"And yet this great profusion of their prince did
so smally serve their hungry guts, like starven
tikes that were never content with more than
enough; at all their collations, assemblies, and
sermons, they never left yelling and yelping in
pursuit of their prey, Restore! Restore! These
devout deacons nothing regarded how some for long
service and travail abroad, while they sat at
home--some for shedding his blood in defence of his
prince's cause and country, while they with safety,
all careless in their cabins, in luxe and lewdness,
did sail in a sure port--some selling his antient
patrimony for purchase of these lands, while they
must have all by gift a God's name--they nothing
regarding, I say, what injury to thousands, what
undoing to most men, what danger of uproar and
tumult throughout the whole realm, and what a
weakening to the State, should thereby arise; with
none of these matters were they moved a whit, but
still held on their cry, Restore! Restore!"
"And that ye may be sure they meant nothing more
than how to have all, and that with all haste;
after that their Pope, this seditious Paul IV.,
that now is, had sent hither his bulls and his
thunderbolts for that cause, and other (and yet
little restored, because the world, indeed, would
not be so faced out of their livelihood) sundry of
our prelates, like hardy champions, slacke not a
whit themselves to thrust lords out of their lands,
and picked quarrels to their lawful possessions.
Well. Let nobility consider the case as they list;
but, as some think, if the clergy come to be
masters again, they will teach them a school point.
Christ taught the young man that perfection was in
_vade, vende, et da_, not in _mane, acquire,
accumula_."--Grace to be said at the Accession of
Elizabeth: _Tannes MSS._, Bodleian Library.]
{p.241} Language had been heard in both Houses, during the debates,
of unusual violence. Bradford's letter on the succession was
circulating freely among the members, and the parliament from which
the queen anticipated so much for her husband's interests proved the
most intractable with which she had had to deal.[521] After the
difficulty which she had experienced with the first-fruits, she durst
not so much as introduce the question of the crown.[522] She attempted
a bill for the restoration of the forfeited lands of the Howards, but
it was lost.[523] The Duchess of Suffolk,[524] with {p.242} several
other persons of rank, had lately joined the refugees on the
Continent; she attempted to carry a measure for the confiscation of
their property, and failed again.[525] A sharp blow was dealt also at
the recovered privileges of ecclesiastics. A man named Benet Smith,
who had been implicated in a charge of murder, and was escaping under
plea of clergy, was delivered by a special act into the hands of
justice.[526] The leaven of the heretical spirit was still unsubdued.
The queen dissolved her fourth parliament on the 9th of December; and
several gentlemen who had spoken out with unpalatable freedom were
seized and sent to the Tower. She was unwise, thought Noailles; such
arbitrary acts were only making her day by day more detested, and,
should opportunity offer, would bring her to utter destruction.
[Footnote 521: Noailles.]
[Footnote 522: Michele, the Venetian ambassador, in
his curious but most inaccurate account of England
during this reign, states that the queen had it in
her power to cut off Elizabeth from the succession,
but that she was prevented from doing it by Philip.
Michele's information suffered from the policy of
Venice. Venice held aloof from the complications of
the rest of Europe, and her representatives were
punished by exclusion from secrets of state. The
letters of Noailles might be suspected, but the
correspondence of Renard with Charles V. leaves no
doubt whatever either as to the views of the
Spaniards towards Elizabeth, of their designs on
the crown, or of the causes by which they were
baffled.]
[Footnote 523: Noailles to the King of France,
December 16.]
[Footnote 524: The witty Katherine Brandon, widow
of Henry VIII.'s Charles Brandon, married to
Richard Bertie. She was a lady of advanced
opinions, between whom and the Bishop of Winchester
there were some passages-at-arms. She dressed a dog
in a rochet on one occasion, and called it Bishop
Gardiner.
Gardiner himself said that he was once at a party
at the Duke of Suffolk's, and it was a question who
should take the duchess down to dinner. She wanted
to go with her husband; but as that could not be,
"My lady," said Gardiner, "taking me by the hand,
for that my lord would not take her himself, said
that, forasmuch as she could not sit down with my
lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom
she loved worst."--Holinshed.]
