THE CATHOLIC MARTYRS.
[Sidenote: State of England in the summer of 1534.]
While the disturbance in Ireland was at its height, affairs in England
had been scarcely less critical. The surface indeed remained unbroken.
The summer of 1534 passed away, and the threatened invasion had not
taken place. The disaffection which had appeared in the preceding year
had been smothered for a time; Francis I. held the emperor in check by
menacing Flanders, and through French influence the rupture with
Scotland had been seemingly healed. In appearance the excommunication
had passed off as a _brutum fulmen_, a flash of harmless sheet
lightning, serving only to dazzle feeble eyes. The oath of succession,
too, had been taken generally through the country; Sir Thomas More and
Bishop Fisher having alone ventured to refuse. The pope had been abjured
by the universities and by the convocation in both the provinces, and to
these collective acts the bishops and the higher clergy had added each
their separate consent.
[Sidenote: The clergy comply with the revolution, but inwardly have
little heart for it.]
[Sidenote: They bend before the storm, trusting to time.]
[Sidenote: The clergy are called upon to explain to the people the
changes which have taken place.]
But the government knew too well the temper of the clergy to trust to
outward compliance, or to feel assured that they acquiesced at heart
either in the separation from Rome, or in the loss of their treasured
privileges. The theory of an Anglican Erastianism found favour with
some of the higher church dignitaries, and with a section perhaps of
secular priests; but the transfer to the crown of the first-fruits,
which in their original zeal for a free Church of England the
ecclesiastics had hoped to preserve for themselves, the abrupt
limitation of the powers of convocation, and the termination of so many
time-honoured and lucrative abuses, had interfered with the popularity
of a view which might have been otherwise broadly welcomed; and while
growing vigorously among the country gentlemen and the middle classes in
the towns, among the clergy it throve only within the sunshine of the
court. The rest were overawed for the moment, and stunned by the
suddenness of the blows which had fallen upon them. As far as they
thought at all, they believed that the storm would be but of brief
duration, that it would pass away as it had risen, and that for the
moment they had only to bend. The modern Englishman looks back upon the
time with the light of after history. He has been inured by three
centuries of division to the spectacle of a divided church, and sees
nothing in it either embarrassing or fearful. The ministers of a faith
which had been for fifteen centuries as the seamless vesture of Christ,
the priests of a church supposed to be founded on the everlasting rock
against which no power could prevail, were in a very different position.
They obeyed for the time the strong hand which was upon them, trusting
to the interference of accident or providence. They comforted themselves
with the hope that the world would speedily fall back into its old ways,
that Christ and the saints would defend the church against sacrilege,
and that in the meantime there was no occasion for them to thrust
themselves upon voluntary martyrdom.[383] But this position, natural as
it was, became difficult to maintain when they were called upon not only
themselves to consent to the changes, but to justify their consent to
their congregations, and to explain to the people the grounds on which
the government had acted. The kingdom was by implication under an
interdict,[384] yet the services went on as usual; the king was
excommunicated; doubt hung over the succession; the facts were
imperfectly known; and the never-resting friars mendicant were busy
scattering falsehood and misrepresentation. It was of the highest moment
that on all these important matters the mind of the nation should if
possible be set at rest; and the clergy, whose loyalty was presumed
rather than trusted, furnished the only means by which the government
could generally and simultaneously reach the people. The clergy
therefore, as we have seen, were called upon for their services; the
pope's name was erased from the mass; books; the statute of appeals and
the statute of succession were fixed against the doors of every parish
church in England, and the rectors and curates were directed every week
in their sermons to explain the meaning of these acts. The bishops were
held responsible for the obedience of the clergy; the sheriffs and the
magistrates had been directed to keep an eye upon the bishops; and all
the machinery of centralization was put in force to compel the
fulfilment of a duty which was well known to be unwelcome.
[Sidenote: The order for preaching. Every preacher to deliver one sermon
against the papal usurpation.]
[Sidenote: The archbishop's sentence to be held a thing of mere verity,
not to be again called in question.]
[Sidenote: The clergy are forbidden to preach upon disputed points of
doctrine.]
That as little latitude as possible might be left for resistance or
evasion, books were printed by order of council, and distributed through
the hands of the bishops, containing a minute account of the whole
proceedings on the divorce, the promises and falsehoods of the pope, the
opinions of the European universities, and a general epitome of the
course which had been pursued.[385] These were to be read aloud to the
congregations; and an order for preaching was at the same time
circulated, in which the minuteness of the directions is as remarkable
as the prudence of them. Every preacher was to deliver one sermon at
least ("and after at his liberty") on the encroachments and usurpations
of the papal power. He was to preach against it, to expose and refute it
to the best of his ability, and to declare that it was done away, and
might neither be obeyed nor defended further. Again in all places "where
the king's just cause in his matter of matrimony had been detracted, and
the incestuous and unjust [matrimony] had been set forth [and
extolled]," the clergy were generally directed "to open and declare the
mere verity and justice" of the matter, declaring it "neither doubtful
nor disputable," but to be a thing of mere verity, and so to be allowed
of all men's opinions. They were to relate in detail the pope's conduct,
his many declarations in the king's favour; the first decretal, which
was withheld by Campeggio, in which he had pronounced the marriage with
Catherine invalid; his unjust avocation of the cause to Rome; his
promises to the King of France; and finally, his engagement at
Marseilles to pronounce in the King of England's favour, if only he
would acknowledge the papal jurisdiction.[386] They were therefore to
represent the king's conduct as the just and necessary result of the
pope's duplicity. These things the clergy were required to teach, not as
matters of doubt and question, but as vital certainties on which no
difference of opinion could be tolerated. Finally, there were added a
few wholesome admonitions on other subjects, which mark the turning of
the tide from Catholic orthodoxy. The clergy were interdicted from
indulging any longer in the polemics of theology. "To keep unity and
quietness in the realm it" was "ordained that no preachers" should
"contend openly in the pulpit one against another, nor uncharitably
deprave one another in open audience. If any of them" were "grieved one
with another," they were to "complain to the King's Highness or the
archbishop or bishop of the diocese." They were "purely, sincerely, and
justly" to "preach the scripture and words of Christ, and not mix them
with men's institutions, or make men believe that the force of God's law
and man's law was the like." On subjects such as purgatory, worship of
saints and relics, marriage of the clergy, justification by faith,
pilgrimages and miracles, they were to keep silence for one whole year,
and not to preach at all.[387]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of securing obedience to the order.
Obstructiveness of the bishops,]
[Sidenote: And of the regular clergy.]
These instructions express distinctly the convictions of the government.
It would have been well if the clergy could have accepted them as they
were given, and submitted their understandings once for all to statesmen
who were wiser than themselves. The majority (of the parish clergy at
least) were perhaps outwardly obedient; but the surveillance which the
magistrates were directed to exercise proves that the exceptions were
expected to be extensive; and in many quarters these precautions
themselves were rapidly discovered to be inadequate. Several even of the
most trusted among the bishops attempted an obstructive resistance. The
clergy of the north were notoriously disobedient. The Archbishop of York
was reported to have talked loosely of "standing against" the king "unto
death."[388] The Bishop of Durham fell under suspicion, and was summoned
to London. His palace was searched and his papers examined in his
absence; and the result, though inconclusive, was unsatisfactory.[389]
The religious orders again (especially the monks of such houses as had
been implicated with the Nun of Kent) were openly recusant. At the
convent at Sion, near Richmond, a certain Father Ricot preached as he
was commanded, "but he made this addition, that he which commanded him
to preach should discharge his conscience: and as soon," it was said,
"as the said Ricot began to declare the king's title," "nine of the
brethren departed from the sermon, contrary to the rule of their
religion, to the great slander of the audience."[390] Indeed it soon
became evident that among the regular clergy no compliance whatever was
to be looked for; and the agents of the government began to contemplate
the possible consequences, with a tenderness not indeed for the
prospective sufferers, but for the authorities whom they would so
cruelly compel to punish them. "I am right sorry," wrote Cromwell's
secretary to him, "to see the foolishness and obstinacy of divers
religious men, so addict to the Bishop of Rome and his usurped power,
that they contemn counsel as careless men and willing to die. If it were
not for the opinion which men had, and some yet have, in their apparent
holiness, it made no great matter what became of them, so their souls
were saved. And for my part, I would that all such obstinate persons of
them as be ready to die for the advancement of the Bishop of Rome's
authority were dead indeed by God's hand, that no man should run
wrongfully into obloquy for their just punishment."[391]
[Sidenote: Powers of the confessional.]
