CHAPTER XIII.

THE MARTYRS.

It is doubtful, even had her hopes of an heir not proved vain, whether

Mary would have been able to control the revolutionary movement that

had now spread from London into various parts of the country. She had

formed an alliance with the most powerful nation in Europe, she had

reconciled her kingdom to the one stable institution in Christendom,

she had worked incessantly to promote peace between the Emperor and the

French King, she had earnestly desired peace in her time; and there was

no peace.[507]

The enthusiasm with which her advent had been hailed had entirely

subsided, except among the poor, in country towns and villages, who

loved her to the last, and with whom she came in personal contact,

in the most informal manner, distributing alms, counsel and words of

kindness and sympathy. Many of her autograph letters in the Cotton

Library testify to the fidelity with which she remembered, through

life, the claims of her dependants, although she had scanty means

wherewith to reward them. The great royal progresses throughout the

country, for which Henry VIII. had had so marked a predilection, were

often a heavy tax upon the country people. In the time of hay-making

or harvesting it was a serious inconvenience to them to be pressed

into the royal service, and to have their horses and waggons seized

for the transport of household stuff and provisions for the court. As

often as not, they received little or no compensation, while their

beasts were so fatigued with the additional labour, that a further loss

of time was entailed, before they could use them again. Mary seldom

went in progress, and when she did, was careful not to trouble and vex

the country people, at times when their well-being for the whole year

depended on their industry. If she discovered that her Comptroller had

not acted fairly by them, she was extremely indignant, and would not

rest till she saw the poor folk righted.

She visited them in their own homes, accompanied by two or three of

her ladies, would sit down familiarly among them, and inquire into

their manner of living, talking kindly to them, while the poor man ate

his supper after his day’s work in the fields, little thinking that

he was confiding his troubles to the Queen, for Mary would have no

special ceremony paid to her by her suite, in order not to embarrass or

confuse him.[508] The help she afforded was always substantial and well

advised. If her poor neighbours were overburdened with children, she

did not content herself with dispensing alms, but took care to advise

them to live thriftily, bring up their boys and girls in the fear of

God, and sometimes apprenticed these to an honest trade, so that they

might be able to earn their living and better their condition. “This

she did,” writes the biographer of the Duchess of Feria, “in a poor

carpenter’s house, and the house of the widow of a husbandman. And in

this sort did she pass some hours with the poor neighbours, with much

plainness and affability; they supposing them all to be Queen’s maids,

for there seemed no difference. And if any complaints were made, she

commended the remembrance very particularly to Jane Dormer.”[509]

No religious or political agitators had as yet disturbed the loyalty

of these simple peasants; but in London, pasquinades directed against

the Queen had become of constant occurrence. Offensive and scurrilous

language was the order of the day. A boy named Featherstone was made

to personate Edward VI. in order to dispute her right. Treasonable

books, such as John Knox’s _Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of

Women_, Goodman’s _Superior Magistrate_, in which Wyatt was invoked as

a martyr, Poynet’s treatise on _Politic Power_, were busily circulated,

and roused the spirit of revolt in the minds of thousands of hitherto

peaceable citizens. The seditious availed themselves boldly of the

shibboleth liberty of conscience and of the 270 persons estimated by

Foxe, as having suffered for religion during this reign, many were,

quite apart from their religious opinions, traitors, assassins and

perjurers. The Venetian ambassador says, in a letter to the Doge, dated

13th May 1555:[510] “Certain knaves in this country endeavour daily

to disturb the peace and quiet, and present state of the kingdom, so

as if possible to induce some novelty and insurrection, there having

been publicly circulated of late throughout the city, a _Dialogue_

written and printed in English, full of seditious and scandalous things

against the religion and government, as also against the Council, the

Parliament, and chiefly against their Majesties’ persons; and although

all diligence has been used for the discovery of the authors, no light

on the subject has yet been obtained, save that an Italian has been

put in the Tower, he being a master for teaching the Italian tongue to

Milady Elizabeth, some suspicion having been apparently entertained

of him. The edition of the _Dialogue_ was so copious, that a thousand

copies have been taken to the Lord Mayor, who by order of their

Majesties, commanded all those who had any of them to bring them to him

under heavy penalties.”

A royal proclamation was then issued, to the effect that all books,

both Latin and English, concerning “any heretical, erroneous or

slanderous doctrines, might be destroyed and burnt throughout the

realm,” as also against conveying into the kingdom any books, writings

or works by writers thereinafter named. All the names of the principal

reformers follow, as also that of Erasmus, who was at that time looked

upon with distrust. The Book of Common Prayer “set forth by the

authority of Parliament” in the reign of Edward VI. was to be delivered

up within the space of fifteen days, to be burned or otherwise disposed

of.[511]

But these measures only increased the fanaticism. William Thomas,

who had been clerk of the Council under Edward, and was a disciple

of the preacher Goodman, plotted to murder the Queen, “for which he

was sent to the Tower, and afterwards executed, at which time he said

he died for his country”.[512] Wriothesley and Machyn both chronicle

a murderous attack made on a priest at the altar rails. The former

says: “The 4 day of April (1555) being Easter Day was a lewd fact

done in the church of St. Margaret, Westminster. Sir John Sleuther,

priest, ministering the sacrament to the parishioners, and holding the

chalice in his left hand, one William Branch, _alias_ called Flower,

in a serving-man’s coat, suddenly drew a wood knife, and struck the

priest on the head, that the blood ran down, and fell both on the

chalice and on the consecrated bread. The said person was apprehended,

and committed to the Gatehouse in Westminster.” Machyn adds that the

ruffian assaulted the priest, after saying that “by the idolatory which

he committed, he deceived the crowds of souls there assembled, with

other disgusting language, and gave him two deep wounds, one in the

hand, the other in the head, that he fell as if dead, causing such

an uproar and tumult, in part from the shrieks of the women, and the

multitude of persons present, who pursued the man as if to put him to

death. It was thought for a moment that the English had risen for the

purpose of massacring the Spaniards, and all the other foreigners who

lived in that quarter. The man was seized, and burnt for the assault,

on the 24th April following, outside St. Margaret’s churchyard.”[513]

This outrage was a bold advance on the part of the revolutionists, who

the previous year had contented themselves with derisively hanging a

cat on the gallows in Cheapside, dressed in full pontificals.

Holinshed, Stow and Strype all tell a story of a fraud, perpetrated

by the Queen’s enemies. Strange sounds were heard to issue from a

house in Aldersgate Street, interspersed with obscure words, perfectly

incomprehensible, until they were interpreted by certain persons who

were in the secret. These told the crowds assembled in front of the

house, that what they heard was the voice of the Holy Ghost, warning a

wicked and perverse generation. It inveighed, they said, against the

Queen’s marriage, and the impiety of the Mass; and the citizens were

threatened with war, famine, pestilence and earthquakes. The tumult

became so great, that the magistrates ordered the front wall of the

house to be demolished, when a young woman, named Elizabeth Crofts,

crept out of a hiding place, and confessed that she had been hired to

commit the fraud. She was put in the pillory, but afterwards pardoned

and sent home.[514]

The way in which religion was purposely confused with political

grievances, real or supposed, was the cause of more than half the

difficulty. The Council were still for prosecuting the criminals for

heresy, the Emperor for ever maintained that they should be tried for

treason.

The Venetian ambassador notifies a slight insurrection in Essex,

whereupon Bonner received an order from the Privy Council to send

“certain discreet and learned preachers to reduce the people who

hath been of late seduced by sundry lewd persons named ministers

there”.[515] The state of affairs is thus seen to have entered into

a vicious circle. The lawlessness of the sectaries prompted severe

reprisals, and the punishments inflicted did but aggravate the evil

instead of suppressing it. “I have never,” said Renard, “seen the

people so disturbed and discontented as now.” For six months, he had

not ceased urging that Elizabeth, who was, he considered, the cause of

all the troubles, should be sent abroad.

The opinion was at that time general, that capital punishment might

be inflicted in religious matters. Catholics and Reformers were

alike agreed on this subject, differing only as to their definition

of heresy. Catholics regarded it as a revolt from the teaching of a

divinely appointed Church; each individual Reformer submitted it to

the test of his own private judgment. Calvin burned Servetus for his

opinions on the Blessed Trinity, an act that was not only attended with

as many aggravating circumstances as any death for heresy that had

ever been suffered, but which was almost unanimously applauded by the

Protestants of that time, Melancthon, Bullinger and Farel all writing

to express their approval of it. Those who objected were called by

Beza, “emissaries of Satan”. Luther, in his reply to Philip of Hesse,

distinctly asserted the right of civil magistrates to punish heresy

with death, a right that was maintained by the Helvetic, Belgic,

Scottish and Saxon confessions. Calvin, Beza and Jurieu all wrote

books to prove the lawfulness of persecution for false doctrine, each

having independent views of what was the true.[516] Knox in his famous

_Appellation_ says: “None provoking the people to idolatry ought to

be exempted from the punishment of death ... it is not only lawful to

punish to the death such as labour to subvert the true religion, but

the magistrates and people are bound to do so, unless they will provoke

the wrath of God against themselves ... and therefore, my Lords, to

return to you, seeing that God hath armed your hands with the sword of

justice, seeing that His law most straightly commandeth idolaters and

false prophets to be punished with death, and that you be placed above

your subjects, to reign as fathers over children, and further, seeing

that not only I, but with me many thousand famous, godly and learned

persons accuse your bishops, and the whole rabble of the Papistical

clergy, of idolatry, of murder and of blasphemy against God committed,

it appertaineth to your honours to be vigilant and careful in so

weighty a matter. The question is not of earthly substance, but of the

glory of God and of the salvation of yourselves.”[517]

In Edward’s reign, Cranmer not only pronounced sentence on Joan Bocher,

for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

but informed the King, in delivering her over to the civil power, that

she was to be “deservedly punished,” which meant that she was to be

burned.[518] He also pronounced sentence on van Parris, and gave the

same recommendation, and handed over several Anabaptists to be burned

at Smithfield. In his new code of ecclesiastical discipline, Cranmer

classed belief in Transubstantiation, in Papal supremacy, and in the

denial of justification by faith alone, as heresy. But Edward died

before this code had obtained the sanction of Parliament.[519]

Both in England and Scotland, the Reformation signalised itself by a

law, making it penal for any priest to say Mass, for any worshipper

to hear it, under pain of death for the one, of confiscation of his

goods, heavy fines, exile, and finally death for the other. “One

Mass,” exclaimed Knox, “is more fearful to me than if ten thousand

armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm!” In 1572, the two

Houses of Convocation implored Elizabeth to put Mary Queen of Scots

to death, giving as one reason, that she had endeavoured to seduce

God’s people to idolatry, and that according to the Old Testament, all

who did so should be put to death.[520] “There was an express order

that no pity should be shown them.” But not only did the Reformers

adopt the principle, that heresy, such as each understood it to be,

was punishable by death, the newly established Protestant Governments

also claimed the right to define heresy, as well as to punish it. Mr.

