his clergy, that is, he claimed the indulgence accorded by law to those
who could read. In 1522 it was still the law that the privilege could be
claimed by one who had committed murder. In 1531 an Act was passed by the
provisions of which no person committing petty treason, murder, or felony
was admitted to his clergy under the status of sub-deacon (23 Henry
VIII., c. 1).
William Inges’ claim would have been perforce admitted but for the
singular objection on the score of bigamy. The exception seems strange,
but was founded on well-understood provisions of the law. A bigamist,
it must be remembered, was not what we of to-day mean when we use the
word. A bigamist was one who had married two wives, the second after
the decease of the first, or who had married a widow. We will return
presently to this question of bigamy, after noting what Sir Thomas Smith,
writing fifty years later, says as to clergy. Let us, however, premise
that benefit of clergy means, as indeed the name imports, a privilege
of the clergy consisting originally in the right of the clergy to be
free from the jurisdiction of lay courts, and to be subject to the
ecclesiastical courts only. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen aptly compares
it to “the privilege claimed by British and other foreign subjects in
Turkey, in Egypt, and in China, of being tried before their own courts.”
The privilege was extended by 25 Edward III. (1351-2), st. 6, c. 4, to
all manner of clerks, as well secular as religious. The statute was
construed as being applicable to all persons who could read, and its
effect is succinctly stated in “Piers Plowman,” written a few years
later:—
“_Dominus pars hereditatis mee._ is a meri verset,
That has take fro tybourne. twenti stronge theves.”
This is the description given by Sir Thomas Smith of the process of
claiming clergy:—
Of him whom the xij. men pronounce guiltie, the Judge asketh what he can
say for himselfe: if he can reade, he demaundeth his Clergie. For in many
felonies, as in theft of oxen, sheepe, money, or other such things which
be no open robberies, by the high way side, nor assaulting one by night
in his house, putting him that is there in feare, such is the favour
of our Lawe, that for the first fault the felon shalbe admitted to his
Clergie, for which purpose the Bishop must send one with authoritie vnder
his seale to be Judge in that matter at euerie gaole deliuerie. If the
condemned man demandeth to be admitted to his booke, the Judge commonly
giveth him a Psalter, and turneth to what place he will. The prisoner
readeth as well as he can (God knoweth sometime very slenderly:) then he
asketh of the Bishops commissarie, _legit vt clericus_? The commissarie
must say _legit_ or _non legit_, for these be wordes formall, and our men
of Lawe be very precise in their words formall. If he say _legit_, the
Judge proceedeth no further to sentence of death: if he say _non_, the
Judge foorthwith, or the next day proceedeth to sentence, which is doone
by word of mouth onelie,
[gives the form of the death sentence]
he that claimeth his Clergie, is burned forthwith in the presence of
the Judges in the brawne of his hand with a hot yron marked with the
letter T. for a theefe, or M. for a mansleer, in cases where Clergie is
admitted, and is deliuered to the Bishops officer to be kept in the
Bishops prison, from whence after a certaine time by an other enquest
of Clarkes he is deliuered and let at large: but if he be taken and
condemned the second time, and his marke espied, he goeth to hanging.[146]
A shrewd observer, Monsieur César de Saussure, gives an account of the
proceeding in 1726: Clergy, he says, was formerly a privilege restricted
to churchmen, but is to-day extended to lay persons convicted to certain
crimes, and particularly of manslaughter. In virtue of this privilege, a
New Testament in Latin and in blackletter is presented to the criminal,
who is required to read two verses. If the person appointed to make him
read says these words, “Legit ut clericus,” that is to say, “He reads
like a clerk,” which he always does, however ill the prisoner has read,
the prisoner is simply marked in the palm of the hand with a hot iron,
which he has the further right on payment of thirteen pence halfpenny to
have plunged in cold water before it is applied. Then he is set free.[147]
The privilege of clergy was constantly narrowed, but was totally
abolished only in 1827 by 7 and 8 George IV., c. 28.
The following were the provisions respecting bigamy in the old sense of
the word:—
4 Edward I. (1276) c. 1, 2. The Statute of Bigamy, Section
5. Concerning Men twice married, called Bigami, whom our
Lord the Pope by a Constitution made at the Council of Lyons
hath excluded from all Clerks privilege, whereupon certain
Prelates when such persons as were twice married before the
same Constitution, have been called in question for Felony,
have prayed for to have them delivered as Clerks … whether they
were Bigami before the same Constitution or after, they shall
not from henceforth be delivered to the Prelates, but justice
shall be executed upon them, as upon other lay people.
