[319] Sir John Russell to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second
series, Vol. XXXVI.; _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 573.
[320] Hall, p. 825.
[321] Leland wrote an ode on the occasion, which is not without some
beauty:--
Spes erat ampla quidem numerosâ prole Joanna
Henricum ut faceret regem facunda parentem.
Sed Superis aliter visum est, cruciatus acerbus
Distorsit vacuum lethali tormine ventrem.
Frigora crediderim temere contracta fuisse
In causâ, superat vis morbi: jamque salute
Desperatâ omni, nymphis hæc rettulit almis.
Non mihi mors curæ est, perituram agnosco creavit
Omnipotens--Moriar--terram tibi debeo terra:
At pius Elysiis animus spatiabitur hortis.
Deprecor hoc unum. Maturos filius annos
Exigat, et tandem regno det jura paterno.
Dixit et æternâ claudebat lumina nube.
Nulla dies pressit graviori clade Britannum.
_Genethliacon Edwardi Principis._
[322] _Rolls House MS._, A 2, 30. I trace the report to within a month
of Jane Seymour's death. Sanders therefore must be held acquitted of the
charge of having invented it. The circumstances of the death itself are
so clear as to leave no trace of uncertainty. How many of the
interesting personal anecdotes of remarkable people, which have gained
and which retain the public confidence, are better founded than this?
Prudence, instructed by experience, enters a general caution against all
anecdotes particularly striking.
[323] _Rolls House MS._ A 2, 30.
[324] Instructions for the Household of Edward Prince of Wales: _Rolls
House MS._
[325] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 2.
[326] Pole to the Bishop of Liège: _Epist._ Vol. II. p. 41.
[327] Nott's _Wyatt_, p. 312.
[328] Nott's _Wyatt_, p. 319.
[329] Ibid.
[330] Ibid. p. 322.
[331] Mary's submission dates from the fall of Anne Boleyn. It was
offered by her on the instant, in three successive letters; two of which
are printed in the State Papers, a third is in MS. in the State Paper
Office.
[332] "And here Sir Thomas Wyatt shall deliver unto the Emperor the
letter written unto him from the said Lady Mary, whereby it shall appear
how she doth repent herself, and how she would that he should repent,
and take of her the tenour. Whereof it shall like him to consider, it is
not to be thought but it will acquit him therein, his Grace,
nevertheless, being so good a lord and father to her as he is, and
undoubtedly will be."--Instructions to Sir Thomas Wyatt: Nott's _Wyatt_,
p. 314.
[333] Cromwell to Wyatt: Nott, p. 321.
[334] State Papers, Vol. VIII., p. 34.
[335] "My lord: this shall be to advertise you that the Imperials and
Frenchmen have taken a truce for ten months, which, as we think, be
great news, and of great weight and moment. Howbeit, my trust is, the
King's Highness knows what is the occasion of this sudden turn, or else
it will trouble my brain to think of it."--Sir William Fitzwilliam to
Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XI.
[336] Henry VIII. to Wyatt: Nott's _Wyatt_.
[337] Cromwell to Wyatt, November 29, 1537: Nott's _Wyatt_.
[338] Better known as Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots.
[339] Commission of Peter Mewtas to Madame de Longueville: _State
Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 10.
[340] Hutton to Sir Thomas Wriothesley: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 9.
[341] Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Wyatt: Nott's _Wyatt_.
[342] Same to the same: Ibid.
[343] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 17.
[344] Hutton to Cromwell: Ibid.
[345] A story passes current with popular historians, that the Duchess
of Milan, when Henry proposed for her, replied that she had but one
head; if she had two, one should be at his Majesty's service. The less
active imagination of contemporaries was contented with reporting that
she had said that the English ministers need not trouble themselves to
make the marriage; "they would lose their labours, for she minded not to
fix her heart that way." Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who was then resident
at Brussels, thought it worth his while to ask her whether these words
had really been used by her.
"M. Ambassador," she replied, "I thank God He hath given me a better
stay of myself than to be of so light sort. I assure you, that neither
those words that you have spoken, nor any like to them, have passed at
any time from my mouth: and so I pray you report for me."
Wriothesley took courage upon this answer, and asked what was her real
inclination in the matter.
"At this she blushed exceedingly. 'As for mine inclination,' quoth she,
'what should I say? You know I am at the Emperor's commandment.'--'Yea,
madam,' quoth Wriothesley; 'but this matter is of such nature, that
there must be a concurrence between his commandment and your consent, or
else you may percase repent it when it shall be too late. Your answer is
such as may serve both for your modesty and for my satisfaction; and
yet, if it were a little plainer, I could be the better contented.' With
that she smiled, and again said, 'You know I am the Emperor's poor
servant, and must follow his pleasure.'--'Marry,' quoth Wriothesley,
'then I may hope to be among the Englishmen that shall be first
acquainted with my new mistress, for the Emperor hath instantly desired
it. Oh, madam!' quoth he, 'how happy shall you be if it be your chance
to be matched with my master. If God send you that hap, you shall be
matched with the most gentle gentleman that liveth; his nature so benign
and pleasant, that I think till this day no man hath heard many angry
words pass his lips. As God shall help me, if he were no king, I think,
and you saw him, you would say, that for his virtue, gentleness, wisdom,
experience, goodliness of person, and all other qualities meet to be in
a prince, he were worthy before all others to be made a king.'... She
smiled, and Wriothesley thought would have laughed out, had not her
gravity forbidden it.... She said she knew his Majesty was a good and
noble prince. Her honest countenance, he added, and the few words that
she wisely spake, together with that which he knew by her chamberers and
servants, made him to think there could be no doubt of her."--_State
Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 146.
[346] "Mr. Wyatt, now handle this matter in such earnest sort with the
Emperor, as the king, who by your fair words hath conceived as certain
to find assured friendship therein, be not deceived. The Frenchmen
affirm so constantly and boldly that nothing spoken by the Emperor,
either touching the principal contrahents or further alliance, hath any
manner of good faith, but such fraud and deceit, that I assure you, on
my faith, it would make any man to suspect his proceeding. Labour, Mr.
Wyatt, to cause the Emperor, if it be possible, to write."--Cromwell to
Wyatt: Nott's _Wyatt_, p. 333.
[347] Wyatt's Oration to the Judges: Nott's _Wyatt_.
[348] "I have received three houses since I wrote last to your lordship,
the which I think would not a little have moved your lordship, if ye had
known the order of them: some sticking fast in windows, naked, going to
drabs, so that the pillar was fain to be sawed, to have him out; some
being plucked from under drabs' beds; some fighting, so that the knife
hath stuck in the bones; with such other pretty business, of the which I
have too much."--Richard suffragan Bishop of Dover to Cromwell:
_Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 198.
[349] A finger of St. Andrew was pawned at Northampton for 40_l._;
"which we intend not," wrote a dry visitor, "to redeem of the price,
except we be commanded so to do."--Ibid. p. 172.
[350] Printed in Fuller's _Church History_, Vol. III. p. 394.
[351] Fuller's _Church History_, Vol. III. p. 398.
[352] "According to your commission, we have viewed a certain supposed
relic, called the blood of Hales, which was enclosed within a round
beryll, garnished and bound on every side with silver, which we caused
to be opened in the presence of a great multitude of people. And the
said supposed relic we caused to be taken out of the said beryll, and
have viewed the same, being within a little glass, and also tried the
same according to our powers, by all means; and by force of the view and
other trials, we judge the substance and matters of the said supposed
relic to be an unctuous gum, coloured, which, being in the glass,
appeared to be a glistening red, resembling partly the colour of blood.
And after, we did take out part of the said substance out of the glass,
and then it was apparent yellow colour, like amber or base gold, and
doth cleave as gum or bird-lime. The matter and feigned relic, with the
glass containing the same, we have enclosed in red wax, and consigned
it, with our seals."--Hugh Bishop of Worcester, with the other
Commissioners, to Cromwell: Latimer's _Remains_, p. 407.
The Abbot of Hales subsequently applied for permission to destroy the
case in which the blood had been.
"It doth stand yet in the place where it was, so that I am afraid lest
it should minister occasion to any weak person looking thereupon to
abuse his conscience therewith; and therefore I beseech for license that
I may put it down every stick and stone, so that no manner of token or
remembrance of that forged relict shall remain."--Abbot of Hales to
Cromwell: _MS. Tanner_ 105.
[353] Barlow to Cromwell: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 183.
[354] Latimer to Cromwell: _Remains_, p. 395.
[355] Geoffrey Chambers to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second
series.
[356] Ibid.
[357] "Invisit aulam regis, regem ipsum novus hospes. Conglomerant ipsum
risu aulico barones duces marchiones comites. Agit ille, minatur oculis,
aversatur ore, distorquet nares; mittit deorsum caput, incurvat dorsum,
annuit aut renuit. Rex ipse incertum gavisusne magis ob patefactam
imposturam an magis doluerit ex animo tot seculis miseræ plebi fuisse
impositum."--Hooker to Bullinger: _Original Letters on the Reformation._
[358] "He said that blessed man St. Thomas of Canterbury suffered death
for the rights of the Church; for there was a great man--meaning thereby
King Harry the Second--which, because St. Thomas of Canterbury would not
grant him such things as he asked, contrary to the liberties of the
Church, first banished him out of this realm; and at his return he was
slain at his own church, for the right of Holy Church, as many holy
fathers have suffered now of late: as that holy father the Bishop of
Rochester: and he doubteth not but their souls be now in heaven.
"He saith and believeth that he ought to have a double obedience: first,
to the King's Highness, by the law of God; and the second to the Bishop
of Rome, by his rule and profession.
"He confesseth that he used and practised to induce men in confession to
hold and stick to the old fashion of belief, that was used in the realm
of long time past."--_Rolls House MS._
[359] "The Bishop of Worcester and I will be to-morrow with your
lordship, to know your pleasure concerning Friar Forest. For if we
should proceed against him according to the order of the law, there must
be articles devised beforehand which must be ministered unto him; and
therefore it will be very well done that one draw them against our
meeting."--Cranmer to Cromwell: Cranmer's _Works_, Vol. I. p. 239.
[360] _Rolls House MS._ A 1, 7, fol. 213.
[361] Ellis Price to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.
[362] _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XXXIV.
[363] Latimer to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol.
XLIX. Latimer's _Letters_, p. 391.
[364] Stow's _Chronicle_, p. 575.
[365] Hall, p. 875, followed by Foxe.
[366] _MS. State Paper Office_, unarranged bundle. The command was
obeyed so completely, that only a single shrine now remains in England;
and the preservation of this was not owing to the forbearance of the
government. The shrine of Edward the Confessor, which stands in
Westminster Abbey, was destroyed with the rest. But the stones were not
taken away. The supposed remains of St. Edward were in some way
preserved; and the shrine was reconstructed, and the dust replaced, by
Abbot Feckenham, in the first year of Queen Mary.--Oration of Abbot
Feckenham in the Parliament House: _MS. Rawlinson, Bodleian Library._
[367] Cranmer to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I.
[368] "The abuses of Canterbury" are placed by the side of those of
Boxley in one of the official statements of the times.--Sir T.
Wriothesley to Henry VIII., Nov. 20. 1538: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII.