Lecky states no more than bare facts, when he says that, “In Scotland

during nearly the whole period that the Stuarts were on the throne of

England, a persecution, rivalling in atrocity almost any on record, was

directed by the English Government, at the instigation of the Scotch

bishops, and with the approval of the English Church, against all

who repudiated episcopacy. If a conventicle was held in a house, the

preacher was liable to be put to death. If it was held in the open air,

both minister and people incurred the same fate. The Presbyterians were

hunted like criminals over the mountains. Their ears were torn from the

roots. They were branded with hot irons. Their fingers were wrenched

asunder by the thumbkins. The bones of their legs were shattered in the

boots. Women were scourged publicly through the streets. Multitudes

were transported to Barbadoes, infuriated soldiers were let loose

upon them and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in torturing

them.”[521]

It is thus clear, that if the sixteenth century, and the ages preceding

it were not acquainted with our modern ideas of religious toleration,

neither indeed were the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth

centuries. As late as 1679, an Irish Franciscan was executed for his

priesthood at Ruthin, being hanged, cut down while yet alive, drawn and

quartered;[522] and in 1729 died in Hurst Castle another Franciscan,

Father Paul Atkinson, who had been apprehended and condemned to

perpetual imprisonment for the same crime.[523]

On the Catholic side, two authorities may be quoted in favour of the

punishment of heresy as a crime; and the standpoint from which it was

so regarded may be briefly stated thus. Before the Reformation, the

Catholic Church was universally recognised as the sole depositary of

revealed truth. To the mediæval mind, he who was convicted of spreading

doctrine contrary to the teaching of this divine institution was worse

than a fratricide, since by poisoning the wells of truth, he murdered

not his brother’s perishable body, but his immortal soul, and was,

therefore, deserving of death. It is difficult for us, whose minds are

necessarily imbued with modern ideas, to realise the mode of thought

concerning novelties of doctrine which agitated all the countries

of Europe in the middle ages, and which still agitated them when so

much that was purely mediæval had passed away. Nor can we estimate to

the full the depth of those profound convictions, on the subject of

revealed religion, which called forth the ecclesiastical and civil

enactments, framed to prevent any tampering with dogma. We have in our

days no practical experience of a system _universally_ admitted and

recognised to be the sole depositary of revealed truth, such as the

Catholic Church was acknowledged to be, before the rise and growth of

Protestantism. Accustomed to the presence of religious speculation,

doubt, and unbelief around us, or at least to the existence of varying

creeds, we are familiar with the notion that every man may weigh and

consider the credibility of each doctrine proposed to him, and that

he is at liberty to accept or reject it, to halve or to double it,

according to the promptings of his own individual judgment. Religious

truth has come to be considered so much a personal affair, that Roman

Catholics are perhaps alone in looking upon it as a divine deposit,

a purely objective matter, independent of what this or that man may

think, and to be accepted undoubtingly by the faithful. And this was

precisely the state of the pre-Reformation mind. But the opinion is

sometimes expressed in our own day, that were the Catholic Church

again powerful, as in the middle ages, we should see a recurrence of

persecution as determined as any that marked with horror the former

annals of our country. The notion is as absurd as it would be to

imagine that if the Puritans were again masters, they would bring back

the thumbkin, the boots, the rack and the sword, in order to enforce

the uselessness of good works. No organised persecution could ever

be possible where the general trend of ideas was not in its favour.

Our thicker-skinned ancestors had far less sympathy with bodily

suffering, and a much lower appreciation of the value of human life

than ourselves. In an age when coiners and forgers were punished with

death, it would have seemed incongruous that apostates and heretics

should fare more softly.[524] The Reformers, who rejected nearly every

tenet held by the universal Church, were almost all agreed to retain

the punishment by which those tenets had been vindicated. St. Thomas

Aquinas says:—

“The crime of heresy must be considered first in itself and then in its

connexion with the Church. If we consider the crime in itself, heretics

deserve not only to be cut off from the Church by excommunication, but

to be cut off from the world by death. They are more guilty than those

who coin false money, for it is more grave to corrupt the faith which

is the life of the soul, than to falsify coins, by which that of the

body is supported; and thus they are justly put to death like other

malefactors. Considered in connexion with the Church, it is clear that

she, ever merciful and desirous of obtaining the conversion of those

who are in error, does not at once condemn the heretic, but exhorts him

to repentance, according to the teaching of the apostle. It is only

when he shows himself obstinate, and if she despairs of his salvation,

that she cuts him off from herself, and abandons him to the secular arm

that he may be put to death.”[525]

The fourth Lateran Council decreed, that no beneficed clerk, or any

clerk in holy orders, might take any part, even the most mechanical

and subordinate, in the judicial doing to death of a criminal.[526]

Heresy was, however, looked upon as an ecclesiastical as well as a

civil offence, the delinquent first committing a grave crime against

God, by denying and attacking the truths which He had revealed, so

that by his example he led other men astray. Secondly, by so doing he

raised tumults, and endangered the peace of the commonwealth. He was,

therefore, tried in the ecclesiastical courts, and if found guilty and

obdurate, was handed over to the State for punishment. “Cognisance

of heresies, errors and Lollardies appertaineth to the judge of holy

Church.”[527]

Long before the rise of Lollardy, burning at the stake was the

recognised punishment for heresy, just as decapitation and hanging

were the penalty for the crimes of treason and murder. An obstinate

Albigensian was burned in London in 1210, and in 1222 a deacon suffered

death at Oxford, for turning Jew, and marrying a Jewess.[528] The first

Act of Parliament against heresy was passed in the reign of Henry

IV. (1401) and dealt with the suppression of Lollardy. Nevertheless,

the placing of the new law on the statute book was not followed by

any great increase in the number of punishments, and there were more

burnings in the reign of Henry VIII. than in the whole of the previous

century.

The second authority on the Catholic side on the subject of the

punishment of heresy is an Englishman, Sir Thomas More, who says:—

“As touching heretics, I hate that vice of theirs, and not their

persons, and very fain would I that the one were destroyed and the

other saved. And that I have toward no man any other mind than this—how

loudly soever these blessed new brethren and professors and preachers

of heresy belie me—if all the favour and pity that I have used among

them to their amendment were known, it would, I warrant you well and

plain appear; whereof, if it were requisite, I could bring forth

witnesses more than men would ween. Howbeit, because it were neither

right nor honesty, that any man should look for more than he deserveth,

I will that all the world wit it on the other side, that whoso be so

deeply grounded in malice, to the harm of his own soul, and other men’s

too, and so set upon the sowing of seditious heresies, that no good

means that men may use unto him can pull that malicious folly out of

his poisoned, proud, obstinate heart, I would rather be content that

he were gone in time, than overlong to tarry to the destruction of

other.”[529]

Mary’s Parliament of 1554, which abolished her title of Supreme Head of

the Church of England, threw out the bill for reviving the Act of 1401

against heresy, chiefly on Paget’s motion, but it was brought in again

in the following January, and in four days it had passed through both

Houses without opposition.

It was felt that a breakwater had become imperatively necessary to

stop the inflowing tide of sedition. Ross, a reformed preacher, prayed

openly, that God would “either convert the heart of the Queen, or take

her out of this world”. It was then made treason to pray in public for

the Queen’s death. But those who had been already committed for this

offence might recover their liberty, by making humble protestation and

promise of amendment.

While the Council were debating on the manner in which the revived Act

should be enforced, the Queen sent them a message, written in her own

hand, in which, after expressing her wishes with regard to several

points of ecclesiastical discipline, she said:—

“Touching punishment of heretics, me thinketh it ought to be done

without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do justice to such

as by learning would seem to deceive the simple: and the rest so to be

used, that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned

without just occasion, whereby they shall both understand the truth,

and beware to do the like: and especially within London, I would wish

none to be burnt without some of the Council’s presence, and both there

and everywhere good sermons at the same”.[530]

From the fact that the Queen advocated sermons at the stake it has

been inferred that Philip exercised considerable influence on the

persecution, as it was the Spanish custom for preachments to be held at

the _autos da fe_ of heretics. But indeed the custom was quite as much

an English as it was a Spanish one. At the burning of Friar Forest, for

refusing to acknowledge Henry’s ecclesiastical supremacy, Hugh Latimer

preached for three hours against the Papal claims, when the martyr

fixing his eyes on him said: “Seven years back thou durst not have made

such a sermon for thy life!”

