken. But
now came the point which he said troubled him more than
all he had done in his whole life — that he had set forth
writings contrary to the truth.

All this, barring the omissions, was in accordance with the

programme which he had written out himself before-

hisrecanta- hand. But what followed was vastly different.

tions, rpj^^ writings which he said were contrary to the
truth he declared to be — not, as he had originally written,

XVIII MARTYRDOM OF CRANMER 375

his works upon the sacrament, but all the papers he had
written or signed since his degradation, which he protested
he had written and signed against his own belief, in the hope
of saving his Hfe. "And forasmuch," he added, "as my
hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall
be first punished ; for if I may come to the fire it shall be
first burnt." Those about him were taken by surprise, and
some reminded him in vain of his recantations. He ran to
the stake prepared for him while friars plied him with
remonstrances. He was chained to it, and as the .
fire blazed up he put his right hand into the flames,
crying out, "This hand hath offended." Very soon all was
over. After a severe mental struggle he had done justice
at the last to the real convictions of his heart, and he died
with a fortitude that astonished every one, not least those
who believed that he died in a bad cause. Men might think
him blind ; but if so, he was a blind Samson with recovered
strength, pulling down the house in which his spectators
thought themselves secure. And so his death was edifying,
though not in the way expected.

For surely in those last moments of his he was 7iot blind.
His life had not been that of a hero without weaknesses \ and
his original cleverness in suggesting to Henry VHI. an appeal
to the universities on what even Warham considered a debat-
able point of canon law, had led him (against his will) to an
archiepiscopal throne on which he could not possibly maintain
himself v>^ithout undue subservience. Still he had a con-
science, and the fact that he was felt to have one through all
his weaknesses was the very thing which had made him really
serviceable to his master. Moreover, his position compelled
him to face the question as to the true relations between
Church and State in a way which no one thinks of in these
days of ease ; and he was conscious that the old spiritual
empire of Rome, dependent, as it had been all along, on the
support of Christian princes and nations, could no longer be
maintained when one powerful sovereign threw it off. If the
act of that sovereign was not an intolerable outrage to the
whole of Christendom, compelling other princes to treat
Henry as an enemy no less dangerous than the Turk, then it
followed that the Church of England must obey the ruler of

376 THE PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION chap.

England in things both temporal and spiritual. And if so,
then it further followed that doctrines which were in the last
resort only upheld by papal authority could not be essential
doctrines of Christianity.

The real source of perplexity in his mind was that roya.
supremacy now endeavoured to restore papal supremacy once
more. For this cause he, like Latimer, would have appealed
to a general council if a real oecumenical council had been any
longer possible. But the days when a real general council
could vindicate its claim to general obedience were now past.
As for the Council of Trent, it had at this time been sus-
pended five years, and was not to meet again for five years
more. Nor was it the sort of council to which Cranmer
and Latimer had appealed. The German Protestants, after
some negotiation, had declined it. England, of course, under
Edward VI. would have nothing to say to it. Yet during the
fifteen sessions it had held, the articles to which most objections
had been raised had been already defined. The Protestant
view of justification and every form of Protestant teaching
on the subject of the Eucharist had been condemned. But
these decisions had practically produced no effect whatever.
Opinions remained opinions, and questions questions ; and
the only thing that came out clearly as a result was that the
Council of Trent did not really represent the whole Christian
world.

Authorities. — Foxe ; Writings of Ridley, Latimer, Bradford, and Philpot
(Parker Soc. ) ; Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol, iii. ; Calendar of
Venetian State Papers ; Tytler ; Wilkins ; Lives of Cranmer by Strype and
Todd, and his Remains by Jenkyns ; Cranmer's Recantacyons (Philobiblon
Soc.) ; Noailles, V. 319 ; Letter of "J. A." in Strype's Cranmer, pp. 551-559.

Wake's State of the Church, pp. 496-499, should be consulted touching the
Convocation and Synod of 1555 ; for the facts, though clearly stated by this
author at the beginning of the eighteenth century, have been continually mis-
apprehended. Convocation, of course, met as usual in obedience to a writ
from the Crown — not, indeed, in this case, directed to the archbishop, who
was under attainder, but to the dean and chapter of Canterbury, by whose
orders it assembled. It met on October 22. The Lower House presented
their prolocutor on the 25th, when the causes of meeting were declared, and
on the 30th the subsidy was voted with three petitions. Eight days later the
president agreed that the cardinal should be consulted " on the manner, form,
and quality of their subsidy." Meanwhile the cardinal, having had licence
from the queen to exercise his legatine jurisdiction, had summoned a synod of
the whole nation to meet in the King's Chapel ; after which, on November 2.

xviii CRAMMER'S PERPLEXITIES 377

a patent was granted by the queen to protect him and the clergy from any
"danger of the laws" such as had occurred in Wolsey's case. Pole then,
on the 8th, issued a mandate to Bonner to appoint a day for all the clergy
to appear before him, which Bonner determined should be on or before
December 2. The old theoretical independence of the Church was restored,
and Pole, as legate, had summoned the synod by an authority theoretically
superior to that of temporal princes — having obtained, however, the recogni-
tion of his legatine authority from the queen beforehand.

CHAPTER XIX

THE pope's estrangement

To Mary's great annoyance, her husband still remained abroad.
He had indeed many cares ; for not only did his father,
Charles V., resign to him, as we have seen, in
absence Octobcr 1 555, the government of the Low Coun-
abroad. ^j-jgg^ |-)^|- q^ January i6 following he also resigned
to him the crown of Spain ; and from this time the son is
known in history as Philip H. Within three weeks he and
the emperor, his father, concluded with Henry H. the truce
of Vaucelles, and there seemed to be a fair prospect of relief
from a war in which England was only in too great danger of
being implicated. This truce was made on February 5, 1556,
and was to last five years. Unfortunately it was broken
before many months were over; nor did Philip return to
England for more than a year after. He had his own troubles
on the Continent, and Mary had hers at home.

Although Pole had been appointed by the pope to succeed

Cranmer in the See of Canterbury, and although he was a

cardinal, he had hitherto been in deacon's orders only. He

wa-i, however, on March 20, ordained a priest in the Greyfriars'

Church at Greenwich, where next morning he celebrated mass

for the first time. That was the very morning on which

Pole's conse- Craumcr was burned at Oxford. Next day, which

crationas was 2L Suuday, the 22 nd, Pole was consecrated as

"^fcante?? archbishop by Archbishop Heath, Bishop Bonner,

^"'^* and five other bishops of the southern province.

His presence in London was so necessary to the queen that

he deputed one of the canons of Canterbury as his proxy, to

378

CHAP. XIX MORE CONSPIRACIES 379

be enthroned for him ; and the pallimn was delivered to him
in state on Lady Day, the 25 th, in the church of St. Mary le
Bow, a peculiar of his See. There, in ready compliance with a
petition presented to him by the parishioners when he entered
the church, although he had already appointed some one else
to preach the sermon, he delivered extempore an appropriate
address which seems greatly to have impressed the audience
by its grace and fluency.

Easter now approached, for it fell this year on April 5. The
queen's "maunday," and her other charities at this time, were
most elaborate and touching ; and whatever we may think of
the blessing of cramp-rings and touching for the king's evil, her
conduct showed the most genuine sympathy with the poor and
suffering when she herself must have been enduring great
mental anxiety. For not only was she left without the support
of a not too loving husband, while malicious rumours exag-
gerated their feelings of estrangement, but a most alarming
conspiracy had been lately discovered, for which twelve fugi-
tives were denounced as traitors on Easter Eve, April 4. The
deepest secrets of the plot were only known to a
select few ; but the plan, in which even official per- consjiracy?^
sons were engaged, had been to set fire to different
parts of London, rob the exchequer and carry off the booty in
some of the queen's own ships which lay in the river. Nay,
besides this, it was purposed to deliver up the Isle of Wight to
the French, carry off the queen herself with the aid of French
ships and money, and set up her sister Elizabeth as sovereign
in her place, marrying her to the Earl of Devonshire — that un-
stable Edward Courtenay, now away in Italy, where he died
in September, whose royal descent and ambition were again
expected to cancel in his own heart all gratitude to his bene-
factress Mary.

The poor queen had all along been actuated by the best
possible of motives ; and it must be remembered, even as
regards the sad persecution which has left so deep a stain upon
her memory, that heresy and treason had walked continually
hand in hand. She had reigned nearly a year and a-half before
reviving the heresy laws ; and perhaps, if she had not married
Philip, she might have felt no need to revive them. But her
marriage was only the principal matter in which her zeal outran

38o THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

discretion ; for she was painfully deficient in that worldly wis-
dom which enables men to realise the strength and weakness
of their own position, and she did not see how official corrup-
tion and demoralisation all round her were undermining the
ground on which she stood. She would fain have reversed
a great social and ecclesiastical revolution, which, aided though
it was by strong and sincere convictions on the part of many,
had undoubtedly been brought about in the first instance by
immoral and degrading agencies; but she failed to see how
many influences, good and evil, concurred to prevent the
counter-revolution which she was now attempting. Her
marriage, too, had only strengthened the opposition to it by
involving the country in the quarrels of Continental princes.
It had brought about a war of diplomacy and intrigue within
her own kingdom ; and though the French, by the truce of
Vaucelles, were now nominally at peace with her husband,
they were still open to overtures from English traitors whose
assistance would be useful in the not improbable event of
some future rupture.

This conspiracy is associated with the name of Sir Henry
Dudley, a relation of the late Duke of Northumberland, who
had gone to France and made overtures to Henry II. before
the conclusion of the truce. His design did not receive
immediate encouragement, but he was allowed an asylum till
the time should be propitious. By and by several others
joined him and were received openly at the court of France,
while plausible answers were given to the English ambassador
Wotton, who demanded their surrender. Relations with
France continued to be hollow for a year and more, while
at home the examination and punishment of conspirators
divided attention with the burning of heretics. Next year
a new conspiracy was hatched at Paris, and Sir Thomas
Stafford, a grandson of Henry VI XL's victim Buckingham,
sailed with two vessels from the mouth of the Seine to
surprise Scarborough Castle. He published proclamations in
the old style against the Spaniards, but was soon captured,
and met with the fate which he deserved. What wonder
that just after this France was openly declared an enemy both
of the king and queen ?

Meanwhile a beginning had been made with Mary's plans

XIX MONASTERIES RESTORED 381

for the restoration of the monastic system. Already, in

April 1555, a company of Grey Friars were placed

agam in their old house at Greenwich. At Easter ^^^to^^^tiop °f

•1 1 1 r ^ r-^ monasteries.

1556 tne church of St. Bartholomew the Great in
Smithfield " was set up with Black Friars." In November
following Westminster became a monastery once more, with
Dr. Feckenham as abbot ; nuns were again introduced at
Sion, and Carthusians reappeared at Sheen. In June there
had also been instituted in London a system of processions
in every church, in which children with their parents were
compelled to join under a penalty of one shilling ; but this
attempt at coercion proved a failure, as might have been
expected. Another failure occurred next year in the attempt
to restore the grand old Benedictine abbey of Glastonbury ;
but that was simply for want of funds.

As to this monastic revival a remarkable suggestion, it is
said, came from abroad, but was not followed up. From
some Italian MS., not known in our day, Burnet
learned that Ignatius Loyola, who died at Rome Suggestions

*-• -^ ' of Loyola.

this year (1556) on July 31, tried to persuade
Cardinal Pole to fill the old houses with men of his order,
as Benedictine monasticism was no longer a help but rather a
hindrance to the Church in the warfare now before it. The
fact seems probable enough. The new order of the Jesuits
had been started in 1540, and it is certain that Pole took
much interest in it from the beginning. But all that appears
from the published correspondence of Pole and Loyola is
that Loyola had invited Pole to send young men from
England to Rome to be educated under him. And it is
pretty certain that Pole did not act on the suggestion.

Pole, however, appointed visitors for each of the two
universities, for each of them had made him chancellor ; and
though we cannot relate in detail the story of these visitations,
we must not pass over some unpleasant acts done in both
places, repugnant to the better feeling of modern times. In
January 1557, at the request of the University of Cambridge,
sentence was given, after a formal investigation, that the
bodies of Bucer and Fagius should be exhumed as un-
worthy to lie in consecrated ground. This sentence was
executed on February 6, and the two bodies, with the works

382 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

of the dead heretics, were burned in the market-place. Even
worse was done at Oxford, where the body of Peter Martyr's
wife was exhumed and thrown upon a dunghill.

Phihp only returned from the Continent in March 1557,
and his main object in returning then was to get England
committed to the war against France which was now forced
upon Spain. This, of course, was precisely the thing which
Gardiner had so studiously endeavoured to avert by the terms
of the marriage treaty. But events would have been too
strong for Gardiner, even if he had been now alive. France
was an active enemy of England already — all the worse
because she was not an open one — and Philip had an easy
task. Yet, strange to say, the course into which England
was now forced exposed Mary, after all her zeal and self-
denial in the cause of religion, to a rebuke and discourage-
ment far worse than heretics or conspirators could have
inflicted, at the hands of the Holy Father himself ! Such
was actually the case ; and it is to Paul IV., perhaps, as much
as to any one else, that the triumph of the Reformation in
England was ultimately due.

Cardinal Caraffa, as Pope Paul was named before he was
raised to the papacy, was really an earnest man, and his
election in 1555, like that of his short-lived pre-
o^Sfiv ^^Gcessor Marcellus, was due to a feehng which had
now taken possession of the sacred college itself
that the Church required purification at headquarters. It
seemed a hopeful sign for the papacy. Cardinal Caraffa,
abstemious in his own life, had been a most zealous Church
reformer, and had instituted, even before he became cardinal,
the Theatine Order of monks. But being a fiery, passionate
Neapolitan, who had a bad opinion of Charles V. and hated
Spain all his life — not without considerable justification for
these sentiments — he was particularly anxious to free the
Holy See from the constant intimidation to which it was
subjected by the fact that the Spaniards had possession of
Naples. An old man of eighty, he recalled the days before
Ferdinand of Aragon had seized upon his country ; and he
longed to restore its independence. As a Churchman, besides,
he resented the indignities inflicted by Charles V. upon the
papal See — indignities rendered all the more intolerable by a

XIX FRENCH INTRIGUES 383

cold conventional respect and pretence of obedience. And
so he had sided with France in the war against Charles. He
was even disappointed with the truce of Vaucelles. His
dislike and suspicion of the emperor were mingled with
undue contempt, alike for him and for his son Philip, who
was King of Naples as well as of England and of Spain ; and
in the course of the summer of 1556 he was involved in
war with both, and France was committed to take his part
against them.

Unfortunately, he did not see the signs of the times. He
would fain have raised the papacy again to the high ideal of
past ages, made it the supreme judge of right and wrong,
excommunicating and depriving of their kingdoms sovereigns
who disobeyed. A body of wise as well as upright councillors
would have been necessary to render possible even a slight
approach to this ideal ; but Paul was impatient of counsel and
was not to be reasoned with where he had made up his mind.
The consequence was that, in September, while his enemy Charles
was resigning the empire and preparing to sail for Spain, to
spend the brief remainder of his life in retirement, the Romans
were terrified by the sound of Spanish guns at Anagni, while
the Duke of Alva had encircled their city from the mountains
to the sea. A truce for a while, however, was happily con-
venient for both sides, and was arranged with Alva by Cardinal
Caraffa, the pope's nephew.

It was in such a condition of affairs that Henry II. of
France, now committed to a war on the pope's behalf against
Philip as King of Spain, kept continually promoting insurrec-
tion against Philip as King of England. Of course, in circum-
stances such as these, it soon became impossible for England to
preserve her old neutrality. Cardinal Pole did his
utmost for this end, and when Philip returned tOEi?|iSln°d
England retired to his See at Canterbury, as it was ^p?^" ^^^

" •^ ' pope s enem5-.

unbecoming that the pope's legate should appear
at the court of the pope's enemy. He only paid him a
personal visit privately ; and it is hard to say how he could
have borne himself more judiciously in the perplexing circum-
stances in which he found himself. But the pope, who even
in the spring of 1557 was not easily dissuaded from declaring
Philip deprived of his kingdoms, resolved at least to withdraw

384 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

all his agents from Philip's dominions. He accordingly
cancelled Pole's commission both as legate a latere and
. legatiis natus. Sir Edward Came, the English
commtssiJn^ ambassador, was alarmed, as the step was pretty
revoked. ^^^^ ^^ crcatc disturbances in England, besides
being a very bad return both to Pole and to his two
sovereigns for what they had all done to restore papal juris-
diction in that country. Paul himself, apparently, was sensible
that he had made a mistake ; but to revoke his published
act, he said, was impossible. He only modified it by a
declaration that it should not include the title of legatus natus
which belonged to every Archbishop of Canterbury.

But now, after Stafford's rebellion had been repressed, the
king and queen could no longer dispense with Pole's services
in matters of State, and they summoned him to court, on pain
of their displeasure. One great question, clearly, was that of
declaring war against France. To this Pole could no longer
withhold his assent ; and the declaration was published on
June 7. But the legateship was scarcely of less importance ;
and the king and queen wrote joint letters to the pope implor-
ing him not to disturb an incomplete settlement of religion,
which a legate's authority was particularly necessary
nSnftianSs ^^ pcrfcct. Similar remonstrances came also from
the bishops, and apparently from the clergy at large ;
and Pole himself, at the express desire of the Council, who
had waited on him purposely to declare their deep regret at
the pope's intention, wrote likewise to his Holiness, adding
that he was not much concerned who exercised the office if
the office itself were only effectively maintained. On this the
pope, though he declined to go back on what he had done,
told the English ambassador that for the queen's sake, not for
PhiHp's, he would appoint another legate in Pole's place ; and
he accordingly named old Friar Peto, now broken down in
years, whom, to the astonishment of everybody, he proposed as
a cardinal to a consistory on June 14.

Sir Edward Carne warned the pope that this appointment
would not please the queen ; on which the pope at first
laughed, but afterwards said that he hoped Mary would con-
sider that he had urgent reasons for it, and that he had created
the new cardinal freely, where other popes had been in the

XIX POLE'S LEGA TION ENDED 385

habit of receiving 40,000 ducats on each creation. He, how-
ever, stayed his messenger two days, and besides altering some
words in his brief to the queen, added another brief to Pole
requiring his presence at Rome. Carne felt assured that if
Pole obeyed the summons he would experience treatment like
that of his friend Cardinal Morone, whom Paul IV. had
caused to be arrested and kept still in prison, though nothing
had been found against him after four examinations. Game's
letters reached Mary in the beginning of July, as she was
accompanying her husband to Dover to cross once more to
Calais ; and being thus warned of what the pope had done,
she ordered the papal messenger to be detained at Calais that
the brief to Pole might not be delivered until she had sent
to Rome and heard again. Pole, however, found out what
had taken place, and, though pressed both by the queen
and Council to continue discharging his duties as legate,
absolutely refused to do so any longer, even though he had
not received the brief, since they detained the messenger. To
clear himself fully on this and some other subjects to the
pope, he wrote him a very long letter (Strype describes it as
a book rather than a letter) relating these circumstances, and
at the same time complaining vehemently of the pope's con-
duct towards himself. Never had cardinal received such
treatment from any pope before ; " so that," he said pointedly
in this epistle, " as you are without example in what you have
done against me, I also am without an example how I ought
to behave myself towards your Holiness."

These strong words were not unwarranted, for the pope had
actually gone so far as to insinuate that Pole was a heretic ;
and to cast such a suspicion upon a legate engasjed „ , , .„

1 • T 1 r ^ • r • ^ ? Pole's lll-

m the active discharge of his functions, and then treatment by
replace him by another, without first citing him and *^^p°p^-
hearing what he had to say against the charge, was the very
height of injustice. Once, as Cardinal Caraffa, in days before
he was pope, he had entertained suspicions of another kind
against Pole, which he afterwards confessed to be unjust, w^ith
such expressions of friendship and esteem that Pole had no
reason to expect a recurrence of dislike. And since then, the
pope's own words in bestov/ing upon him the archbishopric of
Canterbury had been such as might have cleared him of an

386 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

accusation of heresy from any other quarter. Yet, after all
this, and after hearing nothing about Pole but of his constant
combats with heretics and his success against them, the Holy
Father had tried to cast suspicion upon him in that matter !
How would the heretics of England rejoice to see their con-
stant enemy branded with that name himself ! Even if it were
true that he had given way to false doctrine at any time, what
better evidence could he give than he was now doing of his
entire devotion to the Church, and his anxiety to bring men
back to her? Yet now, he whose piety he had defended,
whose honour and dignity he had done so much to promote,
being pope, had become alike his accuser and his judge.