[369] Madame de Montreuil, though a Frenchwoman and a good Catholic, had
caught the infection of the prevailing unbelief in saints and saintly
relics. "I showed her St. Thomas's shrine," writes an attendant, "and
all such other things worthy of sight, of the which she was not little
marvelled of the great riches thereof, saying it to be innumerable, and
that if she had not seen it all the men in the world could never have
made her to believe it. Thus overlooking and viewing more than an hour
as well the shrine as St. Thomas's head, being at both set cushions to
kneel, the prior, opening St. Thomas's head, said to her three times,
this is St. Thomas's head, and offered her to kiss it, but she neither
kneeled nor would kiss it, but (stood), still viewing the riches
thereof."--Penison to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 583.
[370] These marks are still distinctly visible.
[371] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 494. A story was current on the
Continent, and so far believed as to be alluded to in the great bull of
Paul the Third, that an apparitor was sent to Canterbury to serve a
citation at Becket's tomb, summoning "the late archbishop" to appear and
answer to a charge of high treason. Thirty days were allowed him. When
these were expired a proctor was charged with his defence. He was tried
and condemned--his property, consisting of the offerings at the shrine,
was declared forfeited--and he himself was sentenced to be exhumed and
burnt. In the fact itself there is nothing absolutely improbable, for
the form said to have been observed was one which was usual in the
Church, when dead men, as sometimes happened, were prosecuted for
heresy; and if I express my belief that the story is without foundation,
I do so with diffidence, because negative evidence is generally of no
value in the face of respectable positive assertion. All contemporary
English authorities, however, are totally silent on a subject which it
is hard to believe that they would not at least have mentioned. We hear
generally of the destruction of the shrine, but no word of the citation
and trial. A long and close correspondence between Cromwell and the
Prior of Canterbury covers the period at which the process took place,
if it took place at all, and not a letter contains anything which could
be construed into an allusion to it.--Letters of the Prior of Canterbury
to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.
So suspicious a silence justifies a close scrutiny of the authorities on
the other side. There exist two documents printed in Wilkins's
_Concilia_, Vol. III. p. 835, and taken from Pollini's _History of the
English Reformation_, which profess to be the actual citation and actual
sentence issued on the occasion. If these are genuine, they decide the
question; but, unfortunately for their authenticity, the dates of the
documents are, respectively, April and May, 1538, and in both of them
Henry is styled, among his official titles, Rex Hiberniæ. Now Henry did
not assume the title of Rex Hiberniæ till two years later. Dominus
Hiberniæ, or Lord of Ireland, is his invariable designation in every
authentic document of the year to which these are said to belong. This
itself is conclusively discrediting. If further evidence is required, it
may be found in the word "Londini," or London, as the date of both
citation and sentence. Official papers were never dated from London, but
from Westminster, St. James's, Whitehall; or if in London, then from the
particular place in London, as the Tower. Both mistakes would have been
avoided by an Englishman, but are exceedingly natural in a foreign
inventor.
[372] "We be daily instructed by our nobles and council to use short
expelition in the determination of our marriage, for to get more
increase of issue, to the assurance of our succession; and upon their
oft admonition of age coming fast on, and (seeing) that the time flyeth
and slippeth marvellously away, we be minded no longer to lose time as
we have done, which is of all losses the most irrecuperable."--Henry
VIII. to Sir T. Wriothesley: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 116.
"Unless his Highness bore a notable affection to the Emperor, and had a
special remembrance of their antient amity, his Majesty could never have
endured to have been kept thus long in balance, his years, and the daily
suits of his nobles and council well pondered."--Wriothesley to
Cromwell: ibid, p. 160.
[373] See the Wriothesley Correspondence: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII.
[374] Wriothesley to Henry VIII., November 20, 1538: Ibid.
[375] Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII: printed in Burnet's
_Collectanea_.
[376] Wriothesley Correspondence: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII.
[377] Wriothesley to Cromwell: Ibid.
[378] Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell, Feb. 21, 1539: _State Papers_, Vol.
VIII.
[379] "Of the evils which now menace Christendom those are held most
grievous which are threatened by the Sultan. He is thought most powerful
to hurt: he must first be met in arms. My words will bear little weight
in this matter. I shall be thought to speak in my own quarrel against my
personal enemy. But, as God shall judge my heart, I say that, if we look
for victory in the East, we must assist first our fellow Christians,
whom the adversary afflicts at home. This victory only will ensure the
other."--_Apol. ad Car. Quint._
[380] He speaks of Cromwell as "a certain man," a "devil's ambassador,"
"the devil in the human form". He doubts whether he will defile his
pages with his name. As great highwaymen, however, murderers,
parricides, and others, are named in history for everlasting ignominy,
as even the devils are named in Holy Scripture, so he will name
Cromwell.--_Apol. ad Car. Quint._
[381] Ibid.
[382] Instructions to Reginald Pole: _Epist._ Vol. II. p. 279, &c.
Pole's admiring biographer ventures to say that "he was declared a
traitor for causes which do not seem to come within the article of
treason."--Philips's _Life of Reginald Pole_, p. 277.
[383] News which was sent from Rome unto the Cardinal Bishop of Seville:
_Rolls House MS._
[384] "There is much secret communication among the king's subjects, and
many of them in the shires of Cornwall and Devonshire be in great fear
and mistrust what the King's Highness and his council should mean, to
give in commandment to the parsons and vicars of every parish, that they
should make a book wherein is to be specified the names of as many as be
wedded and buried and christened. Their mistrust is, that some charges
more than hath been in times past shall grow to them by this occasion of
registering."--Sir Piers Edgecombe to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I.
p. 612.
[385] "George Lascelles shewed me that a priest, which late was one of
the friars at Bristol, informed him that harness would yet be occupied,
for he did know more than the king's council. For at the last council
whereat the Emperor, the French king, and the Bishop of Rome met, they
made the King of Scots, by their counsel, _Defensor fidei_, and that the
Emperor raised a great army, saying it was to invade the Great Turk,
which the said Emperor meaned by our sovereign lord."--John Babington to
Cromwell: MS. _State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. III.
[386]
[Sidenote: Renewed agitation among the people.]
I attach specimens from time to time of the "informations" of which the
Record Office contains so many. They serve to keep the temper of the
country before the mind. The king had lately fallen from his horse and
broken one of his ribs. A farmer of Walden was accused of having wished
that he had broken his neck, and "had said further that he had a bow and
two sheaves of arrows, and he would shoot them all before the king's
laws should go forward." An old woman at Aylesham, leaning over a
shop-window, was heard muttering a chant, that "there would be no good
world till it fell together by the ears, for with clubs and clouted
shoon should the deed be done." Sir Thomas Arundel wrote from Cornwall,
that "a very aged man" had been brought before him with the reputation
of a prophet, who had said that "the priests should rise against the
king, and make a field; and the priests should rule the realm three days
and three nights, and then the white falcon should come out of the
north-west, and kill almost all the priests, and they that should escape
should be fain to hide their crowns with the filth of beasts, because
they would not be taken for priests."--"A groom of Sir William Paget's
was dressing his master's horse one night in the stable in the White
Horse in Cambridge," when the ostler came in and began "to enter into
communication with him." "The ostler said there is no Pope, but a Bishop
of Rome. And the groom said he knew well there was a Pope, and the
ostler, moreover, and whosoever held of his part, were strong heretics.
Then the ostler answered that the King's Grace held of his part; and the
groom said that he was one heretic, and the king was another; and said,
moreover, that this business had never been if the king had not married
Anne Boleyn. And therewith they multiplied words, and waxed so hot, that
the one called the other knave, and so fell together by the ears, and
the groom broke the ostler's head with a faggot stick."--Miscellaneous
Depositions: _MSS. State Paper Office_, and _Rolls House_.
[387] Her blood was thought even purer than Lord Exeter's. A cloud of
doubtful illegitimacy darkened all the children of Edward IV.
[388] "At my lord marquis being in Exeter at the time of the rebellion
he took direction that all commissions for the second subsidy should
stay the levy thereof for a time."--Sir Piers Edgecombe to Cromwell:
_MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. X.
[389] "'The marquis was the man that should help and do them good' (men
said). See the experience, how all those do prevail that were towards
the marquis. Neither assizes, nisi prius, nor bill of indictment put up
against them could take effect; and, of the contrary part, how it
prevailed for them."--Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton.
Titus_, B 1, 386.
[390] Depositions relating to Lord Delaware: _Rolls House MS._ first
series, 426.
[391] Depositions taken before Sir Henry Capel: Ibid. 1286.
[392] "A man named Howett, one of Exeter's dependents, was heard to say,
if the lord marquis had been put to the Tower, at the commandment of the
lord privy seal, he should have been fetched out again, though the lord
privy seal had said nay to it, and the best in the realm besides; and he
the said Howett and his company were fully agreed to have had him out
before they had come away."--_Rolls House MS._ first series, 1286.
[393] Deposition of Geoffrey Pole: _Rolls House MS._
[394] Jane Seymour was dead, and the king was not remarried: I am unable
to explain the introduction of the words, unless (as was perhaps the
case) the application to the painter was in the summer of 1537, and he
delayed his information till the following year.
[395] Sir William Godolphin to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_,
second series, Vol. XIII.
[396] Ibid.
[397] Wriothesley to Sir Thos. Wyatt: Ellis, second series, Vol. II.
[398] Godolphin's Correspondence: _MS. State Paper Office_, second
series, Vol. XIII.
[399] Instructions by the King's Highness to John Becket, Gentleman of
his Grace's Chamber, and John Wroth, of the same: printed in the
_Archæologia_.
[400] "Kendall and Quyntrell were as arrant traitors as any within the
realm, leaning to and favouring the advancement of that traitor Henry,
Marquis of Exeter, nor letting nor sparing to speak to a great number of
the king's subjects in those parts that the said Henry was
heir-apparent, and should be king, and would be king, if the King's
Highness proceeded to marry the Lady Anne Boleyn, or else it should cost
a thousand men's lives. And for their mischievous intent to take effect,
they retained divers and a great number of the king's subjects in those
parts, to be to the lord marquis in readiness within an hour's
warning."--Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1.
[401] Deposition of Alice Paytchet: _MS. State Paper Office_, second
series, Vol. XXXIX.
[402] Examination of Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter: _Rolls
House MS._ first series, 1262.
[403] "The Lord Darcy played the fool," Montague said; "he went about to
pluck the council. He should first have begun with the head. But I
beshrew him for leaving off so soon."--_Baga de Secretis_, pouch xi.
bundle 2.
[404] "I am sorry the Lord Abergavenny is dead; for if he were alive, he
were able to make ten thousand men."--Sayings of Lord Montague: Ibid.
[405] "On Monday, the fourth of this month, the Marquis of Exeter and
Lord Montague were committed to the Tower of London, being the King's
Majesty so grievously touched by them, that albeit that his Grace hath
upon his special favour borne towards them passed over many accusations
made against the same of late by their own domestics, thinking with his
clemency to conquer their cankeredness, yet his Grace was constrained,
for avoiding of such malice as was prepensed, both against his person
royal and the surety of my Lord Prince, to use the remedy of committing
them to ward. The accusations made against them be of great importance,
and duly proved by substantial witnesses. And yet the King's Majesty
loveth them so well, and of his great goodness is so loath to proceed
against them, that it is doubted what his Highness will do towards
them."--Wriothesley to Sir T. Wyatt: Ellis, second series, Vol. II.
