The Reformation.
Edward VI. (1547-1553).
The oppressive tyranny of Henry VIII. had ceased, and the child
who succeeded him was destined to reign without attaining
manhood. The ambitions and animosities of the great, as well as
the sincere passions and intrigues of the theologians were about
to occupy the scene, to divide and agitate all minds; but the
work which was to make England Protestant and free had begun, and
was continuing silently, and in obscurity; Henry VIII. had
thought to regulate the religious movement in England as he had
shaken off the supremacy of the Pope, but all his despotism could
not arrest the effects of the new convictions, powerful
especially among the lower clergy and the inhabitants of the
towns. It was there that the Reformation numbered every day more
numerous and more zealous adherents; it was there that the
changes soon brought about by Cranmer in the organization of the
Church met with the most ardent sympathy, and it was there that
the persecution set on foot by the fanatic zeal of Queen Mary was
to find the firmest resistance and the most heroic martyrs. Henry
VIII. had accomplished the royal reform in order to satisfy his
passions and his personal animosities; the English people, under
the reign of his son, accomplished noiselessly and without
proclamation a reform in a far different way, solid and profound.
{269}
The country districts were still Catholic and long remained so; a
portion of the bishops and the high clergy refused to admit the
new doctrines, but the religious reform progressed none the less;
it was no longer in the power of man to arrest the work begun in
the heart and conscience of a mass of people as obscure as they
were sincere. The young king, moreover, never had a desire to do
so. During the short reign of Edward VI., through the weaknesses
and vacillations natural to childhood, the prince was seen to
pass from one to the other of the great noblemen who were
contending together for power; never did he change in opinion or
in religious tendency, and his influence always weighed on the
side of the Reformation. Edward VI. was destined for a long while
yet, to remain the most Protestant of English sovereigns.
Henry VIII. had scarcely been dead four days, his obsequies had
not yet been celebrated, and already all that he had wished and
ordained for the government of England during the minority of his
son was destroyed. Formerly the House of Lords possessed the
privilege of designating the regent and the members of the
council of regency; Parliament had granted this power to the king
by the Act which had allowed him to dispose at his pleasure of
the succession to the throne. Henry had accordingly made use of
this right in designating in his will sixteen persons to
constitute the privy council, and to be entrusted with the
executive power. A second commission of twelve members was to be
consulted in grave cases; the two bodies united composed the
council of regency.
{270}
Among the more important members of the privy council were the
names of Cranmer, Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord Hertford, Lord
Lisle; but the Earl of Hertford did not limit his ambition to his
seat in a council. He had taken his steps and secured partisans
among the testamentary executors of the king; at the first
meeting, he contrived to accomplish his project. It was proposed
to select a president. Wriothesley violently opposed this, saying
that the will placed all the councillors in the same rank; he
counted, no doubt, upon taking possession of the principal part
of the power; he found himself alone upon his side, and finally
gave way. When the Lords reassembled, on the 1st of February, the
young king heard the list of the members of the two councils
read, Wriothesley added that the executors had resolved to place
at their head the Earl of Hertford as Protector of the kingdom
and governor of the royal person; on condition, however, that he
would take no steps in any matter without the assent of a
majority of the members of the council. All the peers spiritual
and temporal applauded this amendment and the last wishes of
Henry VIII. were violated with no more ado.
Some intentions were attributed to the late king, however, which
met with more respect; a clause of the will commanded the
executors to accomplish all the promises which he might have
made; it was even asserted that he had repeated this injunction
to those who surrounded his deathbed.
