the following year was appointed ambassador to the Emperor. In August,
1532, the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant by the death of
Warham, and it was Henry’s pleasure to raise Cranmer to the primacy. The
latter seems to have been truly unwilling to accept his promotion; and
when he found that no reluctance on his part could shake the king’s
resolution, he suggested a difficulty which there were no very obvious
means of removing. The Archbishop must receive his investiture from the
Pope, and at his consecration take an oath of fidelity to his Holiness,
altogether inconsistent with another oath, taken at the same time, of
allegiance to the king. All this had been done without scruple by other
bishops; but Cranmer was already convinced that the Papal authority in
England was a mere usurpation, and plainly told Henry that he would
receive the archbishopric from him alone. Henry was not a man to be
stopped by scruples of conscience of his own or others; so he consulted
certain casuists, who settled the matter by suggesting that Cranmer
should take the obnoxious oath, with a protest that he meant nothing by
it. He yielded to the command of his sovereign and the judgment of the
casuists. His protest was read by himself three times in the most public
manner, and solemnly recorded. It is expedient to notice that the
transaction was public, because some historians, to make a bad matter
worse, still talk of a private protest.
In 1533, he pronounced sentence of divorce against the unhappy
Catherine, and confirmed the marriage of the king with Anne Boleyn. He
was now at leisure to contemplate all the difficulties of his situation.
It is commonly said that Cranmer himself had, at this time, made but
small progress in Protestantism. It is true that he yet adhered to many
of the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church; but he had reached, and
firmly occupied, a position which placed him by many degrees nearer to
the reformed faith than to that in which he had been educated. By
recognising the Scriptures alone as the standard of the Christian faith,
he had embraced the very principle out of which Protestantism flows. It
had already led him to the Protestant doctrine respecting the pardon of
sin, which necessarily swept away all respect for a large portion of the
machinery of Romanism. As a religious reformer, Cranmer could look for
no cordial and honest support from the king. Every one knows that Henry,
when he left the Pope, had no mind to estrange himself more than was
necessary from the Papal Church, and that the cause of religious
reformation owes no more gratitude to him, than the cause of political
liberty owes to those tyrants who, for their own security, and often by
very foul means, have laboured to crush the power of equally tyrannical
nobles. From Gardiner, who, with his party, had been most active and
unscrupulous in helping the king to his divorce and destroying papal
supremacy, Cranmer had nothing to expect but open or secret hostility,
embittered by personal jealousy. Cromwell, indeed, was ready to go with
him any lengths in reform consistent with his own safety; but a sincere
reformer must have been occasionally hampered by an alliance with a
worldly and unconscientious politician. The country at large was in a
state of unusual excitement; but the rupture with Rome was regarded with
at least as much alarm as satisfaction; and it was notorious that many,
who were esteemed for their wisdom and piety, considered the position of
the church to be monstrous and unnatural. The Lollards, who had been
driven into concealment, but not extinguished, by centuries of
persecution, and the Lutherans, wished well to Cranmer’s measures of
reform: but he was not equally friendly to them. They had outstripped
him in the search of truth; and he was unhappily induced to sanction at
least a miserable persecution of those men with whom he was afterwards
to be numbered and to suffer.
His first and most pressing care was by all means to reconcile the minds
of men to the assertion of the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy, because
all further changes must necessarily proceed from the royal authority.
He then addressed himself to what seem to have been the three great
objects of his official exertions,—the reformation of the clerical body,
so as to make their ministerial services more useful; the removal of the
worst part of the prevailing superstitious observances, which were a
great bar to the introduction of a more spiritual worship; and above
all, the free circulation of the Scriptures among the people in their
own language. In this last object he was opportunely assisted by the
printing of what is called Matthews’s Bible, by Grafton and Whitchurch.
He procured, through the intervention of Cromwell, the king’s licence
for the publication, and an injunction that a copy of it should be
placed in every parish church. He hailed this event with unbounded joy;
and to Cromwell, for the active part he took in the matter, he says, in
a letter, “This deed you shall hear of at the great day, when all things
shall be opened and made manifest.”
