CHAPTER VI

THE PROTESTANTS

Where changes are about to take place of great and enduring moment, a kind

of prologue, on a small scale, sometimes anticipates the true opening of

the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the coming storm, or

as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards into the future,

and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real actors in the story.

Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation was witnessed at the close of

the fourteenth century, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to outward

appearance barren of results; yet containing a representative of each one

of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately effected, and

foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to run.

There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges;

there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,--accompanied, as if

involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the Catholic

faith,--while innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency

which characterised the extreme development of the later

Protestants--towards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and

community of goods. Some account of this movement must be given in this

place, although it can be but a sketch only. "Lollardry"[449] has a history

of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation.

It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced

their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on

which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out,

and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the

name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil

from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy

into their language; and in the word _miscreant_, misbeliever, as the

synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of

the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.

The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of

Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty

years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the

archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and

exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had

recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been

conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then became

established was in accordance with the general spirit of the English

constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter applied to the

crown for a congé d'élire. The application was a form; the consent was

invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages; his name

was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the pope. If the pope

signified his approval, the election was complete; consecration followed;

and the bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was

presented to the king, and from him received "the temporalities" of his

see. The mode in which the great abbots were chosen was precisely similar;

the superiors of the orders to which the abbeys belonged were the channels

of communication with the pope, in the place of the archbishops; but the

elections in themselves were free, and were conducted in the same manner.

The smaller church benefices, the small monasteries or parish churches,

were in the hands of private patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the

case of each institution a reference was admitted, or was supposed to be

admitted, to the court of Rome.

There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which

it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, but

which, however, if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his

discretion. He had absolute power over every nomination to an English

benefice; he might refuse his consent till such adequate reasons, material

or spiritual, as he considered sufficient to induce him to acquiesce, had

been submitted to his consideration. In the case of nominations to the

religious houses, the superiors of the various orders residing abroad had

equal facilities for obstructiveness; and the consequence of so large a

confidence in the purity of the higher orders of the Church became visible

in an act of parliament which it was found necessary to pass in

1306-7.[450]

"Of late," says this act, "it has come to the knowledge of the king, by the

grievous complaint of the honourable persons, lords, and other noblemen of

his realm, that whereas monasteries, priories, and other religious houses

were founded to the honour and glory of God, and the advancement of holy

church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the said noblemen and their

ancestors; and a very great portion of lands and tenements have been given

by them to the said monasteries, priories, and religious houses, and the

religious men serving God in them; to the intent that clerks and laymen

might be admitted in such houses, and that sick and feeble folk might be

maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and other charitable deeds might be

done, and prayers be said for the souls of the founders and their heirs;

the abbots, priors, and governors of the said houses, _and certain aliens

their superiors_, as the abbots and priors of the Cistertians, the

Premonstrants, the orders of Saint Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and

many more of other religions and orders have at their own pleasure set

divers heavy, unwonted heavy and importable tallages, payments, and

impositions upon every of the said monasteries and houses subject unto

them, in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, without the privity of the

king and his nobility, contrary to the laws and customs of the said realm;

and thereby the number of religious persons being oppressed by such

tallages, payments, and impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms

are not given to the poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the

living and the souls of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality,

alms-giving, and other godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times

past was charitably given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now

converted to an evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal

to the people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was

enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form,

send out of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors

aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden

whatever upon houses within the realm.[451]

The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not alluded

to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised were not

explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either having not yet

distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the government trusting

that a measure of this general kind might answer the desired end. Lucrative

encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to treatment; nearly fifty

years after it became necessary to re-enact the same statute; and while

recapitulating the provisions of it, the parliament found it desirable to

point out more specifically the intention with which it was passed.

The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of the

religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from the

affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain of a

rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be

distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English

parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father of

Christendom.

"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.,

"accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm of

England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell in

England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as well

aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued." "Not

regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to present to

bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in

large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these

offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal

nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were

conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the

papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or

a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks

should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons should be

preserved, and penalties of imprisonment, forfeiture, or outlawry,

according to the complexion of the offence, should be attached to all

impetration of benefices from Rome by purchase or otherwise.[452]

If statute law could have touched the evil, these enactments would have

been sufficient for the purpose; but the influence of the popes in England

was of that subtle kind which was not so readily defeated. The law was

still defied, or still evaded; and the struggle continued till the close of

the century, the legislature labouring patiently, but ineffectually, to

confine with fresh enactments their ingenious adversary.[453]

At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes to

maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged

to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that

extremity, it would follow. The lay lords[454] and the House of Commons

found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal

statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided

that "if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or

excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur

pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate made

execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from him, and

should abide in the king's hands till redress was made."[455]

So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture. The act,

however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined

consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to attempt

a milder course. The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay with the

Commons.[456] When the session of parliament was over, a great council was

summoned to reconsider what should be done, and an address was drawn up,

and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the then reigning pope would

devise some manner by which the difficulty could be arranged.[457] Boniface

IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown afterwards on an

analogous occasion by Clement VII. He disbelieved the danger; and daring

the government to persevere, he granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an

Italian cardinal, to which a presentation had been made already by the

king. Opposing suits were instantly instituted between the claimants in the

courts of the two countries. A decision was given in England in favour of

the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were

excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a

struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender

at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.

The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant

of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was sitting at the time

when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled;

and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a

declaration of the circumstances which had occurred. After having stated

generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, "Now of late,"

they added, "divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and

censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made

execution of the judgments [given in the king's courts], to the open

disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of

England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no

earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and

statutes of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in

perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown,

his regality, and all his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part,

declared, "That the things so attempted were clearly against the king's

crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his

progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm

would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases

aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of

1389 does not appear--a measure passed under protest from one of the

estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency--at

all events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion

of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the way

of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they

thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the

result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without reservation that

they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in a difficulty for

which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but also a manly answer.

They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to

excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not.