[Footnote 525: Et de mesme fust rejette audict
parlement a la grande confusion de ladicte dame ung
aultre bill, par lequel elle vouloit confisquer les
personnes et biens de ceulx qui sont transfuges de
ce royaulme despuis son advenement a la
couronne.--Noailles to the King of France, December
16: _Ambassades_, vol. v.]
[Footnote 526: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap.
17.]
Unwise she was indeed, and most unhappy. When the poor results of the
session became known to Philip, he sent orders that such of his
Spanish suite as he had left behind him should no longer afflict
themselves with remaining in a country which they abhorred; he
summoned them all to come to him except Alphonso, his confessor. "The
queen wept and remonstrated; more piteous lamentations were never
heard from woman." "How," exclaimed a brother of Noailles,[527] "is
she repaid now for having quarrelled with her subjects, and set aside
her father's will! The misery which she suffers in her husband's
absence cannot so change her but that she will risk crown and life to
establish him in the sovereignty, and thus recall him to her side.
Nevertheless, she will fail, and he will not come. He is weary of
having laboured so long in a soil so barren; while she who feels old
age stealing so fast upon her, cannot endure to lose what she has
bought so dearly."
[Footnote 527: Francois de Noailles to Madame de
Roye: _Ambassades_, vol. v.]
Nothing now was left for Mary but to make such use as she {p.243}
was able of the few years of life which were to remain to her. If
Elizabeth, the hated Anne Boleyn's hated daughter, was to succeed her
on the throne, and there was no remedy, it was for her to work so
vigorously in the restoration of the church that her labours could not
afterwards be all undone. At her own expense she began to rebuild and
refound the religious houses. The Grey Friars were replaced at
Greenwich, the Carthusians at Sheene, the Brigittines at Sion. The
house of the Knights of St. John in London was restored; the Dean and
Chapter of Westminster gave way to Abbot Feckenham and a college of
monks. Yet these touching efforts might soften her sorrow but could
not remove it. Philip was more anxious than ever about the marriage of
Elizabeth; and as Mary could not overcome her unwillingness to
sanction by act of her own Elizabeth's pretensions, Philip wrote her
cruel letters, and set his confessor to lecture her upon her duties as
a wife.[528] These letters she chiefly spent her time in answering,
shut up almost alone, trusting no one but Pole, and seeing no one but
her women. If she was compelled to appear in public, she had lost her
power of self-control; she would burst into fits of violent and
uncontrollable passion; she believed every one about her to be a spy
in the interest of the Lords. So disastrously miserable were all the
consequences of her marriage, that it was said, the pope, who had
{p.244} granted the dispensation for the contraction of it, had
better grant another for its dissolution.[529] Unfortunately there was
one direction open in which her frenzy could have uncontrolled scope.
[Footnote 528: Among the surviving memorials of
Mary, none is more affecting than a rough copy of
an answer to one of these epistles, which is
preserved in the Cotton Library. It is painfully
scrawled, and covered with erasures and
corrections, in which may be traced the dread in
which she stood of offending Philip. _Demander
license de votre Haultesse_, is crossed through and
altered into _Supplier tres humblement_. Where she
had described herself as _obeissante_, she enlarged
the word into _tres obeissante_; and the tone
throughout is most piteous. She entreats the king
to appoint some person or persons to talk with her
about the marriage. She says that the conscience
which she has about it she has had for twenty-four
years; that is to say, since Elizabeth's birth.
Nevertheless, she will agree to Philip's wish, if
the realm will agree. She is ready to discuss it;
but she complains, so far as she dares complain, of
the confessor. The priests trouble her, she says.
"Alfonsez especialement me proposoit questions si
obscures que mon simple entendement ne les pouvoit
comprehendre, comme pour exemple il me demandoit
qui estoit roy au temps de Adam, et disoit comme
j'estoy obligee de faire ceste marriage par ung
article de mon Credo, mais il ne l'exposoit....
Aultres choses trop difficiles pour moy d'entendre
... ainsy qu'il estoit impossible en si peu de
temps de changer ... conscience.... Votre Haultesse
escript en ses dictes lettres que si le consent de
ce royaulme iroyt au contraire, Votre Haultesse en
imputeroit la coulpe en moy. Je supplie en toute
humilite votre Haultesse de differer ceste affaire
jusques a votre retour; et donques Votre Haultesse
sera juge si je seray coulpable ou non. Car
autrement je vinray en jalousie de Votre Haultesse
la quelle sera pire a moy que mort; car j'en ay
commence deja d'en taster trop a mon grand regret,"
etc.--_Cotton MSS., Titus_, B. 2: printed very
incorrectly in Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi. 418.]