[Sidenote: The clergy in some cases advise their penitents to take the
oaths with a mental reservation.]
But the open resistance of mistaken honesty was not the danger which the
government most feared. Another peril threatened their authority, deeper
and more alarming by far. The clergy possessed in the confessional a
power of secret influence over the masses of the people, by which they
were able at once (if they so pleased) to grant their penitents licences
for insincerity, to permit them to perjure themselves under mental
reservations, and to encourage them to expiate a venial falsehood by
concealed disaffection. The secrets of confession were inviolable.
Anathemas the most fearful forbade their disclosure; and, secured behind
this impenetrable shield, the church might defy the most stringent
provisions, and baffle every precaution.
From the nature of the case but little could transpire of the use or the
abuse which was made at such a time of so vast a power; but Cromwell,
whose especial gift it was to wind himself into the secrets of the
clergy, had his sleuth-hounds abroad, whose scent was not easily
baffled. The long tyranny of the priesthood produced also its natural
retribution in the informations which were too gladly volunteered in the
hour of revenge; and more than one singular disclosure remains among the
_State Papers_, of language used in this mysterious intercourse. Every
man who doubted whether he might lawfully abjure the pope, consulted his
priest. Haughton, the Prior of Charterhouse, in all such cases, declared
absolutely that the abjuration might not be made.[392] He himself
refused openly; and it is likely that he directed others to be as open
as himself. But Haughton's advice was as exceptional as his conduct.
Father Forest, of Greenwich, who was a brave man, and afterwards met
nobly a cruel death, took the oath to the king as he was required; while
he told a penitent that he had abjured the pope in the outward, but not
in the inward man, that he "owed an obedience to the pope which he could
not shake off," and that it was "his use and practice in confession, to
induce men to hold and stick to the old fashion of belief."[393]
[Sidenote: Confession of John Staunton.]
Here, again, is a conversation which a treacherous penitent revealed to
Cromwell; the persons in the dialogue being the informer, John Staunton,
and the confessor of Sion Monastery, who had professed the most
excessive loyalty to the crown.[394] The informer, it must be allowed,
was a good-for-nothing person. He had gone to the confessor, he said, to
be shriven, and had commenced his confession with acknowledging "the
seven deadly sins particularly," "and next the misspending of his five
wits." As an instance of the latter, he then in detail had confessed to
heresy; he could not persuade himself that the priest had power to
forgive him. "Sir," he professed to have said to the confessor, "there
is one thing in my stomach which grieveth my conscience very sore; and
that is by reason of a sermon I heard yesterday of Master Latimer,
saying that no man of himself had authority to forgive sins, and that
the pope had no more authority than another bishop; and therefore I am
in doubt whether I shall have remission of my sins of you or not, and
that the pardon is of no effect."
The priest answered, "That Latimer is a false knave;" and seven or eight
times he called him false knave, and said he was an eretycke. "Marry,
this I heard Latimer say," the confessor continued, "that if a man come
to confession, and be not sorry for his sins, the priest hath no power
to forgive him. I say the pope's pardon is as good as ever it was; and
he is the Head of the Universal Church, and so I will take him. Here in
England the king and his parliament hath put him out; but be of good
comfort, and steadfast in your faith; this thing will not last long, I
warrant you. You shall see the world change shortly."
To this the informer said that he had replied, "You know how that we be
sworn unto the King's Grace, and he hath already abjured the pope."
[Sidenote: The confessor thinks that an oath loosely made may be loosely
broken.]
[Sidenote: Reported advice of Cranmer to the confessor of Sion.]
"As for that," said the priest, "an oath loosely made may be loosely
broken; and by this example be ye in ease. I had an enemy come unto this
church, and one of his friends and mine came unto me and said, 'Sir, I
pray you let us go drink with yonder man.' And the said friend maketh
such importunate suit unto me to drink with my enemy, that I promise him
by my faith that I will go and drink with him; and so indeed doth drink
with him. But what then," said the priest; "though I go and drink with
him upon this promise, trow you that I will forgive him with my heart.
Nay, nay, I warrant you. And so in like wise in this oath concerning the
abjuration of the pope. I will not abjure him in my heart," said the
priest, "for these words were not spoken unto Peter for nought--'I will
give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven'--and the pope is Peter's
successor. Of this matter," said the priest, "I communed once with the
Bishop of Canterbury,[395] and I told the bishop I would pray for the
pope as the chief and papal head of Christ's church. And the bishop told
me it was the king's pleasure that I should not. I said unto him I would
do it; and though I did it not openly, yet would I do it secretly. And
he said I might pray for him secretly, but in any wise do it not
openly."[396]
[Sidenote: Maitland the Black Friar, by his science of nigromancy,
foretells a counter-revolution.]
Trifles of this kind may seem unimportant; but at the time they were of
moment, for their weight was cumulative; and we can only now recover but
a few out of many. Such as they are, however, they show the spirit in
which the injunctions were received by a section at least of the English
clergy. Nor was this the worst. We find language reported, which shows
that many among the monks were watching for symptoms of the promised
imperial invasion, and the progress of the Irish insurgents. A Doctor
Maitland, of the order of Black Friars in London, had been "heard divers
times to say, he trusted to see every man's head that was of the new
learning, and the maintainers of them, to stand upon a stake, and
Cranmer's to be one of them. The king," he hoped, might suffer "a
violent and shameful death;" and "the queen, that mischievous whore,
might be brent." "He said further, that he knew by his science, which
was nigromancy, that all men of the new learning should be suppressed
and suffer death, and the _people of the old learning should be set up
again by the power of the king's enemies from the parts beyond the
sea_."[397]
[Sidenote: Feron and Hale.]
[Sidenote: Feron hopes that Henry's death may be like that of the
manqueller Richard.]
In the May weather of 1534, two Middlesex clergy, "walking to and fro
in the cloyster garden at Sion, were there overheard compassing sedition
and rebellion." John Hale, an eager, tumultuous person, was prompting
his brother priest, Robert Feron, with matter for a pamphlet, which
Feron was to write against the king.[398] "Syth the realm of England was
first a realm," said Hale, "was there never in it so great a robber and
piller of the commonwealth read of nor heard of as is our king..... He
is the most cruellest capital heretic, defacer and treader under foot of
Christ and of his church, continually applying and minding to extinct
the same; whose death, I beseech God, may be like to the death of the
most wicked John, sometime king of this realm, or rather to be called a
great tyran than a king; and that his death may be not much unlike to
the end of that manqueller Richard, sometime usurper of this imperial
realm. And if thou wilt deeply look upon his life, thou shalt find it
more foul and more stinking than a sow wallowing and defiling herself in
any filthy place."
[Sidenote: The Irish will persevere in the quarrel, and the Welsh will
join them.]
[Sidenote: Three parts of England be against the king.]
These words were spoken in English; Feron translated them into Latin,
and wrote them down. Hale then continued: "Until the king and the rulers
of this realm be plucked by the pates, and brought, as we say, to the
pot, shall we never live merrily in England, which, I pray God, may
chance, and now shortly come to pass. Ireland is set against him, which
will never shrink in their quarrel to die in it; and what think ye of
Wales? The noble and gentle Ap Ryce,[399] so cruelly put to death, and
he innocent, as they say, in the cause. _I think not contrary, but they
will join and take part with the Irish, and so invade our realm. If they
do so, doubt ye not but they shall have aid and strength enough in
England. For this is truth: three parts of England be against the king,
as he shall find if he need._ For of truth, they go about to bring this
realm into such miserable condition as is France; which the commons see,
_and perceive well enough a sufficient cause of rebellion and
insurrection in this realm. And truly we of the church shall never live
merrily until that day come_."[400]
[Sidenote: The persecuting laws against the Catholics.]
These informations may assist us in understanding, if we cannot forgive,
the severe enactments--severely to be executed--which were passed in the
ensuing parliament.
[Sidenote: Effect of circumstances upon policy.]
[Sidenote: A modern analogy.]