{271}
The royal promises might be of great extent and entail grave
consequences; inquiries were promptly made; according to the
statement of Sir William Paget secretary of state, Sir Anthony
Denny and Sir Fulke Herbert, gentlemen of the bedchamber, to whom
the king had spoken on the subject, it was a question of a
promotion to the peerage and a distribution of legacies in money
among the testamentary executors. Lord Hertford was to be made
Duke of Somerset; the Earl of Essex to become Marquis of
Northampton; Lord Lisle, Earl of Warwick; Wriothesley, Earl of
Southampton; Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of Lord Hertford, Baron
Seymour and Lord High Admiral; all were to receive from the
ecclesiastical property still at the disposition of the crown,
revenues proportioned to their new dignities. The servants of the
new king rewarded themselves in advance, and with their own
hands, for the services which they were to render him. Public
opinion was shocked at this; people went as far as to call in
question the alleged intentions of the late king as they had been
reported by Sir John Paget. The elevation of Somerset was
received with great joy among the Protestants, to whom he was
favourable; the Catholics counted upon Wriothesley, who had
become Lord Southampton, but he committed the imprudence of
charging four delegates, under the great seal, to attend in his
absence to the affairs of the chancellorship, without having
previously consulted his colleagues; this act was declared
illegal, and the omission being grave enough to deprive the
chancellor of his office and his seat in the privy council, he
gave in his resignation and was kept a prisoner in his house,
until the council had decided the amount of the fine which he was
to pay.
{272}
Henceforth Somerset found himself without a rival; none protested
when he caused all the executive powers to be conferred upon
himself, abolishing the two councils, and confounding all the
testamentary executors under the common title of councillors of
the king. Matters were arranged; an amnesty had been proclaimed
for all state offenders, with the exception of the Duke of
Norfolk and Cardinal Pole, and the Protector was preparing to
sign the treaty of alliance between France and England, renewed
in London on the occasion of the accession of Edward VI., when he
learnt the death of Francis I. That monarch had been painfully
affected by the decease of the King of England; he was convinced,
it was said, that he would survive him a short time. In effect,
he had died at Rambouillet, on the 31st of March; the Protestant
interests received a fatal blow in Germany and in Scotland; in
Germany, because the Emperor Charles V., delivered of his rival,
was becoming master of the country; in Scotland, because the
Guises, the brothers of the dowager queen, were all-powerful with
the new King of France, and because the latter immediately
concluded a close alliance with the Earl of Arran, now placed at
the head of the Catholic party. At the same time, Henry II.
refused to sign the treaty of London, and sent ships to Scotland
to assist the regent in the siege of the Castle of St. Andrew,
which the assassins of Cardinal Beaton had contrived to retain.
The latter had demanded help in England, promising to support the
marriage of the little Queen Mary with the young King of England;
but before the Protector had been able to assemble his forces,
the castle had been captured, razed to the ground, and all its
defenders conveyed to France.
{273}
Five weeks elapsed before the English troops were able to cross
the frontier. It was on the 10th of September that the two armies
met, not far from Musselburgh. Arran was there encamped behind
the river Esk, with considerable forces; nearly all the great
Scottish noblemen had joined him, notwithstanding party
rivalries. The first challenge which the English received was
that of Lord Huntley, who proposed to the Protector to fight him
man to man, or with the assistance of ten knights on each side,
after the fashion of Horatii and Curiatii. Somerset smiled. "Tell
your master," he replied to the herald, "that it is a want of
judgment on his part to make such a proposal to me, who, by the
grace of God, am entrusted with so precious a jewel as the person
of a king and the protection of his kingdom." Warwick wished to
accept the challenge of Huntley, but the duke did not permit it.
"Let them come to us upon the field of battle," he said, "and
they shall have blows enough."
The Scots, eager to come to close quarters, committed the
imprudence of quitting the advantageous position which they
occupied, to advance and meet the enemy. The combat began by a
charge of Scottish cavalry, taken in flank as they were crossing
the bridge of the Esk, by a broadside from the English vessels
drawn up along the coast. The English had found time to take
possession of the hill upon which was situated St. Michael's
church; the fray soon became general. The English wavered at
first before the long lances of the Scots; but the ardour of the
latter led them so far forward in the pursuit that, in reforming,
they found themselves involved in the hostile ranks; the arrows
of the English archers who were drawn up on an eminence, thinned
the ranks of the Scottish men-at-arms; the firing from the
vessels was incessant; the knights at length moved and took to
flight.
{274}
The pursuit was vigorous and the massacre horrible; quarter was
given only to the great noblemen capable of paying a heavy
ransom; the Esk rolled down a shoal of corpses; eight thousand
Scots, it is said, remained upon the battle-field of Pinkey, as
it was called, from the name of a neighbouring mansion belonging
to the Douglases. The Earl of Huntley, Lord Yester, Lord Wemyss,
and several other persons of distinction were made prisoners.