[Footnote 529: Noailles.]
The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his trial and his citation to
Rome, addressed to the queen a singular letter; he did not ask for
mercy, and evidently he did not expect mercy: he reasserted calmly the
truth of the opinions for which he was to suffer; but he protested
against the indignity done to the realm of England, and the
degradation of the royal prerogative, "when the king and queen, as if
they were subjects in their own realm, complained and required justice
at a stranger's hand against their own subjects, being already
condemned to death by their own laws." "Death," he said, "could not
grieve him much more than to have his most dread and gracious
sovereigns, to whom under God he owed all obedience, to be his
accusers in judgment before a stranger and outward power."[530]
[Footnote 530: Cranmer to Queen Mary: Jenkins, vol.
i. p. 369. This protest was committed to Pole to
answer, who replied to it at length.
The authority of the pope in a secular kingdom, the
legate said, was no more a foreign power than "the
authority of the soul of man coming from heaven in
the body generate on earth." "The pope's laws
spiritual did no other but that the soul did in the
body, giving life to the same, confirming and
strengthening the same;" and that it was which the
angel signified in Christ's conception, declaring
what his authority should be, that he should sit
_super domum David_, which was a temporal reign,
_ut confirmet illud et corroboret_, as the
spiritual laws did.
The quotation is inaccurate. The words in the
Vulgate are, _Dabit illi Dominus sedem David patris
ejus: et regnabit in domo Jacob in aeternum_.
The letter contains another illustration of Pole's
habit of mind. "There was never spiritual man," he
says, "put to execution according to the order of
the laws of the realm but he was first by the canon
laws condemned and degraded; whereof there be as
many examples afore the time of breaking the old
order of the realm these last years, as hath been
delinquents. Let the records be seen. And specially
this is notable of the Bishop of ----, which, being
imprisoned for high treason, the king would not
proceed to his condemnation and punishment afore he
had the pope's bull given him...."
The historical argument proceeded smoothly up to
the name, which, however, was not and is not to be
found. Pole was probably thinking of Archbishop
Scrope, who, however, unfortunately for the
argument, was put to death _without_ the pope's
sanction.--Draft of a Letter from Cardinal Pole to
Cranmer: _Harleian MSS._ 417.]
The appeal was intended perhaps to provoke the queen to let him die
with his friends, in whose example and companionship he felt his
strength supported. But it could not be; he was the spectator of their
fate, while his own was still held at a distance before him. He
witnessed the agonies of Ridley; and the long imprisonment, the
perpetual chafing of Soto the Spanish friar, {p.245} and the dreary
sense that he was alone, forsaken of man, and perhaps of God, began to
wear into the firmness of a many-sided susceptible nature. Some vague
indication that he might yield had been communicated to Pole by Soto
before Christmas,[531] and the struggle which had evidently commenced
was permitted to protract itself. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
father of the Reformed Church of England, could be brought to a
recantation, that one victory might win back the hearts which the
general constancy of the martyrs was drawing off in tens of thousands.
Time, however, wore on, and the archbishop showed no definite signs of
giving way. On the 14th of December, a mock trial was instituted at
Rome; the report of the examination at Oxford was produced, and
counsel were heard on both sides, or so it was pretended. Paul IV. then
pronounced the final sentence, that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of
Canterbury, having been accused by his sovereigns of divers crimes and
misdemeanours, it had been proved against him that he had followed the
teachings of John Wicliff and Martin Luther of accursed memory;[532]
that he had published books containing matters of heresy, and still
obstinately persisted in those his erroneous opinions: he was
therefore declared to be anathema, to be deprived of his office, and
having been degraded, he was to be delivered over to the secular arm.
[Footnote 531: Pole to Philip: _Epistolae_ Reg.
Pol., vol. v. p. 47.]
[Footnote 532: _Damnatae memoriae._ Sentence
Definitive against Thomas Cranmer: Foxe, vol.
viii.]