It is a maxim of sound policy, that actions only are a proper subject of
punishment,--that to treat men as offenders for their words, their
intentions, or their opinions, is not justice, but tyranny. But there is
no rule which is universally applicable. The policy of a state of war is
not the policy of a state of peace. And as a soldier in a campaign is
not at liberty to criticise openly the cause for which he is fighting;
as no general, on his army going into action, can permit a subordinate
to decline from his duty in the moment of danger, on the plea that he is
dissatisfied with the grounds of the quarrel, and that his conscience
forbids him to take part in it; so there are times when whole nations
are in a position analogous to that of an army so circumstanced; when
the safety of the State depends upon unity of purpose, and when private
persons must be compelled to reserve their opinions to themselves; when
they must be compelled neither to express them in words, nor to act upon
them in their capacity of citizens, except at their utmost peril. At
such times the _salus populi_ overrides all other considerations; and
the maxims and laws of calmer periods for awhile consent to be
suspended. The circumstances of the year 1848 will enable us, if we
reflect, not upon what those circumstances actually were, but on what
they easily might have been, to understand the position of Henry VIII.'s
government at the moment of the separation from Rome. If the danger in
1848 had ceased to be imaginary,--if Ireland had broken into a real
insurrection,--if half the population of England had been Socialist, and
had been in secret league with the leaders of the Revolution in Paris
for a combined attack upon the State by insurrection and invasion,--the
mere passing of a law, making the use of seditious language an act of
treason, would not have been adequate to the danger. Influential persons
would have been justly submitted to question on their allegiance, and
insufficient answers would have been interpreted as justifying
suspicion. Not the expression only, of opinions subversive of society,
but the holding such opinions, however discovered, would have been
regarded and treated as a crime, with the full consent of what is
called the common sense and educated judgment of the nation.[401]
[Sidenote: The Romanism of the sixteenth century not the Romanism of the
nineteenth.]
If for "opinions subversive of society," we substitute allegiance to the
papacy, the parallel is complete between the year 1848, as it would then
have been, and the time when the penal laws which are considered the
reproach of the Tudor governments were passed against the Roman
Catholics. I assume that the Reformation was in itself right; that the
claims of the pope to an English supremacy were unjust; and that it was
good and wise to resist those claims. If this be allowed, those laws
will not be found to deserve the reproach of tyranny. We shall see in
them but the natural resource of a vigorous government placed in
circumstances of extreme peril. The Romanism of the present day is a
harmless opinion, no more productive of evil than any other
superstition, and without tendency, or shadow of tendency, to impair the
allegiance of those who profess it. But we must not confound a phantom
with a substance; or gather from modern experience the temper of a time
when words implied realities, when Catholics really believed that they
owed no allegiance to an heretical sovereign, and that the first duty of
their lives was to a foreign potentate. This perilous doctrine was
waning, indeed, but it was not dead. By many it was actively professed;
and among those by whom it was denied there were few except the
Protestants whom it did not in some degree embarrass and perplex.
[Sidenote: Parliament meets, November 3.]
[Sidenote: The king is declared supreme Head of the Church.]
The government, therefore, in the close of 1534, having clear evidence
before them of intended treason, determined to put it down with a high
hand; and with this purpose parliament met again on the 3d of November.
The first act of the session was to give the sanction of the legislature
to the title which had been conceded by convocation, and to declare the
king supreme Head of the Church of England. As affirmed by the
legislature, this designation meant something more than when it was
granted three years previously by the clergy. It then implied that the
spiritual body were no longer to be an _imperium in imperio_ within the
realm, but should hold their powers subordinate to the crown. It was now
an assertion of independence of foreign jurisdiction; it was the
complement of the Act of Appeals, rounding off into completeness the
constitution in Church and State of the English nation. The act is
short, and being of so great importance, I insert it entire.
[Sidenote: Act of Supremacy.]
"Albeit," it runs, "the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and
ought to be the supreme Head of the Church of England, and so is
recognised by the clergy of this realm in their convocation, yet
nevertheless, for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for
increase of virtue in Christ's religion within this realm of England,
and to repress and extirp all errours, heresies, and other enormities
and abuses heretofore used in the same: Be it enacted, by authority of
this present parliament, that the King our Sovereign Lord, his heirs and
successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed
the only supreme Head in earth of the Church of England, called
_Anglicana Ecclesia_, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to
the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof as
all the honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, authorities,
immunities, profits, and commodities, to the said dignity belonging and
appertaining; and that our said Sovereign Lord, his heirs and
successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority to
visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all
such errours, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever
they be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction
ought or may lawfully be reformed--most to the pleasure of Almighty God,
the increase of virtue in Christ's religion, and for the conservation of
the peace, unity, and tranquillity of this realm--any usage, custom,
foreign lawes, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or
things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding."[402]
[Sidenote: The meaning and value of the title.]
[Sidenote: It becomes the gage of the battle.]
Considerable sarcasm has been levelled at the assumption by Henry of
this title; and on the accession of Elizabeth, the crown, while
reclaiming the authority, thought it prudent to retire from the
designation. Yet it answered a purpose in marking the nature of the
revolution, and the emphasis of the name carried home the change into
the mind of the country. It was the epitome of all the measures which
had been passed against the encroachments of the spiritual powers within
and without the realm; it was at once the symbol of the independence of
England, and the declaration that thenceforth the civil magistrate was
supreme within the English dominions over church as well as state.[403]
Whether the king was or was not head of the church, became now therefore
the rallying point of the struggle; and the denial or acceptance of his
title the test of allegiance or disloyalty. To accept it was to go along
with the movement heartily and completely; to deny it was to admit the
rival sovereignty of the pope, and with his sovereignty the lawfulness
of the sentence of excommunication. It was to imply that Henry was not
only not head of the church, but that he was no longer lawful King of
England, and that the allegiance of the country must be transferred to
the Princess Mary when the pope and the emperor should give the word.
There might be no intention of treason; the motive of the opposition
might be purely religious; but from the nature of the case opposition of
any kind would abet the treason of others; and no honesty of meaning
could render possible any longer a double loyalty to the crown and to
the papacy.
[Sidenote: The new Treason Act.]
The act conferring the title was in consequence followed by another,
declaring the denial of it to be treason. It was necessary to stop the
tongues of the noisy mutinous monks, to show them once for all that
these high matters were no subjects for trifling. The oath to the
succession of the Princess Elizabeth partially answered this purpose;
and the obligation to take that oath had been extended to all classes of
the king's subjects;[404] but to refuse to swear to the succession was
misprision of treason only, not high treason; and the ecclesiastics (it
had been seen) found no difficulty in swearing oaths which they did not
mean to observe. The parliament therefore now attached to the statute of
supremacy the following imperious corollary:--
[Sidenote: For the better security of the realm, it is enacted, That any
person who, by words, writing, or otherwise, deprives the king or queen
of any one of their just titles, shall be held guilty of high treason.]
"Forasmuch as it is most necessary, both for common policy and duty of
subjects, above all things to prohibit, provide, restrain, and extinct
all manner of shameful slanders, perils, or imminent danger or dangers,
which might grow, happen, or arise to their sovereign lord the king, the
queen, or their heirs, which, when they be heard, seen, or understood,
cannot be but odible and also abhorred of all those sorts that be true
and loving subjects, if in any point they may, do, or shall touch the
king, the queen, their heirs or successors, upon which dependeth the
whole unity and universal weal of this realm; without providing
wherefore, too great a scope should be given to all cankered and
traitorous hearts, willers and workers of the same; and also the king's
loving subjects should not declare unto their sovereign lord now being,
which unto them both hath been and is most entirely beloved and
esteemed, their undoubted sincerity and truth: Be it therefore enacted,
that if any person or persons, after the first day of February next
coming, do maliciously wish, will, or desire, by words or writing, or by
craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done
or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their
heirs apparent, or to _deprive them or any of them of the dignity,
title, or name of their royal estates_, or slanderously and maliciously
publish and pronounce by express writing or words that the king our
sovereign lord should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or
usurper of the crown, &c., &c., that all such persons, their aiders,
counsellors, concertors, or abettors, being thereof lawfully convict
according to the laws and customs of the realm, shall be adjudged
traitors, and that every such offence in any of the premises shall be
adjudged high treason."[405]
[Sidenote: The act made still more comprehensive, in the interpretation
of it.]
[Sidenote: Retributive justice.]