Such was the main substance of this long letter. It con-
tained no answer to the summons to Rome, because the brief
containing that summons had been kept back from him. Pole
sent the letter to Rome by his auditor, Ormanetto, who was
unfortunately so unwell when admitted to an audience by the
pope on September 4 that he was obliged to withdraw before
receiving his dismissal. Nevertheless he managed to state,
with great moderation, the case in Pole's behalf, and virtually
to put the pope upon the defensive. Paul now found it neces-
sary to be civil, having by this time received such a hard
lesson from the teaching of events that he was presently
obliged to make peace with Philip. For while his allies the
French had been seeking to relieve him from Spanish influ-

„ , ^ ence in Italy, Philip had won in Picardy the decisive
Battle of , , - ^ -^ ' ^ , , - -' r 1 .

St. guentin, battle of St. Quentm, and the way lay open for hnn,
August 10. -^ j^^ j^^^ ^^ly pursued it, to Paris, which stood in
dread of his approach. The Duke of Guise had to leave
Rome and the pope to make their own terms with the con-
querors and hurry back to France. But Alva understood the
mind of Philip, and made the terms as little humiliating as
possible to a power which they both respected.

As to Friar Peto, the new cardinal, since the day that he
had preached that memorable sermon before Henry VIII. at
Greenwich, he had been obliged to live abroad till
^PetT^ Mary's accession, when he returned to England and
resigned his nominal title to the bishopric of Salis-
bury which Pope Paul III. had conferred upon him in 1543 ;
for even Mary could not admit his claim to it, as Bishop Salcot

XIX DISAFFECTION INCREASING 387

had joined in the general reconcihation to Rome and ob-
tained absolution from Cardinal Pole from Church censures.
Peto was living now at his old convent at Greenwich, which
Mary had set up again, when the news reached him of his new
dignity, which was as unwelcome to him as it was unexpected.
For he was, in fact, an aged man quite unequal to the duties
imposed upon him, and his new dignity only exposed him to
jeers and insults from the populace as he went about the
streets. Indeed, his death, which happened in the following
April, is said to have been due to the fracture of a rib from
a stone thrown at him when he endeavoured to escape from
their violence in a boat.

The pope's action was certainly a great encouragement to
English heretics, and was very injurious to the peace of Eng-
land. The persecution, of course, still went on. It was the
law that heretics must be burned, and to relax it was impos-
sible, especially when sedition, intrigue, and conspiracy had so
much to do with heresy. A number of royal com-
missions were issued at intervals, and for different ^yj^;^'-^^^^^^^
parts of the country, during the last few years of the
reign; one of which, issued on February 8, 1557, is printed
by Foxe with the title, " A bloody commission given forth by
King Philip and Queen Mary to persecute the poor members
of Christ." If we read the preamble, however, we find that
it was provoked by the assiduous propagation of a number of
slanderous and seditious rumours, along with which the sowing
of heresies and heretical opinions was merely a concurrent.
The commissioners were both clerical and lay, or rather, the
Bishops of London and Ely were put at the head of twenty
others, all laymen except Dr. Henry Cole, the Dean of St.
Paul's. They were empowered to search out and seize all
seditious books and writings, inquire into disturbances com-
mitted in churches and the taking away of lands or goods
belonging to those churches ; to note also what persons
neglected to attend divine service or refused holy bread or
holy water. Their commission, moreover, empowered them
to inquire about "vagabonds and masterless men, barretors,
quarrellers, and suspect persons " in London and within ten
miles, and to commit offenders to prison. There is no appear-
ance that anything more was contemplated than was really

388 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

quite natural under the circumstances for the peace of the
kingdom.

The heretics, though they formed secret societies, were
occasionally betrayed by some of their own brethren. Thus
it happened that a little company, which had met together
on Sunday, December 12, on pretence of hearing a play at
the Saracen's Head, Islington,' was apprehended by the vice-
chamberlain of the queen's household. Their real object, it
was found, had been to hold a communion service in English.
The minister was a Scotsman named John Rough. Origin-
ally a Black Friar, he had been chaplain to the Earl of
Arran, and had preached in favour of Henry VIH.'s Church
policy in Scotland till his master Arran made his peace
with Beton. He was then dismissed to Ayrshire, where
" the Lollards of Kyle " were still held in remembrance.
Like Knox, he had betaken himself to St. Andrews after
Beton's murder, and it was he and Henry Balnavis who
induced Knox to begin preaching there. He was pensioned
by Henry VHL and by Somerset, and had a living given him
in Hull. But after Mary's accession he escaped with his wife
(for of course he had married) to Friesland, where he practised
as an artisan, and consorted with a number of English heretics
who had taken refuge there. He returned, however, probably
more than once, conveying books and letters from abroad to
those of kindred minds at home, and after his last arrival in
November was appointed minister of "that godly fellowship."
He was committed to Newgate, and Bonner, having received
an order from the Council to examine him, found that he had
promoted heretical doctrine on the sacrament, had approved
and used the Edwardine form of communion, and had been
at Rome, and made scandalous reports of what he had seen
there. He was burned in Smithfield on December 22.

The new year, 1558, opened with the loss of Calais, which
was besieged on January i and captured on the 6th ; its
important adjunct, Guisnes, surrendered on the
Loss of ^^i^'2oth. The blow was a crushing one for England ;
but it was the natural consequence of culpable neglect, while
France had been carefully preparing to repair the disaster
of St. Quentin. A parliament which met on January 20
is chiefly memorable in that an abbot of Westminster and a

XIX DEA TH OF MAR V 389

prior of St. John's of Jerusalem again appeared in it ; but its
proceedings have little interest for us. It was prorogued
from March 7 till November 5 ; and even in that eight
months' interval there is little to relate except the
continuance of the persecution and a pestilential ^^JeJ^^J^
summer. When it met again the queen was on
her deathbed. She passed away on November 17, and her
faithful, lifelong friend, Cardinal Pole, died twelve hours later
on the same day.

History has been cruel to her memory. The horrid
epithet "bloody," bestowed so unscrupulously, alike on
her and on Bonner and Gardiner and the bishops gener-
ally, had, at least, a plausible justification in her case from
the severities to which she gave her sanction ; though it
was really not just, even to her. The spectacle of those
cruel proceedings in public, and the enduring recollection
of them afterwards, blotted out from the public mind what
even at first was but imperfectly known — the painful trials
which she herself had so long endured at the hands of law-
less persecutors ; yet it was just such lawless persecutors who
had deranged the whole system of Church government, and
as queen she endeavoured to suppress them by means which,
if severe, were strictly legal. Among the victims no doubt
there were many true heroes and really honest men; but many
of them also would have been persecutors if they had had their
way. Most of them retained the belief in a Catholic Church,
but rejected the mass and held by the services authorised in
Edward VI.'s time. But of course this meant complete
rejection of an older authority — higher, according to time-
honoured theory, than that of any king or parliament — which
had never been openly set aside until that generation. The
revolution had not merely dethroned the pope — it had virtually
destroyed the authority of the bishops. Under Edward VI.
they complained that they could no longer exercise their
proper functions ; the coercive jurisdiction which alone en-
abled them to have complete supervision of their dioceses
was entirely taken away. That was certainly a fact ; but it
was also a fact that men were not going to endure it again.
Secret baptisms, secret communions, secret readings of
Scripture, were irregularities quite destructive of episcopal

390 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap.

supervision ; but they went on and were not to be put down
even under Mary.

On the other hand, not even heretics would have been
content with freedom of worship for themselves without putting
down the mass. So the question really resolved itself to this
— what religion should be supported by the authority of the
State and should have power to put down others ? It must
be confessed Mary's government showed no signs of relenting
towards the close. On one occasion six, on another five, and
on another seven heretics suffered at a time at Smithfield ;
ten had been known to burn together at Colchester, and
thirteen at Stratford-le-Bow\ And yet in 1 5 1 1 it had been
quite exceptional for two men to suffer at Smithfield in one
year ! In August, just three months before her death, the
queen through her Council conveyed a sharp reproof to the
Sheriff of Hampshire for staying the execution of a heretic
named Bembridge, who, when he began to feel the flames,
cried out, " I recant ! " Matters, of course, had gone too far
wnth him, and the proper time for clemency was past ; so the
sheriff was ordered even yet to see the execution carried out ;
and if the poor penitent continued steadfast, the Bishop of
Winchester would appoint a priest to attend him and help
him " to die God's servant."

But all this cruelty was alienating people's hearts from
authority more than ever. It was brutalising, too ; for men
went often to the stake in a spirit of bravado, laughing and
jesting at their fate. A great change was inevitable as soon
as Mary died. But the story of that change will be told in
another volume ; and we must be content to indicate briefly
here some further influences which during the whole of this
sad reign were inevitably preparing the way for the new era.

The story of the exiles who quitted England for religion's
sake, even from the very outset of the reign, when there
was no persecution, might, indeed, fill a volume by
'^^^^^j?'lj^f°'' itself We have seen already how Peter Martyr,
John a Lasco, and Valerand Poullain, w^ith the
foreign congregations in London and at Glastonbury, were
permitted freely to leave the country. Peter Martyr returned
to Strassburg, Valerand Poullain settled at Frankfort, and
John a Lasco, though he sailed at first to Denmark, found

XIX ENGLISH EXILES FOR RELIGION 391

no resting-place till he got back to his native Poland. As to
English schismatics, also, it has been noted how Bale and
Ponet fled the country. The former escaped to Holland and
found an abiding refuge at Bale ; the latter got to Strassburg.
Coverdale, at the King of Denmark's intercession, was allowed
to go to Denmark. Dr. Richard Cox, the "cancellor" of
Oxford University, after a brief imprisonment on suspicion
of having supported Lady Jane, found his way to Frankfort.
Hosts of married clergy also migrated to the Continent, and
not a few laymen, among whom were persons of no less
distinction than the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk (widow of
Charles Brandon) and her new husband Mr. Richard Bertie.

It was not easy for these refugees to find places in which
to settle j for France was barred to them, and Protestant
Germany abhorred their sacramental doctrine not less than
the Church of Rome did. Some got leave to stay at Wesel
by the intercession of Melanchthon. By Peter Martyr's friend-
ship others found a refuge at Strassburg ; Knox was with his
master Calvin at Geneva, and there were other companies in
Switzerland, at Bale, at Zurich, and latterly at Aarau. But
the chief resting-place in Germany was the free city of
Frankfort, where Valerand Poullain had already procured a
church for his own company of Frenchmen from Glaston-
bury, and, in return for the shelter he had received in
England, agreed to share the use of it with a body of English-
men who arrived there in June 1554, on the understanding
that there should be agreement in point of doctrine. This
led to a reconsideration of the English service-book, already
once revised at home, and the omission in use of many
details in the administration of the sacraments as superfluous
and superstitious. But the congregation was without a head,
and wrote to the other congregations in Germany and Switzer-
land for advice, and finally to Knox at Geneva to come and
be their minister. Knox came, but differences of opinion
about the book increased all the more. Calvin was
referred to and found the book trifling and childish, J^^Frankfol?
but suggested compromise, as the worst that it
contained were tolerabiles inepticE. Knox, however, drew up
a new order, which the other party, headed by Dr. Richard
Cox, would not agree to, insisting that the English service-

392 THE POPE'S ESTRANGEMENT chap, xix

book should be maintained. The dispute became fervid —
" so boiUng hot," says an original report, " that it ran over on
both sides, and yet no fire quenched " ; and it led to seces-
sions from the congregation to Bile and Aarau. Knox, more-
over, was turned out, and went back to Geneva, being in
danger, indeed, from the civil magistrate for things he had
written in a small pamphlet about the emperor and his son
Philip, besides his abuse of " the wicked Mary," as he
called the English queen. Calvin rebuked the English con-
gregation for what he called their unbrotherly treatment of
Knox; but they had a telling reply. "This we can assure
you," they wrote to him, " that that outrageous pamphlet of
Knox's has added much oil to the flame of persecution in
England. For before the publication of that book, not one
of our brethren had suffered death ; but as soon as it came
forth, you are well aware of the number of excellent men who
have perished in the flames."

This answer, coming from those who were themselves
refugees for religion, is of much historical significance, and
we need not pursue the story further. Mary's government
of England was a sad failure, but it was not merely on account
of her religion. It was mainly because the fanaticism of
others encouraged treason, and because her cold, cautious
Spanish husband was not the man to strengthen English
loyalty. A further reason, of course, was that the possessors
of Church lands disliked even the moral efl"ect of her example
in restoring Church property.

Authorities. — Besides those used by the general historian, the Foreign
and Venetian Calendars of State Papers are important ; also Strype's
Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. iii. ; Strype's heading of No. Ixvi. in the
Appendix is wrong. There is nothing to show that this document emanated
from Parliament, which, in fact, was not then sitting. It was probably drawn
up in the name of the clergy. Mazi^re Brady's Episcopal Succession.
Among other references to Foxe and Burnet note especially the commission
printed by Foxe, viii. 30T, and by Burnet, v. 469. In the Venetian Cale?idar,
vol. vi. , note p. 1420 about Peto (a reference omitted in the Index) and p.
1672 about heretics going to the stake. For the story of refugees abroad see
Strype's Cranmer, bk. iii. ch. 15; Original Letters (Parker Soc. ), "A Brie.
Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort," originally published in 1575,
reprinted 1846. Fuller's Church History, bk. viii., may also be consulted.

CHAPTER XX

CONCLUSION

And now let us consider the main results as regards religion
in England of the half-century that we have traversed. At
the beginning the position of the Church, under the jurisdic-
tion of Rome, seemed as secure as it had ever been. The
confusions of past ages had gone by. The removal of the
Holy See to Avignon, the Great Schism of the papacy, the
monstrosity of rival popes, each claiming to govern all Christen-
dom, were things of the past, and were never to return. What-
ever else may be said of the Council of Constance, it put an
end to ecclesiastical anarchy, and there was but one obedience
in Western Europe for more than a century after, as, indeed,
there is but one obedience still for those who acknowledge
papal authority at all.

But this strengthening of the Church had its weak side.
The Church was the only external authority in matters of faith
and morals, and kings and emperors found it their interest, as
it seemed to be their duty, to support it in its old and recog-
nised position. It had a peculiar jurisdiction of its own in
every kingdom — an imperium in imperio^ which did not trouble
the civil ruler much, for he, in his turn, could obtain from the
Holy See a sanction for his own authority which was of no
small value, subjects knowing full well that a revolt against
their lawful prince would bring down upon them ecclesiastical
censures not less than temporal punishment. Rome, also,
saw the value of temporal support, so that kings could even
obtain, too often, indulgences of a questionable kind, such as
dispensations which enabled them to play fast and loose with

393

394 CONCLUSION chap.

the marriage tie. Abstract principles of right and wrong were
indeed safeguarded. The sanctity of marriage was always
upheld in theory, and divorce, in the true sense of the word,
was never regarded as admissible ; but abundant casuistry
was exercised at times in disputing the validity of marriages
which had actually taken place, with the result that a most
sacred tie was rendered practically insecure and was not
so highly honoured as it should have been. This, together
with the sad effects of clerical celibacy and laxity of discipline,
produced social results among the people which were certainly
deplorable.

As regards doctrine, too, the strengthening of the Church
was not in all respects an advantage. For here the discipline
was not lax, the theory being that no evil could be worse for a
community than the deliberate propagation of error in things
sacred ; and there were not wanting evidences to show how
the peace of a kingdom could be wrecked by heresy. Bohemia
was particularly pointed at, as a land where new doctrines had
created civil war and spread general ruin. Even in England
men looked back to the case of the enthusiast Oldcastle, who
had raised a formidable insurrection in the days of Henry V.
Indeed, Lollardy was by no means an innocent attempt to
secure freedom for the individual judgment; it was a spirit
that prompted the violation of order and disrespect to all
authority. Founding itself upon private interpretation of the
Scriptures, it destroyed images and defied law. It became
even more dangerous after the Reformation than before, when,
under the new names of Puritanism and Calvinism, it issued
scurrilous pamphlets against bishops ; coerced, insulted, and
deposed a sovereign in Scotland ; and ultimately, in England
itself, overturned the throne and established a military despot-
ism. How hideous it could make itself, even in a single
generation, after the spell of papal authority was broken, may
be seen in John Knox's warm approval of one of the most
brutal murders that ever disgraced humanity.

Rebellion against an established order in the Church —
easily leading to rebellion against the State as well — was, of
course, a still greater danger when the supreme ruler in secular
things had deposed the old supreme ruler in things spiritual.
But the fact was that the Church had already become too

XX CA USES OF THE REFORM A TION 395

large, and its government too difficult, to be controlled by
popes and councils any longer. The Council of Trent was
committed beforehand on certain subjects of dispute, when it
met amid the muttering thunder of civil war in Germany, and it
took no cognisance of the condition of pious souls in England —
nay, even of the most loyal souls forced to make concessions to
the evil times. It gave no help whatever to determine the
conditions of a true faith that could afford to endure tyranny,
rendering to Csesar what was strictly his, and to God what was
due to Him. Rome virtually threw over loyal souls struggling
to do their best, and, while disowning every local or national
attempt at a religious settlement, whether by diet, interim, or
established Church, left some nations of Europe no other
remedy than to find such settlement for themselves. In vain
Rome exalted her prerogative anew and declared herself above
kings and princes, threatening to depose them if they departed
from a faith laid down now with greater rigidity than before.
The attempt only discredited Rome's pretensions all the more,
and demoralised alike her votaries and her opponents.

The source of the evil must be traced back into the past.
The external strengthening of the Church of Rome for a century
before the Reformation had been accompanied by growing
internal weakness. If Lollardy was a spiritual evil, it ought to
have been met from the outset by spiritual weapons. The
Church, if sound in herself, ought to have been able to subdue
it by convincing the heretics that reason was on her side.
This Bishop Pecock attempted to do in the fifteenth cen-
tury ; but he himself was branded as a heretic for his pains.
Lollardy was not answered, but stamped out. The custody of
the faith was jealously guarded by the clergy as their own
special privilege. Interpretation of the Bible was their par-
ticular function. Laymen were warned off the sacred ground,
and their untrained logic was required simply to bow to the
decisions of learned men founded on scholastic metaphysics.
But the laity had a right to bv^ reasoned with, and, since this
was not conceded to them, they formed secret societies and
reasoned among themselves in a way that was really dangerous
to the Church's teaching and aut'^ority. Here it was that
Henry VI 1 1, saw his advantage when he wished to throw off
papal authority. He had merely to encourage forces which

396 CONCLUSION chap, xx

till that time he, like every other sovereign, had studiously
kept in check. He knew, indeed, that it was a task not un-
attended with danger ; but he was watchful to the end, and
the chief evils did not come in his day.

Under the unstable government of his son, what had once
been heresy carried all before it. But heresy enthroned in
power had to consider on what principles it could safely rest ;
and amid all the noise and violence of the reign a standard
of belief was being quietly elaborated by Cranmer and other
divines, which, after the Marian reaction was over, was adopted
with very slight modification in the familiar Thirty-nine Articles.
In these, and in the English Prayer-book itself, the final
results of the Reformation were embodied, so far as doctrine
and devotion were concerned ; and it would be difficult to
overestimate their value. No formularies were ever drawn
that give so much liberty to the human mind. Truth had
been well tested by martyrdoms on either side before they
were finally adopted ; and while they repudiated the exclusive-
ness of Rome, they raised no barrier to the freest thinking
consistent with belief in revelation. They constitute a more
real Catholicism than that of the Council of Trent.

But this result was allied with a political change quite as
marked and even more far-reaching. For it destroyed the old
imperium in imperio altogether ; and this not in England only,
but ultimately all the world over. The king was declared to
have the supreme government within his own realm in all
causes, alike ecclesiastical and civil. It was a new principle
that Henry VIII. introduced into politics, involving new re-
sponsibilities to him and his successors, that the civil ruler
was charged with the care of national religion no less than
with the national defence and administration. But this
principle has survived to the present da)^, and will remain.
Men may secede from the Church of England as they please,
but it remains a national trust, reflecting, as it must always
do, the religious feeling of the nation.

APPENDIX I

SOME PRINCIPAL EVENTS

with

him

Fidel

Jubilee at Rome ........