There was some delay in sending the judgment to England. It arrived at
the beginning of February, and on the 14th, Thirlby and Bonner went
down to finish the work at Oxford. The court sat this time in Christ
Church Cathedral. Cranmer was brought to the bar, and the papal
sentence was read. The preamble declared that the cause had been heard
with indifference, that the accused had been defended by an advocate,
that witnesses had been examined for him, that he had been allowed
every opportunity to answer for himself. "O Lord," he exclaimed, "what
lies be these! that I, being in prison and never suffered to have
counsel or advocate at home, should produce witness and appoint
counsel at Rome; God must needs punish this shameless lying."
Silence would perhaps have been more dignified; to speak at all was an
indication of infirmity. As soon as the reading was finished, the
archbishop was formally arrayed in his robes, and when the decoration
was completed, Bonner called out in exultation:
{p.246} "This is the man that hath despised the pope's holiness, and
now is to be judged by him; this is the man that hath pulled down so
many churches, and now is come to be judged in a church; this is the
man that hath contemned the blessed sacrament of the altar, and now is
come to be condemned before that blessed sacrament hanging over the
altar; this is the man that, like Lucifer, sat in the place of Christ
upon an altar[533] to judge others, and now is come before an altar to
be judged himself."[534]
[Footnote 533: An allusion to a scaffold in St.
Paul's Church, on which Cranmer had sat as a
commissioner; said to have been erected over an
altar.]
[Footnote 534: Foxe, vol. viii. p. 73.]
Thirlby checked the insolence of his companion. The degradation was
about to commence, when the archbishop drew from his sleeve an appeal
"to the next Free General Council that should be called." It had been
drawn after consultation with a lawyer, in the evident hope that it
might save or prolong his life,[535] and he attempted to present it to
his judges. But he was catching at straws, as in his clearer judgment
he would have known. Thirlby said sadly that the appeal could not be
received; his orders were absolute to proceed.
[Footnote 535: Cranmer to a Lawyer: Jenkins, vol.
i. p. 384.]
The robes were stripped off in the usual way. The thin hair was
clipped. Bonner with his own hands scraped the finger points which had
been touched with the oil of consecration; "Now are you lord no
longer," he said, when the ceremony was finished. "All this needed
not," Cranmer answered; "I had myself done with this gear long ago."
He was led off in a beadle's threadbare gown, and a tradesman's cap;
and here for some important hours authentic account of him is lost.
What he did, what he said, what was done or what was said to him, is
known only in its results, or in Protestant tradition. Tradition said
that he was taken from the cathedral to the house of the Dean of
Christ Church, where he was delicately entertained, and worked upon
with smooth words, and promises of life. "The noblemen," he was told,
"bare him good-will; he was still strong, and might live many years,
why should he cut them short?" The story may contain some elements of
truth. But the same evening, certainly, he was again in his cell; and
among the attempts to move him which can be authenticated, there was
one of a far different kind; a letter addressed to him by Pole to
bring him to a sense of his condition.
"Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,"
so the legate addressed a prisoner in the expectation of {p.247}
death,[536] "hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ,
he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you and
bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid
him God speed; for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his
evil deeds. There are some who tell me that, in obedience to this
command, I ought not to address you, or to have any dealings with you,
save the dealings of a judge with a criminal. But Christ came not to
judge only, but also to save; I call upon you, not to enter into your
house, for so I should make myself a partaker with you; my desire is
only to bring you back to the church which you have deserted.
[Footnote 536: _Epist._ Reg. Pol., vol. v. p. 248.
I am obliged to abridge and epitomise.]
"You have corrupted Scripture, you have broken through the communion
of saints, and now I tell you what you must do; I tell you, or rather
not I, but Christ and the church through me. Did I follow my own
impulse, or did I speak in my own name, I should hold other language;
to you I should not speak at all; I would address myself only to God;
I would pray him to let fall the fire of Heaven to consume you, and to
consume with you the house into which you have entered in abandoning
the church.[537]
[Footnote 537: Car se je n'ecourtois que les
mouvemens de la nature, se je ne vous parlois qu'en
mon nom, je vous tiendrois un autre langage au
plutot je ne vous dirois rien; je m'entretiendrois
avec Dieu seul at je lui demanderois de faire
tomber le feu du ciel pour vous consumer avec cette
maison ou vous avez passe en abandonnant l'Eglise.