The terrible powers which were thus committed to the government lie on
the surface of this language; but comprehensive as the statute appears,
it was still further extended by the interpretation of the lawyers. In
order to fall under its penalties it was held not to be necessary that
positive guilt should be proved in any one of the specified offences; it
was enough if a man refused to give satisfactory answers when subjected
to official examination.[406] At the discretion of the king or his
ministers the active consent to the supremacy might be required of any
person on whom they pleased to call, under penalty to the recusant of
the dreadful death of a traitor. So extreme a measure can only be
regarded as a remedy for an evil which was also extreme; and as on the
return of quiet times the parliament made haste to repeal a law which
was no longer required, so in the enactment of that law we are bound to
believe that they were not betraying English liberties in a spirit of
careless complacency; but that they believed truly that the security of
the state required unusual precautions. The nation was standing with its
sword half drawn in the face of an armed Europe, and it was no time to
permit dissensions in the camp.[407] Toleration is good--but even the
best things must abide their opportunity; and although we may regret
that in this grand struggle for freedom, success could only be won by
the aid of measures which bordered upon oppression, yet here also the
even hand of justice was but commending the chalice to the lips of those
who had made others drink it to the dregs. They only were likely to fall
under the Treason Act who for centuries had fed the rack and the stake
with sufferers for "opinion."
[Sidenote: Appointment of suffragan bishops.]
Having thus made provision for public safety, the parliament voted a
supply of money for the fortifications on the coast and for the expenses
of the Irish war; and after transferring to the crown the first-fruits
of church benefices, which had been previously paid to the See of Rome,
and passing at the same time a large and liberal measure for the
appointment of twenty-six suffragan bishops,[408] they separated, not to
meet again for more than a year.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Farnese is chosen pope.]
[Sidenote: He is chosen by French influence, in the hope he will pursue
a liberal and conciliating policy.]
Meanwhile, at Rome a change had taken place which for the moment seemed
to promise that the storm after all might pass away. The conclave had
elected as a successor to Clement a man who, of all the Italian
ecclesiastics, was the most likely to recompose the quarrels in the
church; and who, if the genius or the destiny of the papacy had not been
too strong for any individual will, would perhaps have succeeded in
restoring peace to Christendom. In the debates upon the divorce the
Cardinal Farnese had been steadily upon Henry's side. He had maintained
from the first the general justice of the king's demands. After the
final sentence was passed, he had urged, though vainly, the
reconsideration of that fatal step; and though slow and cautious,
although he was a person who, as Sir Gregory Cassalis described him,
"would accomplish little, but would make few mistakes,"[409] he had
allowed his opinion upon this, as on other matters connected with the
English quarrel, to be generally known. He was elected therefore by
French influence[410] as the person most likely to meet the difficulties
of Europe in a catholic and conciliating spirit. He had announced his
intention, immediately on Clement's death, of calling a general council
at the earliest moment, in the event of his being chosen to fill the
papal chair; and as he was the friend rather of Francis I. than of the
emperor, and as Francis was actively supporting Henry, and was
negotiating at the same moment with the Protestant princes in Germany,
it seemed as if a council summoned under such auspices would endeavour
to compose the general discords in a temper of wise liberality, and that
some terms of compromise would be discovered where by mutual concessions
Catholic and Protestant might meet upon a common ground.
The moment was propitious for such a hope; for the accession of a
moderate pope coincided with the reaction in Germany which followed the
scandals at Munster and the excesses of John of Leyden; and Francis
pictured to himself a coalition between France, England, and the
Lutherans, which, if the papacy was attached to their side, would be
strong enough to bear down opposition, and reconstitute the churches of
Europe upon the basis of liberality which he seemed to have secured for
the church of France. The flattering vision in the autumn of the
following year dazzled the German princes. Perhaps in the novelty of
hope it was encouraged even by the pope, before he had felt the strong
hand of fate which ruled his will.
[Sidenote: Anxiety and alarm of the emperor.]
[Sidenote: The mission of the Count of Nassau to Paris with proposals
for a league.]
[Sidenote: The emperor's offers are rejected by Francis.]
To Charles V. the danger of some such termination of the great question
at issue appeared most near and real. Charles, whose resentment at the
conduct of England united with a desire to assert his authority over his
subjects in Germany, beheld with the utmost alarm a scheme growing to
maturity which menaced alike his honour, his desire of revenge, his
supremacy in Europe, and perhaps his religious convictions. A liberal
coalition would be fatal to order, to policy, to truth; and on the
election of Cardinal Farnese, the Count de Nassau was sent on a secret
mission to Paris with overtures, the elaborate condescension of which
betrays the anxiety that must have dictated them. The emperor, in his
self-constituted capacity of the Princess Mary's guardian, offered her
hand with the English succession to the Duke of Angoulesme. From the
terms on which he was thought to stand with Anne Boleyn, it was thought
possible that Henry might consent;[411] he might not dare, as
d'Inteville before suggested, to oppose the united demands of France and
the Empire.[412] To Margaret de Valois the Count was to propose the
splendid temptation of a marriage with Philip.[413] If Francis would
surrender the English alliance, the emperor would make over to him the
passionately coveted Duchy of Milan,[414] to be annexed to France on the
death of the reigning Duke. In the meantime he would pay to the French
king, as "tribute for Milan," a hundred thousand crowns a year, as an
acknowledgment of the right of the house of Valois. Offers such as these
might well have tempted the light ambition of Francis. If sincere, they
were equivalent to a surrender of the prize for which the emperor's life
had been spent in contending, and perilous indeed it would have been for
England if this intrigue had been permitted to succeed. But whether it
was that Francis too deeply distrusted Charles, that he preferred the
more hazardous scheme of the German alliance, or that he supposed he
could gain his object more surely with the help of England, the Count de
Nassau left Paris with a decisive rejection of the emperor's advances;
and in the beginning of January, De Bryon, the High Admiral of France,
was sent to England, to inform Henry of what had passed, and to propose
for Elizabeth the marriage which Charles had desired for the Princess
Mary.
[Sidenote: De Bryon sent to England.]
De Bryon's instructions were remarkable. To consolidate the alliance of
the two nations, he was to entreat Henry at length to surrender the
claim to the crown of France, which had been the cause of so many
centuries of war. In return for this concession, Francis would make over
to England, Gravelines, Newport, Dunkirk, a province of Flanders, and
"the title of the Duke of Lorrayne to the town of Antwerp, with
sufficient assistance for the recovery of the same." Henry was not to
press Francis to part from the papacy; and De Bryon seems to have
indicated a hope that the English king might retrace his own steps. The
weight of French influence, meanwhile, was to be pressed, to induce the
pope to revoke and denounce, voyd and frustrate the unjust and
slanderous sentence[415] given by his predecessor; and the terms of
this new league were to be completed by the betrothal of the Princess
Elizabeth to the Duke of Angoulesme.[416]
[Sidenote: Change in Henry's character.]
There had been a time when these proposals would have answered all which
Henry desired. In the early days of his reign he had indulged himself in
visions of empire, and of repeating the old glories of the Plantagenet
kings. But in the peace which was concluded after the defeat of Pavia,
he showed that he had resigned himself to a wiser policy,[417] and the
surrender of a barren designation would cost him little. In his quarrel
with the pope, also, he had professed an extreme reluctance to impair
the unity of the church; and the sacrifices which he had made, and the
years of persevering struggle which he had endured, had proved that in
those professions he had not been insincere. But Henry's character was
not what it had been when he won his title of Defender of the Faith. In
the experience of the last few years he had learnt to conceive some
broader sense of the meaning of the Reformation; and he had gathered
from Cromwell and Latimer a more noble conception of the Protestant
doctrines. He had entered upon an active course of legislation for the
putting away the injustices, the falsehoods, the oppressions of a
degenerate establishment; and in the strong sense that he had done
right, and nothing else but right, in these measures, he was not now
disposed to submit to a compromise, or to consent to undo anything which
he was satisfied had been justly done, in consideration of any supposed
benefit which he could receive from the pope. He was anxious to remain
in communion with the see of Rome. He was willing to acknowledge in some
innocuous form the Roman supremacy. But it could be only on his own
terms. The pope must come to him; he could not go to the pope. And the
papal precedency should only again be admitted in England on conditions
which should leave untouched the Act of Appeals, and should preserve the
sovereignty of the crown unimpaired.
[Sidenote: Henry's reply to the overtures of the French king.]
[Sidenote: The pope must make the first move towards a reconciliation.]