He had hardly witnessed the partial success of the cause of Reformation,
when his influence over the king, and with it the cause which he had at
heart, began to decline. He had no friendly feeling for those monastic
institutions which the rapacity of Henry had marked for destruction; but
he knew that their revenues might, as national property, be applied
advantageously to the advancement of learning and religion, and he
opposed their indiscriminate transfer to the greedy hands of the
sycophants of the court. This opposition gave to the more unscrupulous
of the Romanists an opportunity to recover their lost ground with the
king, of which they were not slow to avail themselves. They were strong
enough at least to obtain from Parliament, in 1539, (of course through
the good will of their despotic master,) the act of the Six Articles,
not improperly called the “Bloody Articles,” in spite of the determined
opposition of Cranmer: an opposition which he refused to withdraw even
at the express command of the king. Latimer and Shaxton immediately
resigned their bishoprics. One of the clauses of this act, relating to
the marriage of priests, inflicted a severe blow even on the domestic
happiness of Cranmer. In his last visit to the continent, he had taken,
for his second wife, a niece of the celebrated divine Osiander. By
continuing to cohabit with her, he would now, by the law of the land, be
guilty of felony; she was therefore sent back to her friends in Germany.
From this time till the death of Henry in 1546, Cranmer could do little
more than strive against a stream which not only thwarted his plans of
further reformation, but endangered his personal safety; and he had to
strive alone, for Latimer and other friends among the clergy had retired
from the battle, and Cromwell had been removed from it by the hands of
the executioner. He was continually assailed by open accusation and
secret conspiracy. On one occasion his enemies seemed to have compassed
his ruin, when Henry himself interposed and rescued him from their
malice. His continued personal regard for Cranmer, after he had in a
measure rejected him from his confidence, is a remarkable anomaly in the
life of this extraordinary king; of whom, on a review of his whole
character, we are obliged to acknowledge, that in his best days he was a
heartless voluptuary, and that he had become, long before his death, a
remorseless and sanguinary tyrant. It is idle to talk of the
complaisance of the servant to his master, as a complete solution of the
difficulty. That he was, indeed, on some occasions subservient beyond
the strict line of integrity, even his friends must confess; and for the
part which he condescended to act in the iniquitous divorce of Anne of
Cleves, no excuse can be found but the poor one of the general servility
of the times: that infamous transaction has left an indelible stain of
disgrace on the Archbishop, the Parliament, and the Convocation. But
Cranmer could oppose as well as comply: his conduct in the case of the
Six Articles, and his noble interference in favour of Cromwell between
the tiger and his prey, would seem to have been sufficient to ruin the
most accommodating courtier. Perhaps Henry had discovered that Cranmer
had more real attachment to his person than any of his unscrupulous
agents, and he may have felt pride in protecting one who, from his
unsuspicious disposition and habitual mildness, was obviously unfit, in
such perilous times, to protect himself. His mildness indeed was such,
that it was commonly said, “Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and
you make him your friend for life.”