The letter was only known to the editor of Pole's
remains in a French translation. I do not know
whether the original exists, or whether it was in
Latin or in English.]
"You pretend that you have used no instruments but reason to lead men
after you; what instrument did the devil use to seduce our parents in
Paradise? you have followed the serpent; with guile you destroyed your
king, the realm, and the church, and you have brought to perdition
thousands of human souls.
"Compared with you, all others who have been concerned in these deeds
of evil, are but objects of pity; many of them long resisted
temptation, and yielded only to the seductions of your impious tongue;
you made yourself a bishop--for what purpose, but to mock both God and
man? Your first act was but to juggle with your king, and you were no
sooner primate, than you plotted how you might break your oath to the
Holy See; you took part in the counsels of the evil one, you made your
home with the wicked, you sat in the seat of the scornful. You
exhorted your king with your fine words, to put away his wife; you
prated to him of his obligations to submit to the judgment of the
{p.248} church;[538] and what has followed that unrighteous
sentence? You parted the king from the wife with whom he had lived for
twenty years; you parted him from the church, the common mother of the
faithful; and thenceforth throughout the realm law has been trampled
under foot, the people have been ground with tyranny, the churches
pillaged, the nobility murdered one by the other.
[Footnote 538: The innumerable modern writers who
agree with Pole on the iniquity of the divorce of
Catherine forget that, according to the rule which
most of us now acknowledge, the marriage of Henry
with his brother's wife _really was
incestuous_--really was forbidden by the laws of
God and nature; that the pope had no more authority
to dispense with those laws then than he has now;
and that if modern law is right, Cranmer did no
more than his duty.]
"Therefore, I say, were I to make my own cries heard in heaven, I
would pray God to demand at your hands the blood of his servants.
Never had religion, never had the church of Christ a worse enemy than
you have been; now therefore, when you are about to suffer the just
reward of your deeds, think no more to excuse yourself; confess your
sins, like the penitent thief upon the cross.
"Say not in your defence that you have done no violence, that you have
been kind and gentle in your daily life. Thus I know men speak of you;
but cheat not your conscience with so vain a plea. The devil, when
called to answer for the souls that he has slain, may plead likewise
that he did not desire their destruction; he thought only to make them
happy, to give them pleasure, honour, riches--all things which their
hearts desired. So did you with your king: you gave him the woman that
he lusted after; you gave him the honour which was not his due, and
the good things which were neither his nor yours; and, last and worst,
you gave him poison, in covering his iniquities with a cloak of
righteousness. Better, far better, you had offered him courtesans for
companions; better you and he had been open thieves and robbers. Then
he might have understood his crimes, and have repented of them; but
you tempted him into the place where there is no repentance, no hope
of salvation.
"Turn then yourself, and repent. See yourself as you are. Thus may you
escape your prison. Thus may you flee out of the darkness wherein you
have hid yourself. Thus may you come back to light and life, and earn
for yourself God's forgiveness. I know not how to deal with you. Your
examination at Oxford has but hardened you; yet the issue is with God.
I {p.249} at least can point out to you the way. If you, then,
persist in your vain opinions, may God have mercy on you."
The legate, in his office of guide, then travelled the full round of
controversy, through Catholic tradition, through the doctrine of the
sacraments and of the real presence, where there is no need to follow
him. At length he drew to his conclusion:
"You will plead Scripture to answer me. Are you so vain, then, are you
so foolish, as to suppose that it has been left to you to find out the
meaning of those Scriptures which have been in the hands of the
fathers of the church for so many ages? Confess, confess that you have
mocked God in denying that he is present on the altar; wash out your
sins with tears; and in the abundance of your sorrow you may find
pardon. May it be so. Even for the greatness of your crimes may it be
so, that God may have the greater glory. You have not, like others,
fallen through simplicity, or fallen through fear. You were corrupted,
like the Jews, by earthly rewards and promises. For your own profit
you denied the presence of your Lord, and you rebelled against his
servant the pope. May you see your crimes. May you feel the greatness
of your need of mercy. Now, even now, by my mouth, Christ offers you
that mercy; and with the passionate hope which I am bound to feel for
your salvation, I wait your answer to your Master's call."