It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was

against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the

whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, _loialment_, like loyal

subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]

In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope

should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the court

of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of

excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality,

or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received

the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever,

within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers

and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king's

protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be

forfeited."

The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface

prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this

especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper

which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation

further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully. The

analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels,

too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself

on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in

its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and

frightened back the nation to conservatism.

While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the

undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the

people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against

the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the

duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the

extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally

convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the

phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the

temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous

wealth.

This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great

forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the

crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of

another forerunner of a greater change.

The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of

Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller,

though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct

notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of

Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in

divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful

enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for

their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally

delivered--those written, we observe, being written in English, not in

Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden

of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some

irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his

successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by

the king. It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended

by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his

chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to

Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a

papal commission.

Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford

remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his

professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his

history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult

to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the

fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to

imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe

flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a

party by the mere fact of his position.

The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent fictions

which passed under the name of religion in the established theory of the

church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance, with bare

feet and russet mantle.[465] As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great

Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the

contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did;

and gradually, under his captaincy, these "poor priests," as they were

called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no

benefice, lest they should misspend the property of the poor, and because,

as apostles, they were bound to go where their Master called them,[466]

spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith

which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences,

but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of

the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, leaving here and there, as they

travelled, their costly treasures, as shining seed points of light; and

they refused to recognise the authority of the bishops, or their right to

silence them.

If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a

prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might

have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope

might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the

church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He

was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in

1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke

of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities

were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield.

But the "poor priests" had other doctrines besides those which they

discovered in the Bible, relating to subjects with which, as apostles, they

would have done better if they had shrunk from meddling. The inefficiency

of the clergy was occasioned, as Wycliffe thought, by their wealth and by

their luxury. He desired to save them from a temptation too heavy for them

to bear, and he insisted that by neglect of duty their wealth had been

forfeited, and that it was the business of the laity to take it from its

unworthy possessors. The invectives with which the argument was accompanied

produced a widely-spread irritation. The reins of the country fell

simultaneously into the weak hands of Richard II., and the consequence was

a rapid spread of disorder. In the year which followed Richard's accession,

consistory judges were assaulted in their courts, sanctuaries were

violated, priests were attacked and ill-treated in church, church-yard, and

cathedral, and even while engaged in the mass;[467] the contagion of the

growing anarchy seems to have touched even Wycliffe himself, and touched

him in a point most deeply dangerous.

His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led

him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the

estates of the church into an axiom, he taught that "charters of perpetual

inheritance were impossible;" "that God could not give men civil

possessions for ever;"[468] "that property was founded in grace, and

derived from God;" and "seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of

treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must consequently

forfeit his right to what he held of God." These propositions were nakedly

true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has his own methods of

enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation may only meddle with

them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction could be represented as

applying equally to the laity as to the clergy, and the new teaching

received a practical comment in 1381, in the invasion of London by Wat, the

tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who were to level all ranks, put down

the church, and establish universal liberty.[469] Two priests accompanied

the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the licentious counterfeits

of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps, and were as inevitably

countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection was attended with the

bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to such outbreaks. The

Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were murdered; and a great part

of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd to attribute this disaster

to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold him responsible for it; but

it is equally certain that the doctrines which he had taught were

incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the

spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had

brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject

of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of

the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, and

disorder.

So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the

conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far

declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient

influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the "poor

priests." In the year following the insurrection, an act was passed for

their repression in the House of Lords, and was sent down by the king to

the Commons. They were spoken of as "evil persons," going from place to

place in defiance of the bishops, preaching in the open air to great

congregations at markets and fairs, "exciting the people," "engendering

discord between the estates of the realm." The ordinaries had no power to

silence them, and had therefore desired that commissions should be issued

to the sheriffs of the various counties, to arrest all such persons, and

confine them, until they would "justify themselves" in the ecclesiastical

courts.[470] Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not

so much perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower

House was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully

disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a more

stringent spiritual control.

But Wycliffe himself meanwhile had received a clear intimation of his own

declining position. His opposition to the church authorities, and his

efforts at re-invigorating the faith of the country, had led him into

doubtful statements on the nature of the eucharist; he had entangled

himself in dubious metaphysics on a subject on which no middle course is

really possible; and being summoned to answer for his language before a

synod in London, he had thrown himself again for protection on the Duke of

Lancaster. The duke (not unnaturally under the circumstances) declined to

encourage what he could neither approve nor understand;[471] and Wycliffe,

by his great patron's advice, submitted. He read a confession of faith

before the bishops, which was held satisfactory; he was forbidden, however,

to preach again in Oxford, and retired to his living of Lutterworth, in

Leicestershire, where two years later he died.

With him departed all which was best and purest in the movement which he

had commenced. The zeal of his followers was not extinguished, but the

wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the being

treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them what

they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next twenty

years, the feebleness of the government, the angry complexion which had

been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political anarchy in the

closing decade of the century, combining to give them temporary shelter;

but they availed themselves of their opportunity to travel further on the

dangerous road on which they had entered; and on the settlement of the

country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down

all parties who had shared in the late disturbances.

They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a more

cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds which had

been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason left for

leniency. The character of the Lollard teaching was thus described (perhaps

in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of the act of 1401.[472]

"Divers false and perverse people," so runs the act _De Heretico

comburendo_, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the

sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against the law

of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely

and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers

new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and

determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked doctrines they

make unlawful conventicles, they hold and exercise schools, they make and

write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and excite and

stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division

among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard, daily do

perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by their jurisdiction

spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty, sufficiently correct these

said false and perverse people, nor refrain their malice, because they do

go from diocess to diocess, and will not appear before the said diocesans;

but the jurisdiction spiritual, the keys of the church, and the censures of

the same, do utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings

and doctrines they do from day to day continue and exercise, to the

destruction of all order and rule, right and reason."

Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror with

which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked upon in the Catholic

church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made possible being

held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had become political

revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the revolt against the

spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a revolt against the

secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that these institutions

should have sympathised with each other, and have united to repress a

danger which was formidable to both.

The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and imprison

on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will and

pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted in

heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be burnt at

the stake--a dreadful punishment, on the wickedness of which the world has

long been happily agreed. Yet we must remember that those who condemned

teachers of heresy to the flames, considered that heresy itself involved

everlasting perdition; that they were but faintly imitating the severity

which orthodoxy still ascribes to Almighty God Himself.

The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet,

however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to

sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of

the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410,

spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made

upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be

agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412, the

church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as ever.

Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the

persecuting act is uncertain; it is more likely, from their conduct, that

they had made their existence incompatible with the security of any

tolerable government.

A rumour having gone abroad that the king intended to enforce the laws

against heresy, notices were found fixed against the doors of the London

churches, that if any such measure was attempted, a hundred thousand men

would be in arms to oppose it. These papers were traced to Sir John

Oldcastle, otherwise called Lord Cobham, a man whose true character is more

difficult to distinguish, in the conflict of the evidence which has come

down to us about him, than that of almost any noticeable person in history.

He was perhaps no worse than a fanatic. He was certainly prepared, if we

may trust the words of a royal proclamation (and Henry was personally

intimate with Oldcastle, and otherwise was not likely to have exaggerated

the charges against him), he was prepared to venture a rebellion, with the

prospect of himself becoming the president of some possible Lollard

commonwealth.[474] The king, with swift decisiveness, annihilated the

incipient treason. Oldcastle was himself arrested. He escaped out of the

Tower into Scotland; and while Henry was absent in France he seems to have

attempted to organise some kind of Scotch invasion; but he was soon after

again taken on the Welsh Border, tried and executed. An act which was

passed in 1414 described his proceedings as an "attempt to destroy the

king, and all other manner of estates of the realm, as well spiritual as

temporal, and also all manner of policy, and finally the laws of the land."

The sedition was held to have originated in heresy, and for the better

repression of such mischiefs in time to come, the lord chancellor, the

judges, the justices of the peace, the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and

every other officer having government of people, were sworn on entering

their office to use their best power and diligence to detect and prosecute

all persons suspected of so heinous a crime.[475]

Thus perished Wycliffe's labour,--not wholly, because his translation of

the Bible still remained a rare treasure; as seed of future life, which

would spring again under happier circumstances. But the sect which he

organised, the special doctrines which he set himself to teach, after a

brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no trace remained of

Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and hatred with which the

heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered by the English people,

long after the actual Reformation had become the law of the land.[476]

So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the

agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in

Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth.

Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind

nor in the mind of the world about him, had the problem ripened itself for

solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow of

the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was cast out could

have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of the seven devils of

anarchy.

The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in

insurrection,[477] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor

seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the

years which followed, found his way into that high presence through the

martyr's fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience--the

church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit in

which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful elements--until

Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a desire, not for a fairer

adjustment of the world's good things, but in a desire for some deeper,

truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of God. It recommenced not

under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the partial countenance of a

government which was crossing swords with the Father of Catholic

Christendom, and menacing the severance of England from the unity of the

faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted Catholic loyalty, with the

entire administrative power, secular as well as spiritual, in the hands of

the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited, by the

vital necessity of its nature, among the masses of the nation.

Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or about

which time, a society was enrolled in London calling itself "The

Association of Christian Brothers."[478] It was composed of poor men,

chiefly tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was

carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were

regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country

carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all

persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had been

long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts[479] are filled from the

beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for heresy--with

prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the

pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the

establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind

resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the

truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had

plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had

been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain:

punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was

said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews, "infected all that it

did blow upon."[480]

There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of

conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of

Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death

penalties if detected, met to read;[481] copies, also, of some of his

tracts[482] were extant; but they were unprinted transcripts, most rare and

precious, which the watchfulness of the police made it impossible to

multiply through the press, and which remained therefore necessarily in the

possession of but a few fortunate persons.

The Protestants were thus isolated in single groups or families, without

organisation, without knowledge of each other, with nothing to give them

coherency as a party; and so they might have long continued, except for an

impulse from some external circumstances. They were waiting for direction,

and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain.

The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe.

Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was

in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same craving

for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the

race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the common feeling; in

England it was almost confined to the lowest. But, wherever it existed, it

was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by

agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of

honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and which

could be endured no longer. At such times the minds of men are like a train

of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other,

and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark

kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common

explosion. Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st

of October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of

Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg,

and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which

the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and were

healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found an echo,

and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. The thing which all were longing

for was done, and in two years from that day there was scarcely perhaps a

village from the Irish Channel to the Danube in which the name of Luther

was not familiar as a word of hope and promise. Then rose a common cry for

guidance. Books were called for--above all things, the great book of all,

the Bible. Luther's inexhaustible fecundity flowed with a steady stream,

and the printing presses in Germany and in the Free Towns of the

Netherlands, multiplied Testaments and tracts in hundreds of thousands.

Printers published at their own expense as Luther wrote.[483] The continent

was covered with disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these

precious wares;[484] and as the contagion spread, noble young spirits from

other countries, eager themselves to fight in God's battle, came to

Wittenberg to learn from the champion who had struck the first blow at

their great enemy how to use their weapons. "Students from all nations came

to Wittenberg," says one, "to hear Luther and Melancthon. As they came in

sight of the town they returned thanks to God with clasped hands; for from

Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of

evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth."[485]

Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so

much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and

thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William

Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the

Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence

to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family,

and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm

approval to suit his patron's conservatism,[486] he fell into disgrace.

From Gloucestershire he removed to London, where Cuthbert Tunstall had

lately been made bishop, and from whom he looked for countenance in an

intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall showed little

encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose where he was

least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by name, hearing

the young dreamer preach on some occasion at St. Dunstan's, took him to his

home for half a year, and kept him there: where "the said Tyndal," as the

alderman declared, "lived like a good priest, studying both night and day;

he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor drink but small single

beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him all the time of his

being there."[487] The half year being passed, Monmouth gave him ten

pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and the alderman,

for assisting him in that business, went to the Tower--escaping, however,

we are glad to know, without worse consequences than a short imprisonment.