Subsidy procured by Henry VII. for a crusade .

Marriage of Prince Arthur to Katharine of Aragon, November

Death of Prince Arthur, April 2 .... .

Treaty for Katharine's marriage to Henry, Prince of Wales
Death of Henry VII., April 21 .....

Henry VIII. marries Katharine, June 11 .

Council of Pisa, September i .

The Holy League formed at Rome, October 5 .

Battle of Flodden, September 9 ; Capture of Tournay, September 23

Henry VIII. 's sister Mary married to Louis XII., October 9

Inquest on Richard Hunne, December 6 .

Wolsey created a cardinal, September 10 .

Birth of Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., February 18

Luther opposes the sale of Indulgences in Germany .

Campeggio comes to England ; Wolsey made legate along

Charles V. elected emperor, June 28

Field of the Cloth of Gold, June ....

Henry VIII. writes against Luther, and the pope creates

Defensor .......

Francis I. taken prisoner at Pavia, February 24
Treaty of Madrid, January 14
Henry VIII. seeks a divorce from Katharine ,
Sack of Rome, May ......

Wolsey's mission to France, July-September
The king's divorce suit before Campeggio and Wolsey at Blackfriars
Fall of Wolsey, October 9 ; More made lord chancellor, October 25
Opinions of universities obtained for the king ....

Death of Wolsey, November 29 .

The clergy acknowledge the king's supremacy with a qualification

Submission of the clergy .......

Interview of Henry VIII. and Francis I. at Boulogne, October .
Secret marriage of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, January 25 .
Coronation of Anne Boleyn as queen, June i . .

Sentence at Rome, declaring Henry's marriage with Katharine valid

July II .
Birth of Elizabeth, afterwards queen, September 7 .

397

A.D.
1500
I5OI
I5OI
1502
1503
1509
1509

I512
I513
1514
I514

1516

I517
1518

I519
1520

I52I

1525
1526

1527
1527
1527
1529
1529
1530
1530
153I
1532
1532
1533
1533

1533
1533

398

APPENDIX I

Act of Supremacy passed by Parliament .....
Martyrdoms of Carthusian monks, of More, Fisher, and others .
Suppression of the smaller monasteries .....
Anne Boleyn beheaded ; Henry marries Jane Seymour, May
Rebellions in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, October .
Marriage of James V. of Scotland and Madeleine in Paris, January
Severe punishment of rebels in the North of England

Birth of Edward VI. , October 12

Surrenders begin to be taken of the larger monasteries

Ten years' truce between Charles V. and Francis I., June i8

Spoliation of Becket's shrine at Canterbury, September

Executions of the Marquess of Exeter and Lord Montague, December

The Act of the Six Articles

Abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester put to death
Charles V. at Paris on his way to the Netherlands, January i
Henry VIII. marries Anne of Cleves, January 6 ; is divorced from her

July 9

Execution of Cromwell, July 28 ... .

Execution of the Countess of Salisbury, May 28

Henry VIII. proclaimed King of Ireland, January 22

Queen Katharine Howard beheaded, February 12

Defeat of the Scots at Solway Moss, November 25 ; Death of James

v., December 14 ..... .

Alliance of Henry VIII. and the emperor against France

"The King's Book" {A Necessary Doctrine ) published, May

Henry VIII. marries Katharine Parr, July 12 .

Three Windsor heretics burned, July 28 .

Cranmer complained of by his prebendaries

The English burn Edinburgh and invade France

Act for the dissolution of chantries ....

Council of Trent meets, December 13 .

George Wishart burned at St. Andrews, March 28 .

Cardinal Beton murdered, May 29 .

Martyrdom of Anne Askew, July 16 ...

Death of Henry VIII., January 28 ; Edward VI. crowned, February 20 15

Death of Francis I., March 31 ; Henry II, succeeds .

Council of Trent transferred to Bologna, April 21

Defeat of the German Protestants at Miihlberg, April 24

Battle of Pinkie, September 10 ... .

Bishops Bonner and Gardiner sent to the Fleet, September
Parliament repeals heresy laws and allows marriage of the clergy

November, December .....
"The Order of Communion " issued, March 8
The Interim at Augsburg, May 15 .
Mary Stuart conveyed from Scotland to France, August
First Act of Uniformity, January 21
Visitation of Oxford and Cambridge universities. May
The Western Rising and Kett's rebellion in Norfolk .
Bishop Bonner deprived, October i .
Somerset arrested, October 14
Act against images in churches, January .
Treaty restoring Boulogne to France, March 24
Ridley in his visitation orders removal of altars. May

SOME PRINCIPAL EVENTS

Gardiner deprived of his bishopric, February 14

Council of Trent reopened, May i . . . . .

Execution of the Duke of Somerset, January 22

Second Act of Uniformity, April ......

Council of Trent suspended, April 28 .

Peace of Passau, May 26, secures religious liberty in Germany .

Bishop Tunstall deprived, October 13 .

Death of Edward VI., July 6 ; Lady Jane Grey proclaimed queen, July

10; Mary proclaimed, July 19.
Wyatt's rebellion, January .......

Great changes among the bishops ......

Philip of Spain comes to England and marries Mary, July .

Cardinal Pole, having arrived in England, absolves the realm from

schism, November 30 . . .....

Heresy laws revived, December ......

John Rogers (first Marian martyr) burned, February 4 .

Many others follow during the next two years and a half.
Ridley and Latimer burned at Oxford, October 16 .
Cranmer burned at Oxford, March 21 .

Cardinal Pole consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, March 22
The pope at war with Philip IL in Italy .....

Pole deprived of his legation .......

Calais taken by the French, January 6 .... .

Deaths of Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole, November 17 .

399

A.D.
I55I
1551
1552
1552
1552
1552
1552

1553
1554

ISS4
1554

1554
IS54
155s

1555
1556
1556
1556
1556
1558
1558

ro CO

CI ro

O O

(N CJ

Lo u^

U-) LQ

to IT)
ITj lO
lO lO

^ >

> *--

^_;

>^'

In;

-ai

S£

o ^-

a, 1^ --.

k: CO
O O

lO LO

pqH

C CO o 1-.

lO lO
to to

INDEX

Aarau, in Switzerland, 391-392

Abell, Thomas, martyr, 218

Abergavenny, Lord, 331

Adrian VI., pope, 78

Aigues Mortes, interview at, 205

Aldersgate Street, 340

Aldricli, Robt., bp. of Carlisle (1537-

56), 276, 303
Alen9on, duchess of, 84
Alesius (Alane), Alexander, 175
Alexander, Peter, of Aries, 263
Alexander VI., pope, 6, 9, 11
All Hallows Barking, church of, 159
Allen, John, abp. of Dublin, murdered,

222
Altars, destruction of, 280-281, 284-

285, 296
Ambleteuse, 266
Ammonius, Andreas, 62, 64, 65
Anabaptists, 157, 203, 279, 288
Angers, university of, 105
Annates, or first-fruits, 116, 140, 145,

153. 252
Anne of Cleves, 209, 213 ; her mar-
riage with Henry VIII. annulled,

217
d'Annebaut, admiral, 238
Ap Rice, John, notary, 164-165
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 60
Arian, spitting on an, 369
Arran, earl of, governor of Scotland,

225, 388
Arthur, prince, son of Henry VII. , his

marriage with Katharine, 8, 84, 93
Articles, the Forty-two, 311 ; the

Thirty-nine, 396
Arundel, earl of, 299
Arundel, Humphrey, 269

Aske, Robert rebellion of, 179, 180,

182, 185
Askew, Anne, martyr, wife of Thos.

Kyme, 234-236, 279
Atwater, William, bp. of Lincoln

(1514-20), 63
Audeley, Thomas, speaker of the

Commons (1529), 104, 118, 120,

123 ; lord chancellor (1533-44),

123, 160, 215
Augmentation, court of, 210
Augsburg, Confession of, 162, 237 ;

diet of, 298
Austin Friars, 284
Avignon, papal see at, 393
Axholme, charterhouse of, 156

Bacon, Lord, i

Bagnall, Sir Ralph, 345

Bainbridge, Christopher, bp. of Dur-
ham (1507-8), abp. of York (1508-
14), 14, 15 ; created cardinal, 16,
22 ; death of, 21, 23

Bainham, Sir Christopher, 130

Bainham, James, heretic, 129 ; burned,
130-131

Baker, Joan, 37, 56, 57

Baker, Sir John, 312

Bale, 266, 391-392

Bale, John, bp. of Ossory, his writings
under the name of Michael Wood,
326-327 ; his history, 327-328, 341,

391
Balnavis, Henry, 388
Bangor, bp. of. See Capon, John
Barlings, prior of, 186
Barlow, William, bp. of St. Asaph

(1536), of St. David's (1536-48),

2 D

402

INDEX

of Bath and Wells (1548-53), 188,

216, 243, 253, 337, 352, 358
Barnabas, St., feast of, 281
Barnes, Dr. Robert, 89, 115, 125,

134, 162, 191, 203-204, 214-215 ;

burned, 218, 220, 236
Barton, Eliz. , "the nun of Kent,"

143, 147-148
Bath, earl of, 316
Bath Place, 72
Bath and Wells, bishopric of, 70 ;

bps. of : see Castello, A. de ; Wol-

sey, cardinal (1518-23) ; Clerk,

John (1523-41) ; Barlow, Wm.

(1548-53) ; Bourne, Gilbert (1554-8)
Bayfield, Richard, heretic, burned,

126, 129, 130
Bay ham, monastery of, 81
Baynard's Castle, 32, 36, 38, 39, 46,

48
Beche, Thomas, abbot of Colchester,

executed, 211
Becket, Hfe of, 211
" Becket's house " (the Mercers'

chapel), 208
Bedyll, Thomas, clerk of the council,

151-152, 159, 164
Bele, Dr., 69
Bellay, J. du, loi
Bembridge, a heretic, 390
Benet, Thomas, heretic, 129
Benet, WiUiam, Henry VIII. 's ambas-
sador at Rome, 240
Berkshire, commotions in, 266
Berthelet, the king's printer, 175
Bertie, Richard, 391
Berwick, 307
Baton, David, 184, 206 ; cardinal,

225 ; murder of, 237, 388
Bevall, Notts, charterhouse of, 156
Bible, English, 37, 106, 177, 188,

202-203, 215, 223-225
Latin (Vulgate), 177, 192, 223-224
Coverdale's, 191-192
Matthew's, 192, 354
Tyndale's. See Tyndale
Bibles ordered in churches, 192, 202 ;

in St. Paul's, 221
Bigod, Sir Francis, 186
Bilney, Thomas, burned, 129, 234
Bird, John, bp. of Chester (1541-53),

362
Bisham, monastery of, 197

Bishops compelled to surrender bulls,
155 ; ordered to suspend their
visitations, 165, 246 ; the king's
letter to them, 180 ; restrained,
257, 275, 284

Bishops' Book, the. See Books

Bishopstoke, 327

Blackfriars, London, 46

Blackheath, 63, 72

Blount. Eliz., 86

Bocardo, in Oxford, 371, 373

Bocher, Joan, burned, 278, 369

Bocking, Dr. Edward, 144, 146

Bodmin, mayor of, 269

Body, William, 256

Bohemia, 104, 394

Boleyn, Anne, 83, 86-88, 94-96, 98,
100, 107, III, 126, 128, 133, 135-
137 ; created marchioness of Pem-
broke, 137 ; married to Henry
VIII., 139-141, 144. i47» 151.
156, 169 ; crowned, 142 ; gives
birth to Elizabeth, 143 ; her fall and
execution, 170-172, 187 ; Bible de-
dicated to, 192 ; noticed, 195-196

Boleyn, George (brother of Anne), 95 ;
Lord Rochford, 108, 140, 170

Boleyn, Sir Thomas, viscount Roch-
ford (father of Anne), 83, 86,
95 ; earl of Wiltshire (1529-38),
104-105

Bologna, Charles V. crowned by Cle-
ment VII. at (1530), 104; their
second meeting there (1532), 138,
140 ; council of Trent removed
thither, 298 ; universities and lib-
raries at, 105

Bonner, Edmund, 140, 143 ; bp. of
Hereford (1538-9), 203 ; bp. of
London (1539-49), 216, 220, 234-5,
• 242, 247, 254, 256, 270-272, 274,
282, 285, 301, 317-319. 324. 326-
327, 337. 339-342, 345, 347, 352-
355. 360-362, 370-373. 378, 387-
389

Bonnivet, Sieur de, 74

Books {see also Bible ; Pole, Reginald,
and other authors' names), procla-
mation against, 203; " the Bishops'
Book " [Institution of a Christian
Man), 188, 196, 226, 369; "the
King's Book " {A Necessary Doc-
trine), 226, 238, 247; "Ceremonies

INDEX

403

to be used," 226; Homilies, first
book, 246-247 ; books made by pre-
lates and doctors, 251 ; Hermann's
Consultation, 255 ; books imported
from abroad, 266 ; Act touching,
276

Boulogne, interview of Henry VHI.
and Francis I. at, 135, 139 ; taken
by the English, 245, 266, 274 ;
peace made at, 278

Bourges, university of, 105

Bourne, secretary, 351

Bourne, Dr. Gilbert, 318, 322 ; bp.
of Bath and Wells (1554-58), 337,

^ 359

Bow, church of St. Mary le, 379

Bow churchyard, 347

Bowes, Robert, 1 80-1 81

Boxley, the Rood of, 199, 253

Boxted, Essex, 54

Bradford, John, martyr, 318, 348-

349. 352. 359. 360
Braintree, Essex, 278
Branch, William, 355
Bret, Captain, 331-332
Brewster, James (or John?), 51, 53-

54
Brian, Sir Francis, 96, 137
Bridewell, 314
Bristol, bishopric of, 210 ; bp. of, see

Holyman, J.
Bromley, Justice, 312
Brooks, James, bp. of Gloucester

(1554-58), 337-338. 364-366
Browne, Sir Anthony, 290. See also

Montague, viscount
Browne, Dr. George, prior of the

Austin Friars, 142, 150 ; abp. of

Dublin, 222
Brunswick, 195
Bruton, monastery of, 164
Bucer, 263, 291, 304, 359, 381
Buckden, Katharine removed to, 148
Buckingham, duke of, 78
Buckinghamshire, commotions in, 266
Bull and brief, 9

Bulls from Rome, surrender of, 155
Bullinger, the Swiss reformer, 219,

280, 291
Burnet's History of the Reformation ,

50. 381
Burton-on-Trent, St. Modwen's image
at, 201

Bury, a monk of, 92

Buttes, Dr., Henry VIII. 's physician,

98. 233
Buxton, baths of, 201

Calais, conferences at, 77, 80, 231 ;
loss of, 388

Calvin, 227, 291, 391-392

Calvinism, 394

Calvinists, 264

Cambray, league of, 8, 14

Cambridge, 89 ; White Horse Inn,
89 ; University, 105, 177, 231, 263,
338 ; visited, 164, 264-265, 291,
381 ; King's College, 105 ; Trinity
Hall, 258, 265 ; Clare Hall, 265

Campeggio, Lorenzo, cardinal, 12,

71-75. 89. 92-96. 135. 146

Canon law, study of at Oxford
abolished, 164; proposed revision of,
229, 231, 300, 367 ; the commission
of thirty-two, 251-252, 275, 300

Canterbury, abps. of. See Deane,
Henry (1501-3) ; Warham, Wm.
(1503-32); Cranmer, Thos. (1533-
56) ; Pole, Reginald (1556-58) ;
see of, I, 66, 104 ; province of,
109, 113. ^<?<? Convocation

Canterbury, prebendaries of, 228 ;
shrine of St. Thomas at, 201

Capon (or Salcot), John, bp. of Ban-
gor (1534-39). 144; bp. of Salis-
bury (1539-57). 227, 386

Cardmaker (or Taylor), John, 234,
352

Carew, Sir Gawain, 268

Carew, Sir Peter, 268, 329-331

Carlisle, 186

Carlisle, bp. of. See Aldrich, Robert
(1537-56)

Carmarthen, canons of, 358

Carmehano, Pietro, 12

Carne, Edward, 135-136, 140, 356,
364, 384-385

Carranza, cardinal, 369

Carthusian monks (of London and
elsewhere), 151-152, 156, 158, 183,
210, 246

Casale, Sir Gregory, 87-89

Castello (or Corneto), Adrian de, bp.
of Bath, 12, 64, 65, 70, 71

Castro, Alfonso a, 355, 360

Cat, the, in Cheapside, 339

404

INDEX

Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, 17, 19,
107

Cecil, William, 258-260, 295-296,
308

Ceremonies, 203, 226, 238, 280

Chancellor, lord. See Warham, W.
(1504-15) ; Wolsey, Thomas (1515-
29) ; More, Sir Thomas (1529-32) ;
Audley, Sir Thomas (1532-44) ;
Wriothesley, Sir Thomas (1544-47) ;
Rich, Sir Richard (1547-51) ;
Gardiner, Stephen (1552-55)

Chantries, Acts touching, 231, 250

Chapuys, the imperial ambassador in
England, 113, 126, 161, 172

Charing Cross, 63, 360

Charles V., emperor, 10, 75-77, 80,
82, 85, 104, 161, 167, 170, 182,
205-206, 209, 213, 219, 230, 244,
261, 289, 298-299, 328-329, 342-
343' 378, 382 ; as king of Spain,
74

Charterhouse, London, monks of
the, 150, 156, 197-198. See also
Carthusians

Chauncey, Maurice, Carthusian, 198

Cheap, or Cheapside, 339

Chedsey, Dr. , 264, 362

Cheke, Sir John, 296, 304, 308

Chelsea, 54, 130- 131

Chertsey, abbey of, 197, 257, 262

Chester, bishopric of, 210 ; bps. of:
see Bird, John (1541-53); Cotes,
George (1554-55)-

Chichester, bps. of. See Sherborne,
Robert (1507-36) ; Sampson, Rich.
(1536-43) ; Day, Geo. (1543-56) ;
Scory, John (1552-53)

Cholmley, Sir Roger, 307

Christchurch Hospital (or Christ's
Hospital), London, 241, 314

Christchurch, Hants, 257

Christian HI. of Denmark, 162, 214

Church plate, 305

Clement VIL, pope, 81, 85, 87, 104-
105, 107, 136, 138-140 ; excom-
municates Henry VIII. , 142

Clergy, privileges of the, 42-43 ; com-
plained of by the king, 120 ; their
submission, 122

Clerk, John, ambassador at Rome,
79 ; bp. of Bath, 11 1, 122

Gierke. See Sweeting

Cleves, Anne of. See Anne

Cleves, John, duke of, 209

Cleves, William, duke of, 209, 218

Clink, the, 360

Cloth of gold, field of the, 76

Cochlaeus, 91

Cocks. See Cox

Coggeshall, Essex, 278

Coinage, debasement of the, 294

Colchester, 54 ; heretics burned at,
390

Cole, Dr. Henry, provost of Eton,
374 ; dean of St. Paul's, 387

Colet, Dr. John, 60, 61, 62, 71

Colleges, Wolsey's, 81, 97, 98

CoUis, Bonifacio, 63

Cologne, 189

Cologne, Hermann, abp. of, 255

Commendone, 322

Commons, House of, 113-118, 141,
276 ; its supplication against the
clergy, 113-118 ; visited by the
lord chancellor and leading peers,
116 ; rebuked by Henry VIII.,
118

Communion in both kinds, 207, 250,
252, 277 ; order of, 255, 320 ;
table, 281

Compendium Compertorum, 165

Compton, Sir William, 103

Confession, auricular, 207

Constance, council of, 393

Constantine, George, 126

Convocation, joint, at Westminster,
176-181 ; of Canterbury, 64, 108,
113, 115, 117-122, 141, 149, 171,
173-174, 176, 178, 192, 208, 223-
224, 251, 311, 324-325, 337-338.
34S> 367, 370 ; of York, 109, 136,
149 ; (irregular) at Pomfret, 181

Cook, Hugh, abbot of Reading,
hanged, 211

Cooling Castle, 331

Cope, Alan, 39

Copped Hall, 294

Corneto, Adrian de. See Caste! lo

Cornwall, commotions in, 256, 266-
267

Corpus Christi, feast of, 28 1

Cotes, George, bp. of Chester (1554-
55). 337

Council, general, proposed, 162, 184,
194-195

INDEX

405

Counter, the, in the Poultry, 354,
360

Courtenay, Edward, 241, 317 ; re-
stored to the earldom of Devon,
328, 330, 333-334. 379