It is probable, that neither Philip nor Mary was keen to punish as

heresy, the rebellious spirit manifested by the religionists. The

persecution was a movement of expediency, set on foot by the Council,

as a means of coping with the disturbances. The Emperor and Renard

were distinctly opposed to it, and now the Spanish friar, Alfonso de

Castro, Philip’s confessor, in preaching before the court, strenuously

denounced the measure, which he would scarcely have ventured to do

in so public a manner, if it had been ardently desired by the King

and Queen. Moreover, the most enlightened among the English clergy,

including the Bishop of London, who had at first been in favour of it,

though agreeing in the general principle, that erroneous thinking led

to erroneous acting, were against its adoption at this juncture. But

Parliament willed it, and “it was not therefore,” says an authority on

English law, “the policy of the church but of the crown, and not merely

of the crown but of the state. It was the act of the crown with the

authority of Parliament, and the assent of the council.”[531]

The same writer, accentuating this opinion, which appears

incontrovertible, says in another place:—

“With reference to this unhappy persecution, it appears important to

observe, that it was not the will of the church but of the state, that

it was the result not of the religious bigotry of ecclesiastics, but of

state policy, and there is reason to believe not a little, of the worst

and vilest state craft. It did not commence until after the marriage

with the Spanish King, nor until after the lapse of two years after

the restoration of the ancient religion, and then it was not only not

instigated but it was rather discouraged by the prelates; and though

it was no doubt authorized by the sovereign, it was at the advice of

her council, composed chiefly of laymen. The Cardinal Legate opposed

it, the King’s confessor preached against it, the prelates acted only

upon compulsion, and there is reason to believe from the Queen’s reply

to the representation of the council, that she rather yielded to

their advice, and desired the execution of the measure not only to be

moderated, but to be directed rather against popular agitators, than

against mere private holders of heretical opinions.”[532]

Our principal data for the history of this persecution are derived

from John Foxe’s _Acts and Monuments_, and the martyrologist’s spirit

of animosity, wilful misrepresentation and neglect to rectify obvious

errors, have exposed his book to everlasting reproach. On the death of

his last descendant, the greater number of his manuscripts were either

given to Strype, or allowed to remain in Strype’s hands till his death

in 1737, when many of them were purchased for the Harleian Collection,

now in the British Museum. A few found their way into the Lansdowne

Library. They include amongst a mass of heterogeneous documents of

the most unequal value and interest—such as the depositions of some

who were really present at the different executions for religion in

the reign of Queen Mary, minutes of the examination of prisoners,

apparently written on the spot, fantastic stories of his favourite

theory concerning the judgments of God, on those who persecuted the

followers of the reformed doctrines, and the thrilling legend of Pope

Joan—several statements sent to Foxe for the purpose of correcting

portions of his work, but of which he never made any use. Nearly, if

not quite all the material for that part of the _Acts and Monuments_,

which deals with the reign of Mary, was collected by others for Foxe

and Grindal, during their absence from England. Grindal handed over

to Foxe the accounts of the various prosecutions for heresy sent to

him by his correspondents at home, taking care, however, at the same

time, to warn the martyrologist against placing too much confidence

in them, he himself suspending his judgment, “till more satisfactory

evidence came from good hands”. He advised him for the present, only

to print separately the acts of particular persons, of whom they had

authentic accounts, and to wait for a larger and completer history,

until they had reliable information of the whole persecution.[533] But

the careful investigation which Grindal recommended did not fall in

with the particular genius and uncritical methods of Foxe, who, perhaps

on account of his necessitous condition, worked with a will, on the

unsifted tales and reports, as they came to hand, so that the book

in its Latin form was completed, almost to the end of Mary’s reign,

and was published at Basle, before his return to England in 1559. He

afterwards made an English translation of the work, but without seeing

fit to revise his material, and it was given to the public under the

title of _Acts and Monuments_. It was at once popularly styled the

_Book of Martyrs_.

When attacked by Alan Cope (Nicholas Harpsfield) for his inaccuracies,

Foxe replied, “I hear what you will say; I should have taken more

leisure, and done it better. I grant and confess my fault; such is my

vice. I cannot sit all the day (M. Cope) fining and mincing my letters,

and combing my head, and smoothing myself all the day at the glass of

Cicero. Yet notwithstanding doing what I can, and doing my good will,

methinks I should not be reprehended.”[534] Parsons in his _Three

Conversions of England_[535] makes “a note of more than a hundred and

twenty lies uttered by John Foxe in less than three leaves of his _Acts

and Monuments_,” and he proceeds to point them out, beginning with the

lie concerning John Marbeck, and some others, whom he counts among the

martyrs, although they were never burned at all. John Marbeck was an

eminent musician and a controversial writer on the Protestant side. As

in consequence of Parsons’ remark, Foxe acknowledged the error, in his

second edition, he may be held excused thus far; but his delinquencies

in this respect were not infrequent, and gave rise to the saying that

“Many who were burnt in the reign of Queen Mary drank sack in the days

of Queen Elizabeth”.[536]

Two similar mistakes which he was in a position to correct and did not,

relate to the supposed death by the vengeance of God, of Henry Morgan,

Bishop of St. David’s, and of one Grimwood, another “notorious Papist”.

Anthony à Wood, the famous antiquary and historian, who wrote his

_History of the Antiquities of Oxford_ about a hundred years after Foxe

had become celebrated as a martyrologist, and who in his youth spoke

with people who remembered the days of persecution in the reign of

Mary, says that “Henry Morgan was esteemed a most admirable civilian

and canonist; he was for several years the constant Moderator of all

those that performed exercise for their degrees in the civil law in the

school or schools, hall and church pertaining to that faculty, situated

also in the same parish.... He was elected Bishop of St. David’s upon

the deprivation of Robert Ferrar.... In that see he sate till after

Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown, and then being deprived ... retired

among his friends, and died a devoted son to the Church of Rome, on

the 23 of December following (1559) of whose death, hear I pray what

John Fox saith in this manner: _Morgan, Bishop of St. David’s who

sate upon the condemnation of the blessed Martyr Bishop Ferrar, and

unjustly usurped his room, was not long after stricken by God’s hand,

after such a strange sort, that his meat would not go down, but rise

and pick up again, sometimes at his mouth, sometimes blown out of his

nose, most horribly to behold, and so he continued till his death_.

Thus Fox followed by Thomas Beard, in his _Theatre of God’s Judgments_.

But where or when his death happened they tell us not, nor any author

hitherto, only when. Now therefore be pleased to know, that the said

Bishop Morgan, retiring after his deprivation to and near Oxon, where

he had several relations and acquaintance living, particularly the

Owens of Godstow in the parish of Wolvercote, near the said city, did

spend the little remainder of his life in great devotion at Godstow,

but that he died in the condition which Fox mentions, there is no

tradition among the inhabitants of Wolvercote. True it is that I have

heard some discourse many years ago from some of the ancients of that

place, that a certain Bishop did live for some time, and exercised his

charity and religious counsel among them, and there died, but I could

never learn anything of them of the manner of his death, which being

very miserable as John Fox saith, methinks that they should have a

tradition of it, as well as of the man himself, but I say there is now

none, nor was there any thirty years ago, among the most aged persons

then living at that place, and therefore whether there be anything of

truth in it may be justly doubted; and especially for this reason, that

in the very same chapter and leaf containing the severe punishment

upon persecutors of God’s People, he hath committed a most egregious

falsity in reporting that one Grimwood, of Higham in Suffolk, died in

a miserable manner, for swearing and bearing false witness against one

John Cooper, a carpenter of Watsam in the same county; for which he

lost his life. The miserable death of the said Grimwood was as John

Fox saith thus, that _when he was in his labour, staking up a gosse

of corn, having his health, and fearing no peril, suddenly his bowels

fell out of his body, and immediately most miserably he died_. Now it

so fell out that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one Prick became

parson of the parish where the said Grimwood dwelt, and preaching

against perjury, being not acquainted with his parishioners, cited

the said story of Fox, and it happening that Grimwood being alive, and

in the said church, he brought an action upon the case against the

parson, but Judge Anderson, who sate at the assizes, in the county of

Suffolk did adjudge it not maintainable, because it was not spoken

maliciously.”[537]

That the case was not maintained on this ground, as against the parson,

was no doubt fair and just, but Foxe cannot himself be as reasonably

acquitted, for although he went into Suffolk to investigate the matter,

he never made any alteration in his story, which has appeared in all

the subsequent editions of his work.

It would be beyond the scope of the present volume to indicate all the

misstatements and distorted facts of which he was guilty, some being,

no doubt, as much the result of the far too ambitious scheme of his

undertaking, as of his preconceived malice.

Thirty years after the death of Sir Thomas More, the martyrologist

proceeded to collect all the traditional gossip afloat concerning the

Chancellor’s treatment of certain individuals accused of heresy; and

he gravely introduces it into his _Acts and Monuments_ as historical

fact. All these fables had been refuted by More himself, in his famous

_Apology_, made at a time when, although he stood alone, defenceless

and obnoxious, none were bold enough to challenge his truth.

We shall, later on, have occasion incidentally to notice cases of

Foxe’s glaring inaccuracy; suffice it here to mention one instance,

which is fairly representative of his manner. He chronicles the

martyrdom at Newent, on the 25th September 1556, of “Jhon Horne and a

woman”. On investigation it transpires, that the story is nothing more

than an amplification of the burning of Edward Horne, who suffered on

the 25th September 1558, and that no woman suffered at either of these

times. This confusion was first notified by John Deighton, a friendly

critic of the _Acts and Monuments_, clearly not disposed to magnify its

imperfections.