He replied, therefore, to the overtures of Francis, that he was ready to
enter into negotiations for the resignation or his title to the crown of
France, and for the proposed marriage.[418] Before any other step was
taken, however, he desired his good brother to insist that "the Bishop
of Rome" should revoke the sentence, and "declare his pretended marriage
with the Lady Catherine naught;" "which to do," Henry wrote (and this
portion of his reply is written by his own hand), "we think it very
facile for our good brother; since we do perceive by letters [from Rome]
both the opinions of the learned men there to be of that opinion that we
be of; and also a somewhat disposition to that purpose in the Bishop of
Rome's self, according to equity, reason, and the laws both positive and
divine." If there was to be a reconciliation with the Holy See, the
first advance must be made on the Bishop of Rome's side; and Cromwell,
in a simultaneous despatch, warned Francis not "to move or desire his
Grace to the violation of any laws recently passed, as a thing whereunto
he would in no wise condescend or agree."[419]
[Sidenote: Henry distrusts Francis.]
Henry, however, felt no confidence either in the sincerity of the pope,
or in the sincerity of the French king, as he haughtily showed. He did
not even trust De Bryon's account of the rejection of the overtures of
the emperor. "If it happeneth," he wrote, "that the said Bishop will
obstinately follow the steps of his predecessor, and be more inclined to
the maintenance of the actions and sentences of his see than to equity
and justice, then we trust that our good brother--perceiving the right
to stand on our side, and that not only the universities of his whole
realm and dominions hath so defined, but also the most part of the rest
of Christendom, and also the best learned men of the Bishop of Rome's
own council, now being called for that purpose--will fully and wholly,
both he and his whole realm, adhere and cleave to us and our doings in
this behalf; and we herein desire shortly to have answer, which we would
be right loth should be such as whereupon we might take any occasion of
suspicion; trusting, further, that our said good brother will both
promise unto us upon his word, and indeed perform, that in the meantime,
before the meeting of our deputies,[420] he nor directly nor indirectly
shall practise or set forth any mean or intelligence of marriage, or of
other practices with the emperour."[421]
[Sidenote: The pope makes indirect advances, which are received also
with coldness.]
[Sidenote: January.]
So cold an answer could have arisen only from deep distrust; it is
difficult to say whether the distrust was wholly deserved. Analogous
advances, made indirectly from the pope were met with the same reserve.
Sir Gregory Cassalis wrote to Cromwell, that Farnese, or Paul III., as
he was now called, had expressed the greatest desire to please the king.
He had sent for lawyers out of Tuscany, on whose judgment he had great
reliance, and these lawyers had given an opinion that the pope might _ex
officio_ annul the first marriage as Henry desired, and pronounce the
second valid.[422] This was well, but it did not go beyond words; and of
these there had been too many. The English government had fed upon "the
cameleon's dish," "eating the air promise crammed," till they were weary
of so weak a diet, and they desired something more substantial. If the
pope, replied Cromwell, be really well disposed, let him show his
disposition in some public manner, "of his own accord, with a desire
only for the truth, and without waiting till the King's Majesty entreat
him."[423] It would have been more courteous, and perhaps it would have
been more just, if the French overtures had been met in a warmer spirit;
for the policy of Francis required for the time a cordial understanding
with England; and his conduct seems to prove that he was sincerely
anxious to win the pope to complacency.[424] But Henry's experience
guided him wisely with the Roman Bishop; and if he had been entangled
into confidence in Farnese, he would have been entangled to his ruin.
[Sidenote: The language of the papacy had been inconsistent, but its
conduct had been uniform.]
The spring of 1535 was consumed in promises, negotiations, and a
repetition of the profitless story of the preceding years. Suddenly, in
the midst of the unreality, it became clear that one man at least was
serious. Henry, with an insurgent Ireland and a mutinous England upon
his hands, had no leisure for diplomatic finesse; he had learnt his
lesson with Clement, and was not to be again deceived. The language of
the Roman see had been inconsistent, but the actions of it had been
always uniform. From the first beginning of the dispute to the final
break and excommunication, in the teeth of his promises, his flatteries,
his acknowledgments, Clement had been the partisan of Catherine. When
the English agents were collecting the opinions of the Italian
universities, they were thwarted by his emissaries. He had intrigued
against Henry in Scotland; he had tampered with Henry's English and
Irish subjects; he had maintained a secret correspondence with Catherine
herself. And so well had his true feelings and the true position of the
question been understood by the papal party in England, that at the very
time when at Marseilles and elsewhere the pope himself was admitting the
justice of the king's demand, the religious orders who were most
unwavering in their allegiance to the papacy, were pressing their
opposition to the divorce into rebellion.
[Sidenote: Until the pope, therefore, shows some change in action, the
penal laws may not be arrested.]
When, therefore, the chair of St. Peter was filled by a new occupant,
and language of the same smooth kind began again to issue from it, the
English government could not for so light a cause consent to arrest
their measures, or suspend the action of laws which had been passed from
a conviction of their necessity. Whatever might become of French
marriages, or of the cession of a corner of the Netherlands and a few
towns upon the coast in exchange for a gaudy title, the English
Reformation must continue its way; the nation must be steered clear
among the reefs and shoals of treason. The late statutes had not been
passed without a cause; and when occasion came to enforce them, were not
to pass off, like the thunders of the Vatican, in impotent noise.
[Sidenote: The martyrdoms of Catholics and Protestants analogous to
deaths in battle.]
Here, therefore, we are to enter upon one of the grand scenes of
history; a solemn battle fought out to the death, yet fought without
ferocity, by the champions of rival principles. Heroic men had fallen,
and were still fast falling, for what was called heresy; and now those
who had inflicted death on others were called upon to bear the same
witness to their own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war
between two armies of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in
open action, but on the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler
weapons of passive endurance. Each party were ready to give their blood;
each party were ready to shed the blood of their antagonists; and the
sword was to single out its victims in the rival ranks, not as in peace
among those whose crimes made them dangerous to society, but, as on the
field of battle, where the most conspicuous courage most challenges the
aim of the enemy. It was war, though under the form of peace; and if we
would understand the true spirit of the time, we must regard Catholics
and Protestants as gallant soldiers, whose deaths, when they fall, are
not painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are equally able to
admire, even where we cannot equally approve their cause. Courage and
self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an enemy and in a friend. And
while we exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs bought
England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration
to those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset of the old
faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged with the light of its
dying glory.
[Sidenote: The monks of the London Charterhouse.]
Secretary Bedyll, as we saw above, complained to Cromwell of the
obstinacy of certain friars and monks, who, he thought, would confer a
service on the country by dying quietly, lest honest men should incur
unmerited obloquy in putting them to death. Among these, the brethren of
the London Charterhouse were specially mentioned as recalcitrant, and
they were said at the same time to bear a high reputation for holiness.
In a narrative written by a member of this body, we are brought face to
face, at their time of trial, with one of the few religious
establishments in England which continued to deserve the name; and we
may see, in the scenes which are there described, the highest
representation of struggles which graduated variously according to
character and temper, and, without the tragical result, may have been
witnessed in very many of the monastic houses. The writer was a certain
Maurice Channey, probably an Irishman. He went through the same
sufferings with the rest of the brethren, and was one of the small
fraction who finally gave way under the trial. He was set at liberty,
and escaped abroad; and in penance for his weakness, he left on record
the touching story of his fall, and of the triumph of his bolder
companions.
[Sidenote: Story of Maurice Channey.]
[Sidenote: Unity of the monastic life.]
He commences with his own confession. He had fallen when others stood.
He was, as he says, an unworthy brother, a Saul among the prophets, a
Judas among the apostles, a child of Ephraim turning himself back in the
day of battle--for which his cowardice, while his brother monks were
saints in heaven, he was doing penance in sorrow, tossing on the waves
of the wide world. The early chapters contain a loving lingering picture
of his cloister life--to him the perfection of earthly happiness. It is
placed before us, in all its superstition, its devotion, and its
simplicity, the counterpart, even in minute details, of the stories of
the Saxon recluses when monasticism was in the young vigour of its life.
St. Bede or St. Cuthbert might have found himself in the house of the
London Carthusians, and he would have had few questions to ask, and no
duties to learn or to unlearn. The form of the buildings would have
seemed more elaborate; the notes of the organ would have added richer
solemnity to the services; but the salient features of the scene would
have been all familiar. He would have lived in a cell of the same shape,
he would have thought the same thoughts, spoken the same words in the
same language. The prayers, the daily life, almost the very faces with
which he was surrounded, would have seemed all unaltered. A thousand
years of the world's history had rolled by, and these lonely islands of
prayer had remained still anchored in the stream; the strands of the
ropes which held them, wearing now to a thread, and very near their last
parting, but still unbroken. What they had been they were; and, if
Maurice Channey's description had come down to us as the account of the
monastery in which Offa of Mercia did penance for his crimes, we could
have detected no internal symptoms of a later age.
