[Footnote 386: Dio gran tempo perduto e hora ritrovato.—Descriptio Reductionis Angliae: Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. v.]

[Footnote 387: Imbarcatosi adunque sua S. R. ad un hora di giorno, passo a Doure nell' Isola in tre hore et mezza che fu camino di quaranta miglia fatto con extraordinaria prestezza.—Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. v.]

The November evening had closed in when the cavalcade entered Canterbury. The streets were thronged, and the legate made his way through the crowd, amidst the cries of "God save your grace." At the door of the house—probably the archbishop's palace—where he was to pass the night, Harpsfeld, the archdeacon, was standing to receive him, with a number of the clergy; and with the glare of torches lighting up the scene, Harpsfeld commenced an oration as the legate alighted, so beautiful, so affecting, says Pole's Italian friend, that all the hearers were moved to tears. The archdeacon spoke of the mercies of God, and the marvellous workings of his providence. He dwelt upon the history of the cardinal, whom God had preserved through a thousand dangers for the salvation of his country; and, firing up at last in a blaze of enthusiasm, he {p.164} exclaimed, "Thou art Pole, and thou art our Polar star, to light us to the kingdom of the heavens. Sky, rivers, earth, these disfigured walls—all things—long for thee. While thou wert absent from us all things were sad, all things were in the power of the adversary. At thy coming all things are smiling, all glad, all tranquil."[388] The legate listened so far, and then checked the flood of the adoring eloquence. "I heard you with pleasure," he said, "while you were praising God. My own praises I do not desire to hear. Give the glory to Him."

[Footnote 388: "Tu es Polus, qui aperis nobis Polum regni caelorum. Aer, flumina, terra, parietes ipsi, omnia denique te desiderant. Quamdiu abfuisti omnia fuerunt tristia et adversa. In adventu tuo, omnia rident, omnia laeta, omnia tranquilla." I have endeavoured to preserve the play on the word Polus, altering the meaning as little as the necessities of translation would allow. It has been suggested to me that the word "parietes" implies properly internal walls, and the allusion was to the defacement of the cathedral.]

From Canterbury, Richard Pate, who, as titular Bishop of Worcester, had sat at the council of Trent, was sent forward to the queen with an answer to her letter, and a request for further directions. The legate himself went on leisurely to Rochester, where he was entertained by Lord Cobham, at Cowling Castle. So far he had observed the instructions brought to him by Paget, and had travelled as an ordinary ecclesiastic, without distinctive splendour. On the night of the 23rd, however, Pate returned from the court with a message that the legatine insignia might be displayed. A fleet of barges was in waiting at Gravesend, where Pole appeared early on the 24th; and, as a further augury of good fortune, he found there Lord Shrewsbury, with his early friend the Bishop of Durham, who had come to meet him with the repeal of his attainder, to which the queen had given her assent in parliament the day before.

To the fluttered hearts of the priestly company the coincidence of the repeal, the informality of an act of parliament receiving the royal assent before the close of a session, were further causes of admiration. They embarked; and the Italians, who had never seen a tidal river, discovered, miracle of miracles, that they were ascending from the sea, and yet the stream was with them. The distance to London was soon accomplished. They passed under the bridge at one o'clock on the top of the tide, the legate's barge distinguished splendidly by the silver cross upon the bow. In a few minutes more they were at the palace-stairs at Whitehall, where a pier was built on arches out into the river, and on the pier stood the Bishop of Winchester, with the lords of the council.

{p.165} The king and queen were at dinner, the arrival not being expected till the afternoon. Philip rose instantly from the table, hurried out, and caught the legate in his arms. The queen followed to the head of the grand staircase; and when Pole reached her, she threw herself on his breast, and kissed him, crying that his coming gave her as much joy as the possession of her kingdom. The cardinal, in corresponding ecstasy, exclaimed, in the words of the angel to the Virgin, "Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus."[389] The first rapturous moments over, the king, queen, and legate proceeded along the gallery, Philip and Pole supporting Mary on either side, and the legate expatiating on the mysteries of Providence.

[Footnote 389: "Cardinalis cum reginam salutaret, nec ulla humana verba occurrerent tali muliere digna, Sanctis Scripturarum verbis abuti non verebatur, sed in primo congressu iisdem quibus matrem Dei salutavit Angelus, Reginam Polus alloquitur, Ave Maria," etc.—Salkyns to Bullinger: Epistolae Tigurinae, p. 169.]

"High thanks, indeed," he exclaimed, "your majesty owes to the favour of the Almighty, seeing that, while he permits you to bring your godly desires to perfection, he has united at this moment in your favour the two mightiest powers upon earth—the majesty of the emperor represented in the king your husband, and the pope's holiness represented in myself." The queen, as she walked, replied "in words of sweet humility," pouring out gentle excuses for past delays. The legate, still speaking with ecstatic metaphor, answered that it was the will of God; God waited till the time was mature, till he could say to her highness, "Blessed be the fruit of thy womb."[390]

[Footnote 390: "Il Signor Legato rispose che Dio havea voluto, che fusse tardato a tempo piu maturo, perche egli havesse potuto dire a sua Altezza come diceva Benedictus fructus ventris tui."—Descriptio Reductionis Angliae.]