[406] Southampton to Cromwell: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 110.
[407] Southampton to Cromwell: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 114.
[408] Robert Warren to Lord Fitzwaters: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1, 143.
[409] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 494, &c.
[410] Hall, followed by the chroniclers, says that the executions were
on the 9th of January; but he was mistaken. In a MS. in the State Paper
Office, dated the 16th of December, 1538, Exeter is described as having
suffered on the 9th of the same month. My account of these trials is
taken from the records in the _Baga de Secretis_: from the Act of
Attainder, 31 Henry VIII. cap. 15, not printed in the Statute Book, but
extant on the Roll; and from a number of scattered depositions,
questions, and examinations in the Rolls House and in the State Paper
Office.
[411] The degrading of Henry Courtenay, late Marquis of Exeter, the 3d
day of December, and the same day convicted; and the 9th day of the said
month beheaded at Tower Hill; and the 16th day of the same month
degraded at Windsor: _MS. State Paper Office_. Unarranged bundle.
[412] Examination of Christopher Chator: _Rolls House MS._ first series.
[413] Gibbon professes himself especially scandalized at the persecution
of Servetus by men who themselves had stood in so deep need of
toleration. The scandal is scarcely reasonable, for neither Calvin nor
any other Reformer of the sixteenth century desired a "liberty of
conscience" in its modern sense. The Council of Geneva, the General
Assembly at Edinburgh, the Smalcaldic League, the English Parliament,
and the Spanish Inquisition held the same opinions on the wickedness of
heresy; they differed only in the definition of the crime. The English
and Scotch Protestants have been taunted with persecution. When nations
can grow to maturity in a single generation, when the child can rise
from his first grammar lesson a matured philosopher, individual men may
clear themselves by a single effort from mistakes which are embedded in
the heart of their age. Let us listen to the Landgrave of Hesse. He will
teach us that Henry VIII. was no exceptional persecutor.
The Landgrave has heard that the errors of the Anabaptists are
increasing in England. He depicts in warning colours the insurrection at
Münster: "If they grow to any multitude," he says, "their acts will
surely declare their seditious minds and opinions. Surely this is true,
the devil, which is an homicide, carrieth men that are entangled in
false opinions to unlawful slaughters and the breach of society....
There are no rulers in Germany," he continues, "whether they be Popish
or professors of the doctrines of the Gospel, that do suffer these men,
if they come into their hands. All men punish them grievously. We use a
just moderation, which God requireth of all good rulers. Whereas any of
the sect is apprehended, we call together divers learned men and good
preachers, and command them, the errors being confuted by the Word of
God, to teach them rightlier, to heal them that be sick, to deliver them
that were bound; and by this way many that are astray are come home
again. These are not punished with any corporal pains, but are driven
openly to forsake their errours. If any do stubbornly defend the ungodly
and wicked errours of that sect, yielding nothing to such as can and do
teach them truly, these are kept a good space in prison, and sometimes
sore punished there; yet in such sort are they handled, that death is
long deferred for hope of amendment; and, as long as any hope is, favour
is shewed to life. If there be no hope left, then the obstinate are put
to death." Warning Henry of the snares of the devil, who labours
continually to discredit the truth by grafting upon it heresy, he
concludes:--
"Wherefore, if that sect hath done any hurt there in your Grace's realm,
we doubt not but your princely wisdom will so temper the matter, that
both dangers be avoided, errours be kept down, and yet a difference had
between those that are good men, and mislike the abuses of the Bishop of
Rome's baggages, and those that be Anabaptists. In many parts of Germany
where the Gospel is not preached, cruelty is exercised upon both sorts
without discretion. The magistrates which obey the Bishop of Rome
(whereas severity is to be used against the Anabaptists) slay good men
utterly alien from their opinions. But your Majesty will put a
difference great enough between these two sorts, and serve Christ's
glory on the one side, and save the innocent blood on the
other."--Landgrave of Hesse to Henry VIII., September 25, 1538: _State
Papers_, Vol. VIII.
[414] "They have made a wondrous matter and report here of the shrines
and of burning of the idol at Canterbury; and, besides that, the King's
Highness and council be become sacramentarians by reason of this embassy
which the King of Saxony sent late into England."--Theobald to Cromwell,
from Padua. October 22, 1538: Ellis, third series, Vol. III.
[415] The history of Lambert's trial is taken from Foxe, Vol. V.
[416] Cromwell to Wyatt: Nott's _Wyatt_, p. 326.
[417] Cromwell to Wriothesley: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 155.
[418] Christopher Mount writes: "This day (March 5) the Earl William a
Furstenburg was at dinner with the Duke of Saxe, which asked of him what
news. He answered that there is labour made for truce between the
Emperor and the Turk. Then said the duke, to what purpose should be all
these preparations the Emperor maketh? The earl answered, that other men
should care for. Then said the duke, the bruit is here--it should be
against the King of England. Then said the earl, the King of England
shall need to take heed to himself."--_State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 606.
[419] The negotiations for the marriages.
[420] Wriothesley to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 165.
[421] _i.e._, he was to marry the Princess Mary.
[422] Wriothesley to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 167.
[423] "Within these fourteen days, it shall surely break out what they
do purpose to do; as of three ways, one--Gueldres, Denmark, or England;
notwithstanding, as I think, England is without danger, because they
know well that the King's Grace hath prepared to receive them if they
come. There be in Holland 270 good ships prepared; but whither they
shall go no man can tell. Preparations of all manner of artillery doth
daily go through Antwerp.
"All the spiritualty here be set for to pay an innumerable sum of money.
Notwithstanding, they will be very well content with giving the
aforesaid money, if all things may be so brought to pass as they hope it
shall, and as it is promised them--and that is, that the Pope's quarrel
may be avenged upon the King's Grace of England."--March 14, ---- to
Cromwell; _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XVI.
[424] William Ostrich to the worshipful Richard Ebbes, Merchant in
London: _MS. State Paper Office_, first series, Vol. II.
[425] Sir Ralph Sadler to Cromwell, from Dover, March 16: _MS. State
Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XXXVII.
[426] Hollinshed, Stow.
[427] Letters of Sir Thomas Cheyne to Cromwell, March and April, 1539:
_MS. State Paper Office_, second series.
[428] Cromwell to the King: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1, 271.
[429] Philips's _Life of Pole_. Four letters of Cardinal Alexander
Farnese to Paul III.: _Epist. Reg. Pol._ Vol. II. p. 281, &c.
[430] One of these, for instance, writes to him: "Vale amplissime Pole
quem si in meis auguriis aliquid veri est adhuc Regem Angliæ videbimus."
His answer may acquit him of vulgar selfishness: "I know not where you
found your augury. If you can divine the future, divine only what I am
to suffer for my country, or for the Church of God, which is in my
country.
eis oἰῶnos ὔristos ὐmύnesthai perὶ patrὴs.
For me, the heavier the load of my affliction for God and the Church,
the higher do I mount upon the ladder of felicity."--_Epist. Reg. Pol._
Vol. III. pp. 37-39.
[431] _Epist. Reg. Pol._ Vol. II. p. 191, &c. The disappointment of the
Roman ecclesiastics led them so far as to anticipate a complete apostacy
on the part of Charles. The fears of Cardinal Contarini make the hopes
so often expressed by Henry appear less unreasonable, that Charles might
eventually imitate the English example. On the 8th of July, 1539,
Contarini writes to Pole:--
"De rebus Germaniæ audio quod molestissime tuli, indictum videlicet esse
conventum Norimburgensem ad Kal. Octobris pro rebus Ecclesiæ
componendis, ubi sunt conventuri oratores Cæsaris et Regis
Christianissimi; sex autem pro parte Lutheranorum et totidem pro
partibus Catholicorum, de rebus Fidei disputaturi; et hoc fieri ex
decreto superiorum mensium Conventûs Francford; in quo nulla mentio fit,
nec de Pontifice, nec de aliquo qui pro sede Apostolicâ interveniret.
Vides credo quo ista tendunt. Utinam ego decipiar; sed hoc prorsus
judico; etsi præsentibus omnibus conatibus regis Angliæ maxime sit
obstandum, tamen non hunc esse qui maxime sedi Apostolicæ possit nocere;
ego illum timeo quem Cato ille in Republicâ Romanâ maxime timebat, qui
sobrius accedit ad illam evertendam; vel potius illos timeo (nec enim
unus est hoc tempore) et nisi istis privatis conventibus cito obviam
eatur, ut non brevi major scissura in ecclesiâ cum majori detrimento
autoritatis sedis Apostolicæ oriatur, quam multis sæculis fuerit visa,
non possum non maxime timere. Scripsit ad me his de rebus primus nuncius
ex Hispaniâ; et postea certiora de iisdem ex Reverendissimo et
Illustrissimo Farnesio cum huc transiret cognovi cui sententiam meam de
toto periculo exposui. Ego certe talem nunc video Ecclesiæ statum, ut si
unquam dixi ullâ in causâ cum Isaiâ, mitte me, nunc potius si rogarer
dicerem cum Mose, Dominus mitte quem missurus es."--_Epist. Reg. Pol._
Vol. II. p. 158.
[432] Account of the Muster of the Citizens of London in the
thirty-first Year of the Reign of King Henry VIII., communicated (for
the _Archæologia_), from the Records of the Corporation of London, by
Thomas Lott, Esq.
[433] Royal Proclamation: _Rolls House MS._ A 1, 10.
[434] In "Lusty Juventus" the Devil is introduced, saying,--
"Oh, oh! full well I know the cause
That my estimation doth thus decay:
The old people would believe still in my laws,
But the younger sort lead them a contrary way.
They will not believe, they plainly say,
In old traditions made by men;
But they will live as the Scripture teacheth them."
Hawkins's _Old Plays_, Vol. I. p. 152.
[435] "The king intended his loving subjects to use the commodity of the
reading of the Bible humbly, meekly, reverently, and obediently; and not
that any of them should read the said Bible with high and loud voices in
time of the celebration of the mass, and other divine services used in
the Church; or that any of his lay subjects should take upon them any
common disputation, argument, or exposition of the mysteries therein
contained."--Proclamation of the Use of the Bible: Burnet's
_Collectanea_, p. 138.
In a speech to the parliament Henry spoke also of the abuse of the
Bible: "I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverendly that most
precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled
in every alehouse and tavern. I am even as much sorry that the readers
of the same follow it in doing so faintly and coldly."--Hall, p. 866.
[436] The Bishop of Norwich wrote to Cromwell, informing him that he had
preached a sermon upon grace and free-will in his cathedral; "the next
day," he said, "one Robert Watson very arrogantly and in great fume came
to my lodgings for to reason with me in that matter, affirming himself
not a little to be offended with mine assertion of free will, saying he
would set his foot by mine, affirming to the death that there was no
such free will in man. Notwithstanding I had plainly declared it to be
of no strength, but only when holpen by the grace of God; by which his
ungodly enterprise, perceived and known of many, my estimation and
credence concerning the sincere preaching of the truth was like to
decay." The bishop went on to say that he had set Watson a day to answer
for "his temerarious opinions," and was obliged to call in a number of
the neighbouring county magistrates to enable him to hold his court, "on
account of the great number which then assembled as Watson's
fautors."--The Bishop of Norwich to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_,
first series, Vol. X.