Tyndal saw Luther,[488] and under his immediate direction translated the

Gospels and Epistles while at Wittenberg. Thence he returned to Antwerp,

and settling there under the privileges of the city, he was joined by Joy,

who shared his great work with him. Young Frith from Cambridge came to him

also, and Barnes, and Lambert, and many others of whom no written record

remains, to concert a common scheme of action.

In Antwerp, under the care of these men, was established the printing

press, by which books were supplied, to accomplish for the teaching of

England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplishing for Germany. Tyndal's

Testament was first printed, then translations of the best German books,

reprints of Wycliffe's tracts or original commentaries. Such volumes as the

people most required were here multiplied as fast as the press could

produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious writings, the

brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their lives, to form

themselves into an organised association.

It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of heroes; for

heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the first reformers

who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object, emphatically none;

and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they

were all, as I have said, poor men--either students, like Tyndal, or

artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact

with reality, had learnt better than the great and the educated the

difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and noblemen

for his supporters--knights and divines among his disciples--a king and a

House of Commons looking upon him, not without favour. The first

Protestants of the sixteenth century had for their king the champion of

Holy Church, who had broken a lance with Luther; and spiritual rulers over

them alike powerful and imbecile, whose highest conception of Christian

virtue was the destruction of those who disobeyed their mandates. The

masses of the people were indifferent to a cause which promised them no

material advantage; and the Commons of Parliament, while contending with

the abuses of the spiritual authorities, were laboriously anxious to wash

their hands of heterodoxy. "In the crime of heresy, thanked be God," said

the bishops in 1529, "there hath no notable person fallen in our time;" no

chief priest, chief ruler, or learned Pharisee--not one. "Truth it is that

certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants,

vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the

abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them

have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if

judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be

without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our

duty from henceforth."[489] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of

their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of

authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too

were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and here were all

the worthier influences so pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to

shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one

stone of them remains upon another, This was the army of conservatism.

Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and

fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about to do battle in God's name;

and it was to be seen whether God or the world was the stronger. They were

armed, I say, with the truth. It was that alone which could have given them

victory in so unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential

fountain of life; they re-asserted the principle which has lain at the root

of all religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt

with divine lustre in that Catholicism which was now to pass away; the

fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to God

is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but

the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of

duty.

When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English

Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the

lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite

schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no positive system of

theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later

growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a

perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old

exhortation of the Wise Man--"Will you hear the beginning and the end of

the whole matter? Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole

duty of man."

Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this single

principle without disguising its simplicity, their history would have been

painted in far other colours than those which have so long chequered its

surface. This, however, has not been given to us; and perhaps it never will

be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only thus is able to perform

its functions in this earth, where it is sent to live; as the thought must

find a word before it can pass from mind to mind; so every great truth

seeks some body, some outward form in which to exhibit its powers. It

appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to

themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and

these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen

into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after

era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at

once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the

spirit, the form and the reality. For a while the lower tendencies are held

in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a

living language, pregnant and suggestive. Bye and bye, as the mind passes

into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead

language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of

corruption. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing;

obedience is dispensed with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and

outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are converted into

jugglers' tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and

escape the penalties of wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but

a falsehood; and honourable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste

upon the naked elemental life.

This, as I understand it, was the position of the early Protestants. They

found the service of God buried in a system where obedience was dissipated

into superstition; where sin was expiated by the vicarious virtues of other

men; where, instead of leading a holy life, men were taught that their

souls might be saved through masses said for them, at a money rate, by

priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a

system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages,

indulgences,--double-faced as these inventions are--wearing one meaning in

the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the multitude who live

and suffer under their influence--one plain fact at least is visible. The

people substantially learnt that all evils which could touch either their

spirits or their bodies, might be escaped by means which resolved

themselves, scarcely disguised, into the payment of moneys.

The superstition had lingered long; the time had come when it was to pass

away. Those in whom some craving lingered for a Christian life turned to

the heart of the matter, to the book which told them who Christ was, and

what he was; and finding there that holy example for which they longed,

they flung aside in one noble burst of enthusiastic passion, the disguise

which had concealed it from them. They believed in Christ, not in the

bowing rood, or the pretended wood of the cross on which he suffered; and

when that saintly figure had once been seen--the object of all love, the

pattern of all imitation--thenceforward neither form nor ceremony should

stand between them and their God.

Under much confusion of words and thoughts, confusion pardonable in all

men, and most of all in them, this seems to me to be transparently visible

in the aim of these "Christian Brothers;" a thirst for some fresh and noble

enunciation of the everlasting truth, the one essential thing for all men

to know and believe. And therefore they were strong; and therefore they at

last conquered. Yet if we think of it, no common daring was required in

those who would stand out at such a time in defence of such a cause. The

bishops might seize them on mere suspicion; and the evidence of the most

abandoned villains sufficed for their conviction.[490] By the act of Henry

V., every officer, from the lord chancellor to the parish constable, was

sworn to seek them out and destroy them; and both bishops and officials had

shown no reluctance to execute their duty. Hunted like wild beasts from

hiding-place to hiding-place, decimated by the stake, with the certainty

that however many years they might be reprieved, their own lives would

close at last in the same fiery trial; beset by informers, imprisoned,

racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by their own infirmities, the

flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of agony--thus it was that they

struggled on; earning for _themselves_ martyrdom--for _us_, the free

England in which we live and breathe. Among the great, until Cromwell came

to power, they had but one friend, and he but a doubtful one, who long

believed the truest kindness was to kill them. Henry VIII. was always

attracted towards the persons of the reformers. Their open bearing

commanded his respect. Their worst crime in the bishops' eyes--the

translating the Bible--was in his eyes not a crime, but a merit; he had

himself long desired an authorised English version, and at length compelled

the clergy to undertake it; while in the most notorious of the men

themselves, in Tyndal and in Frith, he had more than once expressed an

anxious interest.[491] But the convictions of his early years were long in

yielding. His feeling, though genuine, extended no further than to pity, to

a desire to recover estimable heretics out of errors which he would

endeavour to pardon. They knew, and all the "brethren" knew, that if they

persisted, they must look for the worst from the king and from every

earthly power; they knew it, and they made their account with it. An

informer deposed to the council, that he had asked one of the society "how

the King's Grace did take the matter against the sacrament; which answered,

the King's Highness was extreme against their opinions, and would punish

them grievously; also that my Lords of Norfolk and Suffolk, my Lord Marquis

of Exeter, with divers other great lords, were very extreme against them.