For four days the victors continued their work of pillage at
Leith and in the environs. People expected to see them march upon
Edinburgh, but Somerset suddenly ordered a retreat, without any
one being able to explain, in Scotland, this unexpected
deliverance. Grave interests recalled him to the court of the
young king.
Lord Seymour, brother of the Protector, and Lord High Admiral of
England, was as ambitious as his elder brother, and more
courageous and enterprising; he had been deeply offended by the
unequal partition of the power, and during the absence of
Somerset he had laboured to establish his influence with the
little king. He married, in the month of June, 1547, Catherine
Parr, the widow of the king, who had always loved him, it was
said, notwithstanding the two other unions which she had
contracted, and finding himself thus brought nearer to the person
of the king, who often saw his step-mother, and being enriched by
the fortune which Catherine had amassed as queen of England, he
took care to win the good graces of Edward VI. by supplying him
with the funds which he wanted for pocket-money and charities,
liberalities which the Protector did not encourage.
[Image]
Death Of Anne Askew.
{275}
Seymour had also gained the favour of the household of the king,
by distributing many gifts among them. In the month of November,
1547, the admiral persuaded the young king to address a letter to
Parliament, demanding that the office of guardian of the royal
person should be conferred upon his uncle, Lord Seymour. The
project became known and steps were taken; the admiral was
threatened with the Tower, and a reconciliation was effected
between the two brothers; Seymour shortly afterwards received a
fresh dotation.
The ambition of the admiral could not be satisfied with money;
Catherine Parr had recently died in childbed, and the rumour was
circulated that she had been poisoned. Her husband had already
turned his views higher; he was paying his addresses to the
Princess Elizabeth, whose guardian he had completely gained over;
he did not aspire to a secret marriage, which, according to the
will of Henry VIII., would have impaired the right of succession,
but he patronized all the members of the council, endeavouring to
arouse among them sufficient disaffection to secure the approval
of his union with the princess. The Protector resolved to rid
himself of so dangerous a rival. The opportunity was propitious;
Sharington, the director of the mint at Bristol, was accused of
having enriched himself by means of numerous malversations.
{276}
The admiral defended him vigorously, but Sharington, to save his
life, suddenly betrayed his advocate; he stated that he had
promised to coin money for Lord Seymour, and that the latter
could count upon an army of ten thousand men, with whom he hoped
to change the aspect of the State. Less than this was needed to
send the Lord High Admiral to the Tower. His courage was not cast
down, and he demanded to be confronted with his accusers.
Somerset had been brought up in the school of Henry VIII.; he
knew how to use bills of attainder: the little king, terrified,
had abandoned his uncle Seymour; when the House of Commons made
some opposition, demanding that the accused should be heard, a
royal message silenced the objectors, and the bill was voted
without further difficulty; Lord Seymour was executed on the 20th
of March, 1549, protesting his innocence to the last. Two letters
had been seized, it was said, written from the Tower to the
Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to incite them to jealousy towards
their brother. The Protector had given to the young king a
terrible example of cold barbarity, by being the first to sign
the death-warrant of his brother.
The war continued in Scotland, with alternations of successes and
reverses, but its principal aim, the marriage of King Edward VI.
with the little queen, had been thwarted by Henry II., king of
France, who destined her for the Dauphin. Parliament even
consented to send the child to France, there to receive her
education in safety. Mary of Guise remained in Scotland; but the
little queen, Mary Stuart, arrived at Brest in French vessels,
and was conducted to St. Germain-en-Laye, to be solemnly
betrothed to the Dauphin.
{277}
The warfare continued upon the frontiers, but the thoughts of the
government were elsewhere; a great popular insurrection, which
had taken its rise in the south, had gained the eastern counties;
a portion of England was in flames. Various causes had
contributed towards the insurrection; the alteration of the
currency under the reign of Henry VIII. had brought about an
excessive rise in the nominal price of commodities, but labour
was not remunerated in proportion; workmen were, on the contrary,
less employed and less paid than in the past. A great quantity of
arable land had been transformed into pasture-ground, in
consequence of a considerable increase in the price of wools. The
monasteries no longer took in intelligent peasants to make monks
of them; the monastic charities no longer relieved the misery of
the poor; the vast spaces belonging to the parishes, where the
villagers were wont to let their cattle graze, had been, by
degrees, swallowed up by the neighbouring proprietors, who had
enclosed all the waste lands, thus depriving the poor, at a time
of great distress, of a resource to which they were accustomed.