Courtenay family, 205

Coventry, 251

Coverdale, Miles, his Bible, 191-192,
236, 268 ; bp. of Exeter (1551-53)1
295. 317. 320, 348, 391

Covos, secretary to Charles V., 218

Cox (or Cocks), Dr. Richard, 216,
264, 285, 291, 300, 391

Cranmer, Thomas, 95, loi ; abp. of
Canterbury, 137, 139, 141, 145,
149, 155, 171, 174, 179, 188-189,
192, 195, 203-204, 208, 216, 221,
226 ; visits his province, 149 ; com-
plained of by the prebendaries of
Canterbury, 228 - 229 ; and by
others, 232-233 ; composes an Eng-
lish litany, 230 ; contemplates a
change of ritual, 238 ; under Ed-
ward VL, 242, 247, 251, 254-256,
261-263, 271, 276, 283, 287-289,
291-293, 300, 303-304, 307-311,
313 ; under Mary, 317, 320-321,
323. 325-326, 338, 348 ; his trial,
364-367 ; his sentence and martyr-
dom, 370-376, 378 ; his catechism,

351

Crediton, 268

Croftes, Sir James, 330

Croke, Richard, 105

Crome, Dr. Edward, 130, 203, 233-
234, 348, 352

Cromwell, Thomas, 81 ; his history,
97 ; his policy, loo-ioi, 114, 134,
141, 149, 155, 157-159. 163-166,
172, 175-179, 184-185, 188-189,
207-209, 214-215 ; chancellor of
Cambridge University, 164; created
Lord Cromwell, 173 ; earl of Essex,
215 ; his fall, 216 , and execution,
218 ; referred to, 226, 228, 327,
347 ; his injunctions, 177, 202

Crusade against the Turks sanctioned,
70-74

Cujavia, Poland, bishopric of, 283

Cumberland, earl of, 180

Curson, David, monk of Sion, 152

Curwen, Dr. Richard, 119

Curzon, Sir Robert, 17

Dalaber, Anthony, 92

Dalmatia, 63

Dandino, cardinal, 322

Darcy, Lord, 17, 179, 180-181, 186

Darlington, 53

Darvell Gadarn, the image brought
from Wales, 200

Day, Dr. George, 216 ; bp. of Chi-
chester (1543-56), 238, 276, 285,

296, 301, 318, 319, 335, 360
Deane, Henry, abp. of Canterbury

(1501-3), I, 3
Decretal commission desired by Wol-

sey, 89
Denmark, 162, 390-391
Devon, earl of. See Courtenay,

Edward
Devonshire, commotions in, 266-270,

272, 275, 288
Doncaster, 180 ; meeting at, 181, 185
Dorset, Thomas Grey, 2nd marquess

of, 19, 22
Dorset, Henry Grey, 3rd marquess of,

created duke of vSuffolk, 296, 312,

See Suffolk
Dovercourt, the rood of, 128 note,

347

Dudley, Ambrose and Henry, 325

Dudley, Guildford, 312, 325, 333

Dudley, Sir Henry, 380

Dudley, John, Viscount Lisle, created
earl of Warwick, 241, 270, 272,
286, 289, 296-299 ; created duke
of Northumberland, 296, 299, 301,

305. 307. 310-313. 315. 319. 322;
his sons, 348
Dudley, John, Viscount Lisle and earl
of Warwick, son of the preceding,

297. 319

Dudley, Kath. , daughter of Northum-
berland, 312

Duns Scotus, 164

Durham, bps. of. See Bainbridge, C.
(1507-8); Ruthall, Thomas (1509-
23) ; Wolsey, Thomas (1523-29) ;
Tunstall, C. (1530-52, and 1553-
59); bishopric of, 305, 307, 311

Durham House, 311

Dussindale, battle of, 267

Dutch church at Austin Friars, 284

Edinburgh, 230, 247

Edward VL, birth of, 194 ; as prince.

4o6

INDEX

225 ; his accession and coronation,
241 ; as king, 282, 286, 288-289,
291. 295, 300, 306, 309-312, 327,
329. 345- 347. 363. 376, 389 ; his
journal, 289, 305 ; his death, 313,
316 ; his hospitals and schools,
314-315 ; service-books of, 349,

351. 363
Elizabeth, queen, birth of, 143 ; as

princess, 317, 330, 333-334
Ellerker, Sir Ralph, 180-181
Elstowe, Henry, warden of the friars

at Greenwich, 119
Ely, bps. of. See Goodrich, Thomas

{1534-54) ; Thirlby, Thos. (1554-

58)
Embden, 283

Emmanuel, king of Portugal, 7
Enclosures, 267
Epistles. See Gospels.
Erasmus, 60, 62, 71, 283 ; his Para-
phrase of the New Testament, 249,

252
Erneley, attorney-general, 48
Esher, 96, 98
Essex, commotions in, 260
Essex, earl of (Henry Bourchier), 63
Evil May-day, 69
Exeter, besieged, 268 ; taken, 330
Exeter, bps. of. See Voysey, John

(1519-51 and 1553-54) ; Coverdale,

Miles (1551-53)
Exeter, Henry Courtenay, marquess

of, 205
Exeter, marchioness of, 146
Exmewe, William, martyr, 159

Fagius, 263, 381

Farman, Thomas, parson of Honey

Lane, 92
Fasting days, 304
Feckenham, Dr., 336, 362 ; abbot of

Westminster, 381
Ferdinand of Aragon, 6, 9, 10, 11,

14, 16-20, 24
Ferdinand, king of the Romans, 161
Feron, Robert, of Teddington, 156
Ferrar, Robert, bp. of St. David's

(1548-54), 276, 348, 358-359
Ferrara, duke of, 16
Fetherstone, Richard, martyr, 218
Fewterer, John, confessor of Sion,

198

Filmer, Henry, 227

Fineux, chief justice, 47

First-fruits. See Annates

Fish, Simon, his Supplication for the
Beggars, 125-126 ; his widow, 130

Fisher, John, bp. of Rochester (1504-
35), 68, 85, 94, 95 ; his remon-
strance in the House of Lords, 104 ;
consulted by Convocation, 121,
141 ; examines heretics, 129 ; ac-
cused of misprision, 146; refuses to
swear to the preamble of the Suc-
cession Act, 149 ; attainted, 153 ;
made a cardinal, 158 ; visited by
Cromwell in the Tower, ib. ; his
martyrdom, 159, 160, 164, 183 ;
mentioned, 209, 211 ; his cook,
no

Fitz James, Richard, bp. of London
(1506-22), 30, 31, 38, 50, 51, 60,

Fitzwilliam, Sir William, 112, 182

Fleet prison, 247, 260, 278, 285, 290,
292, 295-296, 348

Flodden, battle of, 68

Flower (or Branch) William, 355

Foix, Gaston de, 21

Forest, John, friar, burned, 200

Fortescue, 242

Fountains, abbot of, 186

Fox, Richard, bp. of Winchester, 2,
3, 15, 18, 20, 49, 63, 66-68

Foxe, Edward, provost of King's Col-
lege, Cambridge, 88, 90, 95, 105,
120-121 ; bp. of Hereford (1535-
38), 162, 175, 188

Foxe, John, his Acts and Monuments,
36-40, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 60, 128,
130-133, 135, 177, 220-221, 271,
333. 338, 342, 350, 352. 355-356,
361-362, 387

Foxe, John, Carthusian, 246

France, invaded by Henry VHL, 230;
declares war against England, 266 ;
peace with, 288 ; alliance with, 299

Francis I., king of France, 75, 82,
137-138, 140, 161-162, 170, 182,
187, 205-206, 215, 244

Francis the Dauphin (afterwards
Francis H.), 261

Frankfort, 390 ; troubles at, 391-392

French Protestants in London, 321

Friars, visitation of the, 150

INDEX

407

Friars, Grey (Conventuals and Ob-
servants), 150

Friesland, reformed churches of, 283

Frith, John, martyr, 115, 128-129,
133-134. 225, 236

Fulham, 37, 361

Fuller, the Church historian, 174

Furness, abbot of, 186

Garcia (or Villa Garcina), Joannes de,
friar, 371, 373

Gardiner, Stephen, 88-90, 95, 105 ;
bp. of Winchester, 102, 117, 120,
143, 214, 216, 227-228, 235, 238,
241-243, 248-249, 254, 257-261,
271, 274, 275, 285-287, 291-292,
297. 301. 303. 310. 317. 319 ; lord
chancellor, 320, 323-324, 327-330,
335-337. 340. 345. 349-352, 358,
368-370, 382, 389, 390 ; his con-
troversy with Cranmer, 291-292 ;
his book de Vera Obedicntia, 326

Garret (or Garrard), Thos. , his flight
from Oxford, 92, 133 ; preaches at
Paul's Cross, 215 ; is burnt, 218 ;
referred to, 228, 358

Garter, Order of the, 306

Gatehouse, the, 362

Gates, Sir John, 319

Geneva, 391-392

Geraldine faction in Ireland, 222

Ghent, revolt at, 214

Ghinucci, Girolamo, bp. of Worcester
(1523-34). 105, 146

Gigli, Giovanni de', bp. of Worcester
(1497-98), II

Gigli, Silvestro de', bp. of Worcester
(1499-1521), 9, II, 23, 63, 64, 65,
71. 72, 75

Giustinian, Sebastian, Venetian am-
bassador, 67

Glastonbury, abbey of, 381 ; abbot
of (Whiting), 210

Glastonbury, community of foreigners
at, 284, 321, 390-391

Glazier, Hugh, Cranmer's commissary,

243

Gloucester, bishopric of, 210, 306 ;
bps. of: see Hooper, John (1550-
53) ; Brooks, James (1554-58)

Gloucestershire, commotions in, 266

Goodrich, Richard, 300

Goodrich, Thomas, bp. of Ely (1534-

54), lord chancellor (1552-53), 276,
285, 292, 300, 302

Gospels and Epistles in English, 246

Gostwick, Sir John, 232

Grafton, Richard, printer, 192, 202,
246, 278, 307

Grammont, bp. of Tarbes, 82, 83,
85, 93 ; cardinal, 138

Granvelle, minister of Charles V. ,
219

Greenwich, 72, 74, 213, 235, 306

Greenwich, Grey Friars of, 150, 378,
381, 387

Grey, Lady Jane, 312, 314, 316, 325
326, 333, 391

Grey, Lady Katharine, 312

Grey, Lord, 299, 316

Grey, Lord Leonard, deputy of Ire-
land, 219, 222

Grey, Lord Thomas, 333

Grey Friars' Church, London, 241,
312 ; school, 352

Grey Friars' Chronicle, 285

Griffin, Maurice, bp. of Rochester
(1554-58), 337

Griffith, 257

Guildford, Sir Henry, 103

Guildhall, 235, 325

Guillard, Louis, bp. elect of Tour-
nay, 21

Guise, house of, 245

Gwent, Dr., prolocutor in Convoca-
tion, 174

Hackney, 278

Hadham, Herts, 342

Hadlam, John, of Colchester, tailor,

burned, 235-236
Hailes, abbot of, 199
Hailes, "holy blood of," 200
Hale, John, vicar of Isleworth, 156 ;

his martyrdom, 157
Hales, Sir James, 313, 334-335
Hall's Chronicle, 27, 31, 35, 36, 103,

III, 169
Hamilton, Patrick, Scotch martyr, 225
Hampshire (or Hants), commotions

in, 266
Hampton Court, 221
Hancock, Thomas, preacher, 256-257
Harding, Thomas, heretic, 129 ;

burned, 132-133
Harington, Sir John, 359

4o8

INDEX

Harpsfield, archdeacon, 360-361

Hastings, Lord, 312, 344

Hastings, Sir Edward, 317

Hawkes, Thomas, 361-362

Haynes, Dr. Simon, dean of Exeter,
228

Heath, Dr. Nicholas, 162 ; bp. of
Rochester (1540-43), 216 ; bp. of
Worcester (1543-51), 238, 256,
276, 278, 285, 295, 301, 319, 323;
abp. of York (1555-58), 360, 370,
378

Hemsley, a priest, burned, 236

Henry II. , 364

Henry VII., 5, 6, 9, 10, 17 ; favours
a crusade, 7

Henry VIII., his taste for theology, 5 ;
his marriage with Katharine, 8, 11 ;
his protest against it, 10 ; his acces-
sion, ib. ; early acts and policy,
17, 23, 45-48, 61 ; Defender of the
Faith, 78 ; his treatise on vocal
prayer, 78 ; his book against
Luther, 79 ; his divorce from Kath-
arine of Aragon, 83-89, 92-98, 373 ;
acknowledged as Supreme Head of
the Church, 108-109 ; complains of
being cited to Rome, 112 ; receives
the * ' Supphcation " of the Commons
against the clergy, 115-116 ; and
"the Answer of the Ordinaries,"
118 ; rebukes the Commons, ib. ;
interested in Tyndale's books, 126-
127 ; his interview with Francis I.
at Boulogne, 137 ; urges Francis to
support his cause at Rome, 138 ;
marries Anne Boleyn, 139 ; his
divorce before Convocation, 141 ;
his marriage pronounced valid at
Rome, 147 ; takes title of Supreme
Head, 155 ; his tyranny, 156 ; his
delight at the death of Katharine of
Aragon, 167, 169 ; his conduct
towards his daughter Mary, 172 ;
Bibles dedicated to, 192 ; ridicules
the proposed council at Mantua,
195 ; revolution effected by him,
240; his death, 241, 269, 270, 345;
other references, 365, 388

Henry, duke of Orleans, 138 ; be-
comes Henry II. of France, 244-
,24s, 266, 342, 356, 378, 380,
383

Herbert, Sir William, created Earl of
Pembroke, 296, 298, 312

Hereford, bps. of. See Foxe, Edward
(1535-38); Bonner, Edmund (1538-
39) ; Skipp, John (1539-52) I War-
ton, Robert (i5S4-57)

Heresy, 26, 41, 56, 57, 60, 257 ;
burnings for, 53, 54, 55 ; Acts and
Bills touching, 146, 231, 249, 346,
362

Hertford, Edward Seymour, earl of,
241 ; created Protector and Duke
of Somerset, ib. See Somerset

Hertfordshire, 266

Hesse, Philip, landgrave of, 162, 195,
203, 209, 299

Hewet, Andrew, heretic, 129, 133

Hexham priory, 179

Heylin, the Church historian, 324

Hilsey, Dr. John, provincial of the
Black Friars, 150 ; bp. of Rochester

(1535-39). 199

Hitton, Thomas, heretic, 129

Hoby, Sir Philip, 299

Hodgkin, Dr., suffragan bp. of Bed-
ford, 313

Holbeach, Henry, bp. of Rochester
(1544-47), 241 ; bp. of Lincoln
(1547-51). 247, 276

Holland, 157, 391

Holy days, 174, 177, 281, 304

Holy League, the (1512), 16

Holyman, John, bp. of Bristol (1554-
58), 366

Homilies, first book of, 246-248, 252,
256-258

Hooper, John, martyr, bp. of Glou-
cester (1550-53), and of Worcester
(1552-53). 271, 275, 277, 281-284,
292-293, 306-307, 320, 323, 348,
352. 354, 358

Home, Robert, dean of Durham, 301

Horsey, Dr. , chancellor of the bp. of
London, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36,
39, 40, 48, 51, 52

Houghton, John, prior of the London
Charterhouse, 151, 156 ; martyr-
dom of, 157, 197, 246

Howard, Sir Edward, admiral, 19, 20

Howard, Katharine, queen, 218, 221,
223

Howard, Lord William, 332, 334

Huick, examined, 234

INDEX

409

Hull, 186

Hungary, 283

Hunne, Richard, suspicious death of,
25 sq. ; inquest on, 28-30 ; inquiry
by the king, 31-36 ; condemned
and burned as a heretic after death,
37-39 ; restitution of his goods, 39,
40 ; his case, 41, 43, 48, 51, 52

Hunsdon, 306, 316

Hunter, William, heretic, 362

Husee (or Hussey), Lady, 173

Husee, Lord, 186

Images, 51, 56, 174, 202, 243-244,
248-249, 252-253 ; Act touching,
276

Injunctions, by Cromwell, 177, 202 ;
of Edward VI., 246-249, 252, 258

Interim, the, 261, 263, 284, 290, 298

Ipswich, Wolsey's intended college
at, 81, 98 ; Our Lady of, 201

Ireland, 221-223 I Henry VIII. pro-
claimed king of, 223 ; kingdom of,

363
Isabella, the Catholic, of Spain, 8, 10
Isleworth, vicar of. See Hale, John
Italy in fear of the Turk, 195

Jaicze in Dalmatia besieged by the

Turks, 63
James IV. of Scotland, 15, 17, 20
James V. of Scotland, 184, 221, 224
Jarnac, French ambassador, 297
Jerningham, Sir Henry, 317, 331
Jerome, William, vicar of Stepney,

215 ; burned, 218
Jervaulx, abbot of, 186
Jesuits, 381

Joseph, Charles, 29, 30
Joye, George, 134
Jubilee at Rome (a.d. 1500), 6
Julius II., pope, 7, 14, 15, 16, 64;

his dispensation, 8, 9, 11, 21, 93 ;

sends Henry VIII. a sword and

cap, 22
Julius III., 277, 298, 356, 363
Juvenale, Latino, 206

Katharine of Aragon, 8, 9, 10, 74,
83, 84, 87, 93-95, 111-112, 127,
135-136, 139. 140, 142, 147-148,
163 ; death of, 167-168, 170, 196

Keilwey, Robert, his Reports, 43

Kenninghall, in Norfolk, 316

Kent, commotions in, 266

Kett's rebellion, 267

Kidderminster, Richard, abbot of
Winchcombe, 43

Kildare, earl of (Silken Thomas),
186, 222

King, Robert, abbot of Thame, after-
wards bp. of Oxford, 133

King's Bench prison, 348, 359

Kingston, Sir William, 98, 171

Knight, Stephen, heretic, 363

Knight, William, 86.89

Knox, John, 245, 307-308, 388, 391-
392, 394

Kyle, the Lollards of, 388

Kyme, Thomas, 234 ; his wife, see
Askew, Anne

Kytson, Sir Thos. , sheriff of London,
151

Lambeth, 171, 263, 285, 293

Lancashire, 186

Lancaster herald, 180

Lang, Matthew, bp. of Gurk, car-
dinal, 16

Langton, Thos., bp. of Winchester,
elected to CanterlDury, i

Lascelles, examined, 234 ; burned,

Lasco, John a, 263, '283-284, 321,
390

Lateran Council (1512), 16, 22, 70

Latimer, Hugh, 5, 130 ; bp, of Wor-
cester (1535-39). 173, 175. T-17^
179, 188, 200, 204, 208, 233-234,
253-254, 282, 323, 338, 348, 359,
364, 366-367, 371, 376

Latimer, William, 271

Laund, George, prior of St. Osyth's,

54
Laurence, John, heretic, 362
Laurence, Robert, prior of the Charter-
house of Bevall, 156 ; his martyr-
dom, 157
Layton, Dr. Rich., visitor of monas-
teries, 164-166, 198
" League Christian, the," 238
Lee, Dr. Edward, 80 ; abp, of York
(1531-44), 102, 112, 179, 181, 221,
238
Lee, Roland, bp. of Coventry and
Lichfield (1534-43), 151-152

4IO

INDEX

Legatine court at Blackfriars, 94

Legbourne monastery, 179

Legh, Dr. Thomas, visitor of monas-
teries, 164-166, 198

Leicester, Wolsey's death at, 98, 99

Lent, fasting in, 174, 254

Lenton, Notts, monastery of, 209

Leo X., pope, 8, 22, 70, tj \ his
bull against Luther, 78

Liege, cardinal bp. of, 187

Ligham, Dr. , dean of the Arches, 95

Lincoln, bps. of. See Smith, W.
(1495 ■ 1 5 14) > Wolsey, Thomas
(1514) ; Atwater, W. (1514-20) ;
Longland, John (1520-47) ; Hol-
beach, Henry (1547-51) ; Taylor,
John (1552 - 53) ; White, John
{1554-56)