Then he (the informer) asked him how he and his fellows would do seeing

this, the which answered they had two thousand books out against the

Blessed Sacrament, in the commons' hands; and if it were once in the

commons' heads, they would have no further care."[492]

Tyndal then being at work at Antwerp, and the society for the dispersion of

his books thus preparing itself in England, the authorities were not slow

in taking the alarm. The isolated discontent which had prevailed hitherto

had been left to the ordinary tribunals; the present danger called for

measures of more systematic coercion. This duty naturally devolved on

Wolsey, and the office of Grand Inquisitor, which he now assumed, could not

have fallen into more competent hands.

Wolsey was not cruel. There is no instance, I believe, in which he of his

special motion sent a victim to the stake;--it would be well if the same

praise could be allowed to Cranmer. There was this difference between the

cardinal and other bishops, that while they seemed to desire to punish,

Wolsey was contented to silence; while they, in their conduct of trials,

made escape as difficult as possible, Wolsey sought rather to make

submission easy. He was too wise to suppose that he could cauterise heresy,

while the causes of it, in the corruption of the clergy, remained

unremoved; and the remedy to which he trusted, was the infusing new vigour

into the constitution of the church.[493] Nevertheless, he was determined

to repress, as far as outward measures could repress it, the spread of the

contagion; and he set himself to accomplish his task with the full energy

of his nature, backed by the whole power, spiritual and secular, of the

kingdom. The country was covered with his secret police, arresting

suspected persons and searching for books. In London the scrutiny was so

strict that at one time there was a general flight and panic; suspected

butchers, tailors, and carpenters, hiding themselves in the holds of

vessels in the river, and escaping across the Channel.[494] Even there they

were not safe. Heretics were outlawed by a common consent of the European

governments. Special offenders were hunted through France by the English

emissaries with the permission and countenance of the court,[495] and there

was an attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he

happily escaped.[496]

Simultaneously the English universities fell under examination, in

consequence of the appearance of dangerous symptoms among the younger

students. Dr. Barnes, returning from the continent, had used violent

language in a pulpit at Cambridge; and Latimer, then a neophyte in heresy,

had grown suspect, and had alarmed the heads of houses. Complaints against

both of them were forwarded to Wolsey, and they were summoned to London to

answer for themselves.

Latimer, for some cause, found favour with the cardinal, and was dismissed,

with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might prove as

honest as he appeared to be, and even with a general licence to

preach.[497] Barnes was less fortunate; he was far inferior to Latimer; a

noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence. In addition to his

offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked Wolsey himself with

somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well to single him out for

a public, though not a very terrible admonition. His house had been

searched for books, which he was suspected, and justly suspected, of having

brought with him from abroad. These, however, through a timely warning of

the danger, had been happily secreted,[498] or it might have gone harder

with him. As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having

used heretical language. An abjuration was drawn up by Wolsey, which he

signed; and while he remained in prison preparations were made for a

ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul's church, by which

the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary effect on the

disaffected spirits of London.

Vast quantities of Tyndal's publications had been collected by the police.

The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves[499] to buy up the

copies of the New Testament before they left Antwerp;--an unpromising

method, like an attempt to extinguish fire by pouring oil upon it; they had

been successful, however, in obtaining a large immediate harvest, and a

pyramid of offending volumes was ready to be consumed in a solemn _auto da

fé_.

In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to ourselves

a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison to St.

Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight

marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with

bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men

marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds'

weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the

fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy,

was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men,"

undistinguishable by any other name, but detected members of the

brotherhood.

It was eight o'clock when they arrived at St. Paul's. The people had

flocked in crowds before them. The public seats and benches were filled.

All London had hurried to the spectacle. A platform was erected in the

centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and

gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with

eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors--six-and-thirty in all; his

chaplains and "spiritual doctors" sitting also where they could find place,

"in gowns of damask and satin." Opposite the platform, over the north door

of the cathedral, was a great crucifix--a famous image, in those days

called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire

was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round

it in baskets, waiting for the execution of sentence.

Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered. A

second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal's

throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon

their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of

God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences. When

the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon:

and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that "he was

more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so heinous and

detestable."

There was no other religious service: mass had perhaps been said previous

to the admission into the church of heretics lying under censure; and the

knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to the fire underneath

the crucifix. They were taken within the rails, and three times led round

the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they passed. The contents of

the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the holocaust was complete.

This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed sufficient. The church was

satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced the prisoners absolved, and

received back into communion.[500]

So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on the

consciences of the spectators. It may be supposed, however, that men whom

the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be

affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.

A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the

persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated by

rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face with

that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and suffered,

three centuries ago.

Two years before the time at which we have now arrived, Wolsey, in

pursuance of his scheme of converting the endowments of the religious

houses to purposes of education, had obtained permission from the pope to

suppress a number of the smaller monasteries. He had added largely to the

means thus placed at his disposal from his own resources, and had founded

the great college at Oxford, which is now called Christchurch.[501]

Desiring his magnificent institution to be as perfect as art could make it,

he had sought his professors in Rome, in the Italian universities, wherever

genius or ability could be found; and he had introduced into the foundation

several students from Cambridge, who had been reported to him as being of

unusual promise. Frith, of whom we have heard, was one of these. Of the

rest, John Clark, Sumner, and Taverner are the most noticeable. At the time

at which they were invited to Oxford, they were tainted, or some of them

were tainted, in the eyes of the Cambridge authorities, with suspicion of

heterodoxy;[502] and it is creditable to Wolsey's liberality, that he set

aside these unsubstantiated rumours, not allowing them to weigh against

ability, industry, and character. The church authorities thought only of

crushing what opposed them, especially of crushing talent, because talent

was dangerous. Wolsey's noble anxiety was to court talent, and if possible

to win it.