It is one of the many anomalies which confront the student of sixteenth

century methods, that the _Book of Martyrs_ being what it is, a mass

of unsorted fact and fiction, carelessly thrown together, often proved

untrustworthy, rarely corrected, and at the best uncritical, one-sided

and violent, should not merely have leapt into the foremost rank of

contemporary literature, but should have attained in the popular

estimation the level of the Bible itself. Foxe had been penniless when

he returned to England in 1559, but the success of his book, first

published in 1563, made his fortune. The Catholics called it derisively

_Foxe’s Golden Legend_. In 1570, a second edition was printed, in two

volumes folio, and Convocation decreed that the book designated by the

canon as _Monumenta Martyrum_, should be placed in cathedral churches,

and in the houses of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries. This decree,

although never confirmed by Parliament, was so much in accordance

with the Puritan tone of the whole Church of England at that time,

that even parish churches, far and wide were furnished with copies of

the work, chained side by side with the Bible. The vestry minutes of

St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill, of the 11th January, 1571-72, ordered

“that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe, and the paraphrases (of the

Gospel) of Erasmus shalbe bowght for the church, and tyed with a chain

to the Egle bras”. A few years ago, mutilated copies of the _Acts

and Monuments_ might still be seen chained, in the parish churches

of Apethorpe (Northamptonshire), of Arreton (Isle of Wight), of

Chelsea, of Eustone (Oxfordshire), Kinver (Staffordshire), Lessingham

(Norfolk), St. Nicholas (Newcastle-on-Tyne), Northwold (Norfolk),

Stratford-on-Avon, Waltham, St. Cuthbert (Wells).[538]

No more potent means could have been devised for saturating the

national mind with a hatred of Queen Mary, and of her religion, than

the diffusion of the _Book of Martyrs_ on this gigantic scale. In a

short time, there was scarcely a parish church in England, that did not

possess a copy of the work, which was at the disposal of all who could

read. Those who were illiterate might frequently be seen standing in

a group round the lectern, while one among them read aloud from the

graphic pages. In many churches, a chapter was read to the assembled

congregations every Sunday evening along with the Bible, and the

clergy constantly made its stories of martyrdom the subject of their

sermons. One of the indictments against Archbishop Laud, at his trial,

was the fact of his having ordered the book to be withdrawn from some

churches.[539] But the secret of its charm for Puritan England did not

altogether lie in its anti-Marian character, or in the partisanship

of its garbled facts, and fictitious heroisms. The simplicity of its

vigorous English, the picturesque, though minute circumstances which

it detailed, the very boldness with which it lied, and above all, its

appeal to the newly awakened passion for the private interpretation of

Scripture, endeared it to the children of the new era. Nevertheless,

it was undeniably one of the most powerful engines in the conspiracy

to blacken Mary’s fame, and cast a lurid light on the few years of

her troubled reign. It was not so much an epoch-making book as the

embodiment of a movement, the effects of which have not yet passed

away, and even the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, a far more imaginative and

strictly religious work than Foxe’s, did not displace the _Acts and

Monuments_ in the religious life of the nation. The two together did

perhaps more than anything else to wean the people from the old faith.

But, apart from all misrepresentation, exaggeration, distorted evidence

and positive fiction, there remains the fact that a considerable number

of persons did perish at the stake in Mary’s reign, although it is as

great an historical absurdity to apply to Mary the epithet “bloody,”

as it is to attach that of “good” to Queen Elizabeth. Mary did but

sanction that which was not only the common practice throughout

Christendom, but which had been the law of England for more than 150

years, and which continued in force for upwards of a century after

her. Utterly repugnant to modern ideas as is the thought which made

it possible to punish any religious propaganda with the death of the

propagandist, we must admit that Mary, and those whose business it was

to carry out the law, far from entertaining feelings of vengeance,

provided every possible loophole of escape for those under examination.

Moreover, the accused, even on the showing of Foxe, instead of being

the meek and lamb-like martyrs we have been led to consider them,

persistently flouted their judges, and treated them with flippant

insolence and contempt.

Immediately after the revival of the statute, it was Gardiner’s

unwelcome duty, with thirteen other bishops and a number of laymen, to

sit in a commission of inquiry into the teaching of four Churchmen,

Hooper, the deprived Bishop of Gloucester; Rogers, Prebendary of St.

Paul’s; Saunders, Rector of Allhallows, and Taylor, Rector of Hadley in

Sussex. This was the only occasion on which Gardiner presided over a

trial for heresy.

Hooper, by far the most distinguished of the four, had had a singularly

chequered career, even for those stirring times. Perhaps even more

than Cranmer, he had come under the influence of the German reformers.

He had entered the cloister at an early age, and had graduated as a

religious at Oxford, but had returned to secular life, after some fray

in which he was concerned. He fed his mind on the writings of Zwingli

and Bullinger, and identified himself so closely with their opinions,

that on the promulgation of the _Six Articles_ he was obliged to fly

the country. He went to Zürich, the hot-bed of Calvinism, and there

attacked Gardiner’s book on the Holy Eucharist. On Edward’s accession,

he returned to England, and continued the controversy in a lecture

which he delivered on the 1st September 1549. This lecture brought him

into notice and favour with the Council, and when Bonner attacked his

doctrine in a powerful sermon preached to a large congregation at St.

Paul’s, Hooper retaliated by denouncing the Bishop of London.[540]

Bonner was therefore examined as to his belief in the dogma in

question, deprived, and sent to the Tower. But although Hooper was now

made King’s Preacher, he did not allow himself to exult greatly over

his good fortune. “Sharp and dangerous,” said he, “has been my contest

with that bishop; if he be restored again to his office, I shall be

restored to my Father which is in heaven.”[541] He threw himself with

ardour into the war then raging against altars, vestments, priests

and bishops, putting himself at the head of the Gospellers. None of

his contemporaries surpassed him in forcible language. In 1551 some

altars were still standing in the diocese of Chichester, in spite of

the decree of the Council, that they should be destroyed, and Masses

were still surreptitiously offered at some of them.[542] “The bishops

and priests do damnable and devilish superstition,” he exclaimed in one

of his sermons,[543] “saying Mass, conjuring the holy water bucket and

the like, in the congregation of God.... Into the sea with all clerks

who will not preach the true doctrine and teach the catechism.” The

Council owed it mainly to Hooper, if their behests were at last obeyed.

“So long as the altars remain, the ignorant people and evil-persuaded

priests will dream of sacrifice,” he persisted, until even the places

where the altars had stood were whitewashed, so that no vestige of

them might remain. In one of his pungent sermons, he went so far as to

condemn Cranmer’s new Prayer Book, as savouring too much of Popery.

For this he was brought before the Council, but came out of the debate

victorious, and was offered a bishopric which he refused, saying, “I

cannot put on me a surplice and a cope. I cannot swear by created

beings.” Even Edward’s Government found his eloquence inconvenient, and

he was sent to the Fleet for his intemperate preaching.[544] He was at

length consecrated Bishop of Gloucester, with the usual ceremonies,

but was afterwards allowed to discard the hated vestments of

Episcopacy, “the rags of the harlot of Babylon,” as he described them.

He does not seem to have had any scruple in holding the bishopric of

Worcester _in commendam_; but he consistently maintained the greatest

simplicity, forbade the people under his jurisdiction, to stand at the

reading of the Gospel, or to kneel when they received Communion.[545]

He was indefatigable in striving to enlighten the gross ignorance

of his clergy. “Out of 300, 168 were unable to repeat the Ten

Commandments, 31 knew not where to find them in the Bible, 40 could not

find the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible, and 31 did not know who framed

it.”[546]

On the 1st September 1553, Hooper was again committed to the Fleet,

not apparently on a charge of religion, but for debts due to the

Crown.[547] While he was in prison, the statute against Lollardy was

again enforced, and he and his three companions were examined as to

their doctrine. They pleaded conscientious objections to the religion

restored by the Queen. Gardiner allowed them twenty-four hours

for reflection, but on their second refusal to retract, they were

excommunicated, degraded, and handed over to the civil power. Hooper

was sent back to Gloucester, where he suffered at the stake. Rogers was

burned at Smithfield, Saunders at Coventry, and Taylor at Hadley.

Nevertheless, Gardiner was by no means the savage tyrant Foxe

represents him to be. His personal kindness to the proscribed brethren

was amply acknowledged by them. He furnished Peter Martyr with funds

to escape out of England, shielded Thomas Smith, formerly Secretary

to Edward VI., from persecution, and generously allowed him a yearly

pension of £100 for his support. Of his behaviour to Roger Ascham,

the reformer himself said, “Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester,

High Chancellor of England, treated me with the utmost humanity and

favour, so that I cannot easily decide whether Paget was more ready

to commend me, or Winchester to protect and benefit me; there were

not wanting some, who on the ground of religion, attempted to stop

the flow of his benevolence towards me, but to no purpose. I owe very

much to the humanity of Winchester, and not only I, but many others

who have experienced his kindness.”[548] One of the “many others” was

John Frith, whom Gardiner did his best to save.[549] It was said,

that even the Duke of Northumberland would not have perished, had the

Chancellor’s counsels prevailed.

Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley had remained in the Tower, where at first

they had enjoyed considerable freedom, till March 1554. Ridley dined

frequently at the Lieutenant’s table, and he and Cranmer were allowed

the liberty of the Queen’s garden, Latimer being kept more straitly.

But after Wyatt’s rebellion, the Tower being crowded with prisoners,

the three bishops were put together in one room, and to them was added

Ridley’s chaplain, John Bradford. In the spring of 1554, they were sent

to Oxford, to take part in a theological discussion on the Mass.

Ridley, the most learned of the three, was born in 1500 and was

consequently fifty-four years old at the time of the disputation.

He had adopted the principles of the German reformers in 1536, and

renounced his belief in transubstantiation in the year of Henry’s

death, after which he laboured strenuously to defend and spread the

new doctrines. Cranmer acknowledged him his superior in controversy,

and during the disputation it was said of the three bishops: “Latimer

leaneth to Cranmer, Cranmer leaneth to Ridley and Ridley to the

singularity of his own wit”. Nevertheless in arguing, he always

referred to Cranmer’s book.