Lincoln, John, 69

Lincolnshire rebellion, 179, 186 ;
commotions in, 266

Lisle, viscount. See Dudley, John

Litany, an English, 230, 361 ; to be
said kneeling, 246

Lollards' Tower in St. Paul's Cathe-
dral, 25, 37, 54

Lollardy, 59, 60, 394-39S

London, bps. of. See Warham, W.
(1502-3) ; Fitz-James, Rich. (1506-
22) ; Tunstall, Cuthbert (1522-30) ;
Stokesley, John (1530-39) ; Bonner,
Edmund (1539-49 and 1553-59) I
and Ridley, Nicholas (1550-55)

London, special watch kept in, 266

London, Dr., 228

Longland, John, bp. of Lincoln (1520-
47), 92, 111-112, 127, 133

Lords, House of, 116, 276, 284

Lorraine, duke of, 217

Louis Xn. of France, 6, 14, 15, 21,
24

Louth Park monastery, 179

Lovell, Sir Thomas, 67

Loyola, Ignatius, 381

Lubeck, 162

Lucas, John, 300

Luther, 57, 60, 89, 91, 155, 243,
373 ; the king's book against, 78-
80, 119, 120

Lutheran books, 124, 130

Lutheran divines come to England,
261

IvUtherans and Lutheranism, 89, 90,

92, 126, 162-163, 170, 188, 194,
206, 209, 214, 243
Lynn, 251

Macchiavelli, 100

Mackerell, Dr., prior of Barlings, 186

Madeleine, daughter of Francis I.,
married to James V. of Scotland,
184

Magdeburg, 298

Malet, Dr., 290

Malta, 217

Mantua, proposed council at, 194

Mantua, duke of, 194

Marbeck, John, 227

Marcellus H., pope, 356

Margaret of Savoy, 17

Marlar, Anthony, 224

Marriage of the clergy, 195, 204, 207,
262, 305, 336-337

Marshalsea prison, 272, 317, 348, 360

Martin, Dr., 365

Martyr, Peter. See Vermigli

Mary, daughter of Henry VU. , 10 ;
married to Louis XH. , 24 ; after-
wards to the duke of Suffolk, 67

Mary, queen, daughter of Henry VH I.
and Katharine of Aragon ; as prin-
cess, 73, 85, 86, 117, 143, 148,
163, 169, 172-173, 181, 275, 288-
290, 294-295, 297-298, 306, 310,
312-313; her accession, 316-319;
her marriage to Philip, 340 ; prayer
to shorten her days, 347 ; her acts,
356. 358. 363. 378-380, 389, 390,
392 ; appeal to, 365

Mary of Guise, 301

Mary of Hungary, Regent of the
Netherlands, 157, 187, 263

Mary Stuart, 224, 261, 266, 329

Mason, Sir John, 320

Mass to be turned into a communion,
238

Master, Richard, parson of Aldington,
144, 146

Matthew, Thomas. See Bible

Maximilian, emperor, 16, 17, 24, 70,

75
May, Dr. William, dean of St. Paul's,

271, 293, 300, 336
Medici, Katharine de', 138
Medici, Lorenzo de', nephew of Leo

X., 71

INDEX

411

Mekins, Richard, burned, 219, 220

Melanchthon, 162, 202, 391

Menville, Ninian, 295, 301

Mercers' Chapel, 208, 233, 355

Micronius, preacher at Austin Friars,
284

Middlemore, Humphrey, procurator
of the London Charterhouse, 151,
159 ; his martyrdom, 159

Monasteries, dissolution of smaller,
166, 196 ; surrenders of others, 199,
201, 209, 210 ; others confiscated
by attainder, 209, 210

Monmouth, Humphrey, 91

Montague, Anthony Browne, viscount,
356

Montague, Sir Edward, 312-313

Montague, Henry Pole, Lord, 205

Mordaunt, Sir John, 353

More, Sir Thomas, 71, 92 ; his
Apology, 115 ; his Dialogue, 32-
39, 124-125, 128 ; his criticism
on the king's book, 79 ; lord chan-
cellor, 96, III -112, 125-127;
resigns, 122, 124 ; his answers to
Tyndale and Frith, 122, 124-125,
133 ; his Supplication of Souls,
125 ; his house at Chelsea, 130 ;
his alleged severities, 130-132 ; in-
cluded in bill of attainder, 147 ;
refuses to swear to preamble of
Succession Act, 149 ; attainted,
153 ; refuses to acknowledge the
king's supremacy, 158-159 ; his
trial, 159-160 ; his execution, 161,
183 ; mentioned, 209, 211

Morgan, Henry, bp. of St. David's

(1553-59). 337
Morice, Cranmer's secretary, 232-

233
Morone, cardinal, 385
Morton, cardinal, i, 3, 4
Munster, the Anabaptists at, 157

Navarre, kingdom of, 20

Newcastle, 307 ; proposed bishopric

of, 307
Newdigate, Sebastian, martyr, 150-

152 ; his martyrdom, 159
Newgate prison, 198, 221, 235, 348,

350. 354. 361, 388
Newhall in Essex, 289
Nice, truce made at, 205

Nicholson (or Lambert), John, martyr,
204

Nix, or Nikke, Richard, bp. of Nor-
wich (1501-36), 91, 106, 125, 130

Noailles, French ambassador, 329

Norfolk, commotions in, 266, 270,
272

Norfolk, Thomas Howard, second
duke of (1514-24 ; previously earl
of Surrey, q.v.), lord treasurer, 64,
67

Norfolk, Thomas Howard, third duke
of (1524-54), 95, 97, 100, 106, 112,
116, 120, 160, 180-181, 182, 186,
208, 218, 236, 240-242, 317, 319,
331

Norham Castle, 68

Norris, Henry, 96

Northampton, 317

Northampton, Wm. Parr, marquess
of, 241, 267, 286, 298, 319

Northamptonshire, commotions in,
266

Northumberland, Henry Percy, earl

of (1527-37). 98. 172
Norwich, bps, of. ^^•g Nix, R. (1501-

36) ; Rugg, William (1536-50) :

Thirlby, Thos. (1550-54)
Nottinghamshire, commotions in, 266
Nuncio, papal, in England, 139, 143,

148

Ochino, 263

CEcolampadius, books of, 130
Oglethorpe, Dr. Owen, 216
Oldcastle, Sir John, 225, 394
Ordinal for consecrations, 276, 278,

281
Ordinaries, answer of the, 118
Orleans, university of, 105, 136
Ormanetto, Pole's auditor, 386
Orvieto, Clement VH. at, 87, 88
Osiander, niece of, married to Cran-

mer, 137
Ossory, bp. of. See Bale, John
Oxford, Parliament and Convocation

summoned to, 337 ; Garret's escape

from, 91, 92 ; St. Mary's church,

364-365 ; iDishopric of, 210 ; first

bp. of, Robt. King, 133
Oxford university, 105, 177, 231, 263;

visitation of, 164, 264, 290, 382 ;

disputations at, 338, 348

412

INDEX

Oxford colleges, 374

Balliol, 290

Christchurch, 371 ; dean of, 371

Merton, 290

New, 290

Wolsey's, 81, 98
Oxford, earl of, 361
Oxfordshire, commotions in, 266

Pace, Richard, 23, 75, qj, 78

Packington, Augustine, 91

Padua, university and Hbraries at,

105

Paget, William, secretary, 241 ; Lord
Paget, 305, 344

Palmer, Sir Thomas, 297, 299, 319

Paraphrase by Erasmus, 249, 252

Paris, opinions of lawyers and divines
at, 105, 136

Paris, George van, burned, 288

Parker, Dr. , chancellor of Worcester,
90, 134

Parliament, 108, no, in, 116, 152-
153, 166-167, 206-208, 217, 229,
231-232, 249, 262, 275, 299, 302,
305, 310-311, 323, 325, 337, 345-
348, 367, 388

Parr, Katharine, 226-227, 263

Parr, William, earl of Essex, 241.
See Northampton, marquess of

Pate, Dr. Richard, titular bp. of Wor-
cester, 242, 322-323

Paul III., pope (1534-49), 158, 161,
185, 194, 205-206, 213, 224, 277

Paul IV., pope (1555-59). 356- 363.
382-387

Paulet, WiUiam, Lord St. John, 242 ;
afterwards lord treasurer, earl of
Wiltshire (1550), and marquess of
Winchester (155 1 ), 285-286, 296

Paul's Cross, 43, 44, 54, 144, 214-
215, 234, 236, 243-244, 252-253,
263, 270, 282, 318, 322, 339, 340,

359
Pearson, Anthony, 227
Pecock, bp, , 395
Pembroke, earl of. See Herbert,

Sir W.
Pendleton, Dr., 339, 360
Pentney, priory of, 196
Percy, Sir Thomas, 186
Perne, Dr. , 244
Peterborough, bishopric of, 210

Peter's pence abolished, 145

Peto, William, provincial of the Grey
Friars, 118-119 ; created cardinal,
384, 386-387

Petre, Dr., 173, 271, 285-286, 295

Petrucci, cardinal, 70

Philip of Austria, king of Castile, 10

Philip II. of Spain, as prince, 325,
328 ; his marriage to Mary, 340 ;
Pole's letter to him, 343 ; dislikes
severity to heretics, 355-356 ; is
disliked by Paul IV., 383

Philip and Mary, king and queen,
337. 364. 368, 378, 382, 384-385,
387. 392

Philips, Morgan, 264

Philips, Walter, dean of Rochester,
338

Philpot, John, martyr, 348, 369

Piedmont, prince of, 352

Pilgrimage of grace, the, 179

Pilgrimages, 52, 56, 202

Pinkie, battle of, 247

Pisa, council of, 16, 21, 22

Pisani, cardinal, 87

Pius III., pope, 9

Poisoners, Act against, in, 250

Poland, 391

Pole family, 205

Pole, Geoffrey, 205

Pole, Henry. See Montague, Lord

Pole, Reginald, cardinal, 95, loo-ioi,
182-187, 205, 207, 237, 241, 269,
270, 277, 322, 328, 340 ; his lega-
tion to England, 342-345. 352, 354-
356, 364, 366 ; his book de Unitate
Ecclesiastica, 183 ; convokes a
national synod, 367, 369 ; his Re-
formatio AnglicB, 369 ; abp. of
Canterbury, 370, 373, 378, 381,
383 ; his legatine commission re-
voked, 384-387 ; his death, 389

Pomfret, 181 ; Castle, 179, 180-181

Ponet (or Poynet), John, bp. of Ro-
chester ( 1 550-5 1 ), bp, of Winchester
(1551-53). 287-289, 293, 320, 332,
391 ; his CatecJdsm, 311, 325 ; his
Treatise of Politic Poxver, 332

Poole, 257

Pope, the, called " Bishop of Rome,"
144-145 ; his authority to be extin-
guished in France, 238. See Julius
11.(1503-13); Leo X. (1513-21);

INDEX

413

Adrian VI. (1522-23); Clement

VII. (1523-34) ; Paul III. (1534-

49); Julius III. (1550-55); Mar-
cellus 11. (1555) ; Paul IV. (1555-

59).
Porter, John, 220
Portsmouth, images at, 243
Pottier, William, 57
PouUain, Valdrand, 284, 390-391
Poultry, the. See Counter
Powell, Dr. Edward, martyr, 218
Poynings, Sir Edward, 4
Prczmunire against the clergy, 107-

108, 248
Prayer-book, the first, 262, 266-268,

270, 279, 285-286, 288, 291 ; the

second, 303, 325, 391 ; compared

with the first, 309, 318
Preaching, lack of, 174; inhibited, 256
Protestant princes of Germany, 162,

175, 194-195, 201-202, 208-209,

214, 216, 219, 231, 237-238, 244,

299. 301. 376
Pucci, cardinal, 88
Purgatory, 174, 176, 195-196
Puritanism, 394
Puy, Cardinal du, 370
Pygot, William, 362-363

Ratisbon, diet of (1541), 219

Ravenna, battle of, 21

Rawson, Sir John, prior of the knights

of St. John in Ireland, created

Viscount Clontarf, 223
Rayne, John, vicar-general of the bp.

of Lincoln, 133
Reading Abbey, 92, 210
Reading, abbot of (H. Cook), hanged,

211
Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum,

230, 300
Regent, the (ship), burning of, 19
Regnault, French printer, 203
Renard, Simon, imperial ambassador,

343-344. 356
Ren^e, daughter of Louis XII., 84,

86, 127
" Reonensis," bishop, 133
Requests, court of, 274
Reynolds, Dr. Richard, Bridgettine,

156 ; his martyrdom, 157
Rhodes, capture of, by the Turks, 217
Rich, Sir Richard, solicitor-general.

160, 179, 235-236 ; created Lord
Rich, 241 ; lord chancellor, 285
295, 302

Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of
the Romans, 200

Richmond, duke of, bastard son of
Henry VIII., 86, 173

Ricot, monk of Sion, 152

Ridley, Dr. Nicholas, 243 ; bp. of
Rochester (1547-50), 258, 265, 271,
276 ; bp. of London (1550-55),
278 ; his visitation, 279-281, 283-
285, 289, 292-293, 306-307, 313,
319. 338, 348, 359. 364. 366-367.
371

Robinson, Dr., 216

Rochester, taken by Wyatt, 331

Rochester, bps. of. See Fisher, John
(1504-35); Hilsey, John (1535-39);
Heath, Nicholas (1540-43) ; Hol-
beach, Henry (1544-47) ; Ridley,
Nicholas (1547-50) ; Ponet, John
(1550-51) ; Scory, John (1551-52);
Griffin, Maurice (1554-58)

Rochester, John, Carthusian martyr,
197-198

Rochford, Lady, 221

Rochford, viscount. See Boleyn, Sir
Thomas, and Boleyn, Sir George

Rogers, John, martyr, 192, 348, 350,

352, 354. 358

Rome, sacked by the troops of Charles
V. (1527), 85 ; proceedings there
in Henry VIII. 's suit, 94-96; his
citation to, 112-113 ; bulls from,
surrendered, 155 ; Acts against
the see of, 144 - 145, 346 ; em-
bassy to, 363

Roper, Margaret, Sir T. More's
daughter, 149, 160

Rose, Thomas, 347

Rotherham, Thomas, abp. of York
(1480-1500), I

Rotherhithe, 54

Rough, John, Scotch friar, 388

Royal supremacy, loi

Roye, William, 91

Rugg, William, bp. of Norwich (1536-
50). 278

Russell, John, Lord, 233 ; earl of
Bedford, 286

Ruthall, Thos., bp. of Durham, 38,
67, 68, 72

414

INDEX

Sacraments, 176, 188, 203, 226, 250,

253. 324. 325
Sadolet, cardinal, 206
St. Albans Abbey. See Wolsey,

Thomas
St. Andrew Undershaft, 244
St. Andrews in Scotland, 225, 237,

24s
St. Asaph, bps. of. See Standish, Dr.

H. (1518-25) ; Barlow, W. (1536);

Warton, Robt. (1536-54)
St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, 236,

241, 381
St. Cuthbert's banner, 68
St. David's, bps. of. See Barlow,

Wm. (1536-48) ; Ferrar, Robert

(1548-54); Morgan, Henry (1554-

59)

St. George (Garter), Order of, 306

St. German, Christopher, 115, 125

St. John's of Jerusalem, knights of
the Order suppressed, 216-217;
prior of, 389 ; priory of, 290

St. John, Lord. See Paulet, W.

St. Leger, Sir Anthony, deputy of Ire-
land, 222

St. Margaret's, Westminster, 355

St. Martin's, Ironmonger Lane, 242

St. Mary-le-Strand, 266

St. Mary Overy's, 336, 349, 352

St. Neot's, 249

St. Osyth's, prior of (G. Laund), 54

St. Paul's Cathedral, London, 72,
113, 157, 221, 247, 255, 262, 266,
285. 293, 311, 313, 320. 323, 332,
339. 345. 354. 362, 367 ; Convo-
cation at, 76 ; churchyard, New
Testaments burned at, 106

St. Paul's School, London, 60, 61, 352

St. Quentin, battle of, 386, 388

St. Thomas of Aeon, 208

St. Thomas's Hospital, 314

Salcot. See Capon

Salisbury, bps. of. See Shaxton, N.
(1535-39) ; Capon, John (1539-57)

Salisbury, bishopric of, 386

Salisbury, Margaret, countess of,
mother of Cardinal Pole, 205, 207 ;
executed, 219

Sampson, Elizabeth, 51

Sampson, Richard, dean of the chapel,
112, 183 ; bp. of Chichester (1536-
43), 172, 216-217, 327, 336-337

Saracen's Head, Islington, 388
Sauli, cardinal, 70
Saunders, Laurence, 352-353, 359
Savage, Thomas, abp. of York (1501-

7). I. 14
Savoy, duke of, 352
Savoy Hospital, the, 314
Sawley, abbot of, 186
Saxony, John Frederic, elector of,

162, 195. 202-203, 209, 237, 299;

his wife Sibilla, 209
Saxony, Maurice, duke of, 298, 301
Scarborough, 186, 380
Schism in the papacy, 393
Schmalkalden, 162
Schools, 314
Scory, John, bp. of Rochester (1551-

52), 311 ; of Chichester (1552-53),

320
Scotland, 116- 117, 230, 245-246,

249, 261, 278
Sedbergh, Adam, abbot of Jervaulx,

186
Seditious tracts, 368
Seymour, Jane, 171, 173, 185, 194 ;

Bible dedicated to, 192
Seymour of Sudeley, Thomas, Lord,

241, 262
Shakespeare, 233
Shaxton, Nicholas, bp. of Salisbury

(1535-39). 175. 188, 204, 208,

235-236
Sheen, 277 ; Carthusians restored to,

381
Shelley, judge, 97
Sherborne, Robert, bp. of Chichester

(1507-36), 9, 71
Shoreditch, 316

Shrewsbury, earl of, 98, 179-180
Simonetta, auditor of the Rota, 104
Simony, 305
Sion, Bridgettine monastery of, 152,

156 ; nuns at, 381
Sion, Somerset's house, 277
Six Articles, Act of the, 207, 220, 227,

229, 251
Skeffington, sent to govern Ireland,

222
Skelton, John, poet laureate, 81
Skipp, John, bp. of Hereford (1539-

52), 216
Skipton Castle, 180
Smalcaldic league, 237

INDEX

415

Smith, Dr. Richard, 244, 264-263,
296, 371

Smith, Thomas, 258-259, 271

Smith, Wm. , bp. of Lincoln {1495-
1514), 38, 133

Smithfield, burnings in, 38, 51, 54, 62,
13O1 133. i57i 200, 204, 218-219,
278, 288, 354, 360, 369, 389, 390

Sol way Moss, battle of the, 224

Somerset, county, 266

Somerset, Edward, duke of, protector,
241, 243, 246-249, 254, 256-257,
259-261, 265-268, 270-272, 274,
276-277, 279, 282, 284-286, 288,
296-297, 301, 304-307, 311, 358,
388 ; his trial, 301-302 ; and execu-
tion, 302

Somerset, duchess of, 317

Somerset House, 266, 281

Sorbonne, the, at Paris, 105

Soto, Peter de, Spanish friar, 371

Southampton, Thomas Wriothesley,
earl of, 241-242

Southminster, Essex, 278

Southwell, Notts, 98, 107

Spaniards, English dislike of, 330,
368, 380

Spinelli, Leonardo de', 22

Stafford, Sir Thomas, rebellion of,
380, 384

Standish, Dr. Henry, 44-50, 69 ; bp.
of St. Asaph, 95, III

Staples, bp. of Meath, 222

Star Chamber, 220

Starkey, Thos., 183

Stepney, 150, 278

Stixwold nunnery, 196

Stokesley, John, bp. of London (1530-
39), III, 113, 120, 125, 130-131,

Story, Dr., 365

Strassburg, 263, 282, 284, 368, 390-

391 ; liturgy used at, 284
Stratford-le-Bow, heretics burned at,

390
Strozzi, Pietro, 246
Submission of the clergy, 122
Succession Acts, 153
Suffolk, commotions in, 266
Suffolk, Charles Brandon, duke of,

22, 64, 67, 311-312
Suffolk, Frances, duchess of, 299,

312

Suffolk, Henry Grey, duke of (mar-
quess of Dorset), 256, 316, 330-

331. 333
Suffolk, duchess of, widow of Charles

Brandon, 391
Suffragans, Act for, 153
Supplication against the clergy, 114.