[437] For instance, in Watson's case he seems to have rebuked the
bishop. Ibid.
[438] Very many complaints of parishioners on this matter remain among
the _State Papers_. The difficulty is to determine the proportion of
offenders (if they may be called such) to the body of the spiritualty.
The following petition to Cromwell, as coming from the collective
incumbents of a diocese, represents most curiously the perplexity of the
clergy in the interval between the alteration of the law and the
inhibition of their previous indulgences. The date is probably 1536. The
petition was in connexion with the commission of inquiry into the
general morality of the religious orders:--
"May it please your mastership, that when of late we, your poor orators
the clergy of the diocese of Bangor, were visited by the king's visitors
and yours, in the which visitation many of us (to knowledge the truth to
your mastership) be detected of incontinency, as it appeareth by the
visitors' books, and not unworthy, wherefore we humbly submit ourselves
unto your mastership's mercy, heartily desiring of you remission, or at
least wise of merciful punishment and correction, and also to invent
after your discreet wisdom some lawful and godly way for us your
aforesaid orators, that we may maintain and uphold such poor
hospitalities as we have done hitherto, most by provision of such women
as we have customably kept in our houses. For in case we be compelled to
put away such women, according to the injunctions lately given us by the
foresaid visitors, then shall we be fain to give up hospitality, to the
utter undoing of such servants and families as we daily keep, and to the
great loss and harms of the king's subjects, the poor people which were
by us relieved to the uttermost of our powers, and we ourselves shall be
driven to seek our living at alehouses and taverns, for mansions upon
the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and
substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, knowing our frailty
and accustomed liberty, they will in no wise board us in their
houses."--Petition of the Clergy of Bangor to the Right Hon. Thomas
Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XXXVI.
[439] This story rests on the evidence of eye-witnesses.--Foxe, Vol. V.
p. 251, &c.
[440] The late parliament had become a byword among the Catholics and
reactionaries. Pole speaks of the "Conventus malignantium qui omnia illa
decreta contra Ecclesiæ unitatem fecit."--_Epist. Reg. Pol._ Vol. II. p.
46.
[441] "For your Grace's parliament I have appointed (for a crown
borough) your Grace's servant Mr. Morison, to be one of them. No doubt
he shall be able to answer or take up such as should crack on far with
literature of learning."--Cromwell to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, Vol.
I. p. 603.
[442] Letter to Secretary Cromwell on the Election of the Knights of the
Shire for the County of Huntingdon: _Rolls House MS._
[443] Lady Blount to the King's Secretary: Ibid.
[444] The Earl of Southampton to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.
[445] The two persons whom Cromwell had previously named.
[446] Letters of the Mayor of Canterbury to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper
Office_, second series, Vol. V.
In the first edition this affair is referred to the election of 1539. We
are left almost invariably to internal evidence to fix the dates of
letters, and finding the second of those written by the Mayor of
Canterbury, on this subject, addressed to Cromwell as Lord Privy Seal, I
supposed that it must refer to the only election conducted by him after
he was raised to that dignity. I have since ascertained that the first
letter, the cover of which I did not see, is addressed to Sir Thomas
Cromwell, chief secretary, &c. It bears the date of the 20th of May, and
though the year is not given, the difference of the two styles fixes it
to 1536. The election was conducted while Cromwell was a commoner. He
was made a peer and Privy Seal immediately on the meeting of parliament
on the 2d of July.
[447] Cromwell to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 693.
[448] "The King's Highness desiring that such a unity might be
established in all things touching the doctrine of Christ's religion, as
the same so being established might be to the honour of Almighty God,
and consequently redound to the commonwealth of this his Highness's most
noble realm, hath therefore caused his most High Court of Parliament to
be at this time summoned, and also a synod and convocation of all the
archbishops, bishops, and other learned men of the clergy of this his
realm to be in like manner assembled."--31 Henry VIII. cap. 14.
[449] "Post missarum solemnia, decenter ac devote celebrata, divinoque
auxilio humillimi implorato et invocato."--_Lords Journals_, 31 Henry
VIII.
[450] _Lords Journals_, 31 Henry VIII.
[451] A Device for extirpating Heresies among the People: _Rolls House
MS._
[452] "Nothing has yet been settled respecting the marriage of the
clergy, although some persons have very freely preached before the king
upon the subject."--John Butler to Conrad Pellican, March 8, 1539:
_Original Letters on the Reformation_, second series, p. 624.
[453] Lady Exeter was afterwards pardoned. Lady Salisbury's offences,
whatever they were, seem to have been known to the world, even before
Lord Southampton's visit of inspection to Warblington. The magistrates
of Stockton in Sussex sent up an account of examinations taken on the
13th of September, 1538, in which a woman is charged with having said,
"If so be that my Lady of Salisbury had been a young woman as she was an
old woman, the King's Grace and his council had burnt her."--_MS. State
Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XXXIX. The act of attainder has not
been printed (31 Henry VIII. cap. 15: _Rolls House MS._); so much of it,
therefore, as relates to these ladies is here inserted:--
"And where also Gertrude Courtenay, wife of the Lord Marquis of Exeter,
hath traitorously, falsely, and maliciously confederated herself to and
with the abominable traitor Nicholas Carew, knowing him to be a traitor
and a common enemy to his Highness and the realm of England; and hath
not only aided and abetted the said Nicholas Carew in his abominable
treasons, but also hath herself committed and perpetrated divers and
sundry detestable and abominable treasons to the fearful peril of his
Highness's royal person, and the loss and desolation of this realm of
England, if God of his goodness had not in due time brought the same
treason to knowledge:
"And where also Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and Hugh Vaughan,
late of Bekener, in the county of Monmouth, yeoman, by instigation of
the devil, putting apart the dread of Almighty God, their duty of
allegiance, and the excellent benefits received of his Highness, have
not only traitorously confederated themselves with the false and
abominable traitors Henry Pole, Lord Montague, and Reginald Pole, sons
to the said countess, knowing them to be false traitors, but also have
maliciously aided, abetted, maintained, and comforted them in their said
false and abominable treason, to the most fearful peril of his Highness,
the commonwealth of this realm, &c., the said marchioness and the said
countess be declared attainted, and shall suffer the pains and penalties
of high treason." I find no account of Vaughan, or of the countess's
connexion with him. He was probably one of the persons employed to carry
letters to and from the cardinal.
[454] "Immediate post Billæ lectionem Dominus Cromwell palam ostendit
quandam tunicam ex albo serico confectam inventam inter linteamina
Comitissæ Sarum, in cujus parte anteriore existebant sola arma Angliæ;
in parte vero posteriore insignia illa quibus nuper rebelles in
aquilonari parte Angliæ in commotione suâ utebantur."--_Lords Journals_,
31 Henry VIII.
[455] In quoting the preambles of acts of parliament I do not attach to
them any peculiar or exceptional authority. But they are contemporary
statements of facts and intentions carefully drawn, containing an
explanation of the conduct of parliament and of the principal events of
the time. The explanation may be false, but it is at least possible that
it may be true; and my own conclusion is, that, on the whole, the
account to be gathered from this source is truer than any other at which
we are likely to arrive; that the story of the Reformation as read by
the light of the statute book is more intelligible and consistent than
any other version of it, doing less violence to known principles of
human nature, and bringing the conduct of the principal actors within
the compass of reason and probability. I have to say, further, that the
more carefully the enormous mass of contemporary evidence of another
kind is studied, documents, private and public letters, proclamations,
council records, state trials, and other authorities, the more they will
be found to yield to these preambles a steady support.
[456] 31 Henry VIII. cap. 8.
[457] The limitation which ought to have been made was in the time for
which these unusual powers should be continued; the bill, however, was
repealed duly in connexion with the treason acts and the other irregular
measures in this reign, as soon as the crisis had passed away, or when
those who were at the head of the state could no longer be trusted with
dangerous weapons.--See 1 Edward VI. cap. 7. The temporary character of
most of Henry's acts was felt, if it was not avowed. Sir Thomas Wyatt in
an address to the Privy Council, admitted to having said of the Act of
Supremacy, "that it was a goodly act, the King's Majesty being so
virtuous, so wise, so learned, and so good a prince; but if it should
fall unto an evil prince it were a sore rod:" and he added, "I suppose I
have not mis-said in that; for all powers, namely absolute, are sore
rods when they fall into evil men's hands."--Oration to the Council:
Nott's _Wyatt_, p. 304.
[458] The same expressions had been used of the Lollards a hundred and
fifty years before. The description applied absolutely to the
Anabaptists; and Oliver Cromwell had the same disposition to contend
against among the Independents. The least irregular of the Protestant
sects were tainted more or less with anarchical opinions.
[459] A considerable part of this address is in Henry's own handwriting
See Strype's _Memorials,_ Vol. II. p. 434.
[460] See Fuller, Vol. III. p. 411.
[461] 31 Henry VIII. cap. 9
[462] In some instances, if not in all, this was actually the case.--See
the Correspondence between Cromwell and the Prior of Christ Church at
Canterbury: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.
[463] Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, and
Westminster.
[464] Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, Norwich, Worcester, Rochester,
Durham, and Carlisle.
[465] "Per Dominum cancellarium declaratum est quod cum non solum
proceres spirituales verum etiam regia majestas ad unionem in
precedentibus articulis conficiendam multipliciter studuerunt et
laboraverunt ita ut nunc unio in eisdem confecta sit regia igitur
voluntatis esse ut penale aliquod statutum efficeretur ad coercendum
suos subditos, ne contra determinationem in eisdem articulis confectam
contradicerent, aut dissentirent, verum ejus majestatem proceribus
formam hujusmodi malefactorum hujusmodi committere. Itaque ex eorum
communi consensu concordatum est quod Archiepiscopus Cant., Episcopus
Elien., Episcopus Menevensis et Doctor Peter, unam formam cujusdam
actus, concernentem Punitionem hujusmodi malefactorum dictarent et
componerent similiterque quod Archiepisc. Ebor., Episc. Dunelm., Episc.
Winton et Doctor Tregonwell alteram ejusmodi effectus dictitarent et
componerent formam."--_Lords Journals_, 31 Henry VIII.
[466] Foxe's rhetoric might be suspected, but a letter of Melancthon to
Henry VIII. is a more trustworthy evidence: "Oh, cursed bishops!" he
exclaims; "oh, wicked Winchester!"--Melancthon to Henry VIII.: printed
in Foxe, Vol. V.
[467] "The judge shall be bounden, if it be demanded of him, to deliver
in writing to the party called before him, the copy of the matter
objected, and the names and depositions of the witnesses ... and in such
case, as the party called answereth and denyeth that that is objected,
and that no proof can be brought against him but the deposition of one
witness only, then and in that case, be that witness never of so great
honesty and credit, the same party so called shall be without longer
delay absolved and discharged by the judge's sentence freely without
further cost or molestation."--The Six Articles Bill as drawn by the
King: Wilkins's _Consilia_, Vol. III. p. 848.
[468] Act for Abolishing Diversity of Opinions: 31 Henry VIII. cap. 14.
[469] Printed in Strype's _Cranmer_, Vol. II. p. 743.
[470] Philip Melancthon to Henry VIII., Foxe, Vol. V.
[471] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 265.
[472] Hall's _Chronicle_, p. 828. Hall is a good evidence on this point.