[Sidenote: Channey's description of it.]
His pages are filled with the old familiar stories of visions and
miracles; of strange adventures befalling the chalices and holy
wafers;[425] of angels with wax candles; innocent phantoms which
flitted round brains and minds fevered by asceticism. There are accounts
of certain _fratres reprobi et eorum terribilis punitio_--frail brethren
and the frightful catastrophes which ensued to them.[426] Brother
Thomas, who told stories out of doors, _apud saeculares_, was attacked
one night by the devil; and the fiend would have strangled him but for
the prayers of a companion. Brother George, who craved after the
fleshpots of Egypt, was walking one day about the cloister when he ought
to have been at chapel, and the great figure upon the cross at the end
of the gallery turned its back upon him as it hung, and drove him all
but mad. Brother John Daly found fault with his dinner, and said that he
would as soon eat toads--_Mira res! Justus Deus non fraudavit eum
desiderio suo_--his cell was for three months filled with toads. If he
threw them into the fire, they hopped back to him unscorched; if he
killed them, others came to take their place.
[Sidenote: Character of Haughton, the prior.]
But these bad brothers were rare exceptions. In general the house was
perhaps the best ordered in England. The hospitality was well sustained,
the charities were profuse, and whatever we may think of the intellect
which could busy itself with fancies seemingly so childish, the monks
were true to their vows, and true to their duty as far as they
comprehended what duty meant. Among many good, the prior John Haughton
was the best. He was of an old English family, and had been educated at
Cambridge, where he must have been the contemporary of Latimer. At the
age of twenty-eight he took the vows as a monk, and had been twenty
years a Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation.
He is described as "small in stature, in figure graceful, in countenance
dignified." "In manner he was most modest; in eloquence most sweet; in
chastity without stain." We may readily imagine his appearance; with
that feminine austerity of expression which, as has been well said,
belongs so peculiarly to the features of the mediaeval ecclesiastics.
[Sidenote: The monks espouse the side of Queen Catherine.]
[Sidenote: They are required to take the oath of allegiance, and
refuse.]
[Sidenote: The prior is persuaded to submit, _sub conditione_.]
[Sidenote: The prior's dream.]
[Sidenote: The monks hesitate,]
[Sidenote: But at last yield.]
Such was the society of the monks of the Charterhouse, who, in an era
too late for their continuance, and guilty of being unable to read the
signs of the times, were summoned to wage unequal battle with the world.
From the commencement of the divorce cause they had espoused
instinctively the queen's side; they had probably, in common with their
affiliated house at Sion, believed unwisely in the Nun of Kent; and, as
pious Catholics, they regarded the reforming measures of the parliament
with dismay and consternation. The year 1533, says Maurice,[427] was
ushered in with signs in heaven and prodigies upon earth, as if the end
of the world was at hand; as indeed of the monks and the monks' world
the end was truly at hand. And then came the spring of 1534, when the
act was passed cutting off the Princess Mary from the succession, and
requiring of all subjects of the realm an oath of allegiance to
Elizabeth, and a recognition of the king's marriage with Queen Anne. Sir
Thomas More and Bishop Fisher went to the Tower, as we saw, rather than
swear; and about the same time the royal commissioners appeared at the
Charterhouse to require the submission of the brethren. The regular
clergy through the kingdom had bent to the storm. The conscience of the
London Carthusians was less elastic; they were the first and, with the
exception of More and Fisher, the only recusants. "The prior did answer
to the commissioners," Maurice tells us, "that he knew nothing of such
matters, and could not meddle with them; and they continuing to insist,
and the prior being still unable to give other answer, he was sent with
Father Humphrey, our proctor, to the Tower." There he remained for a
month; and at the end of it he was persuaded by "certain good and
learned men"[428] that the cause was not one for which it was lawful to
suffer. He undertook to comply, _sub conditione_, with some necessary
reservations, and was sent home to the cloister. As soon as he returned,
the brethren assembled in their chapter-house "in confusion and great
perplexity," and Haughton told them what he had promised. He would
submit, he said, and yet his misgivings foretold to him that a
submission so made could not long avail. "Our hour, dear brethren," he
continued, "is not yet come. In the same night in which we were set free
I had a dream that I should not escape thus. Within a year I shall be
brought again to that place, and then I shall finish my course." If
martyrdom was so near and so inevitable, the remainder of the monks were
at first reluctant to purchase a useless delay at the price of their
convictions. The commissioners came with the lord mayor for the oath,
and it was refused. They came again, with the threat of instant
imprisonment for the whole fraternity; "and then," says Maurice, "they
prevailed with us. We all swore as we were required, making one
condition, that we submitted only so far as it was lawful for us so to
do. Thus, like Jonah, we were delivered from the belly of this monster,
this immanis ceta, and began again to rejoice like him, under the shadow
of the gourd of our home. But it is better to trust in the Lord than in
princes, in whom is no salvation; God had prepared a worm that smote our
gourd and made it to perish."[429]
[Sidenote: The convent hears of the Treason Act.]
This worm, as may be supposed, was the act of supremacy, with the
statute of treasons which was attached to it. It was ruled, as I have
said, that inadequate answers to official inquiry formed sufficient
ground for prosecution under these acts. But this interpretation was not
generally known; nor among those who knew it was it certain whether the
crown would avail itself of the powers which it thus possessed, or
whether it would proceed only against such offenders as had voluntarily
committed themselves to opposition. In the opening of the following year
[1535] the first uncertainty was at an end; it was publicly understood
that persons who had previously given cause for suspicion might be
submitted to question. When this bitter news was no longer doubtful, the
prior called the convent together, and gave them notice to prepare for
what was coming. They lay already under the shadow of treason; and he
anticipated, among other evil consequences of disobedience, the
immediate dissolution of the house. Even he, with all his forebodings,
was unprepared for the course which would really be taken with them.
"When we were all in great consternation," writes our author, "he said
to us:--
[Sidenote: The prior's address.]
"'Very sorry am I, and my heart is heavy, especially for you, my
younger friends, of whom I see so many round me. Here you are living in
your innocence. The yoke will not be laid on your necks, nor the rod of
persecution. But if you are taken hence, and mingle among the Gentiles,
you may learn the works of them, and having begun in the spirit you may
be consumed in the flesh. And there may be others among us whose hearts
are still infirm. If these mix again with the world, I fear how it may
be with them; and what shall I say, and what shall I do, if I cannot
save those whom God has trusted to my charge?'
"Then all who were present," says Channey, "burst into tears, and cried
with one voice, 'Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and
earth shall witness for us how unjustly we are cut off.'
[Sidenote: If it may be so, the prior will make himself anathema for his
brethren.]
"The prior answered, sadly,--'Would, indeed, that it might be so; that
so dying we might live, as living we die--but they will not do to us so
great a kindness, nor to themselves so great an injury. Many of you are
of noble blood; and what I think they will do is this: Me and the elder
brethren they will kill; and they will dismiss you that are young into a
world which is not for you. _If, therefore, it depend on me alone--if my
oath will suffice for the house--I will throw myself for your sakes on
the mercy of God. I will make myself anathema; and to preserve you from
these dangers, I will consent to the king's will._ If, however, they
have determined otherwise--if they choose to have the consent of us
all--the will of God be done. If one death will not avail, we will die
all.'
"So then, bidding us prepare for the worst, that the Lord when he
knocked might find us ready, he desired us to choose each our
confessor, and to confess our sins one to another, giving us power to
grant each other absolution.
[Sidenote: The brethren make their preparations.]
"The day after he preached a sermon in the chapel on the 59th Psalm,--'O
God, Thou hast cast us off, Thou hast destroyed us;'[430] concluding
with the words, 'It is better that we should suffer here a short penance
for our faults, than be reserved for the eternal pains of hell
hereafter;'--and so ending, he turned to us and bade us all do as we saw
him do. Then rising from his place he went direct to the eldest of the
brethren, who was sitting nearest to himself, and kneeling before him,
begged his forgiveness for any offence which in heart, word, or deed, he
might have committed against him. Thence he proceeded to the next, and
said the same; and so to the next, through us all, we following him and
saying as he did, each from each imploring pardon."