The exact day on which this letter reached the archbishop is
uncertain, but it was very near the period of his sentence. He had
dared death bravely while it was distant; but he was physically timid;
the near approach of the agony which he had witnessed in others
unnerved him; and in a moment of mental and moral prostration Cranmer
may well have looked in the mirror which Pole held up to him, and
asked himself whether, after all, the being there described was his
true image--whether it was himself as others saw him. A faith which
had existed for centuries, a faith in which generation after
generation have lived happy and virtuous lives; a faith in which all
good men are agreed, and only the bad dispute--such a faith carries an
evidence and a weight with it beyond what can be looked for in a creed
reasoned out by individuals--a creed which had the ban upon it of
inherited execration; which had been held in abhorrence once by him
who was now called upon to die for it. Only fools and fanatics believe
that they cannot be mistaken. Sick misgivings may have taken hold upon
him in moments of despondency, whether, after all, the millions who
received the Roman supremacy might not be more right than the
thousands {p.250} who denied it; whether the argument on the real
presence, which had satisfied him for fifty years, might not be better
founded than his recent doubts. It is not possible for a man of gentle
and modest nature to feel himself the object of intense detestation
without uneasy pangs; and as such thoughts came and went, a window
might seem to open, through which there was a return to life and
freedom. His trial was not greater than hundreds of others had borne,
and would bear with constancy; but the temperaments of men are
unequally constituted, and a subtle intellect and a sensitive
organisation are not qualifications which make martyrdom easy.
Life, by the law of the church, by justice, by precedent, was given to
all who would accept it on terms of submission. That the archbishop
should be tempted to recant, with the resolution formed,
notwithstanding, that he should still suffer, whether he yielded or
whether he was obstinate, was a suspicion which his experience of the
legate had not taught him to entertain.
So it was that Cranmer's spirit gave way, and he who had disdained to
fly when flight was open to him, because he considered that, having
done the most in establishing the Reformation, he was bound to face
the responsibility of it, fell at last under the protraction of the
trial.
The day of his degradation the archbishop had eaten little. In the
evening he returned to his cell in a state of exhaustion:[539] the
same night, or the next day, he sent in his first submission,[540]
which was forwarded on the instant to the queen. It was no sooner gone
than he recalled it, and then vacillating again, he drew a second, in
slightly altered words, which he signed and did not recall. There had
been a struggle in which the weaker nature had prevailed, and the
orthodox leaders made haste to improve their triumph. The first step
being over, confessions far more humiliating could now be extorted.
Bonner came to his cell, and obtained from him a promise in writing,
"to submit to the king and queen in all their laws and ordinances, as
well touching the pope's supremacy, as in all other things;" with an
engagement further "to move and stir all others to do the like," and
to live in quietness and obedience, without murmur or grudging; his
book on the sacrament he would submit to the next general council.
[Footnote 539: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 129.]
[Footnote 540: Forasmuch as the king's and queen's
majesties, by consent of parliament, have received
the pope's authority within this realm, I am
content to submit myself to their laws herein, and
to take the pope for chief head of this Church of
England so far as God's laws and the customs of
this realm will permit.--Thomas Cranmer.]
{p.251} These three submissions must have followed one another
rapidly. On the 16th of February, two days only after his trial, he
made a fourth, and yielding the point which he had reserved, he
declared that he believed all the articles of the Christian religion
as the Catholic Church believed. But so far he had spoken generally,
and the court required particulars. In a fifth and longer
submission,[541] he was made to anathematise particularly the heresies
of Luther and Zuinglius; to accept the pope as the head of the church,
out of which was no salvation; to acknowledge the real presence in the
Eucharist, the seven sacraments as received by the Roman Catholics,
and purgatory. He professed his penitence for having once held or
taught otherwise, and he implored the prayers of all faithful
Christians, that those whom he had seduced might be brought back to
the true fold.
[Footnote 541: Of this fifth submission there is a
contemporary copy among the MSS. at Corpus Christi
College, Oxford. It was the only one known to Foxe;
and this, with the fact of its being found in a
separate form, gives a colour of probability to Mr.