On the accession of Edward new commissions were issued, at the
suggestion of Cranmer, to himself and the other bishops, by which they
were empowered to receive again their bishoprics, as though they had
ceased with the demise of the crown, and to hold them during the royal
pleasure. His object of course was to settle at once the question of the
new king’s supremacy, and the proceeding was in conformity with an
opinion which at one time he undoubtedly entertained, that there are no
distinct orders of bishops and priests, and that the office of bishop,
so far as it is distinguished from that of priests, is simply of civil
origin. The government was now directed by the friends of Reformation,
Cranmer himself being one of the Council of Regency; but still his
course was by no means a smooth one. The unpopularity, which the conduct
of the late king had brought on the cause, was even aggravated by the
proceedings of its avowed friends during the short reign of his son. The
example of the Protector Somerset was followed by a herd of courtiers,
and not a few ecclesiastics, in making reform a plea for the most
shameless rapacity, rendered doubly hateful by the hypocritical pretence
of religious zeal. The remonstrances of Cranmer were of course
disregarded; but his powerful friends were content that, whilst they
were filling their pockets, he should complete, if he could, the
establishment of the reformed church. Henry had left much for the
Reformers to do. Some, indeed, of the peculiar doctrines of Romanism had
been modified, and some of its superstitious observances abolished. The
great step gained was the general permission to read the Scriptures;
and, though even that had been partially recalled, it was impossible to
recall the scriptural knowledge and the spirit of inquiry to which it
had given birth. With the assistance of some able divines, particularly
of his friend and chaplain Ridley, afterwards Bishop of London, Cranmer
was able to bring the services and discipline of the church, well as the
articles of faith, nearly to the state in which we now see them. In
doing this he had to contend at once with the determined hostility of
the Romanists, with dissensions in his own party, and conscientious
opposition from sincere friends of the cause. In these difficult
circumstances his conduct was marked generally by moderation, good
judgment, and temper. But it must be acknowledged that he concurred in
proceedings against some of the Romanists, especially against Gardiner,
which were unfair and oppressive. In the composition of the New Service
Book, as it was then generally called, and of the Articles, we know not
what parts were the immediate work of Cranmer; but we have good evidence
that he was the author of three of the Homilies, those of Salvation, of
Faith, and of Good Works.
It should be observed, that Cranmer, though he early set out from a
principle which might be expected eventually to lead him to the full
extent of doctrinal reformation, made his way slowly and by careful
study of the Scriptures, of which he left behind sufficient proof, to
that point at which we find him in the reign of Edward. It is certain
that during the greater part, if not the whole, of Henry’s reign, he
agreed with the Romanists in the doctrine of the corporal presence and
transubstantiation.
The death of Edward ushered in the storms which troubled the remainder
of his days. All the members of the council affixed their signatures to
the will of the young king, altering the order of succession in favour
of the Lady Jane Grey. Cranmer’s accession to this illegal measure, the
suggestion of the profligate Northumberland, cannot be justified, nor
did he himself attempt to justify it. He appears, weakly and with great
reluctance, to have yielded up his better judgment to the will of his
colleagues, and the opinion of the judges.
Mary had not been long on the throne before Cranmer was committed to the
Tower, attainted of high treason, brought forth to take part in what
seems to have been little better than a mockery of disputation, and then
sent to Oxford, where, with Latimer and Ridley, he was confined in a
common prison. The charge of high treason, which might undoubtedly have
been maintained, was not followed up, and it was not, perhaps, the
intention of the government at any time to act upon it: it was their
wish that he should fall as a heretic. At Oxford he was repeatedly
brought before commissioners delegated by the Convocation, and, in what
were called examinations and disputations, was subjected to the most
unworthy treatment. On the 20th of April, 1554, Cranmer, Ridley, and
Latimer were publicly required to recant, and on their refusal were
condemned as heretics. The commission however having been illegally made
out, it was thought expedient to stay the execution till a new one had
been obtained; which, in the case of Cranmer, was issued by the Pope. He
was consequently dragged through the forms of another trial and
examination; summoned, whilst still a close prisoner, to appear within
eighty days at Rome; and then, by a sort of legal fiction, not more
absurd perhaps than some which still find favour in our own courts,
declared contumacious for failing to appear. Finally, he was degraded,
and delivered over to the secular power. That no insult might be spared
him, Bonner was placed on the commission for his degradation, in which
employment he seems to have surpassed even his usual brutality.
Cranmer had now been a prisoner for more than two years, during the
whole of which his conduct appears to have been worthy of the high
office which he had held, and the situation in which he was placed.