He was then a middle-aged man, resident in London, with clear eyes and a
shrewd, clear head, and was relating not what others told him, but what
he actually saw.
[473] In Latimer's case, against Henry's will, or without his knowledge.
Cromwell, either himself deceived or desiring to smooth the storm, told
Latimer that the king advised his resignation; "which his Majesty
afterwards denied, and pitied his condition."--_State Papers_, Vol. I.
p. 849.
[474] Hall.
[475] Notes of Erroneous Doctrines preached at Paul's Cross by the Vicar
of Stepney: _MS. Rolls House_.
[476] Henry Dowes to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 258.
[477] Richard Cromwell to Lord Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_,
second series, Vol. VII. p. 188.
[478] More's _Utopia_, Burnet's translation, p. 13.
[479] Respectable authorities, as most of my readers are doubtless
aware, inform us that seventy-two thousand criminals were executed in
England in the reign of Henry VIII. Historians who are accustomed to
examine their materials critically, have usually learnt that no
statements must be received with so much caution as those which relate
to numbers. Grotius gives, in a parallel instance, the number of
heretics executed under Charles V. in the Netherlands as a hundred
thousand. The Prince of Orange gives them as fifty thousand. The
authorities are admirable, though sufficiently inconsistent, while the
judicious Mr. Prescott declares both estimates alike immeasurably beyond
the truth. The entire number of victims destroyed by Alva in the same
provinces by the stake, by the gallows, and by wholesale massacre,
amount, when counted carefully in detail, to twenty thousand only. The
persecutions under Charles, in a serious form, were confined to the
closing years of his reign. Can we believe that wholesale butcheries
were passed by comparatively unnoticed by any one at the time of their
perpetration, more than doubling the atrocities which startled
subsequently the whole world? Laxity of assertion in matters of number
is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood. Men not
remarkably inaccurate will speak of thousands, and, when
cross-questioned, will rapidly reduce them to hundreds, while a single
cipher inserted by a printer's mistake becomes at once a tenfold
exaggeration. Popular impressions on the character of the reign of Henry
VIII. have, however, prevented inquiry into any statement which reflects
discredit upon this; the enormity of an accusation has passed for an
evidence of its truth. Notwithstanding that until the few last years of
the king's life no felon who could read was within the grasp of the law,
notwithstanding that sanctuaries ceased finally to protect murderers six
years only before his death, and that felons of a lighter cast might use
their shelter to the last,--even those considerable facts have created
no misgiving, and learned and ignorant historians alike have repeated
the story of the 72,000 with equal confidence.
I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on
which it rests.
The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the _Description of
Britain_ prefixed to Hollinshed's _Chronicle_. Harrison, speaking of the
manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of
discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and
adds, "It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop
of Lexovia, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father,
executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves,
and rogues, did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them."
I am unable to discover "the Bishop of Lexovia;" but, referring to the
_Commentaries_ of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the
horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of
his birth, and after it this passage:--
"Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father,
wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he
divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction with
Cauda, Lampas partook of the nature of Mars; Luna in occiduo cardine was
among the dependencies of Mars; and Mars himself was in the ill-starred
constellation Virgo and in the quadrant of Jupiter Infelix. Moreover, he
quarrelled with the Pope, owing to the position of Venus and to
influences emanating from her. He was affected also by a constellation
with schismatic properties, and by certain eclipses, and hence and from
other causes, arose a fact related to me by the Bishop of Lexovia,
namely, that two years before his death as many as seventy thousand
persons were found to have perished by the hand of the executioner in
that one island during his reign."
The words of some unknown foreign ecclesiastic discovered imbedded in
the midst of this abominable nonsense, and transmitted through a brain
capable of conceiving and throwing it into form, have been considered
authority sufficient to cast a stigma over one of the most remarkable
periods in English history, while the contemporary English Records, the
actual reports of the judges on assize, which would have disposed
effectually of Cardan and his bishop, have been left unstudied in their
dust.
[480] As we saw recently in the complaints of the Marquis of Exeter. But
in this general sketch I am giving the result of a body of
correspondence too considerable to quote.
[481] In healthier times the Pope had interfered. A bull of Innocent
VIII. permitted felons repeating their crimes, or fraudulent creditors,
to be taken forcibly out of sanctuary.--Wilkins's _Concilia_, Vol. III.
p. 621.
[482] The Magistrates of Frome to Sir Henry Long: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B
1, 102. Mr. Justice Fitzjames to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_,
second series, Vol. XI. p. 43.
[483] The letter which I quote is addressed to Cromwell as "My Lord
Privy Seal," and dated July 17. Cromwell was created privy seal on the
2d of July, 1536, and Earl of Essex on the 17th of April, 1540. There is
no other guide to the date.
[484] The Magistrates of Chichester to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State
Paper Office_, second series, Vol. X.
[485] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 1.
[486] Humfrey Wingfield to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_,
second series, Vol. LI.
[487] Richard Layton to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second
series, Vol. XX.
[488] _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.
[489] Correspondence of the Warden and Council of the Welsh Marches with
the Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.
[490] _MS. Rolls House_, first series, 494.
[491] At the execution, Latimer's chaplain, Doctor Tailor, preached a
sermon. Among the notes of the proceedings I find a certain Miles
Denison called up for disrespectful language.
"The said Miles did say: The bishop sent one yesterday for to preach at
the gallows, and there stood upon the vicar's colt and made a foolish
sermon of the new learning, looking over the gallows. I would the colt
had winced and cast him down."--"Also during the sermon he did say, I
would he were gone, and I were at my dinner."--_MS. State Paper Office._
[492] Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1, 386.
[493] The Sheriff of Hampshire to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_,
first series, Vol. IX.
[494] The traditions of severity connected with this reign are explained
by these exceptional efforts of rigour. The years of licence were
forgotten; the seasons recurring at long intervals, when the executions
might be counted by hundreds, lived in recollection, and when three or
four generations had passed, became the measure of the whole period.
[495] "These three abbots had joined in a conspiracy to restore the
Pope."--Traherne to Bullinger: _Original Letters on the Reformation_,
second series, p. 316.
[496] "Yesterday I was with the Abbot of Colchester, who asked me how
the Abbot of St. Osith did as touching his house; for the bruit was the
king would have it. To the which I answered, that he did like an honest
man, for he saith, I am the king's subject, and I and my house and all
is the king's; wherefore, if it be the king's pleasure, I, as a true
subject, shall obey without grudge. To the which the abbot answered, the
king shall never have my house but against my will and against my heart;
for I know, by my learning, he cannot take it by right and law.
Wherefore, in my conscience, I cannot be content; nor he shall never
have it with my heart and will. To the which I said beware of such
learning; for if ye hold such learning as ye learned in Oxenford when ye
were young ye will be hanged; and ye are worthy. But I will advise you
to confirm yourself as a good subject, or else you shall hinder your
brethren and also yourself."--Sir John St. Clair to the Lord Privy Seal:
_MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XXXVIII. The abbot did not
take the advice, but ventured more dangerous language.
"The Abbot of Colchester did say that the northern men were good men and
_mokell_ in the mouth, and 'great crackers' and nothing worth in their
deeds." "Further, the said abbot said, at the time of the insurrection,
'I would to Christ that the rebels in the north had the Bishop of
Canterbury, the lord chancellor, and the lord privy seal amongst them,
and then I trust we should have a merry world again.'"--Deposition of
Edmund ----: _Rolls House MS._ second series, No. 27.
But the abbot must have committed himself more deeply, or have refused
to retract and make a submission; for I find words of similar purport
sworn against other abbots, who suffered no punishment.
[497] _Lords Journals_, 28 Henry VIII.
[498] "The Abbot of Glastonbury appeareth neither then nor now to have
known God nor his prince, nor any part of a good Christian man's
religion. They be all false, feigned, flattering hypocrite knaves, as
undoubtedly there is none other of that sort."--Layton to Cromwell:
Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 247.
[499] Confession of the Abbot of Barlings: _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.
[500] "And for as much as experience teacheth that many of the heads of
such houses, notwithstanding their oaths, taken upon the holy
evangelists, to present to such the King's Majesty's commissioners as
have been addressed unto them, true and perfect inventories of all
things belonging to their monasteries, many things have been left out,
embezzled, stolen, and purloined--many rich jewels, much rich plate,
great store of precious ornaments, and sundry other things of great
value and estimation, to the damage of the King's Majesty, and the great
peril and danger of their own souls, by reason of their wilful and
detestable perjury; the said commissioners shall not only at every such
house examine the head and convent substantially, of all such things so
concealed or unlawfully alienated, but also shall give charge to all the
ministers and servants of the same houses, and such of the neighbours
dwelling near about them as they shall think meet, to detect and open
all such things as they have known or heard to have been that way
misused, to the intent the truth of all things may the better appear
accordingly."--Instructions to the Monastic Commissioners: _MS. Tanner_,
105, _Bodleian Library_.
[501] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p.
499.
[502] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p.
619.
[503] Ibid. 621.
[504] Butler, Elliot, and Traherne to Conrad Pellican: _Original
Letters_, second series, p. 624.
[505] Thomas Perry to Ralph Vane: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 140.
[506] I should have distrusted the evidence, on such a point, of excited
Protestants (see _Original Letters on the Reformation_, p. 626), who
could invent and exaggerate as well as their opponents; but the promise
of these indulgences was certainly made, and Charles V. prohibited the
publication of the brief containing it in Spain or Flanders. "The
Emperor," wrote Cromwell to Henry, "hath not consented that the Pope's
mandament should be published neither in Spain, neither in any other his
dominions, that Englishmen should be destroyed in body, in goods,
wheresoever they could be found, as the Pope would they should
be."--_State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 608.
[507] _MS. Cotton._
[508] Lord Russell to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.
[509] Ibid.
[510] Pollard to Cromwell: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 261.
[511] Henry Fitz Roy, Duke of Richmond, died July 22, 1536.
[512] "Animadvertens sua clementia quod maxime hoc convenerat
parliamentum pro bono totius Regni publico et concordiâ Christianæ
religionis stabiliendà non tam cito quam propter rei magnitudinem quæ
non solum regnum ipsum Angliæ concernit verum etiam alia regna et
universi Christianismi Ecclesias quantumvis diversarum sententiarum quæ
in eam rem oculos et animum habebant intentos, sua Majestas putavit tam
propriâ suâ regiâ diligentiâ et studio quam etiam episcoporum et cleri
sui sedulitate rem maturius consultandam, tractandam et
deliberandam."--Speech of the Lord Chancellor at the Prorogation: _Lords
Journals_, Vol. I. p. 137.
[513] Brother of Jane Seymour; afterwards Protector.
[514] "I am as glad of the good resolutions of the Duke of Cleves, his
mother, and council, as ever I was of anything since the birth of the
prince: for I think the King's Highness should not in Christendom marry
in no place meet for his Grace's honour that should be less prejudicial
to his Majesty's succession."--Hertford to Cromwell: Ellis, first
series, Vol. II. p. 119.
[515] "I find the council willing enough to publish and manifest to the
world that by any covenants made by the old Duke of Cleves and the Duke
of Lorraine, my Lady Anne is not bounden; but ever hath been and yet is
at her free liberty to marry wherever she will."--Wotton to the King:
Ellis, first series, Vol. II. p. 121.