Vagrancy had increased in such a manner, that in the first year
of the reign of Edward VI. a barbarous law had been voted by
Parliament, delivering up to the first comer, in the capacity of
a slave, any individual without a fixed residence, sojourning for
three days in any place. Being declared a vagabond, he was to be
branded upon the chest with a red-hot iron; his master had the
right to compel him to work by every possible punishment; he
could chain him up, let him out to hire, or sell him; a veritable
slave-market being thus suddenly instituted for a few years in
that free England, which, three centuries later, was to be the
first to put its hand to work to destroy slavery in the whole
world.
{278}
These rigours did not suffice; the vagabonds were not the only
unhappy or exasperated persons; the religious feelings of the
Catholic populations were galled by the rapid progress of the
Reformation; the insurrection was so grave that the Protector,
always greedy of popularity, vainly endeavoured to appease it by
a hurried measure, forbidding the enclosure of all waste lands
accessable to the peasants, and ordering that they should
everywhere be restored to their former uses. This concession only
served to put arms in the hands of the peasantry, some to beat
down the fences, others to defend them; the government was
everywhere obliged to send troops. But for the auxiliaries raised
in Italy, Spain, and Germany, for the war with Scotland, the
Protector might have found himself much embarrassed.
The demands of the insurgents and the aim of the insurrection
were of a very different nature, according to the various parts
of the country in which they were found. The south almost
everywhere claimed the re-establishment of the old religion; the
men of Devonshire, at the head of whom marched Humphrey Arundel,
were secretly urged by the priests; they laid siege to Exeter,
and Lord Russell, badly provided with men and supplies, could not
effectually succour the town. The proclamations of the young king
in vain succeeded each other in answer to the inquisitions of the
insurgents.
{279}
Exeter was closely pressed for five weeks, and famine was already
in the city, when Lord Russell, having received troops and money,
at length defeated the rebels and caused the siege to be raised;
the insurrection was drowned in blood, and the soldiers ravaged
the country. Arundel and some of the chiefs were taken to London,
where they were executed.
The insurrection in Norfolk had a more political character; it
had begun in like manner by the question of the enclosures; a
tanner of Norwich, named Ket, had placed himself at the head of
the insurgents, and had established his camp upon a little
elevation called Moushold Hill, at the gates of Norwich. There,
surrounded by malcontents from the environs, to the number of
twenty thousand, it is said, he declaimed against the oppression
of the commoners by the nobles, and against the new religious
service, asserting that he had only taken arms with the object of
placing around the king honest councillors, favourable to the
wishes of the people. A first attack upon the rebels, directed by
the Marquis of Northampton, completely failed; they had been
allowed time to assemble: they pillaged at their ease in the
environs; then they gathered together again under the
_Reformation Tree_, as they called an oak in the centre of
their camp, bringing with them the noblemen whom they had made
prisoners. It was only on the 25th of August, when the disorder
had already lasted for nearly two months, that the Earl of
Warwick, detained several days in Norwich for want of men and
supplies, was able, on the arrival of some reinforcements, to
attack the camp of Ket. The rebels were completely defeated, and
the massacre was terrible.
{280}
Ket and his brother, being sent to London, to be tried, were
hanged, one from the belfry of Wymondham, the other in the
citadel of Norwich, and nine of the principal leaders were
suspended from the nine branches of the _Reformation Tree_.
The revolt in Norfolk was at an end, and the insurrection which
manifested itself shortly afterwards in Yorkshire having been
stifled, tranquillity was restored in the country; it was not so
at the court.