18 Edward III. (1344) Stat. 3, c. 2. (Here summarised.) If a
person accused pleads his clergy, and it is alleged that he has
married two wives, or one widow, the case shall be sent for
determination to the Spiritual Court.
These provisions were abolished by I Edward VI. (1547), c. 12, s. 15,
which put the “bigamist” on the same footing as all others.
=1525.= In the last moneth called December were taken certain traytors in
the citie of Couentry, one called Fraunces Philippe scolemaster to the
kynges Henxmen, and one Christopher Pykeryng clerke of yᵉ Larder, and one
Antony Maynuile gentleman, which by the persuasion of the sayd Fraunces
Philip, entended to haue taken the kynges treasure of his subsidie as
the Collectors of the same came towarde London, and then to haue araised
men and taken the castle of Kylingworth, and then to haue made battaile
against the kyng: wherfore the sayd Fraunces, Christopher and Anthony wer
hanged, drawen and quartered at Tyborne the xi. day of Februarye, the
residue that were taken, were sent to the citie of Couentry and there wer
executed. One of the kynges Henxmen called Dygby which was one of the
conspirators fled the realme, and after had his pardon (Hall, p. 673).
=1531.= This yeare Mr. Risse was beheaded at Tower hill, and one that was
his servante was drawne from the Tower of London to Tiburne, where he was
hanged, his bowells burnt, and his bodie quartered.[148]
=1534.= With the aid of Cranmer, the willing instrument of his lust and
cruelty, Henry had divorced Catherine, and had married his mistress,
Anne Boleyn, the sister of a former mistress. With the same aid he had
also invested himself with the supremacy of the Church. But there was
a strong feeling throughout the country against these proceedings, and
Henry viewed with alarm every manifestation of this feeling. To express
disapprobation, however mildly, was regarded as a crime, as evidence of a
conspiracy against the State.
Elizabeth Barton, afterwards known as the Holy Maid of Kent, was a
domestic servant at Aldington, Kent. From about the year 1525 she was
subject to trances, on recovery from which she narrated the marvels she
had seen in the world of spirits. Her fame was soon spread abroad; many
of the greatest men in the kingdom visited her; some came to believe that
she was inspired, among them perhaps Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop
of Rochester. When the great case of the divorce came on, Elizabeth
predicted that if Henry married Anne during the life of Catherine he
would die within a month. Cranmer, who had now received the reward of his
services by being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, laboured to draw
from Elizabeth a confession that “her predictions were feigned of her own
imagination only.”
In the Parliament which met in January, 1534, seven persons, including
Elizabeth, were accused of forming a conspiracy in relation to the
matter. This was the end:—
=1534.= The 20. of Aprill, Elizabeth Barton a nunne professed [she had
entered a convent in 1527], Edward Bocking, and Iohn Dering, two monks
of Christs church in Canterburie, and Richard Risby & another of his
fellowes of yᵉ same house, Richard Master parson of Aldington, and Henry
Gold priest, were drawne from the Tower of London to Tiborne, and there
hanged and headed, the nuns head was set on London bridge, and the other
heades on gates of yᵉ citie (Stow, p. 570).
=1535.= Maurice Chauncy, a monk of the Charterhouse of London, has told
the story of the martyrdom of the Carthusians, in a book which some one,
I think, has called the swan-song of English monasticism, “Historia
Aliquot Martyrum Anglorum Cartusianorum.”
Proceedings were taken against the London Carthusians for refusing to
admit Henry’s claim to be supreme head of the Church. In the London House
were at this time Father Robert Lawrence, Prior of Beauvale, and Father
Augustine Webster, Prior of Axholme; Beauvale and Axholme being two other
Carthusian monasteries.
Together with Father Houghton, Prior of the London House, Father Lawrence
and Father Webster were brought to trial and condemned. Let Chauncy tell
the story of their execution: with little variation it may stand for that
of all the Catholic martyrs from 1535 to 1681:—
Being brought out of prison [the Tower] they were thrown down on a hurdle
and fastened to it, lying at length on their backs, and so lying on the
hurdle, they were dragged at the heels of horses through the city until
they came to Tyburn, a place where, according to custom, criminals are
executed, which is distant from the prison one league, or a French mile.