119

Supplication for the Beggars. See

Fish, S.
Supplication of Souls. See More,

Sir Thomas
Supremacy, Act of, 153, 181, 350-351
Supremacy, royal, declarations of, 149
Surrey, commotions in, 266
Surrey, Henry, earl of, son of the

third duke of Norfolk, 240, 330
Surrey, Thomas, earl of, the victor of

Flodden, 2, 18, 20, 68 ; afterwards

duke of Norfolk, q.v.
Sussex, commotions in, 266
Sussex, earl of, 112
Sweating sickness, 394
Sweeting (or Clerke), Wm. , 51, 53
Sydall, Henry, 373

Tarbes, bp. of. See Grammont

Tayler, Dr. John, 50, 64

Taylor, Dr., of St. Peter's, Cornhill,

204
Taylor (or Cardmaker), John, vicar

of St. Bride's, 234, 352
Taylor, John, bp. of Lincoln (1552-

53). 292
Taylor, Roland, of Hadleigh, martyr,

300, 348, 351-352. 354. 360
Temse, a member of the Commons,

117
Testwood, Robert, 227
Tetzel, 78
Tewkesbury, John, heretic, 129, 131 ;

burned, 130
Thame, Robert King, abbot of, 133
Therouanne, 20
Thirlby, Dr. Thomas, 216, 247, 256;

bp. of Westminster (1540-50), 276;

bp. of Norwich (1550-54), 278,

303. 356, 371-372 ; bp. of Ely

(1554-58), 387
Thirsk, William, 186
Thomas, William, 334
Throgmorton (Michael), 242
Throgmorton, Sir Nicholas, 339, 340

4i6

INDEX

Tithes, 231

Tomkins, Thomas, 362

Tooley, John, 361

Toulouse, university at, 105

Tourna3% 20, 73, 75 ; bishopric of,
conferred on Wolsey, 21

Tournon, cardinal, 138

Tower of London, 29, 40, 65, 150-
151, 157-160, 163, 170-171, 211,
215-219, 233, 241, 243, 260-262,
272, 274, 285, 290, 297, 299, 301,
306, 314, 316-320, 323, 328, 332-
334. 338, 348, 359

Tower Hill, executions on, 159, 160,
302, 333 ; abbey of, 307

Tracy, William, his Testament, 134,
174 ; his son Richard, 134

Trafford, Wm., prior of the Charter-
house (1537), 197-198

Transubstantiation, 176, 195, 207,
236, 260, 263, 325

Treasons, Acts of, 153, 249, 324

Treasurer, the lord. See Norfolk,
second duke of ; Paulet, W

Trent, council of, 231, 237, 261, 269,
298, 376, 395

Tresham, Dr., 264

Tresham, Sir Thomas, 317

Tuke, Brian, iii

Tunstall, Dr. Cuthbert, 5, 22 ; bp.
of London (1522-30), 50, 78, 91,
124; bp. of Durham (1530-52 and
1553-59). 216, 256, 276, 295, 301,
307-308, 311, 319, 327, 337

Turks, the, 6. 63, 64, 138, 195, 206,
283. See Crusade

Tyburn, executions at, 147, 159, 171

Tyndale (or Huchyns), WilUam, his
answer to M ore's Dialogue, 38 ; his
translation of the Bible, 38, 90, 91,
192 ; his personal history, 90, 91 ;
his New Testament burned at St.
Paul's, 106; his books, 115, 126,
130 ; his martyrdom, 192 ; his
New Testament, 124, 129, 189-
192, 236, 266 ; his Obedience of a
Christian Ma?i, 126 ; his Practice
of Prelates, 127 ; his answer to
More, 128 ; his Wicked Mammon,
130; his caution to Frith, 133;
his writings generally, 236

Ulmis, John ab, 280

Uniformity, first Act of, 262, 267 ;
second Act, 302-303 ; Acts repealed,

324
Unitarian opinions, 279
Universities, 320. See Cambridge

and Oxford

Vane, Sir Ralph, 299, 302

Vannes, Peter, 143

Vaucelles, truce of, 378, 380, 383

Vaughan, captain, 243

Venice, 8, 14 ; Julius IL excommuni-
cates the Venetians, 15 ; leagues
with them again, 16 ; libraries at
Venice searched, 105

Vergil, Polydore, 12, 18, 64-66

Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 263-264, 291,
300, 304, 320-321, 390-391; his
wife, 382

Vesey. See Voysey

Veszprim, Hungary, bishopric of, 283

Vicenza, proposed council at, 195

Visitation of churches and monasteries,
163, 166, 178, 199, 246, 252-253

Visitation of the friars, 150

Visitation (royal) of universities, 263

Volaterra, cardinal, 70

Voysey (or Vesey), Di". John, 46 ;
bp. of Exeter (1519-51 and 1553-
54), 295, 319

Walsh, Sir John, 90

Walsingham, priory and image of Our
Lady at, 201

Waltham Abbey, 95, 211

Walworth, James, Carthusian martyr,
197-198

Warham, William, bp. of London,
promoted to Canterbury, i , 4 ; as
abp., II, 21, 22, 44, 47, 49, 61,
63. 65-67, 75, 76, 84, 85, 91, 103-
104, 108, 113-114, 117, 122, 129,
204, 375 ; his death, 137

Warton, Robert, bp. of St. Asaph
(1536-54) ; bp. of Hereford (1554-
57). 337

Warwick, earl of. See Dudley, John

Warwickshire, commotions in, 266

Waterhouse, Thomas, 133

Watson, Dr., 369

Webster, Augustine, prior of Charter-
house of Axholme, 156 ; his martyr-
dom, 157

INDEX

417

Westminster, meeting of divines at
(1537), 187; bishopric of, 210, 278,
305 ; bp. of, see Thirlby, Thos.

Westminster Abbey, 108, 305, 361,
381 ; abbot of, 388 ; St. Katharine's
Chapel in, 121

Westminster Hall, 302

Westmoreland, 186

Weston, Dr., 325, 360

Weston, Sir William, last prior of St.
John, 223

Westphaha, 157

Whalley, abbot of, 186

Whalley, John, 139

Whapplot, Roger, 39

Whitby, abbot of, 136

White, John, bp. of Lincoln (1554-
S6)> 337' 366-367 ; bp. of Win-
chester (1557-59). 29

White, Nicholas, 235

Whitehead, Hugh, dean of Durham,
301

Whitford, monk of Sion, 152

Whiting, Richard, abbot of Glaston-
bury, 210; executed, 211

Whittington, Sir Richard, 314

Wied, Hermann von, abp. of Cologne,

255
Willesden, Our Lady of, 52
Williams, Sir John, 317, 338
Wilson, Dr. Nicholas, 149, 216
Wiltshire, commotions in, 266
Wiltshire, earl of. See Paulet, W.
Winchcombe, abbot of. See Kidder-
minster, Richard
Winchester, bps. of. See Fox, Rich.
(1501-28) ; Wolsey, Thos. (1529-
30) ; Gardiner, Stephen (1531-50
and 1553-55) ; Ponet, John (1551-
53) ; White, John (i557-S9)
Winchester, bishopric of, 102
Winchester, marquess of. See Paulet,

William
Windsor, 112; heretics at, 227-228 ;

bishops at, 262
Wingfield, Sir Anthony, 295
Wishart, George, the Scotch martyr,

237
Woburn, abbey and abbot of, 209, 210
Wolsey, Thos., cardinal, 3; his rise,

17 ; admitted into the privy council,

18 ; bp. of Lincoln, 21, 22 ; abp.
of York, 21, 23, 49 ; created a car-

dinal, 62, 63, 64 ; lord chancellor,
65-66 ; his influence, 66-68 ; his
acts, 69-78, 80-90, 92-100 ; obtains
bishopric of Bath, 70 ; promised
the papacy, •]'], 81 ; obtains the
abbacy of St. Albans, 80 ; and
afterwards the bishopric of Durham,
80 ; then that of Winchester, 80 ;
his colleges, 81 ; surrenders Win-
chester and St. Albans, 98 ; his
death, 99 ; referred to, 1 00-101,
103, 107, no, 127-128, 172, 191,
225, 248

Wood, Mrs. Margery, 54

Wood, Michael. See Bale, John

Wood, William, prior of Bridlington,
186

Woodstock, 112

Worcester, bps. of. See Gigli, Giovanni
de' (1497-98) ; Gigli, Silvestro de'
(1499- 1 521) ; Ghinucci, Girolamo
de' (1523-34) ; Latimer, Hugh
(1535-39) ; Bell, John (1539-43) :
Heath, Nicholas (1543-51 and
1553-55); Hooper, John (1552-53);
Pate, Richard ( 1555-59)

Wotton, Dr. Nicholas, 289

Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, lord chan-
cellor (1544-47), 235-236 ; created
earl of Southampton, 241. See.
Southampton, earl of

Wyatt, Sir Thomas (the elder), 206

Wyatt, Sir Thomas (the younger),
rebellion of, 330-334, 336, 339

Wycliffe's views and writings, 57, 59,
236

Yarmouth, 317

York, 98, 180-181, 185, 221 ; see (or

archbishopric) of, i, 102 ; province

of, 109. See Convocation
York, abps. of. See Rotherham,

Thos. (1480-1500) ; Savage, Thos.

(1501-7); Bainbridge, Chris. (1508-

14) ; Wolsey, Thos. (1514-30) ;

Lee, Edward (1531-44) ; Healh,

Nicholas (1555-58)
York Place, Westminster, 64, 97, 104
Yorkshire, rebellion in, 179 ; rebels,

186; commotions in, 266

Zurich, 266, 282, 391

Zwingli, writings of, 266, 283, 373

2 E

KEY TO MAP

LISTS OF MONASTERIES AND NUNNERIES

I. Suppressed by Wolsey {1524-8)

FOR HIS Colleges

These are indicated on the Map
(except where they are in towns) by
the letter W and a numeral.

1. Beigham (Bayham) abbey, Sus-

sex. Premonstratensian

2. Blackmore priory, Essex. Austin

Canons

3. Blythburgh pr., Suff. A. C.

4. Bradwell pr, , Bucks. Benedicti7ie

5. Bromehill pr. , Norf. A. C.

6. Canwell pr. , Staff. Cluniac

7. Causeway {de Calceto) pr. A. C.

8. Daventry pr. , Northt. Bett.
g. Dodnash pr. , Suff. A. C.

10. Fehxstowe pr., Suff. Ben. (cell
of Rochester cath. )

II. Horkesley pr. , Essex. Cluniac

12. Ipswich, pr. of St. Peter and

Paul. A. C. See Towns

13. Lesnes abbey, Kent. A. C.

14. Littlemore pr. , Oxf. Ben. Nttns

15. Mountjoypr. , Norf A. C.

16. Oxford, St. Frideswide'spr. A.C.

See Towns

17. Poughleypr. , Berks. A. C.

18. Pray, or St. Mary de Pratis, St.

Albans. Ben. Nuns. See Towns

19. Ravenston pr. , Bucks. A. C.

20. Rumburgh pr., Suff. Ben. (cell

of St. Mary's, York)

21. Sandwell pr. , Staff. Ben.

22. Snape pr. , Suff. Ben.

23. Stanesgate pr. , Essex. Chiniac

(cell of Lewes)

24. Thobypr., Essex. A.C,

25. Tickford pr. , Bucks. Ben. (cell

of Holy Trin. , York)

26. Tiptree pr., Essex. A. C.

27. Tonbridge pr. , Kent. A. C.

28. Wallingford pr., Berks. Ben.

(cell of St. Albans)

29. Wikes pr., Essex. Ben. Nuns

II. Houses of Observant Friars

suppressed in 1534, the inmates being
all placed in the Tower, or sent to
custody in other monasteries. They
had seven houses in England, of which
six can be identified as at Southamp-
ton, Canterbury, Newcastle, Newark,
Greenwich, and Richmond (Surrey).
The last two were built for them by
Henry VII. The others were old
Franciscan houses reformed. See
Parkinson's Collectanea A7iglo-Minor-
itica, 211.

III. Carthusian Monasteries
(Charterhouses)

which were suppressed gradually by
martyrdoms and removals. Indicated
on the Map (except where they are
in towns) by the letter C and a
numeral.

The houses of which the names are
printed in italics were allowed to con-
tinue after the Act of 1536, though
their endowments were under ;,^2oo a
year, but were surrendered later.

419

420

KEY TO MAP

1. Beauvale, Notts.

2. Coventry, Warw. See Towns

3. Epworth, in the Isle of Axholme,

Line.

4. Hinton, Soms.

5. Hull, Yorks. See Towns

6. London. See Towns

7. Mountgrace, Yorks.

8. Sheen, Surrey

9. Witham, Soms.

IV. Monasteries suppressed by
Parliament, a.d. 1536

Indicated on the Map by the letter P
and a numeral.

This is a list of the houses which had
not endowments to the value of ;^200
a year. Those named in italics, how-
ever, obtained licences to continue,
though a year or two later they were
forced to surrender.

1. Aberconway, Denbighshire. Cis-

tercian

2. Alnwick, Northumb. Premon.

3. Alvingham, Line. Gilbertine

4. Anglesey, Camb. A. C.

5. Ashby, Northt. A. C.

6. Ashridge, Bucks. Boiihommes

7. Bardsey, Carnarvon. Ben.

8. Barlinch, Soms. A. C.

9. Barnstaple, Devon. Cluniac

10. Basingwerk, Flints. Cist.

11. Beauchief, Derb. Premon.

12. Beeston, Norf. A. C.

13. Berden, Essex. A. C.

14. Bethgelert, Carn. A. C.

15. Bileigh, Essex. Premon.

16. Bilsington, Kent. A. C.

(This priory surrendered to royal
visitors in February 1536, before the
parliamentary suppression.)

17. Bindon, Dorset. Cist.

18. Birkenhead, Cheshire. Ben.

19. Bisham, Berks. A. C.

(This priory was refounded as an
abbey i8th December 1537 with addi-
tional endowments taken from Chert-
sey, but was surrendered on the 19th
June 153S.)

20. Bitilesden, Bucks. Cist.

21. Blanchland, Nthumb. Premon.

22. Blyth, Notts. Ben.

23. Bourne, Line, A. C.

24. Boxgrave, .Sussex. Ben.

25. Boxley, Kent. Cist.

26. Bradley, Leic, A. C.

27. Bredsall, Derb. A. C.

28. Bridge end (Horbling), Line.

Gilb.

29. Bridport, Dorset. (Order not

known. )

30. Brinkburne, Nthumb. A. C.

31. Bromere, Hants. A. C.

32. Bromholm, Norf. Cluniac

33. Brooke, St. Mary, Rutland. A. C.

34. Bruern, Oxf. Cist.

35. Buckenham, Norf. A. C.

36. Buildwas, Salop. Cist.

37. Burcester (now Bicester), Oxf.

A. C.

38. Burscough, Lane. A. C.

39. Bushmead, Beds. A. C.

40. Calder ab. , Cumb. Cist.

41. Caldwell abbey, by Bedford. A. C.

See Towns

42. Caldy Island, Pemb. Ben. (cell

to St. Dogmael's)

43. Calwich, Staff, (decayed). Sup-

pressed in 1532. A. C.

44. Cambridge, St. Edmund's pr.

Gilb. See Towns

45. Canterbury, St. Gregory's. A. C.

See Towns

46. Carmarthen. A. C. See Towns

47. Cartmel, Lane. A. C.

48. Catteley, Line. Gilb.

49. Chacomb, Northt. A. C.

50. Chepstow, Monm. Ben. See

Towns

51. Chirbury, Salop. A. C.

52. Clattercote, Oxf. Gilb.

53. Cleeve, Soms. Cist.

54. Clifford, Heref. Cluniac

55. Cockersand, Lane. Premon.

56. Cokesford, Norf. A. C.

57. Colchester, St. Botolph's, Essex.

See Towns

58. Colne, Earl's, Essex. Ben.
j 59. Combewell, Kent. A. C.

I 60. Conishead, Lane. A. C.

I 61. Coverham, Yorks. Premon.

I 62. Croxden, Staff. Cist.

j 63. Cwmhyre, Radnor. Cist.

I 64. Dale, Derb. Premon.

I 65. Donington, Berks. Trinitarian

i Friars

KEY TO MAP

421

66. Dorchester, Oxf. See Towns

67. Dore, Heref. Cist.

68. Drax, Yorks. A. C.

69. Dunmow, Essex. A. C.

70. Dureford, Suss. Premon.

71. Easton (near Burbage), Wilts.

Trin. Friai's

72. Egleston, Yorks. Premon.

73. Ellerton, Yorks. Gilb.

74. Elsliam, Line. A. C.

75. Erdbury, Warw. (now Arbury

Hall). A. C.

76. Exeter, St. Nicholas'. Ben, See

Towns
•jj. Eye, Suff. Ben.

78. Farieigh, Wilts. Cluniac

79. Felley, Notts. A. C.

80. Ferreby, North, Yorks. A. C.

81. Fineshade, Northt. A. C.

82. Flanesford, Heref. A. C.

83. Flexley, Glouc. Cisi.

84. Flitcham, Norf. A. C.

85. Folkestone, Kent. Ben.

(This priory surrendered to royal
visitors in November 1535, before the
parliamentary suppression.)

86. Ford, Devon (now in Dorset).

Cist.

87. Frithelstoke, Devon. A. C.

88. Garendon, Leic. Cist.

89. Gloucester, St. Oswald's. A. C.

See Towns

90. Gracedieu, Monm. Cist.

91. Gresley, Derb. A. C.

92. Grosmont, Yorks. Ben.

93. Hagnaby, Line. Premon.

94. Haltemprice, Yorks. A. C.

95. Hardham (or Herningham),

Suss. A. C.

96. Hastings, Suss. A. C.

97. Hatfield Broadoak, Essex. Ben.

98. Haverfordwest, Pemb. A. C.

See Towns

99. Haverholme, Line. Premon.
100. Healaugh, Yorks. A. C.
loi. Hempton, Norf. A. C.

102. Herringfleet, Suff. A. C.

103. Hexham, Nthumb. A. C.

104. Hickhng, Norf. A. C.

105. Hilton (Hulton), Staff. Cist.

106. Holland, Lane. Ben.

107. Horsham St. Faith, Norf. Be7t.

108. Horton, Kent. Cluniac

109. Hounslow, Midd. Trin. Friars

no. Humberstone, Line. Ben.

111. Huntingdon, St. Alary' s. A. C.

See Towns

112. Ingham, Little, Norf, Trin.

Friars

113. Ivy church, Wilts. A. C.

114. Ixworth, Suff. A. C.

115. Kirby Bellars, Leic. A. C.

116. Kyme, Line. A. C.

117. Kymmer, Merioneth. Cist,

118. Lanercost, Cumb. A. C.

119. Langdon, Kent. Premon.

(Surrendered to royal visitors in
November 1535, before the parlia-
mentary suppression.)

120. Langley, Norf. Premon,

121. Latton, Essex. A, C.

122. Lavenden, Bucks. Premon.

123. Letheringham, Suff, A. C,

124. Leystone, Suff. Premon.

125. Lighes, Essex. A. C.

126. Llantarnam, Monm. Cist.

127. Louth Park, Line. Cist.

128. Maiden Bradley, Wilts, A. C.

129. Margam, Glamorgan. Cist.

130. Markby, Line. A. C.

131. Marlborough, Wilts. Glib. See

Towns

132. Marton, Yorks. A. C.

(Surrendered in February 1536, be-
fore the parliamentary suppression.)

133. Maxstoke, Warw. A, C.

134. Medmenham, Bucks. Cist.

135. Michelham, Suss. A. C.

136. Monmouth. Ben.

137. Mottenden, Kent. Ti'i?t. Friars

138. Mottisfont, Hants. A. C.

139. Neath, Glamorgan. Cist.

140. Netley, Hants. Cist.

141. Newbo, Line. Premon. (in

Grantham). See Towns

142. Newminster, Nthumb. Cist.

143. Newsome, or Newhouse, Line.

Premon.

144. Newstead (by Stamford), Line.

A. C. See Towns

145. Newstead (in Lindsey), Line.

Gilb.

146. Newstead (in Sherwood), Notts.

A. C.

147. Nocton, Line. A. C.

422

KEY TO MAP

149
150

152.
153
I54.
155
156.
I57.
158^
159
160

161
162

Northampton, St. James'. A. C.

See Towns
Norton, Chesh. A. C.
Osulveston (now Owston), Leic.