The checks which the policy as well as the arms of England had
suffered in Scotland, the progress of King Henry II. in all the
territory surrounding Calais and Boulogne, the proposals of
Somerset to the Emperor to deliver the latter town to him, had
slowly undermined the influence of the Protector, although he
still remained popular with the lower classes, who called him the
_good duke_; but the nobility were discontented, incensed at
the arrogant tone of the Duke of "Somerset by the grace of God,"
as he styled himself. Indignation was aroused at the palace which
he had raised in the Strand, at the cost of a church and three
episcopal dwellings, and public opinion began to award him a
rival, who, owing to the animosity of the former chancellor,
Wriothesley, had for a long time been destined to accomplish the
ruin of his enemy. Lord Warwick, equally ambitious, equally vain,
but more bold and enterprising than Somerset, had already
acquired a great military reputation, which was increased by his
recent services in Norfolk. The two rivals had nearly come to
blows in the month of October, 1549. Twenty members of the
council joined Warwick in London, and the Protector, who remained
at Hampton Court with the young king, began to assemble forces.
[Image]
Edward VI. Writing His Journal.
{281}
Edward VI. has related in his journal the negotiations between
the Protector and the malcontents, the alternations of resolution
and weakness of Somerset, the decision of the noblemen
congregated around Warwick. The overtures of the Protector,
though more and more moderate, were all rejected; the trouble of
answering him was no longer taken, when he at length convoked the
counsel at Windsor. All the nobility repaired thither, and
decreed without hesitation the arrest of Somerset; on the 14th of
October he was conducted to the Tower, accused of high treason,
and the young king was taken back to Hampton Court. Warwick was
henceforth master. Southampton had in vain hoped to share the
power with him; he was not even re-established in the office of
chancellor, and the earl, who had hitherto appeared to be in
favour of the Roman Catholic party, abandoned it completely to
turn towards the Reformers. The wind blew from this quarter, and
the principles of Warwick never impeded in anything the pursuit
of his interests.
The Duke of Somerset was, at first, treated gently; he had shrunk
from no humiliation in order to secure the mercy of the king, and
had confessed all that had been desired, upon his knees, before
the council. Deprived of all his offices, and smitten with a
heavy fine, he appeared to accept his downfall meekly, remaining
at court and behaving so modestly that he was again admitted into
the privy council. The eldest son of Warwick, Lord Lisle, even
married, on the 3rd of June, 1550, Lady Anne Seymour, the
daughter of the Duke of Somerset.
{282}
But secret intrigues increased every day; notwithstanding solemn
reconciliations, the hostility of the two rivals remained
unaltered. Warwick had taken the precaution of causing himself to
be nominated Warden of the Scottish frontiers, in order to cut
off the retreat towards the north of the Duke of Somerset, and
the latter contemplated raising a civil war; he was at the same
time ambitious of equalling him in rank, and caused himself to be
styled the Duke of Northumberland; his friend, the Marquis of
Dorset, became the Duke of Suffolk, and a few days after this
promotion it suddenly became known that the Duke of Somerset had
been arrested and conducted to the Tower, as guilty of conspiracy
and high treason; the duchess was also arrested as well as a
certain number of the friends of the duke.
The charges against Somerset were grave and numerous; he had
plotted, it was said, the assassination of the principal noblemen
of the council, Northumberland, Northampton, Pembroke, and
others; a revolt was at the same time to be fomented in London,
and the duke was to take possession of the person of the king.
This time the prisoner was publicly conducted to Westminster
Hall, to be tried by his peers, that is to say, by the
councillors of the king, whom he was accused of having intended
to assassinate; but he was not confronted with the witnesses
against him. The prosecutors contented themselves with reading
their depositions. He confessed the scheme of assassination with
regard to his powerful enemies, but he had abandoned it, he said,
and he absolutely denied any intention of rebellion or
insurrection. He was accordingly acquitted upon the count of
treason, but the count of felony was proved, and this sufficed to
ruin him.
{283}
The people, who thronged in the hall and the streets, did not
understand the sentence; the axe, which had been borne before him
as long as he was accused of high treason, had disappeared from
the retinue; they cried out that the _good duke_ had been
acquitted, and the favour of the population of London did not
incline Northumberland to show mercy. On the 22nd of January,
1552, six weeks after his condemnation, less than five years
after the day on which he had taken possession of the supreme
power, the former Protector of England was conducted to that
scaffold so often bathed in the most illustrious blood. He died
with more resolution than he had shown during his life; his young
nephew, convinced, it is said, of his crime, having made no
effort to show mercy. Somerset, no doubt, called to mind on Tower
Hill the brother whom he formerly condemned to the same fate.