Who can relate what grievous things, what tortures they endured on that
whole journey, where one while the road lay over rough and hard, at
another through wet and muddy places, which exceedingly abounded.
On arrival at the place of execution our holy Father was the first
loosed, and then the executioner, as the custom is, bent his knee before
him, asking pardon for the cruel work he had to do. O good Jesu,
“Quis non fleret,
Christi servum si videret,
In tanto supplicio,
Quis non posset contristari”;
beholding the benignity of so holy a man, how gently and moderately he
spoke to the executioner, how sweetly he embraced and kissed him, and
how piously he prayed for him and for all the bystanders. Then on being
ordered to mount the ladder to the gibbet, where he was to be hanged, he
meekly obeyed. Then one of the King’s Council, who stood there with many
thousand people, who came together to witness the sight, asked him if he
would submit to the king’s command and the Act of Parliament, for if he
would he should be pardoned. The holy Martyr of Christ answered: “I call
Almighty God, and I beseech you all in the terrible Day of Judgment, to
bear witness, that being here about to die, I publicly declare that not
through any pertinacity, malice, or rebellious spirit, do I commit this
disobedience and denial of the will of our lord the king, but solely
through fear of God, lest I should offend His Supreme Majesty; because
our holy mother, the Church, has decreed and determined otherwise than
as your king and his Parliament have ordained; wherefore I am bound in
conscience and am prepared, and am not confounded, to endure these and
all other torments that can be inflicted, rather than go against the
doctrine of the Church. Pray for me, and have pity on my brethren, of
whom I am the unworthy Prior.” And having said these things, he begged
the executioner to wait until he had finished his prayer, which was,
“_In te Domine speravi_,” down to “_In manus tuas_,” inclusive. Then on
a sign given, the ladder was turned, and so he was hanged. Then one of
the bystanders, before his holy soul left his body, cut the rope, and so
falling to the ground, he began for a little space to throb and breathe.
Then he was drawn to another adjoining place, where all his garments
were violently torn off, and he was again extended naked on the hurdle,
on whom immediately the bloody executioner laid his wicked hands. In the
first place _verenda abscidit_, then he cut open his belly, dragged out
his bowels, his heart, and all else, and threw them into a fire, during
which our most blessed Father not only did not cry out on account of the
intolerable pain, but on the contrary, during all this time until his
heart was torn out, prayed continually, and bore himself with more than
human endurance, most patiently, meekly, and tranquilly, to the wonder
not only of the presiding officer, but of all the people who witnessed
it. Being at his last gasp, and nearly disembowelled, he cried out with
a most sweet voice, “Most sweet Jesu, have pity on me in this hour!”
And, as trustworthy men have reported, he said to the tormentor, while
in the act of tearing out his heart, “Good Jesu, what will you do with
my heart?” and saying this he breathed his last. Lastly, his head was
cut off, and the beheaded body was divided into four parts.… Our holy
Father having been thus put to death the two other before-named venerable
Fathers, Robert and Augustine, with another religious named Reynolds, of
the Order of St. Bridget, being subjected to the same most cruel death,
were deprived of life, one after another; all of whose remains were
thrown into cauldrons and parboiled, and afterwards put up at different
places in the city. And one arm of our Father was suspended at the gate
of our house.[149]
On the subject of these butcheries Mr. Froude remarks, “But we cannot
blame the Government” (ii. 382).
=1535.= The eighteenth of June, three Monks of the Charter-house at
London, named Thomas Exmew, Humfrey Middlemore, and Sebastian Nidigate
[Newdigate] were drawen to Tiborne, and there hanged and quartered for
denying the Kinges supremacie (Stow, pp. 570-1).