Whilst he expressed contrition for his political offence, and was
earnest to vindicate his loyalty, he maintained with temper and firmness
those religious opinions which had placed him in such fearful peril. Of
the change which has thrown a cloud over his memory, we know hardly any
thing with certainty but the fact of his recantation. Little reliance
can be placed on the detailed accounts of the circumstances which
accompanied it. He was taken from his miserable cell in the prison to
comfortable lodgings in Christchurch, where he is said to have been
assailed with promises of pardon, and allured, by a treacherous show of
kindness, into repeated acts of apostacy. In the mean while the
government had decreed his death. On the 21st of March, 1556, he was
taken from his prison to St. Mary’s Church, and exhibited to a crowded
audience, on an elevated platform, in front of the pulpit. After a
sermon from Dr. Cole, the Provost of Eton, he uttered a short and
affecting prayer on his knees; then rising, addressed an exhortation to
those around him; and, finally, made a full and distinct avowal of his
penitence and remorse for his apostacy, declaring, that the unworthy
hand which had signed his recantation should be the first member that
perished. Amidst the reproaches of his disappointed persecutors he was
hurried from the church to the stake, where he fulfilled his promise by
holding forth his hand to the flames. We have undoubted testimony that
he bore his sufferings with inflexible constancy. A spectator of the
Romanist party says, “If it had been either for the glory of God, the
wealth of his country, or the testimony of the truth, as it was for a
pernicious error, and subversion of true religion, I could worthily have
commended the example, and matched it with the fame of any Father of
ancient time.” He perished in his sixty-seventh year.
All that has been left of his writings will be found in an edition of
“The Remains of Archbishop Cranmer,” lately published at Oxford, in four
volumes 8vo. They give proof that he was deeply imbued with the spirit
of Protestantism, and that his opinions were the result of reflection
and study; though the effect of early impressions occasionally appears,
as in the manner of his appeals to the Apocryphal books, and a
submission to the judgment of the early fathers, in a degree barely
consistent with his avowed principles. See his First Letter to Queen
Mary.
This brief memoir does not pretend to supply the reader with materials
for examining that difficult question, the character of the Archbishop.
It is hardly necessary to refer him to such well-known books as Strype’s
Life of Cranmer, and the recent works of Mr. Todd and Mr. Le Bas.
The time, it seems, has not arrived for producing a strictly impartial
life of this celebrated man. Yet there is doubtless a much nearer
agreement among candid inquirers, whether members of the Church of
England or Roman Catholics, than the language of those who have told
their thoughts to the public might lead us to expect. Those who are cool
enough to understand that the credit and truth of their respective
creeds are in no way interested in the matter, will probably allow, that
the course of reform which Cranmer directed was justified to himself by
his private convictions; and that his motive was a desire to establish
what he really believed to be the truth. Beyond this they will
acknowledge that there is room for difference of opinion. Some will see,
in the errors of his life, only human frailty, not irreconcileable with
a general singleness of purpose; occasional deviations from the habitual
courage of a confirmed Christian. Others may honestly, and not
uncharitably, suspect, that the habits of a court, and constant
engagement in official business, may have somewhat marred the simplicity
of his character, weakened the practical influence of religious belief,
and caused him, whilst labouring for the improvement of others, to
neglect his own; and hence they may account for his unsteadfastness in
times of trial.
In addition to the works mentioned above, we may name as easily
accessible, among Protestant authorities, Burnet’s History of the
Reformation; among Roman Catholic, Lingard’s History of England.
Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, stands, perhaps, more nearly on
neutral ground, but can hardly be cited as an impartial historian.
Though a Protestant, in his hatred and dread of all innovators, and
especially of the Puritans, he seems ready to take refuge even with
Popery; and examines always with jealousy, sometimes with malignity, the
motives and conduct of Reformers, from his first notice of Wiclif to the
close of his history.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._
TASSO.
_From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
TASSO.
Torquato Tasso, born at Sorrento March 11, 1544, was the son of Bernardo
Tasso by Portia de Rossi, a lady of a noble Neapolitan family. His
father was a man of some note, both as a political and as a literary
character; and his poem of ‘Amadigi,’ founded on the well-known romance
of Amadis de Gaul, has been preferred by one partial critic even to the
Orlando Furioso. Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, chose him for
his secretary, and with him and for him Bernardo shared all the
vicissitudes of fortune. That Prince having been deprived of his
estates, and expelled from the kingdom of Naples by the court of Spain,
Bernardo was involved in his proscription, and retired with him to Rome.