Four of his friends were executed in like manner, protesting
their innocence. "Every time the Duke of Northumberland places
his head upon his pillow, he will find it wet with our blood,"
exclaimed Sir Ralph Vane, addressing the people. They listened in
silence, without much emotion; the nation was growing accustomed
to see the high nobility fall beneath the axe of the executioner
instead of perishing, as formerly, bravely, sword in hand, upon
the field of battle.
Boulogne had been definitively restored to France by a treaty of
peace in which Scotland was included; the seal of the new
alliance was to be the marriage of Edward VI.; but the health of
the young monarch had been declining for some months past, and
the ambitious Northumberland had already entered upon the
manœuvres which were destined to bring about his ruin.
{284}
He had married his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady
Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and
grand-daughter, by her mother's side, of Mary, formerly Queen of
France, and sister of Henry VIII.; he thus united his family to
the royal blood, while he caused his other children to contract
powerful alliances. His aim was no other than to exclude from the
succession to the throne the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who
had never been reinstated in their birthright, for the benefit of
the Duchess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Jane Grey, who was
disposed to renounce her rights in favour of her eldest daughter.
The duke counted upon being supported in his undertaking by the
Protestant party, uneasy, with just cause, at the probable
accession to the throne of Princess Mary. He urged the same
argument upon the young King Edward: it was, in truth, the only
one which could operate upon him. The dying youth had, naturally,
never played a political part; he even appears not to have taken
much interest in public life, but he was sincerely pious and
attached to the Protestant faith. The work of the Reformation had
been the great preoccupation of a mind of a precocious gravity,
and he had it in heart to protect the new religion after his
death; he knew himself to be in most precarious health, and he
consented without difficulty to the proposals which
Northumberland made to him upon this subject. Perhaps he thought,
moreover, that he had the right of using the same privilege as
his father had claimed of designating his successor to the
throne.
{285}
The poor lad did not perceive into what new troubles and dangers
he was about to plunge his kingdom by exposing it once more to
the misfortunes of a contested succession and the rivalries of a
powerful nobility.
Three social forces, meanwhile, had made immense progress in
England--regard for public order, the idea of the royal
legitimacy, and the spirit of the Reformation. This last power
which Northumberland thought to enroll in his service, had taught
men to govern themselves, to judge their own affairs freely and
rationally, and all the terrors of an ardently Roman Catholic
reign were unable to turn them aside from the path of justice.
United, the three motives frustrated the ambitious designs,--the
plots of the great nobles. Subsequently, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, the same influences were destined to place
Protestantism in England on a settled basis. The reformed faith
had made rapid strides since the death of Henry VIII. The silent
struggle between the progressive and the retrogressive parties
had continued; Cranmer and Gardiner had continued to confront
each other, but Cranmer now had the upper hand. Gardiner had at
first been placed by Henry VIII. in the list of the privy
council, then his name had been effaced from it from motives of
prudence; the Archbishop of Canterbury had all the members of the
council at his disposal, with the exception of the Chancellor
Wriothesley and the Bishop of Durham, Tunstall. It has been seen
how Wriothesley was driven from power. Tunstall was relegated to
his diocese. Cranmer, therefore, found the coast clear, but he
was determined to proceed with more moderation, for fear of
arousing a fresh _pilgrimage of grace;_ he did not
completely succeed in averting the discontent which his
innovations caused among the populations remaining Catholic.
{286}
The first care of the archbishop was to establish in each diocese
_royal visitors_, half lay, half ecclesiastical. Wherever
they presented themselves, their authority was supreme; they
established in all churches the use of a selection of homilies
intended to be read every week, and composed, in great part, by
Cranmer; none could preach without the authorization of the
Protector or the Metropolitan. This prudent prohibition, intended
to favour the extension of the new doctrines, did not escape
attention; Gardiner immediately protested against the homilies
and the paraphrase of the New Testament by Erasmus, introduced
into the Church service in each parish. The reactionary bishop
demanded that neither the doctrine nor the practice established
by the late king should be interfered with until the majority of
the young Edward VI. The intervention of Gardiner was not
successful; he was arrested and held in prison during the
continuance of the Parliamentary session.