Thus, with unobtrusive nobleness, did these poor men prepare themselves
for their end; not less beautiful in their resolution, not less
deserving the everlasting remembrance of mankind, than those three
hundred who in the summer morning sate combing their golden hair in the
passes of Thermopylae. We will not regret their cause; there is no cause
for which any man can more nobly suffer than to witness that it is
better for him to die than to speak words which he does not mean. Nor,
in this their hour of trial, were they left without higher comfort.
"The third day after," the story goes on, "was the mass of the Holy
Ghost, and God made known his presence among us. For when the host was
lifted up, there came as it were a whisper of air, which breathed upon
our faces as we knelt. Some perceived it with the bodily senses; all
felt it as it thrilled into their hearts. And then followed a sweet,
soft sound of music, at which our venerable father was so moved, God
being thus abundantly manifest among us, that he sank down in tears, and
for a long time could not continue the service--we all remaining
stupified, hearing the melody, and feeling the marvellous effects of it
upon our spirits, but knowing neither whence it came nor whither it
went. Only our hearts rejoiced as we perceived that God was with us
indeed."
[Sidenote: The government are in no haste to enforce the statutes.]
Comforted and resolute, the brotherhood awaited patiently the approach
of the commissioners; and they waited long, for the crown was in no
haste to be severe. The statutes had been passed in no spirit of
cruelty; they were weapons to be used in case of extremity; and there
was no attempt to enforce them until forbearance was misconstrued into
fear. Sir Thomas More and the Bishop of Rochester remained unquestioned
in the Tower, and were allowed free intercourse with their friends. The
Carthusian monks were left undisturbed, although the attitude which they
had assumed was notorious, and although the prior was known to forbid
his penitents in confession to acknowledge the king's supremacy. If the
government was at length driven to severity, it was because the clergy
forced them to it in spite of themselves.
[Sidenote: Conduct of the clergy.]
The clergy had taken the oath, but they held themselves under no
obligation to observe it; or if they observed the orders of the crown in
the letter, they thwarted those orders in the spirit. The Treason Act
had for awhile overawed them; but finding that its threats were confined
to language, that months passed away, and that no person had as yet
been prosecuted, they fell back into open opposition, either careless of
the consequences, or believing that the government did not dare to exert
its powers. The details of their conduct during the spring months of
this year I am unable to discover; but it was such as at length, on the
17th of April, provoked the following circular to the lords-lieutenant
of the various counties:[431]--
[Sidenote: Circular of the 17th of April.]
[Sidenote: The clergy in divers places continue to pray for the pope.]
[Sidenote: The king commands that all persons so doing shall be
arrested.]
"Right trusty and well-beloved cousin, we greet you well; and whereas it
has come to our knowledge that sundry persons, as well religious as
secular priests and curates in their parishes and in divers places
within this our realm, do daily, as much as in them is, set forth and
extol the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, otherwise called the Pope;
sowing their seditious, pestilent, and false doctrines; praying for him
in the pulpit and making him a god; to the great deceit of our subjects,
bringing them into errours and evil opinions; more preferring the power,
laws, and jurisdiction of the said Bishop of Rome than the most holy
laws and precepts of Almighty God: We therefore, minding not only to
proceed for an unity and quietness among our said subjects, but also
greatly coveting and desiring them to be brought to a knowledge of the
mere verity and truth, and no longer to be seduced with any such
superstitious and false doctrines of any earthly usurper of God's
laws--will, therefore, and command you, that whensoever ye shall hear of
any such seditious persons, ye indelayedly do take and apprehend them,
or cause them to be apprehended and taken, and so committed to ward,
there to remain without bail or mainprize, until, upon your
advertisement thereof to us and to our council, ye shall know our
further pleasure.
HENRY R."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Carthusians are called upon to acknowledge the royal
supremacy.]
[Sidenote: The reason for the conduct of the government.]
In obvious connexion with the issue of this publication, the monks of
the Charterhouse were at length informed that they would be questioned
on the supremacy. The great body of the religious houses had volunteered
an outward submission. The London Carthusians, with other affiliated
establishments, had remained passive, and had thus furnished an open
encouragement to disobedience. We are instinctively inclined to censure
an interference with persons who at worst were but dreamers of the
cloister; and whose innocence of outward offences we imagine might have
served them for a shield. Unhappily, behind the screenwork of these poor
saints a whole Irish insurrection was blazing in madness and fury; and
in the northern English counties were some sixty thousand persons ready
to rise in arms. In these great struggles men are formidable in
proportion to their virtues. The noblest Protestants were chosen by the
Catholics for the stake. The fagots were already growing which were to
burn Tyndal, the translator of the Bible. It was the habit of the time,
as it is the habit of all times of real danger, to spare the multitude
but to strike the leaders, to make responsibility the shadow of power,
to choose for punishment the most efficacious representatives of the
spirit which it was necessary to subdue.
The influence of the Carthusians, with that of the two great men who
were following the same road to the same goal, determined multitudes in
the attitude which they would assume, and in the duty which they would
choose. The Carthusians, therefore, were to be made to bend; or if they
could not be bent, to be made examples in their punishment, as they had
made themselves examples in their resistance. They were noble and good;
but there were others in England good and noble as they, who were not of
their fold; and whose virtues, thenceforward more required by England
than cloistered asceticisms, had been blighted under the shadow of the
papacy. The Catholics had chosen the alternative, either to crush the
free thought which was bursting from the soil, or else to be crushed by
it; and the future of the world could not be sacrificed to preserve the
exotic graces of mediaeval saints. They fell, gloriously and not
unprofitably. They were not allowed to stay the course of the
Reformation; but their sufferings, nobly borne, sufficed to recover the
sympathy of after-ages for the faith which they professed. Ten righteous
men were found in the midst of the corruption to purchase for Romanism a
few more centuries of tolerated endurance.
[Sidenote: The prior with three others are sent to the Tower,]
[Sidenote: And brought to trial, April 28.]
To return to the narrative of Maurice Channey. Notice of the intention
of the government having been signified to the order, Father Webster and
Father Lawrence, the priors of the two daughter houses of Axholm and
Belville, came up to London three weeks after Easter, and, with
Haughton, presented themselves before Cromwell with an entreaty to be
excused the submission. For answer to their petition they were sent to
the Tower, where they were soon after joined by Father Reynolds, one of
the recalcitrant monks of Sion. These four were brought on the 26th of
April before a committee of the privy council, of which Cromwell was
one. The act of supremacy was laid before them, and they were required
to signify their acceptance of it. They refused, and two days after
they were brought to trial before a special commission. They pleaded all
"not guilty." They had of course broken the act; but they would not
acknowledge that guilt could be involved in disobedience to a law which
was itself unlawful. Their words in the Tower to the privy council
formed the matter of the charge against them. It appears from the record
that on their examination, "they, treacherously machinating and desiring
to deprive the king our sovereign lord of his title of supreme Head of
the Church of England, did openly declare and say, the king our
sovereign lord is not supreme Head on earth of the Church of
England."[432]
[Sidenote: Haughton's language at the bar.]
But their conduct on the trial, or at least the conduct of Haughton,
spared all difficulty in securing a conviction. The judges pressed the
prior "not to shew so little wisdom as to maintain his own opinion
against the consent of the realm." He replied, that he had resolved
originally to imitate the example of his Master before Herod, and say
nothing. "But since you urge me," he continued, "that I may satisfy my
own conscience and the consciences of these who are present, I will say
that our opinion, if it might go by the suffrages of men, would have
more witnesses than yours. You can produce on your side but the
parliament of a single kingdom; I, on mine, have the whole Christian
world except that kingdom. Nor have you all even of your own people. The
lesser part is with you. The majority, who seem to be with you, do but
dissemble, to gain favour with the king, or for fear they should lose
their honours and their dignities."
Cromwell asked him of whom he was speaking. "Of all the good men in the
realm," he replied; "and when his Majesty knows the truth, I know well
he will be beyond measure offended with those of his bishops who have
given him the counsel which he now follows."
"Why," said another of the judges, "have you, contrary to the king's
authority within the realm, persuaded so many persons as you have done
to disobey the king and parliament?"
[Sidenote: Thursday, April 29.]
[Sidenote: The prisoners are condemned.]