[516] Ellis, first series, Vol. II. p. 121.
[517] "The Duke of Cleves hath a daughter, but I hear no great praise,
either of her personage nor beauty."--Hutton to Cromwell: _State
Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 5.
[518] Stow.
[519] Butler to Bullinger: _Original Letters on the Reformation_, p.
627.
[520] Partridge to Bullinger: Ibid. 614.
[521] The Elector of Saxony to Henry VIII.: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol.
II. p. 437.
[522] See a correspondence between Cranmer and a Justice of the Peace,
Jenkins's _Cranmer_, Vol. I.
[523] "I would to Christ I had obeyed your often most gracious grave
councils and advertisements. Then it had not been with me as now it
is."--Cromwell to the King: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 510.
[524] _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.
[525] He required, probably, no information that his enemies would spare
no means, fair or foul, for his destruction. But their plots and
proceedings had been related to him two years before by his friend
Allen, the Irish Master of the Rolls, in a report of expressions which
had been used by George Paulet, brother of the lord treasurer, and one
of the English commissioners at Dublin. Cromwell, it seems, had
considered that estates in Ireland forfeited for treason, or
non-residence, would be disposed of better if granted freely to such
families as had remained loyal, than if sold for the benefit of the
crown. Speaking of this matter, "The king," Paulet said, "beknaveth
Cromwell twice a week, and would sometimes knock him about the pate. He
draws every day towards his death, and escaped very hardly at the last
insurrection. He is the greatest briber in England, and that is espied
well enough. The king has six times as much revenues as ever any of his
noble progenitors had, and all is consumed and gone to nought by means
of my Lord Privy Seal, who ravens all that he can get. After all the
king's charges to recover this land, he is again the only means to cause
him to give away his revenues; and it shall be beaten into the king's
head how his treasure has been needlessly wasted and consumed, and his
profits and revenues given away by sinister means." "Cromwell," Paulet
added, "has been so handled and taunted by the council in these matters,
as he is weary of them; but I will so work my matter, as the king shall
be informed of every penny that he hath spent here; and when that great
expence is once in his head, it shall never be forgotten there is one
good point. And then I will inform him how he hath given away to one man
seven hundred marks by the year. And then will the king swear by God's
body, have I spent so much money and now have given away my land? There
was never a king so deceived by man. I will hit him by means of my
friends."--_State Papers_, Vol. II. p. 551. It is not clear how much is
to be believed of Paulet's story so far as relates to the king's
treatment of Cromwell. The words were made a subject of an inquiry
before Sir Anthony St. Leger; and Paulet meant, it seemed, that the
"beknaving and knocking about the pate" took place in private before no
witnesses; so that, if true, it could only have been known by the
acknowledgments of the king or of Cromwell himself. But the character of
the intrigues for Cromwell's destruction is made very plain.
[526] Foxe's _History of Cromwell_.
[527] A paper of ten interrogatories is in the Rolls House, written in
Cromwell's hand, addressed to a Mr. John More. More's opinion was
required on the supremacy, and among the questions asked him were
these:--
What communication hath been between you and the Bishop of Winchester
touching the primacy of the Bishop of Rome?
What answers the said Bishop made unto you upon such questions as ye did
put to him?
Whether ye have heard the said Bishop at any time in any evil opinion
contrary to the statutes of the realm, concerning the primacy of the
Bishop of Rome or any other foreign potentate?--_Rolls House MS._ A 2,
30, fol. 67.
In another collection I found a paper of Mr. More's answers; but it
would seem (unless the MS. is imperfect) that he replied only to the
questions which affected himself. The following passage, however, is
curious: "The cause why I demanded the questions (on the primacy) of my
Lord of Winchester was for that I heard it, as I am now well remembered,
much spoken of in the parliament house, and taken among many there to be
a doubt as ye, Mr. Secretary, well know. And for so much as I esteemed
my lord's wisdom and learning to be such, that I thought I would not be
better answered, because I heard you, Mr. Secretary, say he was much
affectionate to the Papacy."--_Rolls House MS._ first series, 863.
[528] "The Bishop of Winchester was put out of the Privy Council,
because my Lord Privy Seal took displeasure with him because he should
say it was not meet that Dr. Barnes, being a man defamed of heresy,
should be sent ambassador. Touching the Bishop of Chichester there was
not heard any cause why he was put forth from the Privy
Council."--Depositions of Christopher Chator: _Rolls House MS._ first
series.
[529] "Then said Craye to me, there was murmuring and saying by the
progress of time that my Lord Privy Seal should be out of favour with
his prince. Marry, said I, I heard of such a thing. I heard at Woodstock
of one Sir Launcelot Thornton, a chaplain of the Bishop of Durham, who
shewed me that the Earl of Hampton, Sir William Kingston, and Sir
Anthony Brown were all joined together, and would have had my Lord of
Durham to have had rule and chief saying under the King's Highness. Then
said Craye to me, It was evil doing of my lord your master that would
not take it upon hand, for he might have amended many things that were
amiss; for, if the Bishop of Winchester might have had the saying, he
would have taken it upon hand. Well, said I, my lord my master is too
good a lawyer, knowing by his book the inconstancy of princes, where
there is a text that saith: Lubricus est primus locus apud
Reges."--_MS._ ibid.
[530] "There was an honest man in London called Dr. Watts, which
preacheth much against heresy; and this Dr. Watts was called before my
Lord of Canterbury, and Dr. Barnes should be either his judge or his
accuser."--_Rolls House MS._, first series.
[531] "There was an alderman in Gracechurch-street that came to my Lord
of Canterbury, and one with him, and said to my Lord of Canterbury:
Please your Grace that we are informed that your Grace hath our master
Watts by hold. And if it be for treason we will not speak for him, but
if it be for heresy or debt we will be bound for him in a thousand
pound; for there was ten thousand of London coming to your lordship to
be bound for him, but that we stayed them."--_MS._ ibid.
[532] Butler to Bullinger: _Original Letters on the Reformation_, p.
627.
[533] "As to the matter concerning the Duchess of Milan, when his
Highness had heard it, he paused a good while, and at the last said,
smiling, 'Have they remembered themselves now?' To the which I said,
'Sir, we that be your servants are much bound to God, they to woo you
whom ye have wooed so long.' He answered coldly: 'They that would not
when they might, percase shall not when they would.'"--Southampton to
Cromwell, Sept. 17, 1539: _State Papers_, Vol. I.
[534] "There should be three causes why the Emperor should come into
these parts--the one for the mutiny of certain cities which were dread
in time to allure and stir all or the more part of the other cities to
the like; the second, for the alliance which the King's Majesty hath
made with the house of Cleves, which he greatly stomacheth; the third,
for the confederacy, as they here call it, between his Majesty and the
Almayns. The fear which the Emperor hath of these three things hath
driven him to covet much the French king's amity."--Stephen Vaughan to
Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 203.
[535] "There is great suspicion and jealousy to be taken to see these
two great princes so familiar together, and to go conjointly in secret
practices, in which the Bishop of Rome seemeth to be intelligent, who
hath lately sent his nephew, Cardinal Farnese, to be present at the
parlement of the said princes in France. The contrary part cannot brook
the King's Majesty and the Almains to be united together, which is no
small fear and terror as well to Imperials as the Papisticals, and no
marvel if they fury, fearing thereby some great ruin."--Harvel to
Cromwell from Venice, December 9.
[536] _Epist. Reginaldi Poli_, Vol. V. p. 150. In this paper Pole says
that the Duke of Norfolk stated to the king, in a despatch from
Doncaster, when a battle seemed imminent, "that his troops could not be
trusted, their bodies were with the king, but their minds with the
rebels." His information was, perhaps, derived from his brother
Geoffrey, who avowed an intention of deserting.
[537] "The said Helyard said to me that the Emperor was come into
France, and should marry the king's daughter; and the Duke of Orleans
should marry the Duchess of Milan, and all this was by the Bishop of
Rome's means; and they were all confedered together, and as for the
Scottish king, he was always the French king's man, and we shall all be
undone, for we have no help now but the Duke of Cleves, and they are so
poor they cannot help us."--Depositions of Christopher Chator: _Rolls
House MS._ first series.
[538] Sir Thos. Wyatt to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 219
&c.
[539] Southampton's expressions were unfortunately warm. Mentioning a
conversation with the German ambassadors, in which he had spoken of his
anxiety for the king's marriage, "so as if God failed us in my Lord
Prince, we might have another sprung of like descent and line to reign
over us in peace," he went on to speak to them of the other ladies whom
the king might have had if he had desired; "but hearing," he said,
"great report of the notable virtues of my lady now with her excellent
beauty, _such as I well perceive to be no less than was reported, in
very deed my mind gave me to lean that way_." These words, which might
have passed as unmeaning compliment, had they been spoken merely to the
lady's countrymen, he repeated in his letters to the king, who of course
construed them by his hopes.
[540] Deposition of Sir Anthony Brown: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. II. p.
252, &c.
[541] Those who insist that Henry was a licentious person, must explain
how it was that, neither in the three years which had elapsed since the
death of Jane Seymour, nor during the more trying period which followed,
do we hear a word of mistresses, intrigues, or questionable or criminal
connexions of any kind. The mistresses of princes are usually visible
when they exist, the mistresses, for instance, of Francis I., of Charles
V., of James of Scotland. There is a difficulty in this which should be
admitted, if it cannot be explained.
[542] Deposition of Sir Anthony Denny: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. II.
[543] Cromwell to the King: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 109.
[544] Deposition of the Earl of Southampton: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol.
II.
[545] Questions to be asked of the Lord Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Titus_, B
1, 418.
[546] Compare Cromwell's Letter to the King from the Tower, Burnet's
_Collectanea_, p. 109, with Questions to be asked of the Lord Cromwell:
_MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1, 418. Wyatt's report of his interview and the
Emperor's language could not have arrived till the week after. But the
fact of Charles's arrival with Brancetor in his train, was already known
and was sufficiently alarming.
[547] Cromwell to the King: Burnet's _Collectanea_. The morning after
his marriage, and on subsequent occasions, the king made certain
depositions to his physicians and to members of the council, which I
invite no one to study except under distinct historical obligations. The
facts are of great importance. But discomfort made Henry unjust; and
when violently irritated he was not careful of his expressions.--See
Documents relating to the Marriage with Anne of Cleves: Strype's
_Memorials_, Vol. II.
[548] Hall.
[549] The discharge of heretics from prison by an undue interference
formed one of the most violent accusations against Cromwell. He was,
perhaps, held responsible for the general pardon in the summer of 1539.
The following letter, however, shows something of his own immediate
conduct, and of the confidence with which the Protestants looked to him.
"God save the king.
"Thanks immortal from the Father of Heaven unto your most prudent and
honourable lordship, for your mercy, and pity, and great charity that
your honourable lordship has had on your poor and true orator Henry
King, that almost was in prison a whole year, rather of pure malice and
false suspicion than of any just offence committed by your said orator,
to be so long in prison without any mercy, pity, or succour of meat and
drink, and all your said orator's goods taken from him. Moreover,
whereas your said orator did of late receive a letter from your most
honourable lordship by the hands of the Bishop of Worcester, that your
said orator should receive again such goods as was wrongfully taken from
your said orator of Mr. George Blunt (the committing magistrate
apparently); thereon your said orator went unto the said George Blunt
with your most gentle letter, to ask such poor goods as the said George
Blunt did detain from your poor orator; and so with great pain and much
entreating your said orator, within the space of three weeks, got some
part of his goods, but the other part he cannot get. Therefore, except
now your most honourable lordship, for Jesus sake, do tender and
consider with the eye of pity and mercy the long imprisonment, the
extreme poverty of your said orator, your said orator is clean undone in
this world. For where your said orator had money, and was full
determined to send for his capacity, all is spent in prison, and more.