The property which the religious communities, churches and
colleges, yet possessed, had been placed at the disposal of the
king by Parliament, as a trust-fund for the endowment of schools
and livings. Cranmer opposed this fresh spoliation without
success, foreseeing that it would turn to the profit of the
courtiers; but the measures voted by the two Houses were of a
consoling nature; the law against the Lollards, the prohibition
against reading the Scriptures and the statutes of the six
articles of faith were revoked; marriage was allowed to the
clergy; communion of two kinds was granted to the faithful, and
soon the order was given for celebrating the service in the
English language, without any modification of the mass being yet
made in the text itself.
[Image]
The Corpse Passed Under Her Windows.
{287}
Such were the changes already accomplished a year after the death
of Henry VIII. The royal power had at the same time extended
itself and gathered strength; the election of the bishops had
been withdrawn from the deans and chapters, and made to depend
solely upon the king, and it was by a simple royal decree that
the bishops were invited to suppress in their dioceses certain
Catholic observances, while taking care to destroy all images
that might be extant. In the month of January, 1549, appeared the
great work which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been preparing
for some time, the catechism and the prayer book of the Church of
England. This latter production, skilfully composed by a
commission of bishops and theologians, had for a basis the
Catholic missals and breviaries which had been both deprived of
all that might clash with the Protestant faith, and carefully
adapted to the convictions and sentiments of the Catholics. It
was a work of conciliation effected with skill and with the most
praiseworthy intentions; but the archbishop did not deceive
himself regarding the repugnance which it encountered among the
population, and he took care to surround it with an efficatious
protection; from Whitsuntide, the use of any other book was
prohibited, for Divine service, under severe penalties. The
insurrections which shortly afterwards supervened, proved that
Cranmer had not been mistaken; the new service was especially the
object of the complaints of the rebels of Devonshire.
{288}
Cranmer soon perceived that it was necessary to attack those
prelates who were hostile to the innovations; they were numerous,
but the majority were timid and contented themselves with
proceeding slowly to adopt the reforms ordained by government;
some few were bolder; it was towards these that the efforts of
Cranmer were directed.
For two years past already, Gardiner had been confined in the
Tower, in consequence of a sermon declared to be seditious, and
had not been brought to trial. The Bishop of London, Bonner,
reprimanded for his want of zeal, was commissioned by the council
to preach at St. Paul's Cross; his text had been chosen, and all
the divisions of his discourse settled beforehand, when he
appeared before the crowd; he was to overwhelm with
ecclesiastical thunders the rebels of Devonshire and Norfolk, to
refer to the king and his religious authority, and to point out
that, the rights and power of the sovereign not depending upon
his age, King Edward VI. was as competent to decide questions of
faith as he could be in later years. Bonner completely omitted
this last point of the sermon, and was immediately summoned
before the council. He excused himself upon the ground of the
weakness of his memory, affirmed that he had lost his notes,
declaring at the same time that he was prosecuted not for a
trifling act of forgetfulness, but because he had firmly
maintained the Roman Catholic doctrine of the real presence.
Bonner was condemned, deprived of his see and sent to prison.
{289}
Ridley, bishop of Rochester, was summoned to London in his place;
but the bishopric was despoiled of a portion of its possessions,
as well as those which soon became vacant by successive
deprivations. The court profited by the conscientious obstinacy
of the bishops.
Gardiner was more skilful than Bonner, and quite as resolute; he
embarrassed his enemies by his self-possession and his
intellectual resources, and he refused to sign the formula of
submission which was presented to him, so long as he should
continue to be unjustly detained. He accumulated so many
evidences and called so many witnesses to prove the plot that had
long been hatching against him, that Cranmer cut short the
proceedings. Gardiner was deprived of his episcopal see, and,
like Bonner, he was detained in prison, as well as two other
prelates Heath and Day, Bishops of Worcester and Chichester. It
was at this period that the great Scottish reformer, John Knox,
being in London, preached before the king with so much talent and
vigour, that the primate was instrumental in offering him the
bishopric of Rochester, which had become vacant by the
translation of Poynet to Winchester, where he replaced Gardiner.