Latimer joined to the Puritan sympathies of Hooper the weakness of

character which signalised Cranmer. He had been so deeply imbued with

the spirit of the German divines as to lose Henry’s favour, but as

he ardently advocated the King’s first divorce, Anne Boleyn procured

him a bishopric. He was however regarded with some suspicion, and

was twice convented before Convocation, and required to subscribe

to certain articles presented to him for his acceptance. He refused,

was pronounced contumacious and excommunicated, until he retracted,

and sued for forgiveness. He was ultimately pardoned, but relapsed

into Protestantism, and was only saved from prosecution by a timely

utterance in favour of the divorce, when he was made Bishop of

Worcester. In 1536 he was called on to examine some Anabaptists for

heresy, and saw no reason why they should not suffer the rigour of the

law for their opinions. Later, he thus defended their execution: “This

is a deceivable argument,” said Latimer “he went to his death boldly:

ergo he standeth in a just quarrel. The Anabaptists that were burnt

here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw

them not myself) went to their death even intrepid, as ye will say,

without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well, let them go. There was

in the old doctor’s time another kind of poisoned heretics that were

called Donatists, and these heretics went to their execution as though

they should have gone to some jolly recreation or banquet, to some

belly-cheer or to a play.”[550]

But in spite of these words, Latimer was soon afterwards as busy

as any Anabaptist in destroying images, and during the reaction of

Henry’s orthodoxy, in the matter of the _Six Articles_, was in some

danger. Cromwell forced him to resign his see,[551] and he was kept

in a sort of honourable confinement by the Bishop of Chichester. On

his release, he was forbidden to preach, to go to either university

or to return to his diocese. He found himself in the Tower, in 1546,

for his openly professed disbelief in Purgatory, but was liberated

on Edward’s accession, and licensed as a preacher. Latimer threw in

his lot boldly with Somerset’s Protectorate, and when Admiral Seymour

was executed, and the people murmured, he justified his death from

the pulpit, and told them that the Admiral had gone to everlasting

damnation. The passages in his sermon in which this sentiment was

expressed were afterwards eliminated as too scandalous for Latimer’s

credit as a divine. His eloquence was so overwhelming, that its effect

was generally to excite the people on whatever subject he preached, and

an entry in the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Margaret’s, Westminster,

records the fact that the sum of one shilling and sixpence was paid

some time in 1549, “for mending of divers pews that were broken when

Dr. Latimer did preach”.[552] When in 1550, a fresh commission was

appointed to eradicate heresy, and to enforce the new _Book of Common

Prayer_, Latimer was one of the thirty-two commissioners. On Mary’s

accession, the Council, for some reason unknown, declared his behaviour

seditious, and sent him a close prisoner to the Tower, denying him the

liberty accorded to Cranmer and Ridley. The latter, however, contrived

to communicate with him, and the two together wrote a defence of their

opinions, through the intermediary of Latimer’s servant, who was

allowed to attend him. After the Oxford disputation in October 1555,

Cardinal Pole wrote to Philip, telling him that he had received letters

from the King’s confessor, Friar Soto, who had been sent to persuade

the prisoners to recant, and that Soto had given him an account of what

he had done “with those two heretics, Ridley and Latimer after their

condemnation”. One of them would not even speak to him, and although

the other spoke, “it profited nothing, it being easily intelligible

than no one can save those whom God has rejected, and thus according

to report, the sentence was executed, the people looking on not

unwillingly, as it was known that nothing had been neglected with

regard to their salvation”.[553]

Giovanni Michiel also informed his Government that the execution of the

sentences “against the heretics, the late Bishop of London, Ridley,

and Latimer, Bishop of Worcester had been decided on, there being no

hope or visible sign of their choosing to recant”.[554] Gardiner had

nothing to do with the conviction of the two bishops, beyond the

fact that, as Chancellor, he was at the head of the civil power which

passed sentence upon them. He is known to have been personally averse

from the persecution, and, as we have already seen, he substantially

helped some of the suspects to leave the country before proceedings

could be taken against them. None the less, however, Foxe goes out

of his way to attribute to him the most horrible and inhuman desire

for, and satisfaction at, their death. The apparent object of the

martyrologist was to draw his favourite inference in regard to the

temporal judgment of God on miscreants. He says, admitting that he

obtained his information at _third_ hand: “The same day, when Bishop

Ridley and master Latimer suffered at Oxford (being about the 19th day

of October) there came into the house of Stephen Gardiner the old duke

of Norfolk, with the foresaid Master Munday his secretary above named

reporter hereof. The old aged duke, there waiting and tarrying for his

dinner, the bishop being not yet disposed to dine, deferred the time

to three or four o’clock at afternoon. At length, about four of the

clock cometh his servant, posting in all possible speed from Oxford,

bringing intelligence to the bishop, what he had heard and seen: of

whom the said bishop, diligently inquiring the truth of the matter, and

hearing by his man, that fire most certainly was set unto them, cometh

out rejoicing to the duke. ‘Now,’ saith he, ‘let us go to dinner’.

Whereupon they being set down, meat immediately was brought, and the

bishop began merrily to eat. But what followed? The bloody tyrant had

not eaten a few bits, but the sudden stroke of God’s terrible hand

fell upon him in such sort as immediately he was taken from the table,

and so brought to his bed, where he continued the space of fifteen

days in such intolerable anguish and torments ... whereby his body

being miserably inflamed within (who had inflamed so many good martyrs

before) was brought to a wretched end.”[555]

The first thing to be observed in this story is the notable fact,

that “the old duke of Norfolk” could not by any possibility have dined

with Gardiner on the 19th October 1555, having been in his grave since

August 1553. As for “the sudden stroke of God’s terrible hand,” by

which the Bishop was brought to a wretched end, he had been suffering

for some time from dropsy,[556] and died of it, not in his own house,

but at Whitehall, to which place he had been removed, after making

an heroic effort to appear at the opening of Parliament on the 21st

October. It was an act of devotion to the Queen and the country; the

long speech which he then delivered on the state of the royal finances,

resulting in a subsidy which removed the most pressing difficulties of

the Crown. But his strength was exhausted by the strain; he was too

weak to be taken home, and was therefore accommodated in Whitehall

Palace, till his death on the 12th November. He desired during his

last hours, that the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ might be read to

him, and when the reader came to the contrition of St. Peter, Gardiner

exclaimed: “Negavi cum Petro, exivi cum Petro, sed nondum flevi cum

Petro,” alluding to his fall in Henry’s reign.[557]

Cranmer’s execution was delayed for more than five months after the

execution of Ridley and Latimer, in the hope of his recanting. In the

same letter, in which he communicated to Philip the fact of the burning

of the two bishops, Cardinal Pole said:—

“The late Archbishop of Canterbury whose sentence of condemnation is

now expected from Rome, does not show himself so obstinate, and desires

a conference with me. If he can be brought to repent, the Church will

derive no little profit from the salvation of a single soul; but they

are awaiting what may be expected, from the next letters of Father

Soto, and will certify it to your Majesty.”

From his prison in Bocardo, Cranmer had seen his two companions led

to the stake, and the sight had awakened that natural timidity which

underlay and prompted his least praiseworthy actions. It has been said

of him that in his youth, he was cowed and crushed by a tyrannical

master, and so deprived of all manliness of character.[558] He had a

legal rather than a broad or elevated mind, and this was of service to

him in keeping clear of the pitfalls, into which so many of his friends

fell, at least temporarily. It had also enabled him to avail himself of

the tide, which taken at the flood led on to fame and fortune. He went

to Cambridge at the age of fourteen, but although he remained there

for many years, his name does not once appear among the learned or

distinguished men of the University. Erasmus, who knew every one with

any claim to notice, lived in the same street with him, but makes no

mention of him in his letters.

Cranmer took his degree of B.A. at the age of twenty-two, and proceeded

M.A. three years later. The fact of his marriage, by which he forfeited

the fellowship of his college (Jesus), implies that he had then no

intention of taking orders; and he probably meant to adopt the law as a

profession.[559] His first wife was the daughter of an innkeeper, known

by the name of Black Joan. To support himself and her, he accepted a

readership at Buckingham Hall, afterwards Magdalene College, and lived

with his wife at the Dolphin, her father’s inn. But Black Joan died

in childbirth, and Cranmer was then reinstated in his fellowship. He

proceeded D.D., and was ordained in 1523, at the age of thirty-four.

Either Gardiner, or Fox, Bishop of Hereford, first brought him to the

King’s notice, by quoting a shrewd remark which Cranmer had made, on

the subject of Henry’s “private matter”.

“Who is this Dr. Cranmer?” asked the King. “Where is he? Is he still at

Waltham? I will speak to him; let him be sent for out of hand. This man

I trow has got the right sow by the ear.”[560]

The interview proved satisfactory, and Henry charged Cranmer to draw up

a statement of his view of the King’s marriage. In order to be able to

confer often with him, he lodged him in the household of the Earl of

Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn’s father, at Durham Place. A royal chaplaincy

was conferred on him, besides the emoluments of the Archdeaconry

of Taunton. He visited Rome with Lord Wiltshire, and the Pope,

unsuspicious of what was being plotted, made him Grand Penitentiary for

England. He then went to Germany, on private business of his own, and

there married Osiander’s[561] niece. At this juncture Warham died, and

Henry, who saw that Cranmer was “an admirable tool, so timid that he

could ever be terrorised into submission, so tender with himself that

the King’s policy admirably fitted in with his sensuality,” advanced

him over the heads of better men, and made him Primate of all England.

Probably the dignity was unsolicited, possibly undesired, and perhaps

it was even thrust upon him with unwillingness on his part. If he had

aspired to it, he would scarcely, as things then were, have married a

second time, nor would he have delayed his return to England, after the

death of Archbishop Warham. Ambition had no inordinate share in his

character. But he had signified to the King, that sentence as to the

validity of his marriage should be given, not by the Pope, but by the

Archbishop of Canterbury, and it was to this opinion that his sudden

promotion was due.[562] The bulls from Rome were to be obtained at the

cost of any duplicity, and they were in Henry’s hands before the Pope

had any inkling of what was intended.

The appointment was unpopular in England. Cranmer was still

comparatively unknown, and had as yet done nothing to justify the

extraordinary rise in his fortunes. Public opinion had designated

Gardiner as Warham’s successor, and under normal conditions, he would

probably have been chosen. But lately, he had shown himself less

pliable than suited Henry’s convenience, and the King knew that he

could count absolutely on Cranmer, who was accordingly consecrated on

the 30th March, which that year fell on Passion Sunday. Immediately

before the ceremony, the new Archbishop called four witnesses, and in

their presence declared before a notary, that he did not intend to bind

himself, by the oath of obedience to the Pope which he was about to

take, to do anything that should appear to him contrary to the law of

God, the King’s prerogative or the statutes of the realm. When he knelt

to take this oath, he repeated his protest, and immediately afterwards

swore obedience to the Pope in the usual form. Just before receiving

the pallium, he made his third protest, and again took the oath of

obedience.[563]

Immediately after pledging himself to obey the Pope, he took the

following oath to the King for his temporalities: “I Thomas Cranmer

renounce and utterly forsake all such claims, words, sentences and

grants which I have of the Pope’s Holiness in his Bulls of the

Archbishopric of Canterbury, that in any manner, wise, is or may be

hurtful or prejudicial to your Highness, your heirs, successors,

estate or dignity royal, _knowledging myself to take and hold the

said Archbishopric immediately and only of your Highness and of none

other_,” etc.[564]

Cranmer had been made Archbishop, solely that he might advance “the

King’s matter” which had little chance of being settled at Rome

according to the royal pleasure. Therefore on the 3rd May, he rendered

his first service to Henry by pronouncing a sentence, declaring that

his marriage with Katharine of Arragon was invalid. On the 28th, he

further declared Henry’s union with Anne Boleyn good and valid,[565]

and to stop men’s tongues, prohibited all preaching throughout his

diocese till further notice, a measure that was significant of public

opinion.