=1535-7.= In 1535 was introduced the first Bill for the dissolution of
the monasteries: only the smaller were now touched. The Bill was passed
on Henry’s threat that he would have the Bill pass, or take off some of
the Commons’ heads. Henry had tired of Anne Boleyn, and Cranmer, always
equal to the occasion, “having previously invoked the name of Christ, and
having God alone before his eyes,” had declared that the marriage was
void and had always been so. In 1536 broke out the first of the revolts
caused by the dissolution. Henry had not yet discovered the secret of
detaching from the cause of the people their natural leaders by sharing
the plunder with them. The nobility and gentry had their grievances, and
made common cause with the people. Henry was furious. He gave orders
to “run upon the insurgents with your forces, and with all extremity
destroy, burn, and kill man, woman and child, to the terrible example of
all others.” The chief monks were to be hanged on long pieces of timber
out of the steeples. Later, when the revolt had spread to Yorkshire, he
wrote: “You must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of the
inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their
heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning.” In
summing up these operations, Cromwell, with a pleasant wit, speaks of
the execution of the rest at “Thyfbourne.”[150] The story of the rest
will follow. It forms but a small fraction of those murdered by this fell
tyrant.
It may well be doubted whether in the history of civilised communities
there is any record of a social cataclysm, not resulting from war or
pestilence, so terrible as that which overwhelmed the commons of England
after the dissolution of the monasteries, followed by measures of plunder
extending through the reign of Edward VI. An abbat might not always be a
good man of business, witness the dreadful financial condition in which
Abbat Samson found the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds.[151] He might
even be so pressed for money as to be driven to pledge with the Jews
the arm or leg of a saint taken from the reliquary.[152] But he was a
good landlord; the lands of the monastery were let to the yeomanry on
easy terms. The misery of the French peasantry, largely due to constant
English invasions, was so great, that one who knew France well, Chief
Justice Fortescue, writing three hundred years before the Great Uprising,
had to seek reasons for the fact that the peasantry did not rebel. “It
is not pouerte that kepith Ffrenchmen ffro rysinge, but it is cowardisse
and lakke off hartes and corage”: “thai haue no wepen, nor armour, nor
good to bie it with all.” With their lot he contrasts that of the English
yeoman. The might of England “stondith most vppon archers”: if they were
poor, they could not be much exercised in shooting, “wich mey not be done
withowt ryght grete expenses.”[153]
For the English yeomen were a prosperous class, the backbone of the
country. They were able to serve their country alike in peace and war:
having means to send their sons to the universities, not yet appropriated
by a class: able to help in the maintenance of the poor: stout soldiers
in case of need—the best archers in the world. Latimer’s father was a
type of the class. A yeoman, having no lands of his own, he held a farm
at a rent of three or four pounds a year. The tillage of the farm kept
half a dozen men, there was walk for a hundred sheep: Latimer’s mother
milked thirty kine. Latimer recollected buckling on his father’s harness
when the stout yeoman-soldier set out for Blackheath. He put Latimer “to
schole, or elles I had not bene able to haue preached before the kinges
maiestie nowe,” gave his daughters a portion, kept hospitality for his
poor neighbours, gave alms to the poor, “and all thys did he of the
sayd farme.” The Dissolution changed all that. The rapacity of the new
landlords, who turned arable land into pasture, and quadrupled rents,
is the despair of contemporaries. Latimer thus speaks of his father’s
successor: “Wher he that now hath it, paieth xvi. pounde by yere or more,
and is not able to do anything for his Prynce, for himselfe, nor for his
children, or geue a cup of drincke to the pore.”[154]
Then, for the first time was heard in England the question since become
familiar, “Can I not do as I like with my own?” They say, said Bernard
Gilpin, “the Apostle of the North,” in a sermon preached before the
Court of Edward VI.—“they saie, their lande is their owne, and forget
altogether that the earth is the Lords & the fulnesse thereof. They
turn them out of their shrouds as thicke as mice.”[155] Henry Brinklow,
puritan of puritans, admits that “but for the faith’s sake,” it had been
more profitable to the commonwealth that the abbey lands had remained in
the hands of those “imps of Antichrist,” the abbeys and nunneries. “For
why? thei neuer inhansed their landys, nor toke so cruel fynes as doo our
temporal tyrauntes.”[156]
The governing classes, themselves atheistic,[157] ready to change their
professed religion as often as was necessary to keep their grip on the
lands stolen from the people, played on the fanaticism of a section
of the people by means of imported preachers of the new doctrine,
sharked up in every corner of Europe. When the commons, oppressed beyond
endurance, rose at last in revolt, they were butchered in thousands by
foreign mercenaries, the first seen in England for centuries.[158]
The Guilds, lay associations of men and women banded together for
mutual help, were among the oldest things in England—older than King
Alfred. They were the precursors of the modern Trades Unions and Benefit
Societies, but wider in their constitution, embracing various classes,
and more human in their administration.[159] These, too, were swept away.