"I have declared my opinion," he answered, "to no man living but to
those who came to me in confession, which in discharge of my conscience
I could not refuse. But if I did not declare it then, I will declare it
now, because I am thereto obliged to God."[433] He neither looked for
mercy nor desired it. A writ was issued for the return of a petty jury
the following day. The prisoners were taken back to the Tower, and the
next morning were brought again to the bar. Feron and Hale, the two
priests whose conversation had been overheard at Sion, were placed on
their trial at the same time. The two latter threw themselves on the
mercy of the court. A verdict of guilty was returned against the other
four. The sentence was for the usual punishment of high treason. Feron
was pardoned; I do not find on what account. Hale and the Carthusians
were to suffer together. When Haughton heard the sentence, he merely
said, "This is the judgment of the world."[434]
[Sidenote: May 4. The execution.]
[Sidenote: They are brought to the scaffold in their habits.]
An interval of five days was allowed after the trial. On the 4th of May,
the execution took place at Tyburn, under circumstances which marked the
occasion with peculiar meaning. The punishment in cases of high treason
was very terrible. I need not dwell upon the form of it. The English
were a hard, fierce people; and with these poor sufferers the law of the
land took its course without alleviation or interference. But another
feature distinguished the present execution. For the first time in
English history, ecclesiastics were brought out to suffer in their
habits, without undergoing the previous ceremony of degradation.
Thenceforward the world were to know, that as no sanctuary any more
should protect traitors, so the sacred office should avail as little;
and the hardest blow which it had yet received was thus dealt to
superstition, shaking from its place in the minds of all men the
key-stone of the whole system.
[Sidenote: Haughton dies first.]
[Sidenote: The council urges the rest to submit, but in vain.]
To the last moment escape was left open, if the prisoners would submit.
Several members of the council attended them to the closing scene, for a
last effort of kindness; but they had chosen their course, and were not
to be moved from it. Haughton, as first in rank, had the privilege of
first dying. When on the scaffold, in compliance with the usual custom,
he spoke a few touching and simple words to the people. "I call to
witness Almighty God," he said, "and all good people, and I beseech you
all here present to bear witness for me in the day of judgment, that
being here to die, I declare that it is from no obstinate rebellious
spirit that I do not obey the king, but because I fear to offend the
Majesty of God. Our holy mother the church has decreed otherwise than
the king and the parliament have decreed, and therefore, rather than
disobey the church, I am ready to suffer. Pray for me, and have mercy on
my brethren, of whom I have been the unworthy prior." He then knelt
down, repeating the first few verses of the 31st Psalm,[435] and after a
few moments delivered himself to the executioner. The others followed,
undaunted. As one by one they went to their death, the council, at each
fresh horrible spectacle, urged the survivors to have pity on
themselves; but they urged them in vain. The faces of these men did not
grow pale; their voices did not shake; they declared themselves liege
subjects of the king, and obedient children of holy church; "giving God
thanks that they were held worthy to suffer for the truth."[436] All
died without a murmur. The stern work was ended with quartering the
bodies; and the arm of Haughton was hung up as a bloody sign over the
archway of the Charterhouse, to awe the remaining brothers into
submission.
[Sidenote: June 10. Three more Carthusians tried and executed.]
But the spirit of the old martyrs was in these friars. One of them, like
the Theban sister, bore away the honoured relic and buried it; and all
resolved to persist in their resigned opposition. Six weeks were allowed
them to consider. At the end of that time three more were taken, tried,
and hanged;[437] and this still proving ineffectual, Cromwell hesitated
to proceed.
[Sidenote: Cromwell hesitates.]
[Sidenote: Close of the story of the Carthusians.]
[Sidenote: They will not yield, and are crushed.]
The end of the story is very touching and may be told briefly, that I
may not have occasion to return to it. Maurice's account is probably
exaggerated, and is written in a tone of strong emotion; but it has all
the substantial features of truth. The remaining monks were left in the
house; and two secular priests were sent to take charge of the
establishment, who starved and ill-used them; and were themselves,
according to Maurice, sensual and profligate. From time to time they
were called before the privy council. Their friends and relatives were
ordered to work upon them. No effort either of severity or kindness was
spared to induce them to submit; as if their attitude, so long as it was
maintained, was felt as a reproach by the government. At last, four were
carried down to Westminster Abbey, to hear the Bishop of Durham deliver
his famous sermon against the pope; and when this rhetorical inanity had
also failed, and as they were thought to confirm one another in their
obstinacy, they were dispersed among other houses the temper of which
could be depended upon. Some were sent to the north; others to Sion,
where a new prior had been appointed, of zealous loyalty; others were
left at home to be disciplined by the questionable seculars. But nothing
answered. Two found their way into active rebellion, and being
concerned in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were hung in chains at York. Ten
were sent to Newgate, where nine died miserably of prison fever and
filth;[438] the tenth survivor was executed. The remainder, of whom
Maurice was one, went through a form of submission, with a mental
reservation, and escaped abroad.
[Sidenote: The necessity was a cruel one, but the government are not to
be blamed.]
[Sidenote: The king orders the court into mourning.]
So fell the monks of the London Charterhouse, splintered to pieces--for
so only could their resistance be overcome--by the iron sceptre and the
iron hand which held it. They were, however, alone of their kind. There
were many perhaps who wished to resemble them, who would have imitated
their example had they dared. But all bent except these. If it had been
otherwise, the Reformation would have been impossible, and perhaps it
would not have been needed. Their story claims from us that sympathy
which is the due of their exalted courage. But we cannot blame the
government. Those who know what the condition of the country really was,
must feel their inability to suggest, with any tolerable reasonableness,
what else could have been done. They may regret so hard a necessity, but
they will regret in silence. The king, too, was not without feeling. It
was no matter of indifference to him that he found himself driven to
such stern courses with his subjects; and as the golden splendour of
his manhood was thus sullenly clouding, "he commanded all about his
court to poll their heads," in public token of mourning; "and to give
them example, he caused his own head to be polled; and from thenceforth
his beard to be knotted, and to be no more shaven."[439]
[Sidenote: May 8. Other martyrs who were not Catholics.]
The friars of Charterhouse suffered for the Catholic faith, as
Protestants had suffered, and were still to suffer, for a faith fairer
than theirs. In this same month of May, in the same year, the English
annals contain another entry of no less sad significance. The bishops,
as each day they parted further from their old allegiance, and were
called in consequence by the hateful name of heretics, were increasingly
anxious to prove by evident tokens their zeal for the true faith; and
although the late act of heresy had moderated their powers, yet power
enough remained to enable them to work their will upon all extreme
offenders. Henry, also, it is likely, was not sorry of an opportunity of
showing that his justice was even-handed, and that a schism from the
papacy was not a lapse into heterodoxy. His mind was moving. Latimer and
Shaxton, who three years before had been on trial for their lives, were
soon to be upon the bench; and in the late injunctions, the Bible, and
not the decrees of the church, had been held up as the canon of truth.
But heresy, though the definition of it was changing, remained a crime;
and although the limits of permitted belief were imperceptibly
enlarging, to transgress the recognised boundaries was an offence
enormous as ever.
[Sidenote: Popular estimate of the Anabaptists.]
If we can conceive the temper with which the reasonable and practical
English at present regard the Socialists of the continent, deepened by
an intensity of conviction of which these later ages have had but little
experience, we can then imagine the light in which the Anabaptists of
the Netherlands appeared in the eyes or orthodox Europe. If some
opinions, once thought heretical, were regarded with less agitated
repugnance, the heresy of these enemies of mankind was patent to the
world. On them the laws of the country might take their natural course,
and no voice was raised to speak for them.
[Sidenote: May 25.]
[Sidenote: Fourteen of them are executed.]
[Sidenote: They too did not die in vain.]
We find, therefore, in Stow's _Chronicle_, the following: brief entry:
"The five and twentieth day of May were, in St. Paul's church, London,
examined nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, whose opinions
were--first, that in Christ is not two natures, God and man; secondly,
that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; thirdly,
that children born of infidels may be saved; fourthly, that baptism of
children is of none effect; fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ's body
is but bread only; sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly,
sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned: a
man and a woman were burnt at Smithfield. The remaining twelve were
scattered among other towns, there to be burnt."[440] The details are
gone,[441]--the names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were, and that is
all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly it is told
in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were
ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At
their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting.
Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found
fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be tempted to say
that they believed what they did not believe. History for them has no
word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain.
Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of most of us. In
their deaths they assisted to pay the purchase-money for England's
freedom.
[Sidenote: Fisher and More.]
[Sidenote: Fisher's dangerous imprudence.]
[Sidenote: Treatment and conduct of Fisher and of More in the Tower.]
[Sidenote: Cromwell's charges against them.]