The young Cambridge students, however, ill repaid his confidence (so, at

least, it must have appeared to him), and introduced into Oxford the rising

epidemic. Clark, as was at last discovered, was in the habit of reading St.

Paul's Epistles to young men in his rooms; and a gradually increasing

circle of undergraduates, of three or four years' standing,[503] from

various colleges, formed themselves into a spiritual freemasonry, some of

them passionately insisting on being admitted to the lectures, in spite of

warnings from Clark himself, whose wiser foresight knew the risk which they

were running, and shrank from allowing weak giddy spirits to thrust

themselves into so fearful peril.[504]

This little party had been in the habit of meeting for about six

months,[505] when at Easter, 1527, Thomas Garret, a fellow of

Magdalen,[506] who had gone out of residence, and was curate at All Hallows

church, in London, re-appeared in Oxford. Garret was a secret member of the

London Society, and had come down at Clark's instigation, to feel his way

in the university. So excellent a beginning had already been made, that he

had only to improve upon it. He sought out all such young men as were given

to Greek, Hebrew, and the polite Latin;[507] and in this visit met with so

much encouragement, that the Christmas following he returned again, this

time bringing with him treasures of forbidden books, imported by "the

Christian Brothers;" New Testaments, tracts and volumes of German divinity,

which he sold privately among the initiated.

He lay concealed, with his store, at "the house of one Radley,"[508] the

position of which cannot now be identified; and there he remained for

several weeks, unsuspected by the university authorities, till orders were

sent by Wolsey to the Dean of Christchurch, for his arrest. Precise

information was furnished at the same time respecting himself, his mission

in Oxford, and his place of concealment.[509]

The proctors were put upon the scent, and directed to take him; but one of

them, Arthur Cole, of Magdalen, by name, not from any sympathy with

Garret's objects, as the sequel proved, but probably from old acquaintance,

for they were fellows at the same college, gave him information of his

danger, and warned him to escape.

His young friends, more alarmed for their companion than for themselves,

held a meeting instantly to decide what should be done; and at this meeting

was Anthony Dalaber, an undergraduate of Alban Hall, and one of Clark's

pupils, who will now tell the story of what followed.

"The Christmas before that time, I, Anthony Dalaber, the scholar of Alban

Hall, who had books of Master Garret, had been in my country, at

Dorsetshire, at Stalbridge, where I had a brother, parson of this parish,

who was very desirous to have a curate out of Oxford, and willed me in any

wise to get him one there, if I could. This just occasion offered, it was

thought good among the brethren (for so we did not only call one another,

but were indeed one to another), that Master Garret, changing his name,

should be sent forth with my letters into Dorsetshire, to my brother, to

serve him there for a time, until he might secretly convey himself from

thence some whither over the sea. According hereunto I wrote my letters in

all haste possible unto my brother, for Master Garret to be his curate; but

not declaring what he was indeed, for my brother was a rank papist, and

afterwards was the most mortal enemy that ever I had, for the Gospel's

sake.

"So on Wednesday (Feb. 18), in the morning before Shrovetide, Master Garret

departed out of Oxford towards Dorsetshire, with my letter, for his new

service."

The most important person being thus, as was supposed, safe from immediate

danger, Dalaber was at leisure to think a little about himself; and

supposing, naturally, that the matter would not end there, and that some

change of residence might be of advantage for his own security, he moved

off from Alban Hall (as undergraduates it seems were then at liberty to do)

to Gloucester College,[510] under pretence that he desired to study civil

law, for which no facilities existed at the hall. This little matter was

affected on the Thursday; and all Friday and Saturday morning he "was so

much busied in setting his poor stuff in order, his bed, his books, and

such things else as he had," that he had no leisure to go forth anywhere

those two days, Friday and Saturday.

"Having set up my things handsomely," he continues, "the same day, before

noon, I determined to spend that whole afternoon, until evensong time, at

Frideswide College,[511] at my book in mine own study; and so shut my

chamber door unto me, and my study door also, and took into my head to read

Francis Lambert upon the Gospel of St. Luke, which book only I had then

within there. All my other books written on the Scriptures, of which I had

great numbers, I had left in my chamber at Alban's Hall, where I had made a

very secret place to keep them safe in, because it was so dangerous to have

any such books. And so, as I was diligently reading in the same book of

Lambert upon Luke, suddenly one knocked at my chamber door very hard, which

made me astonished, and yet I sat still and would not speak; then he

knocked again more hard, and yet I held my peace; and straightway he

knocked again yet more fiercely; and then I thought this: peradventure it

is somebody that hath need of me; and therefore I thought myself bound to

do as I would be done unto; and so, laying my book aside, I came to the

door and opened it, and there was Master Garret, as a man amazed, whom I

thought to have been with my brother, and one with him."

Garret had set out on his expedition into Dorsetshire, but had been

frightened, and had stolen back into Oxford on the Friday, to his old

hiding place, where, in the middle of the night, the proctors had taken

him. He had been carried to Lincoln, and shut up in a room in the rector's

house, where he had been left all day. In the afternoon the rector went to

chapel, no one was stirring about the college, and he had taken advantage

of the opportunity to slip the bolt of the door and escape. He had a friend

at Gloucester College, "a monk who had bought books of him;" and Gloucester

lying on the outskirts of the town, he had hurried down there as the

readiest place of shelter. The monk was out; and as no time was to be lost,

Garret asked the servant on the staircase to show him Dalaber's rooms.

As soon as the door was opened, "he said he was undone, for he was taken."