In May 1536, the man whom Anne had virtually made Archbishop, and who

had made her Queen, at Henry’s command, declared and decreed that “the

marriage between our sovereign lord the King and the lady Anne had

always been without effect”. In January 1540, he married Anne of Cleves

to the King, and six months later, pronounced her sentence of divorce.

In 1541, he favoured Henry with yet another decree _nisi_, to relieve

him of his fifth wife, Katharine Howard. He examined Friar Forest

on his refusal to acknowledge the King as supreme Head, and handed

him over to his executioners. But the visit of the German Lutherans,

to negotiate the terms of union between the Church of England and

the reformed Churches of the Continent, marked a crisis in his life,

and the seeds of Protestantism were sown which were to bear abundant

fruit in the next reign.[566] Nevertheless, he still maintained the

Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemned John Lambert

and Anne Askew to the flames for maintaining the contrary, while later

on, he sentenced Joan Bocher to death for holding that Christ was not

incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He also handed over several

Anabaptists to the secular arm, to be burned at Smithfield.

On Henry’s promulgation of the _Six Articles of Religion_, one of

which forbade the marriage of priests, Cranmer was obliged to dismiss

his wife. For some time past, it had cost him no little trouble and

inconvenience to conceal her presence at Lambeth, where she lived in

more than oriental seclusion. When he travelled, he was obliged to

carry her from place to place in a chest, with holes contrived to allow

of her breathing. On one lamentable occasion the chest was placed the

wrong side uppermost, which so incommoded her that she was forced to

betray her presence by screaming.[567]

Cranmer was never popular with his clergy. “Of all sorts of men,” he

complained, “I am daily informed that priests report the worst of me.”

Conspiracies were even set on foot against him, but he was too useful

to Henry to fear a fall, and was the one man in the realm to whom

the King was ever faithful. To all complaints against the Archbishop

Henry turned a deaf ear. “I would you should well understand,” said

he, “that I account my lord of Canterbury as faithful a man towards

me as ever was prelate in this realm, and one to whom I am many ways

beholden.” The praise was certainly not exaggerated. Even in matters

of purely theological moment, Cranmer was never at variance with his

master, for he held no opinion or doctrine that was not at Henry’s

service. Incredible as it seems, Cranmer once said to him: “This is

mine opinion and sentence at this present, which nevertheless I do

not temerariously define, but refer the judgment thereof wholly unto

your Majesty”.[568] Speaking in Cranmer’s defence, the Archbishop’s

secretary Morice unconsciously deprived him of every vestige of

fidelity to principle. “Men ought to consider,” he pleaded, “with whom

he had to do, specially with such a prince as would not be bridled, nor

be against-said in any of his requests.”[569]

In deference to the wishes of the Council, he made several alterations

in the oath administered to the King at Edward’s coronation, but he

said the prescribed Mass of the Holy Ghost, and also sang a Requiem for

the repose of Henry’s soul. Nevertheless, the whole tendency of the

new Government was in sympathy with his private feelings, and it was

not long before he made up his mind to swim with the tide. He headed a

commission which deprived Bonner and Gardiner, and held a visitation

of his diocese, to ascertain whether the destruction of images had

been fully carried out. A bill having been passed in Parliament, “to

take away all positive laws made against the marriage of priests,”

Cranmer sent for his wife, invested in Abbey lands the money granted

to him by Henry and confirmed by Edward’s Council, invited Peter

Martyr, Martin Bucer and other Calvinists to settle in England, and did

all he could to promote union between the Church of England, and the

reformed Churches of the Continent. He renounced the Mass, advocated

the overthrow of the altars and declared transubstantiation to be

heresy. The _Book of Common Prayer_ which he had compiled and put forth

in 1551, under the auspices of the Government, having been criticised

by the foreign Protestants, he set about its revision, aided by the

Bishop of Ely. The so-called Black Rubric, which forbade the practice

of kneeling at the Communion, was introduced a little later. Towards

the close of 1552, the forty-two articles, afterwards reduced to

thirty-nine, were published by the King’s command.

Cranmer was instrumental in Seymour’s execution, and by his treachery

was partly responsible for Somerset’s fall. His abject submission

to the upstart lords of the Council of Regency led to an act of

high treason, by inducing him to sign Edward’s will drawn up by

Northumberland.[570] Had Mary really possessed the vindictive feelings

attributed to her, she had ample pretext for ordering his apprehension,

thus avenging her own and her mother’s cause. But it was not until

some time after the rebellion, when Cranmer had signalised himself by

an act of open and aggressive opposition to her measures, that his

liberty was threatened. Even then, opportunity was given him to escape

if he had so willed. On his committal to the Tower, he was charged with

having caused the Lady Jane to be proclaimed, and for sending twenty

armed men to Cambridge to aid Northumberland. He pleaded not guilty,

but afterwards withdrew the plea, and confessed to the indictment. He

was then sentenced for treason, and would have been executed at Tyburn,

but was saved by Mary’s clemency. Being sent to Oxford with Latimer and

Ridley, to dispute with the most learned scholars in both universities,

he appeared at St. Mary’s before the prolocutor, Dr. Weston, and

thirty-three commissioners, and was presented with three articles

setting forth the doctrine of the Mass, drawn up by Convocation. All

three bishops refused to subscribe to them, and a disputation was

appointed for the following Monday.

The day’s proceedings had been opened by a sermon from Dr. Weston on

the unity of the Church, which he accused Cranmer of having violated

by making, as it were, every year a new faith. The Queen, he said in

conclusion, had commissioned the doctors assembled, on his repentance,

to restore him to the unity of the Church.

On the day appointed for the disputation, Dr. Chedsey, Prebendary of

St. Paul’s, afterwards a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, was Cranmer’s

principal opponent, and kept up the discussion for nearly six hours,

at the end of which time the assembly dispersed crying, _Vicit

Veritas!_ Cranmer wrote an account of what had passed, and complained

to the Council that he had been unfairly treated in argument. He

begged them to obtain for him the Queen’s pardon. Thereupon he was

allowed to reopen the subject with John Harpsfield, a divinity student,

and Dr. Weston,[571] but in the end, it was declared that neither

Cranmer nor the other two bishops had successfully maintained their

_theses_, and they were all sent back to Bocardo. Here they remained

for eighteen months, continually pressed to recant. It was then

decided that they should have a formal trial for heresy, and Cardinal

Pole, as Papal Legate, was appointed to conduct it. The proceedings

with regard to Cranmer, as Primate of all England, were different

from those observed with the Bishops of London and Worcester. He was

cited to appear at Rome, to answer the charges made against him, but

this was a mere matter of form, as he was a prisoner, and the Pope

commissioned Cardinal Dupuy, who delegated his functions to the Bishop

of Gloucester, to represent his Holiness.[572] But Cranmer refused to

recognise the Pope’s authority, declaring that he had sworn never again

to consent to papal jurisdiction. On being reminded that he had also

sworn obedience to Rome, he sheltered himself behind the protest which

he had made before doing so. Sixteen charges in all were formulated

against him, supported by eight witnesses. He admitted the facts, but

not their interpretation, and objected to the witnesses as having also

formerly abjured the Pope. A report of the trial having been sent to

Rome, Cranmer wrote to the Queen, complaining that his “own natural

sovereign” had cited him before a foreign tribunal. Judgment was at

last pronounced against him for heresy in the papal courts, and he was

accordingly deprived, but the sentence of degradation was not carried

out for five months, during which time no efforts were spared to save

him. A papal commission was then issued to Bonner, Bishop of London,

and Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, for his degradation. The scene was a

painful one, and Dr. Thirlby is said to have been moved to tears during

the ceremony. The day fixed for it was the 14th February 1556. Cranmer

was brought before the two bishops at Christ Church, and the function

took place outside the church, in the great quadrangle. He was clothed

successively in vestments proper to a sub-deacon, a deacon, a priest, a

bishop and an archbishop, one over the other, but all made of canvas,

with a mitre and pallium of the same material.

Lastly, a crosier was put into his hand, and Bonner standing before

him, declared the cause of his degradation, Cranmer interrupting him

at intervals with protests and retorts. When the ceremony of unvesting

began, he refused to yield up the crosier, which was then wrested from

him by force, and when the pallium was to be removed, he exclaimed,

“Which of you, having a pallium is able to divest me of mine!” They

replied, that they held their commission from the Pope. He then drew

out of his sleeve a formal protest, appealing from the Pope to a

General Council, and handed the document to Thirlby, who took it,

saying, “Well, if it may be admitted it shall,” and bursting into

tears, he promised to petition the Queen for a pardon. When Cranmer

had been stripped of all the vestments, with appropriate words and

ceremonies at each of them, he was degraded from his minor orders,

after which his hair was closely cut, and Bonner proceeded to scrape

his hands, at the places where he had been anointed priest. His gown

was then taken off, and that of a yeoman substituted, in which he

returned to prison. This was the regular form of degrading a bishop.

Thirlby was as good as his word. Cranmer had drawn up two separate

forms of submission before his degradation, and in consequence of

these, a pardon such as had been granted to other recanters, was

contemplated by the Council. But it was finally decided that the

enormity of his offences required that he should suffer “for ensample

sake”. During the six weeks which intervened before his execution, he

made repeated recantations “without fear, and without hope of favour”

as he himself said, “for the discharge of his conscience, and as a

warning to others,” abjuring his former errors, and “beseeching the

people, the Queen and the Pope, to pray for his wretched soul”.