Therefore, in fond humility your said orator meekly, with all obedience,
puts himself wholly into the hands of your honourable lordship, desiring
you to help your orator to some succour and living now in his extreme
necessity and need; the which is not only put out of his house, but also
all his goods almost spent in prison, so that now the weary life of your
said orator stands only in your discretion. Therefore, _exaudi preces
servi tui_, and Almighty God increase your most honourable lordship in
virtue and favour as he did merciful Joseph to his high honour Amen.
Your unfeigned and true orator _ut supra_. Beatus qui intelligit super
egenum et pauperem. In die malâ liberabit eum Dominus."--_MS. State
Paper Office_, Vol. IX. first series.
[550] Traheron to Bullinger: _Original Letters_, p. 316; Hall, p. 837.
[551] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 431.
[552] Hall, p. 837.
[553] "The bishop was ably answered by Dr. Barnes on the following
Lord's-day, with the most gratifying and all but universal
applause."--Traheron to Bullinger: _Original Letters_, p. 317.
[554] Wyatt to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 240, &c.
[555] Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p.
245, &c. Henry held out a further inducement. "If the duke shall see the
French king persevere in his good mind and affection towards the King's
Highness, he shall yet further of himself say that his opinion is, and
in his mind he thinketh undoubtedly that in such a case as that a new
strait amity might now be made between the French king and the king his
master, his Majesty would be content to remit unto him the one half of
his debt to his Highness, the sum whereof is very great; and also the
one half of the pensions for term of the said French king's life, so as
it may please him to declare what honourable reciproque he could be
content to offer again to his Majesty."--_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p.
251.
[556] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 318. The Queen of Navarre, who was
constant to the English interests, communicated to the secretary of Sir
John Wallop (the resident minister at Paris), an account of a
conversation between herself and the Papal nuntio.
Ferrara had prayed her "to help and put her good hand and word that the
French king might join the Emperor and his master for the wars against
the Almayns and the King of England, which king was but a man lost and
cast away."
"Why, M. l'Ambassadeur," the queen answered, "what mean you by that? how
and after what sort do you take the King of England?"--"Marry," quoth
he, "for a heretic and a Lutheryan. Moreover, he doth make himself head
of the Church."--"Do you say so?" quoth she. "Now I would to God that
your master, the Emperor, and we here, did live after so good and godly
a sort as he and his doth." The nuntio answered, "the king had pulled
down the abbeys," "trusting by the help of God it should be reformed or
it were long." She told him that were easier to say than to do. England
had had time to prepare, and to transport an army across the Channel was
a difficult affair. Ferrara said, "It could be landed in
Scotland."--"The King of Scotland," she replied, "would not stir without
permission from France;" and then (if her account was true) she poured
out a panegyric upon the Reformation in England, and spoke out plainly
on the necessity of the same thing in the Church of Rome. _State
Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 289, &c.
[557] Hall, p. 839. The case broke down, and Sampson was afterwards
restored to favour; but his escape was narrow. Sir Ralph Sadler, writing
to Cromwell, said, "I declared to the King's Majesty how the Bishop of
Chichester was committed to ward to the Tower, and what answer he made
to such things as were laid to his charge, which in effect was a plain
denial of the chief points that touched him. His Majesty said little
thereto, but that he liked him and the matter much the worse because he
denied it, seeing his Majesty perceived by the examinations there were
witnesses enough to condemn him in that point."--_State Papers_, Vol. I.
p. 627.
[558] The Bishop of Chichester to Cromwell: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol.
II. p. 381.
[559] Another instance of Tunstall's underhand dealing had come to
light. When he accepted the oath of supremacy, and agreed to the divorce
of Queen Catherine, he entered a private protest in the Register Book of
Durham, which was afterwards cut out by his chancellor. Christopher
Chator, whose curious depositions I have more than once quoted, mentions
this piece of evasion, and adds a further feature of some interest.
Relating a conversation which he had held with a man called Craye,
Chator says, "We had in communication the Bishop of Rochester and Sir
Thomas More attainted of treason. Craye said to me he marvelled that
they were put to death for such small trespasses; to whom I answered
that their foolish conscience was so to die. Then I shewed him of one
Burton, my Lord of Durham's servant, that told me he came to London when
the Bishop of Rochester and Thomas More were endangered, and the said
More asked Burton, 'Will not thy master come to us and be as we are?'
and he said he could not tell. Then said More, 'If he do, no force, for
if he live he may do more good than to die with us.'"--_Rolls House MS._
first series.
[560] _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII.
[561] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 1.
[562] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 2.
[563] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 3. "Many goes oft begging," "and it causeth
much robbing."--Deposition of Christopher Chator. Here is a special
picture of one of these vagabonds. Gregory Cromwell, writing to his
father from Lewes, says, "The day of making hereof came before us a
fellow called John Dancy, being apparelled in a frieze coat, a pair of
black hose, with fustian slops, having also a sword, a buckler, and a
dagger; being a man of such port, fashion, and behaviour that we at
first took him only for a vagabond, until such time as he, being
examined, confessed himself to have been heretofore a priest, and
sometime a monk of this monastery."--_MS. State Paper Office_, second
series, Vol. VII.
[564] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 12.
[565] _Lords Journals_, 31 Henry VIII.
[566] It was so difficult to calculate at the time the amount likely to
be raised by this method of taxation, or the degree in which it would
press, that it is impossible at present even to guess reasonably on
either of these points. In 1545, two fifteenths and tenths which were
granted by parliament are described as extending to "a right small sum
of money," and a five per cent. income tax was in consequence added.--37
Henry VIII. cap. 25. Aliens and clergy generally paid double, and on the
present occasion the latter granted four shillings in the pound on their
incomes, to be paid in two years, or a direct annual tax of ten per
cent.--32 Henry VIII. cap. 13. But all estimates based on conjecture
ought to be avoided.
[567] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 50.
[568] Ibid. cap. 57. Unprinted _Rolls House MS._
[569] "Hodie lecta est Billa attincturæ Ricardi Fetherstone, etc.; et
communi omnium Procerum assensu nemine discrepante expedita."--_Lords
Journals_, 32 Henry VIII.
[570] Stow.
[571] The Ladies Rutland, Rochford, and Edgecombe, all being together
with the queen, "they wished her Grace with child, and she answered and
said she knew well she was not with child. My Lady Edgecombe said, 'How
is it possible for your Grace to know that?' 'I know it well I am not,'
said she. Then said my Lady Edgecombe, 'I think your Grace is a maid
still.' With that she laughed; 'How can I be a maid,' said she, 'and
sleep every night with the king? When he comes to bed he kisses me, and
takes me by the hand, and bids me "Good night, sweetheart;" and in the
morning kisses me, and bids me "Farewell, darling." Is not this enough?'
Then said my Lady Rutland, 'Madame, there must be more than this, or it
will be long or we have a Duke of York, which all this realm most
desireth.' 'Nay,' said the queen, 'I am contented I know no
more.'"--Deposition on the Marriage of the Lady Anne of Cleves: Strype's
_Memorials_, Vol. II. p. 462.
[572] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 556.
[573] Cromwell to the King: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 109.
[574] The Letter sent to Cromwell is printed in _State Papers_, Vol. I.
p. 628.
[575] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. II. p. 459.
[576] _MSS. State Paper Office_, second series, 52 volumes.
[577] Lady Elizabeth Burgh's letter to him will show the character of
interference which he was called upon to exercise: "My very good lord,
most humbly I beseech your goodness to me your poor bounden bedewoman,
considering the great trouble I am put unto by my Lord Burgh, who always
hath lien in wait to put me to shame and trouble, which he shall never
do, God willing, you being my good and gracious lord, as I have found
you merciful to me ever hitherto; and so I most humbly beseech you of
your good continuance, desiring now your good lordship to remember me,
for I am comfortless, and as yet not out of the danger of death through
the great travail that I had. For I am as yet as a prisoner comfortless,
only trusting to your lordship's goodness and to the King's Grace's most
honourable council. For I hear say my Lord Burgh hath complained on me
to your lordship and to all the noble council; and has enformed your
lordship and them all that the child that I have borne and so dearly
bought is none of his son's my husband. As for me, my very good lord, I
do protest afore God, and also shall receive him to my eternal
damnation, if ever I designed for him with any creature living, but only
with my husband; therefore now I most lamentably and humbly desire your
lordship of your goodness to stay my Lord Burgh that he do not fulfil
his diabolical mind to disinherit my husband's child.
"And thus am I ordered by my Lord Burgh and my husband (who dare do
nothing but as his father will have him do), so that I have nothing left
to help me now in my great sickness, but am fain to lay all that I have
to gage, so that I have nothing left to help myself withal, and might
have perished ere this time for lack of succour, but through the
goodness of the gentleman and his wife which I am in house withal.
Therefore I most humbly desire your lordship to have pity on me, and
that through your only goodness ye will cause my husband to use me like
his wife, and no otherwise than I have deserved; and to send me money,
and to pay such debts as I do owe by reason of my long being sick, and I
shall pray for your lordship daily to increase in honour to your noble
heart's desire. Scribbled with the hand of your bounden bedewoman,
Elizabeth Burgh." _MS. State Paper Office_, first series, Vol. XIII.
I should have been glad to have added a more remarkable letter from Lady
Hungerford, who was locked up by her husband in a country house for four
years, and "would have died for lack of sustenance," "had not," she
wrote, "the poor women of the country brought me, to my great window in
the night, such poor meat and drink as they had, and gave me for the
love of God." But the letter contains other details not desirable to
publish.--_MS. Cotton. Titus_, B 1, 397.
[578] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 349.
[579] "His Majesty remembering how men wanting the knowledge of the
truth would else speak diversely of it, considering the credit he hath
had about his Highness, which might also cause the wisest sort to judge
amiss thereof if that his ingratitude and treason should not be fully
opened unto them."--Ibid. The opening sentences of the letter (it was
evidently a circular) also deserve notice: "These shall be to advertize
you that when the King's Majesty hath of long season travelled, and yet
most godly travaileth to establish such an order in matters of religion
as neither declining on the right hand or on the left hand, God's glory
might be advanced, the temerity of such as would either obscure or
refuse the truth of his Word refrained, stayed, and in cases of
obstinacy duly corrected and punished; so it is that the Lord Privy
Seal, to whom the King's Majesty hath been so special good and gracious
a lord, hath, only out of his sensual appetite, wrought clean contrary
to his Grace's intent, secretly and indirectly advancing the one of the
extremes, and leaving the mean, indifferent, true, and virtuous way
which his Majesty so entirely desired, but also hath shewed himself so
fervently bent to the maintenance of that his outrage, that he hath not
spared most privily, most traitorously to devise how to continue the
same, and in plain terms to say," &c. Then follow the words in the
text.--Ibid.