"Thus he spake unadvisedly in the presence of the young man, who at once

slipped down the stairs," it was to be feared, on no good errand. "Then I

said to him," Dalaber goes on, "alas, Master Garret, by this your

uncircumspect coming here and speaking so before the young man, you have

disclosed yourself and utterly undone me. I asked him why he was not in

Dorsetshire. He said he had gone a day's journey and a half; but he was so

fearful, his heart would none other but that he must needs return again

unto Oxford. With deep sighs and plenty of tears, he prayed me to help to

convey him away; and so he cast off his hood and gown wherein he came to

me, and desired me to give him a coat with sleeves, if I had any; and he

told me that he would go into Wales, and thence convey himself, if he

might, into Germany. Then I put on him a sleeved coat of mine. He would

also have had another manner of cap of me, but I had none but priestlike,

such as his own was.

"Then kneeled we both down together upon our knees, and lifting up our

hearts and hands to God our heavenly Father, desired him, with plenty of

tears, so to conduct and prosper him in his journey, that he might well

escape the danger of all his enemies, to the glory of His Holy Name, if His

good pleasure and will so were. And then we embraced and kissed the one the

other, the tears so abundantly flowing out from both our eyes, that we all

bewet both our faces, and scarcely for sorrow could we speak one to

another. And so he departed from me, apparelled in my coat, being committed

unto the tuition of our Almighty and merciful Father.

"When he was gone down the stairs from my chamber, I straightways did shut

my chamber door, and went into my study; and taking the New Testament in my

hands, kneeled down on my knees, and with many a deep sigh and salt tear, I

did, with much deliberation, read over the tenth chapter of St. Matthew's

Gospel,[512] praying that God would endue his tender and lately-born little

flock in Oxford with heavenly strength by his Holy Spirit; that quietly to

their own salvation, with all godly patience, they might bear Christ's

heavy cross, which I now saw was presently to be laid on their young and

weak backs, unable to bear so huge a burden without the greater help of his

Holy Spirit.

"This done, I laid aside my book safe, folded up Master Garret's gown and

hood, and so, having put on my short gown, and shut my doors, I went

towards Frideswide (Christchurch), to speak with that worthy martyr of God,

Master Clark. But of purpose I went by St. Mary's church, to go first unto

Corpus Christi College, to speak with Diet and Udal, my faithful brethren

and fellows in the Lord. By chance I met by the way a brother of ours, one

Master Eden, fellow of Magdalen, who, as soon as he saw me, said, we were

all undone, for Master Garret was returned, and was in prison. I said it

was not so; he said it was. I heard, quoth he, our Proctor, Master Cole,

say and declare the same this day. Then I told him what was done; and so

made haste to Frideswide, to find Master Clark, for I thought that he and

others would be in great sorrow.

"Evensong was begun; the dean and the canons were there in their grey

amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in

the choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel

there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my

singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in

cometh Dr. Cottisford,[513] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go,

bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to the

dean he goeth into the choir, were he was sitting in his stall, and talked

with him, very sorrowfully: what, I know not; but whereof I might and did

truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and hear more. The

commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully troubled as it

seemed. About the middle of the church, met them Dr. London,[514] puffing,

blustering, and blowing like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey.

They talked together awhile; but the commissary was much blamed by them,

insomuch that he wept for sorrow.

"The doctors departed, and sent abroad their servants and spies everywhere.

Master Clark, about the middle of the compline,[515] came forth of the

choir. I followed him to his chamber, and declared what had happened that

afternoon of Master Garret's escape. Then he sent for one Master Sumner and

Master Bets, fellows and canons there. In the meantime he gave me a very

godly exhortation, praying God to give us all the wisdom of the serpent and

the harmlessness of doves, for we should shortly have much need thereof.

When Master Sumner and Master Bets came, he caused me to declare again the

whole matter to them two. Then desiring them to tell our other brethren in

that college, I went to Corpus Christi College, to comfort our brethren

there, where I found in Diet's chamber, looking for me, Fitzjames, Diet,

and Udal. They all knew the matter before by Master Eden, whom I had sent

unto Fitzjames. So I tarried there and supped with them, where they had

provided meat and drink for us before my coming; and when we had ended,

Fitzjames would needs have me to lie that night with him in my old lodging

at Alban's Hall. But small rest and little sleep took we both there that

night."

The next day, which was Sunday, Dalaber rose at five o'clock, and as soon

as he could leave the Hall, hastened off to his rooms at Gloucester. The

night had been wet and stormy, and his shoes and stockings were covered

with mud. The college gates, when he reached them, were still closed, an

unusual thing at that hour; and he walked up and down under the walls in

the bleak grey morning, till the clock struck seven, "much disquieted, his

head full of forecasting cares," but resolved, like a brave man, that come

what would, he would accuse no one, and declare nothing but what he saw was

already known. The gates were at last opened; he went to his rooms, and for

some time his key would not turn in the door, the lock having been meddled

with. At length he succeeded in entering, and found everything in

confusion, his bed tossed and tumbled, his study door open, and his clothes

strewed about the floor. A monk who occupied the opposite rooms, hearing

him return, came to him and said that the commissary and the two proctors

had been there looking for Garret. Bills and swords had been thrust through

the bed-straw, and every corner of the room searched for him. Finding

nothing, they had left orders that Dalaber, as soon as he returned, should

appear before the prior of the students.

"This so troubled me," Dalaber says, "that I forgot to make clean my hose

and shoes, and to shift me into another gown; and all bedirted as I was, I

went to the said prior's chamber." The prior asked him where he had slept

that night. At Alban's Hall, he answered, with his old bedfellow,

Fitzjames. The prior said he did not believe him, and asked if Garret had

been at his rooms the day before. He replied that he had. Whither had he

gone, then? the prior inquired; and where was he at that time? "I

answered," says Dalaber, "that I knew not, unless he was gone to Woodstock;

he told me that he would go there, because one of the keepers had promised

him a piece of venison to make merry with at Shrovetide. This tale I

thought meetest, though it were nothing so."[516]

At this moment the university beadle entered with two of the commissary's

servants, bringing a message to the prior that he should repair at once to

Lincoln, taking Dalaber with him. "I was brought into the chapel," the

latter continues, "and there I found Dr. Cottisford, commissary; Dr.