He signed in all seven recantations, and it was expected that he would

read the last of them at his execution. But instead of doing so, at

the supreme moment, he repudiated them all, expressing repentance for

having written “contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and

writ for fear of death”.[573] Being bound to the stake, he is said

to have thrust his right hand into the flame exclaiming: “This hand

hath offended”.[574] From first to last, he had proved himself so base

a dissembler, that no confidence could possibly have been placed in

the sincerity of his recantations. That he had lied therein also, he

admitted by his final recantation of them all.

Cranmer suffered according to the notions of the day, on his own

principles, and for causes which he had himself judged sufficient for

death. He had not only sent men and women to the stake for the very

same opinions which he afterwards professed, and had burned Catholics

because they would not acknowledge the King’s supreme Headship, but had

also burned Protestants because their Protestantism differed from his

own. All things considered, it was wonderful that he did not receive

shorter shrift, and we do not find that his miserable end excited much

regret or pity among his contemporaries.[575]

It was part of Foxe’s method, in claiming for his martyrs the sympathy

of his readers, to cast as much odium as possible on their judges.

Thus, Bonner, Bishop of London, has been made to appear an extremely

violent persecutor, although after the publication of his articles in

1554, he was rather the reverse of zealous in enforcing the revived

statute. But whatever may be said for or against it, it was the law of

the land, and Bonner could no more help sitting on the Bench in his

own diocese to examine into the offences committed against it, than

could any other judge of any court over which he had jurisdiction. His

functions were purely judicial, and it does not anywhere appear that he

was guided by passion, or that he overstepped his prerogative. He had,

on the contrary, been somewhat negligent in the exercise of the duty

which the law imposed on him, and hence the reprimand which he received

in the following letter from the King and Queen in Council:—

“Right reverend Father in God, right trusty and well-beloved, we greet

you well. And whereas of late, we addressed our letters to the justices

of peace, within every of the counties of this our realm, whereby,

amongst other instructions given them for the good order and quiet

government of the country round about them, they are willed to have a

special regard unto such disordered persons as (forgetting their duty

towards God and us) do lean to any erroneous and heretical opinions,

refusing to show themselves conformable to the Catholic religion of

Christ’s Church; wherein, if they cannot by good admonitions and fair

means reform them, they are willed to deliver them to the ordinary,

to be by him charitably travailed withal, and removed (if it may be)

from their naughty opinions; or else if they continue obstinate, to be

ordered according to the laws provided in that behalf: understanding

now, to our no little marvel, that divers of the said disordered

persons, being by the justices of peace for their contempt and

obstinacy, brought to the ordinaries to be used as is aforesaid, are

either refused to be received at their hands, or if they be received,

are neither so travailed with, as christian charity requireth, nor yet

proceeded withal, according to the order of justice, but are suffered

to continue in their errors, to the dishonour of Almighty God, and

dangerous example of others; like as we find this matter very strange,

so we have thought convenient both to signify this our knowledge, and

therewith also to admonish you to have in this behalf such regard

henceforth to the office of a good pastor and bishop, as when any such

offenders shall be by the said officers or justices of peace brought

unto you, you, to use your good wisdom and discretion, in procuring to

remove them from their errors, if it may be; or else in proceeding

against them (if they shall continue obstinate) according to the order

of the laws; so as through your good furtherance, both God’s glory may

be better advanced, and the Commonwealth more quietly governed. Given

under our signet, at our honour of Hampton Court, the 24th May, the

first and second years of our reigns.”[576]

It will be admitted that the above document does not correspond in any

sense to the “rattling letters” by which popular historians suppose

Mary to have stimulated the zeal of her “bloody executioners”. Its

tone is calm, judicial, charitable and even wise, if we consider the

stand-point from which the great majority then regarded any divergence

from authorised doctrine.

Foxe would have us believe that Bonner entertained a furious, personal

grudge against those who were brought to be examined, and the pages

of the _Acts and Monuments_ teem with such picturesque allusions to

him as “bloody wolf,” “the bishop being in a raging heat, as one clean

void of humanity,” “he was in a marvellous rage,” “in a great fury,”

etc.; but when we divest the stories of these adornments, there is

little or nothing to support the epithets. As a learned writer has

aptly remarked, this kind of description reminds us of the mountain

being in labour, and bringing forth—a mouse.[577] For when we examine

what Bonner, even according to Foxe, really did say, on the occasion

of his appearing before the Commissioners of the Council in 1549 when

he was supposed to be in such a “raging heat,” that he appeared “as

one clean void of humanity,” we find that turning himself about to the

people he said: “Well, now, hear what the Bishop of London saith for

his part”. But the Commissioners “seeing his inordinate contumacy,

denied him to speak any more, saying that he had used himself very

disobediently”.[578] Equally unjustified by the context are most of

the other vituperative epithets, by which the martyrologist sought to

prejudice Bonner in the minds of his credulous and uncritical readers.

The truth is, that when brought before the bishops, the would-be

martyrs, by Foxe’s own showing, frequently twitted their judges, gave

them home thrusts and “privy nips,” and behaved themselves generally in

a very insolent, provocative and irritating manner. In spite of this

however, the judges seldom lost their tempers, and bore with these

things in a singularly good-humoured spirit, doing their best to give

the accused a chance of escape. Of the six who came under Bonner’s

examination on the 8th February 1555, Foxe affirms that the bishop

sentenced them the next day after they were charged, and killed them

out of hand without mercy, “such quick speed these men could make in

despatching their business at once”—a terrible indictment if it could

be proved. But Bonner not only knew about the accused, long before the

8th February, three of them having been for months in prison, where

he had again and again reasoned with them; but after sentence was

passed, an interval of five weeks was the shortest respite granted for

reflection, before any one of them was executed. The others we find

suffered consecutively on the 26th, 28th and 29th March, and on the

10th June.

With as little accuracy did Foxe pen the following remarkable distich,

which however served his purpose of vilifying Bonner.

This cannibal in three years space three hundred martyrs slew,

They were his food, he loved so blood, he sparèd none he knew.[579]

Of the 200 persons who were burned for spreading opinions considered

subversive of public order, in the reign of Mary, about 120 came

under Bonner’s jurisdiction, so that Foxe’s assertion that the Bishop

of London “slew” 300 must be discounted by more than half, leaving

a sufficiently heavy record. But his supposed thirst for blood has

no foundation in fact, for we have many instances of his labouring

not unsuccessfully in causing many to recant, upon which they were

restored to liberty. Instances of Foxe’s perversion of truth might be

multiplied, but enough has been said, to prove his untrustworthiness

wherever his prejudices are involved. An appreciation of Bonner’s

character from the pen of the late Dr. S. R. Maitland will fitly close

this chapter.

“In plainer terms, setting aside _declamation_, and looking at the

_details of facts_ left by those who may be called if people please,

Bonner’s victims and their friends, we find very consistently

maintained, the character of a man, straightforward and hearty,

familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coarse, naturally

hot-tempered, but obviously (by the testimony of his enemies)

placable and easily entreated, capable of bearing most patiently,

much intemperate and insolent language, much reviling and low abuse

directed against himself personally, against his order, and against

those peculiar doctrines and practices of his church, for maintaining

which, he had himself suffered the loss of all things, and borne long

imprisonment. At the same time, not incapable of being provoked into

saying harsh and passionate things, but much more frequently meaning

nothing by the threatenings and slaughter which he breathed out, than

to intimidate those on whose ignorance and simplicity argument seemed

to be thrown away—in short we can scarcely read with attention any one

of the cases detailed by those who were no friends of Bonner, without

seeing in him a judge who (even if we grant that he was dispensing bad

laws badly) was obviously desirous to save the prisoner’s life.”[580]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 507: De Noailles told the Cardinal of Lorraine that the Queen

of England caused incessant prayers and processions to be made for

obtaining peace; and he declared that he believed her to be sincere,

though he attributed less good intentions to the Emperor (_Ambassades_,

iv., p. 336). One of Cardinal Pole’s letters in St. Mark’s Library at

Venice, dated 20th April 1555, says that “last evening the Queen sent

for him [de Noailles] to show him the despatch she was writing to her

ambassador in France, charging him to tell the French King how much she

rejoiced at his being so well disposed towards the peace, and that she

also had performed every good office in favour of it with the Emperor”.

A peace conference was about to take place at Ardres, to which Mary had

pledged herself to send six commissioners.]

[Footnote 508: _Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria_, p. 64 _et seq._]

[Footnote 509: But it was not only to the poor that Mary showed

kindness and a tender charity. All sorts and conditions of men

experienced her help in the hour of need, one instance of which

appeared in an article on Harrow School, in the _Quarterly Review_ for

January 1899. This instance was taken from a letter belonging to the

Roper family, in which it is recorded, that after the death of one of

the family, who had been keeper of Enfield Chase and Marylebone Forest,

“Queen Mary came into our house within a little of my father’s death,

and found my mother weeping, and took her by the hand, and lifted her

up—for she neeled—and bade her be of good cheer, for her children

should be well provided for. Afterward my brother Richard and I, being

the two eldest, were sent to Harrow to school, and were there till we

were almost men.”]

[Footnote 510: _Venetian Calendar_, vol. vi., pt. i., 80, partly in

cipher; deciphered by Signor Luigi Pasini.]

[Footnote 511: Strype, _Memorials of Cranmer_, vol. i., p. 499.

_Ecclesiastical Memorials_, vol. iii., pt. i., p. 417.]

[Footnote 512: Stow, p. 624.]

[Footnote 513: See Machyn’s _Diary_, p. 84. Wriothesley (vol. ii.,

p. 128) gives the sequel to the outrage. “The xx day of April in the

forenoon, in the consistory of Paul’s was arraigned the said Wm. Branch

_alias_ Flower, who struck the priest on Easter Day in the parish

church of St. Margaret in Westminster. And being condemned of heresy,

he was delivered to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex. This Flower

was once a monk in Ely Abbey, professed at his age of 17 years, and

after made priest, and then married and had three or four children; and

then ran about the country using the art of surgery. The 24 of April,

the said Wm. Flower, for his said fact, had his right hand smitten off,

and for opinions in matters of religion was burned in the sanctuary

nigh to St. Margaret’s churchyard.” Flower is included by Foxe among

the martyrs.]