Southey's suspicion that the rest were forgeries.
The whole collection was published by Bonner, who
injured his claims to credit by printing with the
others a seventh recantation, which was never made,
and by concealing the real truth. But the balance
of evidence I still think is in favour of the
genuineness of the first six. The first four lead
up to the fifth, and the invention of them after
the fifth had been made would have been needless.
The sixth I agree with Strype in considering to
have been composed by Pole, and signed by Cranmer.]
The demands of the church might have been satisfied by these last
admissions; but Cranmer had not yet expiated his personal offences
against the queen and her mother, and he was to drain the cup of
humiliation to the dregs.
A month was allowed to pass. He was left with the certainty of his
shame, and the uncertainty whether, after all, it had not been
encountered in vain. On the 18th of March, one more paper was
submitted to his signature, in which he confessed to be all which Pole
had described him. He called himself a blasphemer, and a persecutor;
being unable to undo his evil work, he had no hope, he said, save in
the example of the thief upon the cross, who when other means of
reparation were taken from him, made amends to God with his lips. He
was unworthy of mercy, and he deserved eternal vengeance. He had
sinned against King Henry and his wife; he was the cause of the
divorce, from which, as from a seed, had sprung up schism, heresy, and
crime; he had opened a window to false doctrines of which he had been
himself the most pernicious teacher; especially he reflected with
anguish that he had denied the presence {p.252} of his Maker in the
consecrated elements. He had deceived the living and he had robbed the
souls of the dead by stealing from them their masses. He prayed the
pope to pardon him; he prayed the king and queen to pardon him; he
prayed God Almighty to pardon him, as he had pardoned Mary Magdalen;
or to look upon him as, from his own cross, He had looked upon the
thief.[542]
[Footnote 542: Recantations of Thomas Cranmer:
Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 393.]
The most ingenious malice could invent no deeper degradation, and the
archbishop might now die. One favour was granted to him alone of all
the sufferers for religion--that he might speak at his death; speak,
and, like Northumberland, perish with a recantation on his lips.
The hatred against him was confined to the court. Even among those who
had the deepest distaste for his opinions, his character had won
affection and respect; and when it was known that he was to be
executed, there was a widespread and profound emotion. "Although,"
says a Catholic who witnessed his death, "his former life and wretched
end deserved a greater misery, if any greater might have chanced to
him; yet, setting aside his offence to God and his country, beholding
the man without his faults, I think there was none that pitied not his
case and bewailed not his fortune, and feared not his own chance, to
see so noble a prelate, so grave a councillor, of so long-continued
honours, after so many dignities, in his old years to be deprived of
his estate, adjudged to die, and in so painful a death to end his
life."[543]
[Footnote 543: Death of Cranmer, related by a
Bystander: _Harleian MSS._, 442. Printed, with some
inaccuracies, by Strype.]
On Saturday, the 21st of March, Lord Williams was again ordered into
Oxford to keep the peace, with Lord Chandos, Sir Thomas Brydges, and
other gentlemen of the county. If they allowed themselves to
countenance by their presence the scene which they were about to
witness, it is to be remembered that but a few years since, these same
gentlemen had seen Catholic priests swinging from the pinnacles of
their churches. The memory of the evil days was still recent, and
amidst the tumult of conflicting passions, no one could trust his
neighbour, and organised resistance was impracticable.
The March morning broke wild and stormy. The sermon intended to be
preached at the stake was adjourned, in consequence of the wet, to St.
Mary's, where a high stage was erected, on which Cranmer was to stand
conspicuous. Peers, knights, {p.253} doctors, students, priests,
men-at-arms, and citizens, thronged the narrow aisles, and through the
midst of them the archbishop was led in by the mayor. As he mounted
the platform many of the spectators were in tears. He knelt and prayed
silently, and Cole, the Provost of Eton, then took his place in the
pulpit.
Although, by a strained interpretation of the law, it could be
pretended that the time of grace had expired with the trial; yet, to
put a man to death at all after recantation was a proceeding so
violent and unusual, that some excuse or some explanation was felt to
be necessary.