[580] Hall, p. 838.
[581] "He is committed to the Tower of London, there to remain till it
shall please his Majesty to have him tried according to the order of his
laws." _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 350.
[582] Act of Attainder of Thomas Lord Cromwell, 32 Henry VIII. The act
is not printed in the Statute Book, but it is in very good condition on
the parliament roll. Burnet has placed it among his _Collectanea_.
[583] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 500.
[584] "Most Gracious Lord, I never spoke with the chancellor of the
augmentation and Throgmorton together at one time. But if I did, I am
sure I never spake of any such matter, and your Grace knows what manner
of man Throgmorton has ever been towards your Grace's
proceedings."--Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 500.
[585] Cranmer to the King: a fragment printed by Lord Herbert.
[586] "The said Privy Seal's intent was to have married my Lady Mary,
and the French king and the Cardinal du Bellay had much debated the same
matter, reckoning at length by the great favour your Majesty did bear to
him he should be made some earl or duke, and therefore presumed your
Majesty would give to him in marriage the said Lady Mary your daughter,
as beforetime you had done the French queen unto my Lord of Suffolk.
These things they gathered of such hints as they had heard of the Privy
Seal, before knowing him to be fine witted, in so much as at all times
when any marriage was treated of for my said Lady Mary, he did always
his best to break the same."--_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 379, and see
p. 362.
[587] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 362.
[588] Pate to the Duke of Norfolk: Ibid. p. 355.
[589] Richard Pate, a priest of high Anglican views, and now minister at
the Imperial court, supplied the Emperor's silence by his own
enthusiasm. He wrote to Henry an ecstatic letter on the "fall of that
wicked man who, by his false doctrines and like disciples, so disturbed
his Grace's subjects, that the age was in manner brought to desperation,
perceiving a new tradition taught." "What blindness," he exclaimed,
"what ingratitude is this of this traitor's, far passing Lucifer's,
that, endeavouring to pluck the sword out of his sovereign's hand, hath
deserved to feel the power of the same. But lauded be our Lord God that
hath delivered your Grace out of the bear's claws, as not long before of
a semblable danger of the lioness!"--Pate to Henry VIII.: _State
Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 364.
[590] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 7; _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII. Session
June 22.
[591] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 15; _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII. July 1.
[592] Communi omnium procerum consensu nemine discrepante.
[593] "Excepted alway all and all manner of heresies and erroneous
opinions touching or concerning, plainly, directly, and only the most
holy and blessed sacrament of the altar; and these heresies and
erroneous opinions hereafter ensuing: that infants ought not to be
baptized, and if they be baptized, they ought to be rebaptized when they
come to lawful age; that it is not lawful for a Christian man to bear
office or rule in the commonwealth; that no man's laws ought to be
obeyed; that it is not lawful for a Christian man to take an oath before
any judge; that Christ took no bodily substance of our blessed Lady;
that sinners, after baptism, cannot be restored by repentance; that
every manner of death, with the time and hour thereof, is so certainly
prescribed, appointed, and determined to every man of God, that neither
any prince by his sword can alter it, nor any man by his own wilfulness
prevent or change it; that all things be common and nothing
several."--32 Henry VIII. cap. 49.
[594] _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII. July 6.
[595] "Upon Tuesday, the sixth of this month, our nobles and commons
made suit and request unto us to commit the examination of the justness
of our matrimony to the clergy; upon which request made we sent
incontinently our councillors the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk,
the Bishop of Winchester, &c., advertising the queen what request was
made, and in what sort, and thereupon to know what answer she would make
unto the same. Whereunto, after divers conferences at good length, and
the matter by her thoroughly perceived and considered, she answered
plainly and frankly that she was contented that the discussion of the
matter should be committed to the clergy as unto judges competent in
that behalf."--_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 404; and see Anne of Cleves
to the King; Ibid. Vol. I. p. 637.
[596] Luculentâ Oratione: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 553.
[597] "Inspectâ hujus negotii veritate ac solum Deum præ oculis
habentes, quod verum, quod honestum, quod sanctum est, id nobis, de
communi consilio scripto authentico renuncietis et de communi consensu
licere diffiniatis. Nempe hoc unum a vobis nostro jure postulamus ut
tanquam fida et proba ecclesiæ membra causæ huic ecclesiasticæ quæ
maxima est in justitiâ et veritate adesse velitis."--_State Papers_,
Vol. I. p. 630.
[598] _MS. Cotton. Otho_, X. 240.
[599] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 404.
[600] "Tum vero quid ecclesia in ejusmodi casibus et possit facere et
sæpenumero ante hac fecerit perpendentes."--Judgment of the Convocation:
_State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 632.
[601] Ibid. p. 633.
[602] "Heretofore divers and many persons, after long continuance
together in matrimony, and fruit of children having ensued of the same,
have nevertheless, by an unjust law of the Bishop of Rome (which is upon
pretence of a former contract made and not consummate by carnal
copulation, for proof whereof two witnesses by that law were only
required), been divorced and separate contrary to God's law, and so the
true matrimonies solemnized in the face of the Church and confirmed by
fruit of children, have been clearly frustrate and dissolved. Further,
also, by reason of other prohibitions than God's law admitteth, for
their lucre by that court invented, the dispensation whereof they always
reserved to themselves, as in kindred or affinity between cousin
germains, and so to the fourth and fifth degree, and all because they
would get money by it, and keep a reputation to their usurped
jurisdiction, not only much discord between lawful married persons hath,
contrary to God's ordinances, arisen, much debate and suit at the law,
with the wrongful vexation and great danger of the innocent party hath
been procured, and many just marriages brought in doubt and danger of
undoing, and also many times undone: marriages have been brought into
such uncertainty, that no marriage could be so surely knit and bounden
but it should lie in either of the parties' power and arbitre, casting
away the fear of God, by means and compasses to prove a pre-contract, a
kindred, an alliance, or a carnal knowledge, to defeat the same, and so,
under the pretence of these allegations afore rehearsed, to live all the
days of their lives in detestable adultery, to the utter destruction of
their own souls and the provocation of the terrible wrath of God upon
the places where such abominations were suffered and used."--32 Henry
VIII. cap. 38.
[603] The Protestant refugees became at once as passionate, as
clamorous, and as careless in their statements as the Catholics.--See
especially a letter of Richard Hilles to Bullinger (_Original Letters_,
196): to which Burnet has given a kind of sanction by a quotation. This
letter contains about as trustworthy an account of the state of London
as a letter of a French or Austrian exile in England or America would
contain at present of the Courts of Paris or Vienna.
[604] _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII.
[605] See _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 637 and Vol. VIII. p. 403, &c.
[606] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 407.
[607] Ibid., 408.
[608] Ibid., 410.
[609] The bishop, nevertheless, was not satisfied that it would be
refused, if it could be had. He thought, evidently, that Henry would act
prudently by being liberal in the matter. Speaking of the miscontentment
which had been shown, he added: "For any overture that yet hath been
opened you may do your pleasure. How be it, in case of their suit unto
your Majesty, if the duke shall be content by his express consent to
approve your proceeding, specially the said decree of your clergy,
whereby all things may be here ended and brought to silence, and the
lady there remaining still, this duke, without kindling any further
fire, made your Majesty's assured friend with a demonstration thereof to
the world, and that with so small a sum of money to be given unto him
(sub colore restitutionis pecuniæ pro oneribus et dote licet vere nulla
interesset), or under some other good colour. . . . God forbid your
Majesty should much stick thereat."--Bishop of Bath to Henry VIII.:
_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 425.
[610] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 392.
[611] Ibid. p. 386.
[612] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 397.
[613] Pate to the Duke of Suffolk: Ibid. p. 412.
[614] No draft of the bill exists in its original form. As it passed it
conferred on lay impropriators the same power of recovering tithes as
was given to the clergy. The members of the lower house had been, many
of them purchasers of abbey lands, and impropriated tithes formed a
valuable item of the property. It is likely that the bishops overlooked,
and that the commons remembered this important condition.--_Lords
Journals_, 32 Henry VIII. Session of July 12.
[615] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 10.
[616] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 26.
[617] Philpot's confession is preserved. He describes how Sir Gregory
Botolph, returning to Calais from a journey to Rome, took him one night
upon the walls, and after swearing him to secrecy, showed himself a
worthy pupil of Reginald Pole.
"If England have not a scourge in time," Botolph said, "they will be all
infidels, and no doubt God to friend, there shall be a redress; and know
ye for a truth what my enterprise is, with the aid of God and such ways
as I shall devise. I shall get the town of Calais into the hands of the
Pope and Cardinal Pole, who is as good a Catholic man as ever I reasoned
with; and when I had declared everything of my mind unto them, no more
but we three together in the Pope's chamber, I had not a little cheer of
the Pope and Cardinal Pole; and after this at all times I might enter
the Pope's chamber at my pleasure."
Philpot asked him how he intended to proceed, Calais being so strong a
place. "It shall be easy to be done," Botolph said. "In the herring time
they do use to watch in the lantern gate, whereat there be in the watch
about a dozen persons, and against the time which shall be appointed in
the night, you, with a dozen persons well appointed for the purpose,
shall enter the watch and destroy them. That done, ye shall recoil back
with your company and keep the stairs, and at the same time I with my
company shall be ready to scale the walls over the gate. I will have
five or six hundred men that shall enter with me on the first burst. We
shall have aid both by sea and land, within short space."--Confession of
Clement Philpot: _Rolls House MS._ Viscount Lisle, the old commandant of
Calais, an illegitimate son of Edward IV., was suspected of having been
privy to the conspiracy, and was sent for to England. His innocence was
satisfactorily proved, but he died in the Tower on the day when he would
have been liberated.
[618] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 58: unprinted, _Rolls House MS._
[619] _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII. The clerk of the parliament has
attached a note to the summary of the session declaring that throughout
its progress the peers had voted unanimously. From which it has been
concluded, among other things, that Cranmer voted for Cromwell's
execution. The archbishop was present in the house on the day on which
the bill for the attainder was read the last time. There is no evidence,
however, that he remained till the question was put; and as he dared to
speak for him on his arrest, he is entitled to the benefit of any
uncertainty which may exist. It is easy to understand how he, and the
few other peers who were Cromwell's friends, may have abstained from a
useless opposition in the face of an overwhelming majority. We need not
exaggerate their timidity or reproach them with an active consent, of
which no hint is to be found in any contemporary letter, narrative, or
document.
[620] Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 160.
[621] Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 160; this is apparently the
letter printed by Burnet, _Collectanea_, p. 500.
[622] "Vereor ne frustra cum Reverendissimâ Dominatione vestrâ per
litteras de Cromwelli resipiscentiâ sum gratulatus, nec enim quæ typis
sunt excusa quæ ad me missa sunt, in quibus novissima ejus verba
recitantur, talem animum mihi exprimunt qualem eorum narratio qui de
ejus exitu et de extremis verbis mecum sunt locuti."--Pole to
Beccatelli: _Epist._ Vol. III.
[623] Prayer of the Lord Cromwell on the Scaffold: Foxe, Vol. V.
[624] His death seems to have been needlessly painful through the
awkwardness of the executioner, "a ragged and butcherly miser, who very
ungoodly performed the office."--Hall.
[625] "Men know not what part to follow or to take."--Foxe, Vol. V.