Higdon, Dean of Cardinal's College; and Dr. London, Warden of New College;

standing together at the altar. They called for chairs and sate down, and

then [ordered] me to come to them; they asked me what my name was, how long

I had been at the university, what I studied," with various other

inquiries: the clerk of the university, meanwhile, bringing pens, ink, and

paper, and arranging a table with a few loose boards upon tressels. A mass

book, he says, was then placed before him, and he was commanded to lay his

hand upon it, and swear that he would answer truly such questions as should

be asked him. At first he refused; but afterwards, being persuaded, "partly

by fair words, and partly by great threats," he promised to do as they

would have him; but in his heart he "meant nothing so to do." "So I laid my

hand on the book," he goes on, "and one of them gave me my oath, and

commanded me to kiss the book. They made great courtesy between them who

should examine me; at last, the rankest Pharisee of them all took upon him

to do it.

"Then he asked me again, by my oath, where Master Garret was, and whither I

had conveyed him. I said I had not conveyed him, nor yet wist where he was,

nor whither he was gone, except he were gone to Woodstock, as I had before

said. Surely, they said, I brought him some whither this morning, for they

might well perceive by my foul shoes and dirty hosen that I had travelled

with him the most part of the night. I answered plainly, that I lay at

Alban's Hall with Sir Fitzjames, and that I had good witness thereof. They

asked me where I was at evensong. I told them at Frideswide, and that I

saw, first, Master Commissary, and then Master Doctor London, come thither

to Master Dean. Doctor London and the Dean threatened me that if I would

not tell the truth I should surely be sent to the Tower of London, and

there be racked, and put into Little-ease.[517]

"At last when they could get nothing out of me whereby to hurt or accuse

any man, or to know anything of that which they sought, they all three

together brought me up a long stairs, into a great chamber, over Master

Commissary's chamber, wherein stood a great pair of very high stocks. Then

Master Commissary asked me for my purse and girdle, and took away my money

and my knives; and then they put my legs into the stocks, and so locked me

fast in them, in which I sate, my feet being almost as high as my head; and

so they departed, locking fast the door, and leaving me alone.

"When they were all gone, then came into my remembrance the worthy

forewarning and godly declaration of that most constant martyr of God,

Master John Clark, who, well nigh two years before that, when I did

earnestly desire him to grant me to be his scholar, said unto me after this

sort: 'Dalaber, you desire you wot not what, and that which you are, I

fear, unable to take upon you; for though now my preaching be sweet and

pleasant to you, because there is no persecution laid on you for it, yet

the time will come, and that, peradventure, shortly, if ye continue to live

godly therein, that God will lay on you the cross of persecution, to try

you whether you can as pure gold abide the fire. You shall be called and

judged a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own friends and

kinsfolk will forsake you, and also hate you; you shall be cast into

prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused before

bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all your

friends and kinsfolk. Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine;

then will ye curse Clark, and wish that ye had never known him because he

hath brought you to all these troubles.'

"At which words, I was so grieved that I fell down on my knees at his feet,

and with tears and sighs besought him that, for the tender mercy of God, he

would not refuse me; saying that I trusted, verily, that he which had begun

this in me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue

therein to the end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his

arms and kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes; and said unto me:

'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do; and from henceforth for ever,

take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ.'"

In these meditations the long Sunday morning wore away. A little before

noon the commissary came again to see if his prisoner was more amenable;

finding him, however, still obstinate, he offered him some dinner--a

promise which we will hope he fulfilled, for here Dalaber's own narrative

abruptly forsakes us,[518] leaving uncompleted, at this point, the most

vivid picture which remains to us of a fraction of English life in the

reign of Henry VIII. If the curtain fell finally on the little group of

students, this narrative alone would furnish us with rare insight into the

circumstances under which the Protestants fought their way. The story,

however, can be carried something further, and the strangest incident

connected with it remains to be told.

Dalaber breaks off on Sunday at noon. The same day, or early the following

morning, he was submitted once more to examination: this time, for the

discovery of his own offences, and to induce him to give up his

confederates. With respect to the latter he proved "marvellous obstinate."

"All that was gotten of him was with much difficulty;" nor would he confess

to any names as connected with heresy or heretics except that of Clark,

which was already known. About himself he was more open. He wrote his "book

of heresy," that is, his confession of faith, "with his own hand"--his

evening's occupation, perhaps, in the stocks in the rector of Lincoln's

house; and the next day he was transferred to prison.[519]

This offender being thus disposed of, and strict secrecy being observed to

prevent the spread of alarm, a rapid search was set on foot for books in

all suspected quarters. The fear of the authorities was that "the infect

persons would flee," and "convey" their poison "away with them."[520] The

officials, once on the scent of heresy, were skilful in running down the

game. No time was lost, and by Monday evening many of "the brethren" had

been arrested, their rooms examined, and their forbidden treasures

discovered and rifled. Dalaber's store was found "hid with marvellous

secresy;" and in one student's desk a duplicate of Garret's list--the

titles of the volumes with which the first "Religious Tract Society" set

themselves to convert England.

Information of all this was conveyed in haste by Dr. London to the Bishop

of Lincoln, as the ordinary of the university; and the warden told his

story with much self-congratulation. On one point, however, the news which

he had to communicate was less satisfactory. Garret himself was

gone--utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track of the

fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither bribes nor

threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate circumstances, as he

told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived that they might strain

a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a

heretic. Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success,

Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding:

"After Master Garret escaped, _the commissary being in extreme pensiveness,

knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made

by one expert in astronomy--and his judjment doth continually persist upon

this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of

London, and will shortly to the sea side_. He was curate unto the parson of

Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as

soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and

my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises;

that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of

London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works,

which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul,

opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[522]