[Footnote 514: Stow, p. 624.]

[Footnote 515: _Acts of the Privy Council_, vol. v., p. 30, new series.]

[Footnote 516: In a letter from Calvin to the Duke of Somerset in

1548, the Reformer says: “As I understand you have two kinds of

mutineers against the King and the estates of the realm; the one are

a fantastical people who under colour of the Gospels would set all to

confusion; the others are stubborn people in the superstition of the

Antichrist of Rome. These altogether do deserve to be well punished

by a sword, seeing they do conspire against the King and against God

who had set him in the royal seat. Of all things let there be _no

moderation_. It is the bane of genuine improvement” (MSS. Edward VI.,

vol. v.).]

[Footnote 517: _Knox’s Works_, vol. iv., pp. 500-15, Laing’s edition.]

[Footnote 518: Wilkins, _Concilia_, iv., 44.]

[Footnote 519: Lingard, vol. v., p. 463.]

[Footnote 520: Froude, _History of England_, vol. x., p. 360.]

[Footnote 521: _History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in

Europe_, vol. i., p. 45.]

[Footnote 522: Dodd, vol. iii., p. 400.]

[Footnote 523: Franciscan Chapter Register, p. 364.]

[Footnote 524: As late as the reign of Charles II, boiling alive was

the penalty inflicted for clipping the King’s coin.]

[Footnote 525: _Summa Theologica_, S. Thomæ, Pars 2^a, 2^a, 2^æ, Q. I.,

Art. 3.]

[Footnote 526: Cap. 9.]

[Footnote 527: Wilkins, _Concilia_, iii., 739.]

[Footnote 528: F. W. Maitland, _Roman Canon Law in the Church of

England_, p. 166.]

[Footnote 529: _Apology_, ch. xlix.; _English Works_, p. 925.]

[Footnote 530: Collier, vol. vi., p. 86, edition 1852. MS. St. Mark’s

Library, Cod. xxiv., Cl. x., p. 208. For a translation of the whole

document, which differs slightly from the version of the English

fragment, see Appendix F., also three articles in the _British

Magazine_, 1839-40.]

[Footnote 531: Reeves’ _History of the English Law_, edited by F. W.

Finlason, vol. iii., p. 514 note.]

[Footnote 532: Reeves’ _History of the English Law_, edited by F. W.

Finlason, vol. iii., p. 560 note.]

[Footnote 533: Strype, _Life of Archbishop Grindal_, p. 25.]

[Footnote 534: _Dictionary of National Biography_, art. “John Foxe,

Martyrologist”.]

[Footnote 535: Part iii., p. 412.]

[Footnote 536: Quoted in Fuller’s _Worthies_, under Barkshire, p. 92.]

[Footnote 537: Anthony à Wood, _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, vol. i., p. 691 _et

seq._]

[Footnote 538: _Dictionary of National Biography_, art. “John Foxe”.

At Cheddar, not many years ago, a great black-letter volume of the

_Book of Martyrs_ was chained to the reading-desk. In the _Life

of Lord Macaulay_ it is stated, that as a child the sight of this

book fascinated him, and that he sat in the family pew on a Sunday

afternoon, longing to get at its bewitching pages. Lutterworth, until

recently, possessed a chained copy of the book.]

[Footnote 539: _Dictionary of National Biography_, art. “William Laud”.]

[Footnote 540: Micronius, Superintendent of the Dutch Church to

Bullinger, _Orig. Letters_, p. 557.]

[Footnote 541: _Ibid._, p. 70.]

[Footnote 542: Strype, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_, vol. ii., pt. i., p.

482.]

[Footnote 543: Hooper’s _Sermons on Jonah_.]

[Footnote 544: Council Book of Edward VI., 27th Jan. 1552.]

[Footnote 545: Hooper’s _Later Writings_, p. 132, Parker Society.]

[Footnote 546: _Ibid._, p. 150.]

[Footnote 547: _Acts of the Privy Council_, vol. iv., p. 337.]

[Footnote 548: _Ep._, p. 51, Oxford ed., 1703.]

[Footnote 549: Grenville MS. 11,990. _Letters and Papers_, vi., 600.]

[Footnote 550: _Latimer’s Works_, vol. i., p. 160, Parker Society.]

[Footnote 551: Foxe says that he resigned of his own accord, but

Latimer himself declared the contrary.]

[Footnote 552: Nichols, _Illustrations of Antient Times_, p. 13.]

[Footnote 553: Venetian Archives, MS., St. Mark’s Library, Cod. xxiv.,

Cl. x., 26th (?) Oct. 1555.]

[Footnote 554: _Ibid._, 14th Oct. 1555, Michiel to the Doge and Senate.]

[Footnote 555: _Acts and Monuments_, vol. vii., p. 592. Burnet, who

copied this story from Foxe, omitted the obvious fable as to the Duke

of Norfolk’s presence.]

[Footnote 556: On the 16th September 1555, Giovanni Michiel wrote to

the Doge and Senate: “After the Chancellor’s return from the conference

at Calais, he fell into such a state of _oppilation_, that besides

having become (as the physicians say) jaundiced, he by degrees got

confirmed dropsy, and had it not been for his robust constitution, a

variety of remedies prescribed for him by his English physicians having

been of no use, he would by this time be in a bad way, his physiognomy

being so changed as to astound all who see him. The Emperor has sent

him the remedy he used when first troubled with dropsical symptoms, on

his return from the war of Metz, and should God grant that it take the

same effect on the Bishop of Winchester, it will be very advantageous

for England, he being considered one of the most consummate chancellors

who have filled the post for many years, and should he die, he would

leave few or none so well suited to the charge as himself” (_Venetian

Calendar_, vol. vi., pt. i., 215, Rawdon Brown).]

[Footnote 557: “The xiii day of November doctor Gardiner bishop of

Winchester and lord chancellor of England died in the morning, between

twelve and one of the clock at the king’s palace, the which is called

Whitehall, and by iij of the clock he was brought by water to his own

palace by Saint Mary Overy’s; and by v of the clock, his bowels was

taken out, and buried afore the high altar; and at 6 the knell began

there, and at dirge and Mass continued ringing all the bells, till vij

at night” (Machyn, p. 96).]

[Footnote 558: Dean Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_,

vol. vi., p. 427.]

[Footnote 559: _Ibid._, p. 430.]

[Footnote 560: Dean Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_,

vol. vi., p. 439. Cranmer was being entertained at the house of a Mr.

Cressey at Waltham. Henry was then at Waltham Abbey.]

[Footnote 561: Osiander was a disciple of Luther, with whom he

afterwards quarrelled.]

[Footnote 562: Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops_, vol. vi., pp. 458-61.]

[Footnote 563: This oath, which is to be found in the original Latin,

in Cranmer’s own Register, at Lambeth Palace, Strype claimed to have

copied _verbatim_ therefrom, and he refers his readers to a document

in the appendix to his _Memorials of Cranmer_. On turning however to

this reference, we find only a shortened and garbled version of that

which Cranmer wrote with his own hand. Strype evidently confused the

two oaths, the one which Cranmer took before his consecration, and

that which he pronounced on receiving the pallium, with the result

that neither is correctly given, Strype omitting a whole essential

paragraph. When the _Memorials_ were re-edited, in 1848, by the

Ecclesiastical History Society, which declared that they had been

verified as far as possible, and more correct references added,

wherever it appeared needful, the learned Dr. S. R. Maitland, Librarian

at Lambeth Palace, pointed out that no collation had been made between

the oath, as it stands in the first edition of Strype’s work, and the

original document. Canon Dixon, in treating of this matter, could not

have been aware of Strype’s blunder, or have seen Cranmer’s Register,

for he says; “When he took the oath or oaths of obedience to the Pope,

he made many omissions, and then with an easier conscience proceeded

to the oath to the King for his temporalities” (_History of the Church

of England_, vol. i., p. 158). The form which Cranmer in his Register

admits that he took on receiving the pallium is, with one or two slight

verbal exceptions, the very same as that which Burnet prints (book ii.,

ann. 1532) as “the old oath of canonical obedience to the Pope”. For

the text of Cranmer’s oath see Appendix E to this volume.]

[Footnote 564: Strype, _Memorials of Cranmer_, appendix.]

[Footnote 565: Gairdner, _Cal._, vi., 330. Grants in June 1533 (7).]

[Footnote 566: Hook, vol. vii., p. 30.]

[Footnote 567: Parsons, _The Three Conversions of England_, ii., ch.

vii., p. 371. The author adds: “This is a most certain story, and

testified at this day by Cranmer’s son’s widow yet living, to divers

gentlemen, her friends, from whom myself had it”.]

[Footnote 568: Jenkyns, ii., 103.]

[Footnote 569: MS., Coll. Corp. Chr., Cantab., 128, f. 405. Printed in

Nichol’s _Narrative of the Days of the Reformation_, p. 266.]

[Footnote 570: Cranmer’s name stands first on the list of conspirators,

though the Archbishop was apparently the last to sign, having held out

until it was no longer safe to do so.]

[Footnote 571: Strype, _Memorials of Cranmer_, vol. i., p. 484.]

[Footnote 572: _Ibid._, p. 527 _et seq._]

[Footnote 573: Strype, _Memorials of Cranmer_, vol. i., p. 557.]

[Footnote 574: _Ibid._, p. 558.]

[Footnote 575: For the opinions of two typical Englishmen on the

subject of these executions see Appendix G.]

[Footnote 576: Foxe, vol. vii., p. 86.]

[Footnote 577: S. R. Maitland, _Essays on Subjects Connected with the

Reformation_, p. 422.]

[Footnote 578: Vol. v., p. 765.]

[Footnote 579: Vol. viii., p. 482.]

[Footnote 580: _Essays on Subjects Connected with the Reformation_, p.

423, by S. R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., sometime Librarian to the

late Archbishop of Canterbury, and Keeper of the MSS. at Lambeth.]