The very hospitals were seized, the sick thrust forth.
The dispossessed people wandered about, workless, aimless, foodless.
“Thousandes in England through such [landlords] begge nowe from dore to
dore, which haue kept honest houses.”[160] The Slave Act of the first
year of the reign of Edward VI. made it lawful to brand an Englishman on
the forehead with the mark of slavery, “to putt a rynge of Iron about his
Necke Arme or his Legge for a more knowledge and suretie of the kepinge
of him.”[161]
In 1547 Ascham, about the time he was appointed tutor to Elizabeth,
wrote, “The life now lived by the greatest number is not life, but
misery,” words which a modern writer has said should be inscribed over
the century as its motto. “Most lamentable of all,” writes Ascham, “is
it, that that noble ornament and strength of England, the yeomanry, is
broken and destroyed.”[162]
A contemporary writer draws a picture of “the Decay of England” almost
too terrible for belief, yet all that we know tends to confirm his story.
“Whether shall then they goo?” he cries in despair. “Foorth from shyre
to shyre, and to be scathered thus abrode, within the Kynges maiestyes
Realme, where it shall please Almighty God: and for lacke of maisters, by
compulsion dryuen, some of them to begge, and some to steale.”[163] Happy
those who in defence of their hearths had died in the West and in Norfolk
at the hands of Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Albanians!
A calculation based upon the statements of this same writer on the “Decay
of England” gives 675,000 persons thrown upon the country by the decay of
husbandry.[164] But to this number we must add those turned out of the
monasteries, the poor, formerly maintained by the monasteries and by the
yeomanry, the sick and infirm, ejected from the hospitals established
for “Christ’s poor,” as they are called in the act of foundation of a
hospital in the thirteenth century. And this immense number out of a
population estimated at 5,000,000! “And nowe they haue nothynge, but
goeth about in England from dore to dore, and axe theyr almose for Goddes
sake. And because they will not begge, some of them doeth steale, and
then they be hanged.”[165] Great numbers flocked to London, seeking in
vain redress of their grievances.
This was the great time of Tyburn.
In his fourth sermon, preached on March 29, 1549, Latimer mentions,
quite incidentally, the frightful number of executions taking place in
London, when he was “in ward” with the Bishop of Chichester in 1539.
“I was desirous to heare of execution done (as ther was euri weke, some
in one place of the citye or other) for there was thre wekes sessions
at newgate, and fourth-nyghte Sessions at the Marshialshy, and so
forth.”[166] That is, sessions every three weeks at the one place and
every two weeks at the other. Never had the gallows been so crowded.
In the sentence quoted on the title-page of this book Sir Thomas More,
writing in Latin in 1516, had said that twenty were “sometimes” hanged
together upon one gallows. In the English translation, first published
in 1551, the translator changed “sometimes” (“nonnunquam”) into “for the
most part.” So had the gallows thriven!
The bitter lamentations of Latimer, Brinklow, Ascham, Lever, Bernard
Gilpin, Crowley, are not the cries of partisans of the old order. They
had looked for a new heaven and a new earth—to see “the pure light of the
gospel” kindled by John a Lasco, Stumphius, John ab Ulmis, illuminating
homes freed for ever from taxation by the spoils of the monasteries. And
“the Blessed Reformation” had sent countless thousands to the gallows,
had reinstituted white slavery in England, and had established the
“pauper,” no longer “Christ’s poor,” as a despised and degraded caste.
But of the judicial murders of this dreadful time we know next to
nothing. As Harrison has been more than once quoted it is necessary to
refer to a passage giving what purports to be a statement as to the
numbers executed in the reign of Henry VIII. He says:—
It appeareth by Cardane (who writeth it vpon the report of the bishop of
Lexouia) in the geniture of king Edward the sixt, how Henrie the eight,
executing his laws verie seuerlie against such idle persons, I meane
great theeues, pettie theeues and roges, did hang vp threescore and
twelue thousand of them in his time.[167]