Tarquato, then five years old, remained with his mother, who left
Sorrento and went to reside with her family in Naples.
Bernardo Tasso having lost all hopes of ever returning to that capital,
advised his wife to retire with his daughter into a nunnery, and to send
Torquato to Rome. Our young poet suffered much in parting from his
mother and sister; but, fulfilling the command of his parents, he joined
his father in October, 1554. On this occasion he composed a canzone, in
which he compared himself to Ascanius escaping from Troy with his father
Æneas.
The fluctuating fortunes of the elder Tasso caused Torquato to visit
successively Bergamo, the abode of his paternal relatives, and Pesaro,
where his manners and intelligence made so favourable an impression,
that the Duke of Pesaro chose him for companion to his son, then
studying under the celebrated Corrado of Mantua. In 1559, he accompanied
his father to Venice, and there perused the best Italian authors,
especially Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The next year he went to the
University of Padua, where, under Sperone Speroni, and Sigonio, he
studied Aristotle and the critics; and by Piccolomini and Pandasio he
was taught the moral and philosophical doctrines of Socrates and Plato.
However, notwithstanding his severer studies, Torquato never lost sight
of his favourite art; and, at the age of seventeen, in ten months, he
composed his _Rinaldo_, a poem in twelve cantos, founded on the then
popular romances of Charlemagne and his Paladins. This work, which was
published in 1562, excited great admiration, and gave rise to
expectations which were justified by the Gerusalemme Liberata. The plan
of that immortal poem was conceived, according to Serassi’s conjecture,
in 1563, at Bologna, where Tasso was then prosecuting his studies. The
first sketch of it is still preserved in a manuscript, dated 1563, in
the Vatican Library, and printed at Venice in 1722. Unfortunately, while
thus engaged, he was brought into collision with the civil authorities,
in consequence of some satirical attacks on the University, which were
falsely attributed to him. The charge was refuted, but not until his
papers had been seized and himself imprisoned. This disgusted him with
Bologna, and he returned to Padua in 1564. There he applied all his
faculties to the accomplishment of his epic poem; collected immense
materials from the Chronicles of the Crusades; and wrote, to exercise
his critical powers, the _Discorsi_ and the _Trattato sulla Poesia_.
While thus engaged, the Cardinal Luigi d’Este appointed him a gentleman
of his court. Speroni endeavoured to dissuade the young poet from
accepting that office, by relating the many disappointments which he had
himself experienced while engaged in a similar career. These
remonstrances were vain. Tasso joined the Cardinal at Ferrara at the end
of October, 1564, and soon attracted the favourable notice of the Duke
Alphonso, brother of the Cardinal, and of their sisters; one of whom,
the celebrated Eleonora, is commonly supposed to have exercised a
lasting and unhappy influence over the poet’s life. Ferrara continued to
be his chief place of abode till 1571, when he was summoned to accompany
his patron the Cardinal to France. The gaieties of a court, celebrated
in that age for its splendour, did not prevent his prosecuting his
poetic studies with zeal; for it appears from his will, quoted by Mr.
Stebbing, that, at his departure for France, he had written a
considerable portion of the Gerusalemme, besides a variety of minor
pieces. His reputation was already high at the court of France, where he
was received by Charles IX. with distinguished attention. But he
perceived, or fancied that he saw, a change in the Cardinal’s demeanour
towards him, and, impatient of neglect, begged leave to return to Italy.
In 1572, he was at Rome with the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. In the same
year he entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara, and resumed with
zeal the completion and correction of the Gerusalemme.
In 1573, Tasso wrote his beautiful pastoral drama Aminta. This new
production added greatly to his reputation. He chose simple Nature for
his model; and succeeded admirably in the imitation of her.
The Gerusalemme Liberata was completed in 1575. Tasso submitted it to
the criticism of the most learned men of that age. The great confusion
which prevailed in the remarks of his critics caused him extraordinary
uneasiness and labour. To answer their objections, he wrote the _Lettere
Poetiche_, which are the best key to the true interpretation of his
poem.