A. C.
151. Ovingham, Nthumb. A. C.

(cell of Hexham)
Penmon, Anglesea. Ben.
Pentney, Norf. A. C.
Pill, Pemb. Ben.
Prittlewell, Essex. Cluniac
Quarr, I. of Wight. Cist.
Ranton, or Ronton, Staff. A. C.
Reigate, Surrey. A. C.
Repton, Derb. A. C.
Rewley, Oxf. Cist. SeeTow^nz:

Oxford
Rocester abbey. Staff. A. C.
Royston, Herts. A. C.

163. Rufford, Notts. Cist.

164. St. Agatha's, Richmond, Yorks.

Premon. See Towns

165. St. Dogmael's, Pemb. Ben.

166. St. Kynemark, by Chepstow,

Monm. Ben. (?) See Towns

167. St. Radegund's, Kent,by Dover.

Premon. See Towns

168. Sawtry, Hunts. Cist.

169. Shap, Westmor. Premon.

170. Shelford, Notts. A. C.
Shulbred, Suss. A. C.
Sibton, Suff. Cist.
Sixhill, Line. Gilb.
Snelleshall, Bucks. Ben.
Stafford, St. Thomas. A. C.

See Towns
Stanley, Wilts. Cist.
Stone, Staff. A. C.
Stoneleigh, Warw. Cist.
Stoneley, Hunts. A. C.
Stratflour, Cardigan. Cist.

181. Strat Margel, Montg. Cist.

182. Studley, Warw. A. C,

183. Swineshead, Line. Cist.

184. Tallagh, Carmarthen. Premon.

185. Tandridge, Surrey. A. C.
Thetford, Norf. Canons of St.

Sepulchre. See Towns
Thornholme, Line. A. C.
Thremhall, Essex. A. C.
Tiltey, Essex. Cist.

(Surrendered in February 1536, be-
fore the parliamentary suppression.)

171.
172.

173-
174.

175-

176.
177.
178.
179.
180.

186.

187.
188.
189.

190. Tintern abbey, Monm. Cist.

191. Torkesey, Line. A. C.

192. Tortington, Suss. A. C.

193. Totnes, Devon. Ben.

194. Trentham, Staff. A. C.

195. Tupholme, Line. Premott.

196. Tywardreth, Cornw. Ben.

197. Ulvescroft, Leic. A. C.

198. Valle Crucis, Denb. Cist.

199. Vaudey, Line. Cist,

200. Warter, Yorks. A.C.

201. Warwick, St. Sepulchre's. A. C.

See Towns

202. Waverley, Surrey. Cist.

203. Wallow, Line. A. C. Sec

Towns : Grimsby

204. Wendling, Norf. A. C.

205. Weybourn, Norf. A. C.

206. Weybridge, Norf. A. C.

207. Whitland, Carm. Cist.

208. Wombridge, Salop. A. C.

209. Woodbridge, Suff. A. C.

210. Wormesley, Heref. A. C.

211. Worspring, Soms. A. C,

212. Wroxton, Oxf. A. C.

213. Wymondley Parva, Herts. A.C.

214. York, Holy Trinity. Ben. See

Towns

215. York, St. Andrew's. Gilb, See

Towns

V. Nunneries suppressed by Par-
liament (1536) under the same
Act

Aconbury, Heref. Augustinian

Ankerwyke, Bucks. Ben.

Arden, Yorks. Ben.

Armthwaite, Cumb. Ben.

Arthington, Yorks. Cluniac

Barrow Gurney, Soms. Ben.

Basedale, Yorks. Cist.

8. Blackborough, Norf. Ben.

9. Brewood, ''Black Ladies," Staff.

Ben.
10, Brewood, " White Ladies," Salop.

Cist.

(The "B'ack Ladies "seem to have
had a licence to continue, though it is
not enrolled, for they surrendered on
the i6th October 1538. The " White
Ladies" — in the same parish, butip
another county — were expectinga visit
from the Commissioners for their sup-
pression in March 1537.)

KEY TO MAP

423

11. Bristol, St. Mary Magdalen.

Ben.

12. Broadholme, Notts. Preinon.
T3. Brusyard, Suff. Minoresses [i.e.

Franciscan nuns)

14. Bungay, Suff. Ben.

15. Burnham, Bucks. Aiig.

16. Campsey, Suff. Aug.

17. Cannington, Soms. Ben.

18. Canonleigh, Devon. Aug.

19. Canterbury, St. Sepulchre's.

Ben. See Towns

20. Carrow, by Norwich, Ben. See

Towns

21. Catesby, Northt. Ben.

22. Chatteris, Camb. Ben.

23. Cheshunt, Herts. Beit.

24. Chester, St. Mary's. Ben. See

Towns

25. Clementhorpe, York. Ben. See

Towns : York

26. Cokehill, Wore. Cist.

27. Cornworthy, Devon. Aug.

28. Crabhouse, Norf. Aug.

29. Davington pr. , Kent. Ben.

30. Denney, Camb.

31. Derby, King's Mead, or de Pratis.

See Towns

32. Easebourne, Suss. Ben.

33. Ellerton (on the Swale), Yorks.

Cist.

34. Esholt, Yorks. Cist.

35. Flamstead, Herts. Ben.

36. Flixton, Suff. Aug.

37. Foss, near Torksey, Line. Ben.

38. Gokewell, Line. Cist.

39. Goring, Oxf. Aug.

40. Gracedieu, Leic. Aug.

41. Greenfield, Line. Cist.

42. Grimsby, Line. Ben. ,5^^ Towns

43. Hallystone, Nthumb. Ben.

44. Hampole (Hamphall), Yorks.

Cist.

45. Handale, Yorks. Ben.

46. Harwood, Beds. Aug.

47. Hedingham, Essex, Ben.

48. Henwood, Warw. Beii.

49. Hevening, Line. Cist.

50. Hinchingbrook, by Huntingdon.

Ben. See Towns

51. Ickleton, Camb. Ben.

52. Irford (now Orford), Line. Pre- I

mon. I

Ivinghoe, Bucks. Ben.
Keldholme, Yorks. Cist.

Kilburn, Midd.
Kington, Wilts.
Kirklees, Yorks,
Langley, Leic.
Laycock, Wilts.
Leebourne, Line

Beji.
Ben.
Cist.
Ben.
Aug.
Cist.

Limebrook, Heref. Aug.
Llanllear, Cardigan. Cist.
Llanllugan, Montg. Cist.
Marham, Norf. Cist.
Market Street, Beds. Ben.
Marlow, Little, Bucks. Ben.
Marrick, Yorks. Ben.
Minster, in Sheppey. Ben.
Molesby (Melsonby), Yorks.

Ben.
Neasham, Durham. Ben.
Newcastle-OTi-Tyne, St. Bartholo-
mew's. Ben. See Towns
Northampton, St. Mary de Prato

(or De la Praye). Clun.
Ntinappleton, Yorks. Cist.
Nunburnholme, Yorks. Ben.
Nunmonkton, Yorks. Ben.
Pinley, Warw. Cist.
Polesworih, Warw. Ben.
Polleslo, Devon. Ben. Sa

Towns : Exeter
Redlingfield, Suff. Ben.
Rosedale, Yorks. Ben.
Rothwell, Northt. Aug.
Rusper, Suss. Be?t.
Seaton, Cumb. Ben.
Sewardesle3^ in Shuttlehanger

par., Northt. Cist.
Sinningthwayte, Yorks. Cist.
Sopwell, by St. Alban's, Herts.
Stainfield, Line, Ben.
Stixwold, Line. Cist.
Stratford at Bow, Midd. Ben.
Studley, Oxf. Ben.
Swaffham Bulbeck, Camb. Ben.
Swifie, Yorks. Cist.
Thetford, Norf. Ben. See

Towns
Thickhed, Yorks. Ben.
Usk, Monm. Ben.
VValliiigwells, Notts. Ben.
West wood, Wore. Ben.
Whiston, Wore. Cist. See

Tov/ns : Worcester

424

KE V TO MAP

99-

lOO.
lOI.
I02.
103.

Winchester, St. Marys. Ben.

See Towns
Wintney, Hants. Cist.
Wroxall, Warw. Be7i.
Wykeham, Yorks. Cist.
Yeddingham, Yorks. Ben.

VI, Monasteries surrendered
(1537-40)

Indicated on the Map by the letter ;
S and a numeral. I

The heads of the houses marked
with an asterisk (*) were mitred abbots
and sat in parliament,

I. Abbotsbury abbey, Dorset. BeJi.

2.* Abingdon ab., Berks. Ben.

3. Athelney ab. , Soms. Ben.

4.*Bardney ab., Line. Ben.

5. Barnwell pr., by Cambridge. A.C.

See Towns

6. Bath Cathedral pr. Ben. See

Towns
Cell : Dunster, Soms, (6 a)

7. *Battle ab. , Sussex. Ben.

Cell: Brecknock, Wales (7 a).
See Towns

8. Beaulieu ab. , Hants. Cist.

9. Bermondsey ab. , Surr. Cluniac

(or Ben. ? See Rymer, xiii. 405)
Cell: St. James's, Derby (9 c).
See Towns

10, Bodmin pr. , Cornw, A. C.

11. Bolton pr. (called "abbey"),

Yorks. A. C.
Bordesley ab. , Wore. Cist.
Bradenstock pr. , Wilts. A. C.
Bristol, St. Augustine's ab. A.C.

See Towns
Bruton ab. , Soms, A. C.
Buckfast ab. , Devon. Cist.
Buckland, Devon. Cist.
BuUington, Line. Gilb.
'^Burton-on-Trent ab. , Staff, Ben.
2o,*Bury St, Edmunds ab. , Suff,

Ben. See Towns

21. Butley pr., Suff. A. C.

22. Byland ab. , Yorks. Cist.
23.*Canterbury, St. Augustine's ab,

Ben. See Towns
24. Canterbury, Christchurch Cathe-
dral pr. See Towns

12,

13-

14.

IS-
16.

17.

18,

[9,

38.

Cells: St, Martin's, Dovei
(24 a). See Towns
Canterbury Coll. , Oxf. (24 b),
now part of Christ Ch. , Oxf.
Carlisle Cathedral pr, A. C.
Castleacre pr, , Norf, Cluniac
Cerne ab. , Dorset, Ben.
Chertsey ab. , Surr. Ben.
Cell : Cardigan (28 a)
Chester, St, Wer burgh's ab. Set •

Towns
Chicksand pr,, Beds. Gilb.

(double)
Christchurch Twynham pr, ,
Hants, A. C.
*Cirencester ab, , Glouc, A. C.
Coggeshall ab. , Essex, Cist.
Combe ab, , Warw. Cist.
Combermere ab. , Chesh. Cist.
Coventry Cathedral pr. Ben.

See Towns
Croxton ab. , Leic. Pre7}ion.
Cell : Hornby, Lane. (37 a)
(This cell surrendered to royal visi-
tors in February 1536, before the par-
liamentary suppression.)

*Croyland (Crowland) ab,, Line,
Ben.
Cell: Freiston pr.. Line. (38a)
Darley ab., Derb, A. C.
Dereham, West, ab. , Norf.

Prenion.
Dieulacres ab. , Staff. Cist.
Dunkeswell ab. , Devon. Cist.
Dunstable pr., Beds. A. C. See

Towns
Durham Cathedral pr. Ben. See
Towns
Cells : Fern Island (44 a)
Finchale, D'ham (44 b)
Jarrow, D'ham (44 ^r)
Lindisfarne (44 d)
Lytham, Lane. (44 e)
Oxford, D'ham Coll. (44/)-

See Towns
Stamford St, Leonard's

(44 g). See Towns
Wearmouth, D'ham (44 h)
Ely Cathedral pr, Ben. See
Towns
Cell: Molycourt in par. of
Outwell, Norf. (45 a)
. Ensham ab. , Oxf. Ben.

KEY TO MAP

425

^^ Evesham ab. , Wore. Ben.

Cells: Alcester, Warw. (47 a)
Penwortham, Lane. (47 ^)
Faversham ab. , Kent. Ben.
Fordham pr. , Camb. Gilb.
Fountains ab. , Yorks, Cist.
Furness ab. , Lane. Cist.
Gisburn (or Guisborough), Yorks.
A. C.
*Gloucester, St. Peter's ab, Ben.
See Towns
Cells: Bromfield, Salop (53 a)
Ewenny, Glamorgan (53 b)
Hereford, St. Guthlac's pr.

(53 c). See Towns
Stanley, St. Leonard's,
Glouc. (53 ^)
Hailes ab. , Gloue. Cist.
Halesowen ab. , Wore. Premon.
Cell: Dodford, in par. of
Bromsgrove, Wore, (55 a)
Hartland ab., Devon. A. C.
Haughmond ab. , Salop. A. C.
Holm Cultram ab. , Cumb. Cist.
*Hyde ab. , by Winchester, See
Towns, W
Kenilworth ab, , Warw. A. C.
Keynsham ab. , Soms. A. C.
Kingswood ab. , Glouc, Cist.
Kirkham pr, , Yorks, A. C.
Kirkstall ab. , Yorks. Cist.
Kirkstead ab. , Line. Cist.
Launceston pr., Cornw, A. C.
Launde, Leic. A. C.
Leeds pr. , Kent. A. C.
Leicester, ab. of St. Mary Pr6,

A. C. See Towns
Lewes pr. , Sussex. Cluniac. See

Towns
Lilleshall ab., Salop. A. C.
Llanthony (Secunda), Gloue.

See Towns, G
London, St. Bartholomew's hosp.

pr. A. C. See Towns
London, St. Mary Spital without

Bishopsgate. A. C.
London, St. Mary Graces ab,,
Tower Hill, Cist.
*Malmesbury ab. , Wilts. Ben.
Cell: Pilton, Devon (76a)
Malton, Old, pr., Yorks. Gilb.
. Malvern, Great, pr. , Wore. Ben.
Cell: Avecote, Warw, {78 a)

79. Mattersay pr. , Notts. Gilb.

80. Meaux ab, , Yorks. Cist.

81. Merevale ab, , Warw, Cist.

82. Mertonpr, , Surr. A. C.

83. Milton ab, , Dorset, Ben.

84. Mirmaud, in Upwell par, , Camb,

Gilb.

85. Missenden ab, , Bucks, A. C.

86. Monk Brettonpr. , Yorks. Cluniac

87. Montacute pr. , Soms. Cluniac

Cells: Holme, Dorset (87 dt)
Malpas, Monm. (87 b)
and others

88. Muchelney ab. , Soms. Be?i.

89. Newburgh pr. , Yorks. A. C.

90. Newnham, near Bedford. A. C.

See Towns : Bedford

91. Newnham ab. , Devon. Cist.

92. Northampton, St. Andrew's pr.

Cluniac. See Towns

93. Northampton, St. James's pr,

A. C. See Towns

94. Norwich Cathedral pr, Be7i. See

Towns
Cells : Aldeby, Norf. (94 a)

Hoxne, Suff. (94 b)

Lynn, Norf. (94^:). Endow-
ment cont. to Cathedral,
See Towns

Norwich, St. Leonard's
(94 d). See Towns

Yarmouth (94 e). Endow-
ment eont. to Cathedral,
See Towns

95. Nostell pr., Yorks. A. C.

Cells: Bamborough, Nthumb.
(95 a). See Towns
Bredon, Leic. (95 b)
and others

96. Notley, or Nutley, ab. , Bucks.

A. C.

97. Ormsby pr. , Line. Gilb.

98. Oseney ab., Oxf. A. C. See

Towns : Oxford

99. Pershore ab. , Wore. Ben.
100. * Peterborough ab. Ben. See

Towns
Cell: Stamford, St. Michael's
nunnery. See Towns (100 a)
loi. Pipwell ab. , Northt. Cist.

102, Plympton pr. , Devon. A. C.

Cells: unimportant

103, Pomfret pr., Yorks. Cluniac

426

KEY TO MAP

104. Poulton pr. , Wilts. Gilb.
io5.*Ramsey ab. , Hunts. Ben.

Cells: St. Ive's, Hunts.
(105 a), and another

106. Revesbyab. , Line. Cist.

107. Rievaulx ab. , Yorks. Cist.

108. Robertsbridge ab. , Sussex. Cist.

109. Rocester ab. , Staff. A. C.
no. Roche ab., Yorks. Cist.

111. Rochester Cath. pr, , Kent. Ben.

See Towns
Cell: Felixstowe, Suff. (W 10)

112. St. Alban's, Herts. Ben. See

Towns
Cells: Belvoir, Line. {112 a)
Binham, Norf. (112 l>)
Hatfield Peverell, Essex

{112 c)
Hertford (112 d)
Pembroke (112 e)
Redburn, Herts. (112/)
Tynemouth (112 _^)
Wallingford (112 h). See

W 28
Coquet Island, Nthumb.

( 1 1 2 ?■ ). Cell of Tynemouth

113. *St. Benet's Hulme ab. , Norf.

Ben.

114. St. Dennis, by Southampton, pr.

A. C. See Towns, S

115. St. German's pr. , Cornw. A.C.

116. St. Neot's pr., Hunts. Ben.

117. St. Osyth'sab., Essex. A. C.
ii8.*Selby ab., Yorks.

Cell: Snaith (118 a)

119. Sempringham pr. , Line. Gilb.

120. Sherborne ab. , Dorset. Ben.

Cells : Horton (120 a)
Kidwelly, Carmarthen (120/^)

121. Shouldham pr. , Norf. Gilb.

(double)
i22.*Shrewsbury ab. Ben. SeeTo^ns,

123. Sixhill pr. , Line. Gilb.

124. Southwark, St. Mary Overy's pr.

A. C. See Towns

125. South wick, or Porchester, pr. ,

Hants. A. C.

126. Spalding pr., Line. Ben.

1 27. Stratford Langthorne ab. , Essex.

Cist.

128. Sulby ab. , Northt. Premon.

129. Taunton pr. , Soms. A. C.

1 30. "'"Tavistock ab., Devon. Ben.

131

132

133'

134.
I35.
136.

137-
138.
139-
140.
141.
142.
143-

144.
145-

147,
148

149
150

151

152
153
154

156.

157.
158.

Cell: Cowick, Devon (130a).
See Towns : Exeter
*Tewkesbury ab. , Glouc. Ben.
Cells : Bristol, St. James's (131
a). See Towns
Cranborne, Dorset (131 b)
Deerhurst, Glouc. (131 c)
Thame ab. , Oxf. Cist.
Thetford pr., Norf. Cluniac.
See Towns
*Thorney ab. , Camb. Ben.
Thornton ab. , Line. A. C.
Thurgarton pr. , Notts. A. C.
Tichfield ab. , Hants. Premon.
Tor ab. , Devon. Premon.
Tutbury pr. , Staff. Ben.
Ulverscroft pr. , Leic. A. C.
Vale Royal ab., Chesh. Cist.
Walden ab. , Essex. Ben.

Walsingham

See Towns

*Waltham ab.

Warden ab. ,

Watton pr.
(double)

Welbeck ab.

Wenlock pr. ,

pr., Norf. A. C.

, Essex. A. C.

Beds. Cist.

, Yorks. Gilb.

Notts. Premoji.
Salop. CI.

Cell: Dudley, Staff. (148
, Westacre pr. , Norf. A.. C.
■^Westminster ab,, Midd. Ben.
See Towns
Cells: Hurley, Berks. (15012)
Sudbury, Suff. (150 b).
See Towns
Whitby ab. , Yorks. Ben.

Cell : Middlesborough (151 12)
Wigmore ab. , Heref. A. C.
*Winchcombe ab. , Glouc. Ben.
Winchester, St. Swithin's Cath.

pr. Ben. See Towns
Worcester Cathedral pr. Ben.
See Towns
Cell: Little Malvern, Wore.

Worksop pr. , Notts, A. C.

Wymondham ab. , Norf. Ben.

*York, St. Mary's ab. Ben. See

Towns

Cells: St. Bee's, Cumb. (158 a)

Lincoln, St. Mary Magd,

(158 b). See Towns
Richmond, St. Martin's,
York (158 c). See Towns

KEY TO MAP

427

VII.

Ruraburgh, Suff. (W 20)
Wetherall, Cumb. (158 a?)

Nunneries surrendered
(1537-40)

1. Amesbury ab. , Wilts. Ben.

2. Barking ab. , Essex. Ben.

3. Brevvood, "Black Ladies" pr. ,

Staff. Ben.

4. Bromhall, Berks. Ben.

5. Buckland, Minchin, pr. , Soms.

Aug.