Cole therefore first declared why it was expedient that the late
archbishop should suffer, notwithstanding his reconciliation. One
reason was "for that he had been a great causer of all the alterations
in the realm of England; and when the matter of the divorce between
King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine was commenced in the court of
Rome, he, having nothing to do with it, sate upon it as a judge, which
was the entry to all the inconvenients which followed." "Yet in that
Mr. Cole excused him--that he thought he did it, not out of malice,
but by the persuasion and advice of certain learned men."
Another occasion was, "for that he had been the great setter-forth of
all the heresy received into the church in the latter times; had
written in it, had disputed, had continued it even to the last hour;
and it had never been seen in the time of schism that any man
continuing so long had been pardoned, and that it was not to be
remitted for example's sake."
"And other causes," Cole added, "moved the queen and council thereto,
which were not meet and convenient for every one to understand."[544]
[Footnote 544: Narrative of the Execution of Thomas
Cranmer: _MS. Harleian_, 422. Another account gives
among the causes which Cole mentioned, that "it
seemed meet, according to the law of equality,
that, as the death of the Duke of Northumberland of
late made even with Sir Thomas More, Chancellor,
that died for the Church, so there should be one
that should make even with Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester; and because that Ridley, Hooper, and
Ferrars were not able to make even with that man,
it seemed that Cranmer should be joined with them
to fill up their part of equality."--Foxe, vol.
viii. p. 85. Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 133.]
The explanations being finished, the preacher exhorted his audience to
take example from the spectacle before them, to fear God, and to learn
that there was no power against the Lord. There, in their presence,
stood a man, once "of so high degree--sometime one of the chief
prelates of the church--an archbishop, the chief of the council, the
second person of the realm: of long time, it might be thought, in
great assurance, a king on his side;" {p.254} and now, "notwithstanding
all his authority and defence, debased from a high estate unto a low
degree--of a councillor become a caitiff, and set in so wretched
estate that the poorest wretch would not change conditions with him."
Turning, in conclusion, to Cranmer himself, Cole then "comforted and
encouraged him to take his death well by many places in Scripture;
bidding him nothing mistrust but that he should incontinently receive
that the thief did, to whom Christ said, To-day shalt thou be with me
in Paradise. Out of Paul he armed him against the terrors of fire, by
the words, The Lord is faithful, and will not suffer you to be tempted
beyond that which you are able to bear; by the example of the three
Children, to whom God made the flame seem like a pleasant joy; by the
rejoicing of St. Andrew on his cross; by the patience of St. Lawrence
on the fire." He dwelt upon his conversion, which, he said, was the
special work of God, because so many efforts had been made by men to
work upon him, and had been made in vain. God, in his own time, had
reclaimed him, and brought him home.
A dirge, the preacher said, should be sung for him in every church in
Oxford; he charged all the priests to say each a mass for the repose
of his soul; and finally, he desired the congregation present to kneel
where they were, and pray for him.
The whole crowd fell on their knees, the archbishop with them; and "I
think," says the eye-witness,[545] "that there was never such a number
so earnestly praying together; for they that hated him before, now
loved him for his conversion, and hopes of continuance: they that
loved him before could not suddenly hate him, having hope of his
confession; so love and hope increased devotion on every side."
[Footnote 545: _MS. Harleian_, 422.]
"I shall not need," says the same writer, "to describe his behaviour
for the time of sermon, his sorrowful countenance, his heavy cheer,
his face bedewed with tears; sometimes lifting his eyes to heaven in
hope, sometimes casting them down to the earth for shame--to be brief,
an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out of his eyes,
retaining ever a quiet and grave behaviour, which increased the pity
in men's hearts."
His own turn to speak was now come. When the prayer was finished, the
preacher said, "Lest any man should doubt the sincerity of this man's
repentance, you shall hear him speak before you. I pray you, Master
Cranmer," he added, turning to him, "that you will now perform that
you promised not long {p.255} ago; that you would openly express the
true and undoubted profession of your faith."
"I will do it," the archbishop answered.
"Good Christian people," he began, "my dear, beloved brethren and
sisters in Christ, I beseech you most heartily to pray for me to
Almighty God, that he will forgive me all my sins and offences, which
be many and without number, and great above measure; one thing
grieveth my conscience more than all the rest, whereof, God willing, I
shall speak more; but how many or how great soever they be, I beseech
you to pray God of his mercy to pardon and forgive them all."