Knox declined, but the proposal shows upon what path the Church
of England, formerly so violent against the friends and partisans
of Knox had entered. Some ardent and reforming prelates, Ridley,
Latimer, Hooper, replaced the revoked bishops; the latter was so
profoundly imbued with Calvinistic principles, that much
difficulty was experienced in inducing him to accept the
consecration of the primate, and to clothe him in the sacerdotal
ornaments.
{290}
It was not enough to establish effectually the new system, or to
secure convinced and faithful ministers; it was necessary also to
firmly establish its doctrines. Towards the end of the year 1551,
the prelates had finished drawing up the articles of the national
faith; forty-two propositions contained the same principles as
the thirty-nine articles subsequently voted under Queen
Elizabeth, which still remain the rule of faith of the Church of
England. In the main, and under different forms, they come very
near to the doctrines of the reformation on the Continent,
inclining, sometimes towards Calvinism, sometimes towards
Lutheranism, but always resting firmly upon the Bible.
The resource of removing the bishops, had always been open to the
government when it had been found impossible to triumph over
their resistance, but it was more difficult to compel the
Princess Mary to practice the new worship. She had been warned,
by an order of the council on the occasion of the institution of
the prayer book, that the celebration of the mass would no longer
be permitted even in her private chapel; and for two years the
intercession of the Emperor in her favour remained ineffectual;
the chaplains of the princess were arrested, she was at length
summoned before the council, and the young king himself vainly
endeavoured to convince her. The Emperor at length declared that
he would wage war with England, rather than suffer his relative
to be constrained in her conscience; Cranmer counselled the young
king to temporise; but Edward VI. wept, lamented the obstinacy of
his sister and the obligation which he was under of allowing mass
to exist in any place in his kingdom.
{291}
The attempts were renewed with Mary several times; she remained
inflexible in her resolution. "If the chaplains cannot repeat
mass, I shall not hear it," she said; "but the new service shall
not be established in my house; if it were introduced there by
force, I would leave the place." "Matters remained thus," says
Burnet, "and I think that Lady Mary continued to have her priests
and to have masses said, so secretly that it could not be
complained of."
In truth, and notwithstanding the removal of the bishops and some
deplorable executions of poor heretics who attacked the very
foundations of Christianity, persecution was at a standstill
under the reign of Edward VI. In the new stage of the
Reformation, no Catholic suffered seriously for his attachment to
his faith.
The obstinacy of the Princess Mary had left a profound impression
upon the mind of the young king, and thus contributed, no doubt,
to the effect of the insinuations of Northumberland in favour of
a Protestant succession. Edward did not wish, however, to
compromise any of his councillors, and he drew up with his own
hand the project for a law which was to regulate the succession
to the throne; he then caused the judges to be summoned, with the
attorney and solicitor-general, to commission them to prepare the
act. They hesitated; the king peremptorily commanded them to
obey, and only reluctantly granted them time to examine the
precedents, in order to satisfy the desires of his Majesty.
{292}
When these officers returned they were still undecided, or rather
they had convinced themselves that the law required of them by
the sovereign would involve an act of treason both on the side of
the framers of the act and on that of the council. The king
insisted; the Duke of Northumberland, who was present, flew into
a passion; the lords of the council, to whom the judges expounded
their scruples, had been won over by the intrigues of the duke.
Cranmer, who had at first been opposed to the proceedings,
yielded to the solicitations of the young monarch; the measure
was resolved upon, and the act, prepared by the lawyers, was
sanctioned by the great seal as well as by the signatures of all
the members of the council. Northumberland had made an attempt to
take possession of the person of Mary; but she had been warned in
time, and far from responding to the summons in the name of the
king, her brother, she retired precipitately to her castle of
Kenninghall, in Norfolk. It was there that she soon learnt the
news of the death of Edward VI., who expired at Greenwich on the
6th of July, 1553, at the age of fifteen years and a half. The
time had come for a trial of the new basis upon which Cranmer had
sought to found the religion of the kingdom. The question whether
England was to be Catholic or Protestant was about to be decided.
{293}