6. Chester, St. Mary's pr. Ben.

See Towns

7. Clerkenwell. Ben. See Towns :

London

8. Dartford pr., Kent. Dom. See

Towns

9. Elstow ab. , Beds. Ben.

10. Godstowab., Oxf. Ben.

11. Lambley pr. , Nthumb. Ben.

12. London {see Towns), Holywell

pr. Ben.

13. London, St. Helen's Bishopsgate

pr. Ben.

14. London, the Minories ab. Fran-

ciscan nuns

15. Mailing ab. , Kent. Ben.

16. Newcastle-on-Tyne, St. Bartholo-

mew's pr. Ben. See Towns

17. Nunappleton pr. , Yorks. Cist.

18. Nuneaton pr. , Warw. Ben.

19. Nunkeeling pr., Yorks. Ben.

20. Romsey ab. , Hants. Ben.

21. Shaftesbury ab. , Dorset. Ben.

22. Sion ab. , Midd. Bridgettine

(double)

23. Stamford, St. Michael's pr. ,

Northt. Ben. See Towns

24. Stixwold pr. , Line. Cist.

25. Studleypr. , Oxf. Ben.

26. Swine pr. , Yorks. Cist.

27. Tarrant ab. , Dorset. Cist.

28. Wherwellab. , Hants. Ben.

29. Wilton ab. , Wilts. Ben.

30. Winchester, St. Mary's ab. Ben.

VIII.

Monasteries suppressed by
Attainder (1537-9)

1. Barlings, Line. Premon.

2. Bridlington, Yorks. A. C.

3. *Colchester, St. John's, Essex.

Ben.

4. *Glastonbury, Soms. Ben.

5. Jervaulx, Yorks. Cist.

6. Kersall, by Manchester, cell to

Lenton. Cluniac

7. Lenton pr. , Notts. Cluniac

8. ^Reading abbey, Berks. Ben.

Cell: Leominster, Heref. (8 a)

9. Sawley, Yorks. Cist.

10. Stanlowe abbey, Chesh. Cist.

(cell of V/halley)

11. Whalley abbey, Lane. Cist.

12. Woburn abbey, Beds. Cist.

IX. Commandries or Preceptories
OF THE Knights of St. John

all of which were confiscated, together
with the London priory, in 1540.
Indicated by a number with J pre-
fixed.

1. Anstey, Wilts.

2. Aslackby, Line.

3. Baddesley, South, Hants.

4. Balsall, Warw.

5. Barrow, Cheshire

6. Battisford, Suff.

7. Beverley, Yorks. See Towns

8. Carbrooke, Norf

9. Chippenham, Camb.

10. Dalby, Leic.

11. Dingley, Northt.

12. Dinmore, Heref.

13. Eagle, Line.

14. Gisleham, Suff.

15. Heather, Leic.

16. Hogshaw, Bucks, 3I miles S.S.W.

from Winslow

17. Maltby, near Louth, Line.

18. Maplestead, Little, Essex

19. Mayne, Dorset

20. Melchbourne, Beds.

21. Mount St. John, Yorks.

22. Newland, Yorks. See Towns ;

Hull

23. Peckham, West, Kent

24. Poling, Suss.

25. Quenington, Glouc.

26. Ribston, York?.'(W. R.)

27. Rothley, Leic.

28. Shingay, Camb.

29. Slebech, Pemb.

428

KEY TO MAP

30. Standon, Herts.

31. Sutton-at-Hone, Kent

32. Swinford, Leic.

33. Swingfield, Kent

34. Temple Bruer, Line,

35. Temple Combe, Soms.

36. Temple Cowley, Oxf.

37. Temple Cressing, Essex

38. Temple Dinsley, Herts. {3 miles

S. of Hitchin)

39. Trebigh, or Tm-bigh, Cornvv. (in

St. Ive's par. , near Liskeard)

40. Wilbraham, Great, Camb.

41. Willoughton, Line.

42. Witham, South, Line.

43. Yeaveley, Derb.

X. List of Towns

showing the religious houses in or
about each, except (for the most
part) hospitals and colleges.

Note. — Houses of Friars were generally
within the towns, while the monasteries in
this list were mostly situated just outside
the walls. The famous four Orders of
Friars were the Augustinian, the Black or
Dominican (sometimes called Jacobin), the
Grey or Franciscan, and the White or
Carmelite, Friars. These Orders are in-
dicated respectively by the letters A., B.,
G., and W. before " Frs." But there were
also other Orders, such as the Crossed or
Crutched Friars and the Trinitarian Friars.
Friaries not situated in towns are also given
in this list.

Appleby, Westmor. W. Frs.
Arundel. B. Frs.
Atherstone, Warw. B, Frs.
Aylesford, Kent. W. Frs.
Aylesbury, Bucks. G. Frs.
Bamborough, Nthumb. B. Frs.

Aug. pr., cell of Nostell (895°)
Bangor. Cathedral (deanery). B. Frs.
Bath. Cathedral pr. (S 6)
Bedford. G.Frs. Caldwell ab. (^.C)

and Newnham pr. [A. C. ), near

(P41, S 90)
Beverley. Preceptory (J 7). B. and

G. Frs.
Blakeney, Norf. W. Frs.
Bodmin, Cornw. G. Frs. Aug.

pr. (S^p)
Boston, Line. A. B, G. and W. Frs.
Brecknock. B. Frs. Ben. pr,, cell

of Battle (S7°)

Bridgenorth. G. Frs.
Bridgewater. G. Frs.
Bristol. St. Augustine's ab. (S 14)

created, in 1540, cathedral of Holy

Trin. ; St, James's, Ben. pr. , cell of

Tewkesbury (S 131°) ; St. John's

hosp. A. B. G. and W. Frs.
Burnham, Norf, W, Frs.
Bury St. Edmunds, Suff. * Ben. ab.

(S 20). G. Frs.
Cambridge. A. B. G. and W, Frs.

Gilbertine pr. of St. Edmund's

(P 44) and Augustinian pr, of Barn-
well (Sj)
Canterbury. Christchurch Cathedral

pr. (S 24) ; *St Augustine's ab.

(S 23) ; St. Sepulchre's nun. (sTg) ;

St. Gregory's pr. (P 45). A. B. and

G. Frs,
Cardiff. B. and G. Frs.
Carlisle. Cathedral pr. (S_2s). B.

and G. Frs.
Carmarthen. Augustinian pr. (P46).

G, Frs.
Chelmsford. B. Frs.
Chepstow. St. Kynemark's (P 166)
Chester. St. Warburg's ab, (S 29) ;

cathedral in 1541 ; St, Mary's

nun. (p 24-S 6). B. G, and W.

Frs.
Chichester. Cathedral (deanery). B.

and G. Frs.
Clare, Suff. A. Frs.
Colchester, Essex. St, John's ab. *

(A3) ; St. Botolph's pr. (P57). G.

Frs.
Coventry. Cathedral pr.* (S 36),

Charterhouse (C 2). G. and W,

Frs.
Dartford. Trin. Frs. Pr,, Dom,

nuns (s~8)
Denbigh. W. Frs.
Derby. St, James's, CI. cell of Ber-

mondsey (89^) ; B. Frs. King's

Mead or de Pratis, Ben. nun. , near

(Pjx)

Doncaster. G. and W, Frs.

Dorchester, Dorset. G. Frs.

Dorchester, Oxf. Pr., ^. C. (P 66)

Dover. St. Martin's pr. (surrendered
to royal visitors in Nov. 1535, be-
fore the parliamentary suppression);
St. Radegund's ab., near (P 167)

KEY TO MAP

429

Droitwich, Wore. A. Frs.
Dunstable, Beds. Pr. {S43). B. Frs.
Dunwich, Suff. B. and G. Frs.
Durham. Cathedral pr. (§44)
Ely. Cathedral pr. (S45)
Exeter. Cathedral (dean. ) ; St.

Nicholas" pr, (P_75) ; B. and G.

Frs. Cowick pr. (cell of Tavistock)

(S 130°) ; Polleslo nun., near (p 78)
Gloucester. * St. Peter's ab. (S 53).

cathedral in 1541 ; St. Oswald's

pr. (P^q). B. G. and W. Frs.

Llanthony (Secunda), A. C. (S 72)
Grantham, Line. G. Frs. Newbo

ab,, Premon. (P 141)
Greenwich. G. Frs. (Observants)
Grimsby, Line. St. Leonard's nun.,

Ben. (^42); Wellow ab., A. C.

(P 203). A. and G. Frs.
Guildford, Surr. B. Frs.
Hartlepool. G. Frs.
Haver ford West, Pemb. Aug. pr.

(P_98). B. Frs.
Hereford. Cathedral (dean.); St.

Guthlac'spr.,^^;?, (cell of Gloucester)

(S 53") B. and G. Frs.
Hitchin, Herts. W. Frs. Gilb.

nuns
Hull. Carthusian pr. (C 5). A. B.

and W. Frs. St. Mary's pr. , y^. C.

(S 66), Commandry of Newland

near (J 22).
Huntingdon. A. Frs. Hinching-

brook Ben. nun. (p 50)
Ilchester, Soms. B. Frs.
Ipswich. Holy Trin. small Austin pr. ;

St. Peter's pr. (W 12). B. G. and

W. Frs.
Lancaster. B. and G. Frs.
Langley, King's, Herts. B. Frs.
Leicester. St. Mary Pr6 ab. (S 69).

A. B. and G. Frs.
Lewes, Suss. Priory (S 70). G. Frs.
Lichfield. Cathedral (dean. ). G.

Frs.
Lincoln. Cathedral (dean. ) ; St.

Katharine's Gilb. pr. (omitted in

List VL ) ; St. Mary Magdalen's

pr. , cell of York (S isS''). A. B.

G. and W. Frs.
Llandaff. Cathedral
Llanvais, Anglesea. G. Frs.
London. Cathedral (dean. ) ; Charter-

house ; Christehurch pr. , Aldgate
(surrendered before the parliament-
ary suppression) ; Clerkenwell nun.
(S~7) ; Elsingspittle pr. {A. C, om.
in List IV. ) ; Holywell nun. (sTa) ;
Minories, or ISlinoresses (s 14) ;
Kilburn Ben. nun., near (p 55) ;
St. Bartholomew's pr. (S^s) ; St.
Helen's pr. within Bishopsgate
(S^) ; St. John's pr. (Knights) ;
St. Mary Spital without Bishopsgate
(S74) ; Tower Hill, ab. of St. Mary
Graces (Sjs). A. B. G. and W.
Frs. , and also Crossed or Crutehed
Frs. See also Southwark

Losenham, Kent. W. Frs.

Ludlow, Salop. A. and W. Frs.

Lynn, Norf. A. B. G. and W. Frs.
Ben. pr. , cell of Norwich (3 94^)

Maldon, Essex. W. Frs. Bileigh,
beside

Marlborough, Wilts. W. Frs. St.
Margaret's pr. , near (Pj3i)

Melcombe, Dorset. B. Frs.

Newark, Notts. A. and G. (Obs. )
Frs.

Newcastle-on-Tyne. A. B. G. and
W. Frs. St. Bartholomew's pr.
(P^i) ; WalknoU Trin. Frs.

Newcastle-under-Line, B. Frs.

Newport, Pemb. A. Frs.

Northallerton, Yorks. W. Frs.

Northampton. St. Andrew's pr.
(S92) ; St. James's ab. (P 148-S 93) ;
De la Pray Cluniac nun., without
(P"^). A. B. G. and W. Frs.

Norwich. Cathedral pr. of Christ-
church (S94) ; St. Leonard's pr.
(S 94^) ; Carrow nun. (F20). A. B.
G. and W. Frs.

Nottingham. G. and W, Frs.

Orford, Suff. A. Frs.

Oxford. St. Frideswide's pr. (W 16),
now Christehurch college and cathe-
dral. Durham coll. (S 44/). A. B.
G. and W. Frs. Oseney ab. , near
(S 98) ; Rewley ab. , near (P 160)

Penrith, Cumb. A. Frs.

* Peterborough, Ab. (S 100), cathe-
j dral in 1541

Plymouth. G. and W. Frs.
1 Pomfret, Yorks. Pr. (S 103). B, Frs,
I Preston, Lane. G. Frs.

430

KE V TO MAP

Reading. *Ab. (AJ). G. Frs.
Rhuddlan, Flints. B. Frs.
Richmond, Suit. G. Frs. (Ob.)
Richmond, Yorks. St. Agatha's ab.

(P 164) ; St. Martin's (S 158=). G.

Frs.
Rochester. Cathedral pr. (S m)
Rye, Suss. A. Frs.
St. Alban's ab. (S 112). De la Praye

nun. (W iS) ; Sopwell nun. (p 86)
St. Asaph's. Cathedral (dean.)
St. David's. Cathedral (dean.)
Sahsbury. Cathedral (dean.), B.

and G. Frs.
Sandwich, Kent. W. Frs.
Scarborough, Yorks. B. G. and W.

Frs.
Sele, Suss, (near Shoreham), W. Frs.
Shrewsbury. * Abbey (S 122). A.

B. G. and W. Frs.
Southampton. G. Frs. (Obs.), A. Frs.

(who replaced Obs. after 1534?); St.

Denis' pr, , South Stoneham (S 114)
Southwark (opp, London on the

Thames). St. Mary Overy's pr.

(S 124)
Stafford. St. Thomas' pr. (P 175).

A. and G. Frs.
Stamford. St. Michael's Ben. nun.

(cell of Peterborough) (s ioo«) ; St.

Leonard's, Ben. (cell of Durham)

(S 44^), A. B. G. and W, Frs, ;

Newstead, Aust. pr., near (P 144)
Sudbury, Suff. Beri. pr., cell of West-
minster (S 150&). B. Frs.
Thelesford, Warw. Trin. Frs.
Thetford, Norf. Cluniac pr. of St.

Mary (S 133) ; Canons of St. Sepul-
chre (P 186) ; Ben. nun. (^"93)

Tickhill, Yorks. A. Frs.

Truro, Cornw. B. Frs.

Walsingham, Norf. Priory (S 143).
G. Frs.

Ware, Herts. G. Frs.

Warwick. St. Sepulchre's pr. (P 201).
B. Frs.

Wells. Cathedral (dean.) ; St. John's
hosp.

Westminster. *Abbey of St. Peter
(S 150), cathedral from 1540 to 1550

Wilton, Wilts. B. Frs. Ben. nun.

Winchelsea. B. and G. Frs.

Winchester. Cathedral pr. of St.
Swithin (S 154) ; St. Mary's abbey,
nuns (p 99) ; * Hyde abbey, near
(S 59), A. B. G. and W. Frs.

Woodhouse, near Cleobury Mortimer,
Salop. A. Frs.

Worcester. Cathedral pr. (S 155).
Whiston pr. of Cistercian nuns,
near (p 98). B. and G, Frs.

Yarm, Yorks, B. Frs.

Yarmouth, Norf. Be7i. pr, , cell of
Norwich (site still an endowment of
the cathedral). B. G. and W. Frs.
At Gorleston, Suff. A. Frs.

York. Cathedral (dean.) Clemen-
thorpe pr. of Ben. nuns (p^s) ;
Holy Trin. pr. (P 214) ; St. An-
drew's pr. (P 215) ; St. Leonard's
hosp. ; *St, Mary's abbey (S 158) ;
St. Nicholas' hosp. A. B. G. and
W. Frs.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, EdinburgJi.

ERRATA

IN MAP
Bangor should be marked (o), not O-

IN MAP AND KE V
The following errors occur in the Lists, chiefly from wrong classification.

In List IV. Alvingham, Boxley, Catteley, EUerton (Yorkshire),
Ford, Haverholme and Newstead in Lindsey are misplaced, and should
have been in List VI.

In List VI. Kirkstead is misplaced ; it should have been in List VIII.
(suppressed by attainder). Newark priory (A. C. ), which has been
omitted altogether, ought to be added to this list. It was in Surrey, two
miles south of Woking, in the parish of Send.

In List VII. Nuncotton has been omitted. It was situated in the
parish of Keel by in Lincolnshire, about seven miles west of Grimsby.

GUARDIAN.—" If it goes on as it lias begun, the new work will be indispensable
to all serious students of the history of the English Church. "

A HISTORY OF
THE ENGLISH CHURCH

EDITED BY THE LATE

Very Rev. W. R. W. STEPHENS, D.D.

DEAN OF WINCHESTER

AND

The Rev. WILLIAM HUNT, M.A.

A Continuous History, based upon a careful Study of Original
Authorities, and of the best Ancient and Modern Writers.

I7i Seven Volumes^ uniform binding, Crow7t Zvo.

Each Vol. will be sold separately, and will have its own Index.

Vol. I . The English Church from its Foundation to the Norman
ConoLuest (597-1066). By the Rev. William Hunt,
M.A. 7s. 6d. {Ready.

Vol. II. The English Church from the Norman Conquest to the
Close of the Thirteenth Century. By Dean
Stephens. 7s. 6d. \_Ready.

Vol. III. The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries. By the Rev. Canon Capes, late Fellow of
Queen's College, Oxford. 7s. 6d. {Ready.

Vol. IV. The English Church in the Sixteenth Century from the
Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of Mary.

By James Gairdner, Esq., C.B., LL.D. 7s. 6d. \Ready.

Vol. V. The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and
James I. By the Rev. W. H. Frere. [In preparaHon.

Vol. VI. The English Church from the Accession of Charles I.
to the Death of Anne. By the Rev. W. H. Hutton,
B.D., Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.

[In preparation.

Vol. VI I. The English Church in the Eighteenth Century. By

the Rev. Canon Overton, D.D. [In prcparatioii.

OF VOLUME I

CHURCH REVIEW.— "yMe. have here the first volume of what promises to be an
admirable work on the history of the Church in England. . . . Written in an interesting
manner ; original documents have been consulted as well as the latest modern authorities,
and we heartily commend it to the study of English Catholics."

EXPOSITORY TIMES.— " Messrs. Macmillan have begun the issue of a new
History of the English Church, and the beginning is most attractive and promising. ._ . .
The book is not written to catch meie popularity. It is authoritative. It is scientific.
It appeals to the student and lover of the literature that lives."

ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.— ''M-r. Hunt has written a really interesting volume.
He will not in these very contentious times expect to satisfy every man who has views as
to the origin of the English Church ; but he will estrange none of them. . . . Undoubtedly
the History begins well. In the time-honoured phrase of the weary reviewer, it will
' supply a long-felt want.' "

DAILY NEWS. — " The first of a series of seven crown octavo volumes which are to
form between them A History o/_ the English Church. . . . The scheme is a large one,
and if it is worked out in the spirit of this first volume, it will make a valuable addition to
ecclesiastical history."

OUTLOOK. — " It is an admirable inauguration of a series that should prove valuable
in many respects."

OF VOLUME II

GUARDIAN. — " If it goes on as it has begun, the new v/ork will be indispensable to
all serious students of the history of the English Church."

SATURDAY REFIEW.—"The Dean is a trained historian, and he has also the
special gift, which no training can give, of sympathetic insight. He writes of the Middle
Ages as one who knows them, in life as well as in books. His portraits of great characters
are fresh and convincing. ... A fresh and vigorous picture of times and men, such as
can come only from personal and first-hand work."

ROCK. — " At the time of the publication of the first volume of this work it was pointed
out that the completed work, if it went on as it had begun, would prove indispensable to
all serious students of the history of the English Church. . . . The praise given to the
preceding volume is fully deserved by the second one, and the whole work so far is the
most valuable of the kind that has ever been produced."

PILOT. — "The Dean of Winchester's contribution ... is a most notable and
excellent book. . . . A real addition to English Church history."

OF VOLUME III

PILOT. — "Canon Capes's close and accurate study of the history of the English Church
from 1272 to 1485 (or later, for the date is uncertain) is a useful addition to our literature.
It is based upon a thorough examination of nearly all the printed material."

CHURCH GAZETTE. — "Canon Capes thoroughly understands his subject, and
writes in that easy, interesting style we expect from a master. . . . Excellent. . . . The
list of authorities is excellent ; so is the index."

PALL MALL GAZETTE. — " Canon Capeshasachieved the difficult task of writing
nistory for the student in the sober modern spirit, and of producing at the same time a
book well calculated to attract and interest the general reader. . . , Altogether we heartily
welcome this volume as a carefully impartial account of a period which has too often been
the hunting ground of historical romancers and people who are partisans first and anti-
quaries afterwards. It is thorough wiiliout being dry-as-dust, and it is conspicuously free
from doubtful deductions."

MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.

n<,

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^:^^,

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