In the saloon they remained standing together for another quarter of an hour. When the cardinal took his leave for the day, the king; in spite of remonstrance, re-attended him to the gate. Alva and the Bishop of Winchester were in waiting to conduct him to Lambeth Palace, which had been assigned him for a residence. The See of Canterbury was to follow as soon as Cranmer could be despatched.

Arrived at Lambeth, he was left to repose after his fatigues and excitements. He had scarcely retired to his apartments when he was disturbed again by a message from the queen. Lord Montague had hurried over with the news that the angelic salutation had been already answered. "The babe had leapt {p.166} in her womb."[391] Not a moment was lost in communicating the miracle to the world. Letters of council were drawn out for Te Deums to be sung in every church in London. The next day being Sunday, every pulpit was made to ring with the testimony of heaven to the truth.

[Footnote 391: Descriptio Reductionis Angliae.]

On Monday the 26th the cardinal went to the palace for an audience, and again there was more matter for congratulation. As he was approaching the king's cabinet, Philip met him with a packet of despatches. The last courier sent to Rome had returned with unheard-of expedition, and the briefs and commissions in which the pope relinquished formally his last reservations, had arrived. Never, exclaimed the Catholic enthusiast, in a fervour of devout astonishment—never since the days of the apostles had so many tokens of divine approbation been showered upon a human enterprise. The moment of its consummation had arrived.[392] Since the thing was to be, no one wished for delay. Three days sufficed for the few necessary preparations, and the two Houses of Parliament were invited to be present unofficially at Whitehall on the afternoon of Wednesday the 28th. In the morning there was a procession in the city and a Te Deum at St. Paul's. After dinner, the Great Chamber was thrown open, and the Lords and Commons crowded in as they could find room. Philip and Mary entered, and took their seats under the cloth of state; while Pole had a chair assigned him on their right hand, beyond the edge of the canopy. The queen was splendidly dressed, and it was observed that she threw out her person to make her supposed condition as conspicuous as possible.[393] When all were in their places, the chancellor rose.

[Footnote 392: The queen's assurances respecting her child were so emphatic, that even Noailles believed her. Profane persons were still incredulous. On Sunday the 25th, the day after the Te Deums, Noailles says, "S'est trouve ung placard attache a la porte de son palais, y estant ces mots en substance: 'serons nous si bestes, oh nobles Angloys, que croy renotre reyne estre enciente si non d'un marmot ou d'un dogue?'"]

[Footnote 393: Contemporary Diary: MS. Harleian, iv. 19.]

"My Lords of the Upper House," he said, "and you my masters of the Nether House, here is present the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, come from the Apostolic See of Rome as ambassador to the king's and queen's majesties, upon one of the weightiest causes that ever happened in this realm, and which pertaineth to the glory of God and your universal benefit; the which embassy it is their majesties' {p.167} pleasure that it be signified unto you all by his own mouth, trusting that you will accept it in as benevolent and thankful wise as their highnesses have done, and that you will give an attent and inclinable ear to him."

The legate then left his chair and came forward. He was now fifty-four years old, and he had passed but little of his life in England; yet his features had not wholly lost their English character. He had the arched eye-brow, and the delicately-cut cheek, and prominent eye of the beautiful Plantagenet face; a long, brown, curling beard flowed down upon his chest, which it almost covered; the mouth was weak and slightly open, the lips were full and pouting, the expression difficult to read. In a low voice, audible only to those who were near him, he spoke as follows:—"My Lords all, and you that are the Commons of this present parliament assembled, as the cause of my repair hither hath been wisely and gravely declared by my Lord Chancellor, so, before I enter into the particulars of my commission, I have to say somewhat touching myself, and to give most humble and hearty thanks to the king's and queen's majesties, and after them to you all—which of a man exiled and banished from this commonwealth, have restored me to be a member of the same, and of a man having no place either here or elsewhere within this realm, have admitted me to a place where to speak and where to be heard. This I protest unto you all, that though I was exiled my native country, without just cause, as God knoweth, yet the ingratitude could not pull from me the affection and desire that I had to your profit and to do you good.

"But, leaving the rehearsal hereof, and coming more near to the matter of my commission, I signify unto you all, that my principal travail is for the restitution of this noble realm to the antient nobility, and to declare unto you that the See Apostolic, from whence I come, hath a special respect to this realm above all others; and not without cause, seeing that God himself, as it were, by providence hath given to this realm prerogative of nobility above others, which, to make plain unto you, it is to be considered that this island first of all islands received the light of Christ's religion."

Going into history for a proof of this singular proposition, the legate said that the Britons had been converted by the See Apostolic, "not one by one, as in other countries, as clocks increase the hours by distinction of times," "but altogether, at once, as it were, in a moment." The Saxons had brought back heathenism, but had again been soon converted; and the popes {p.168} had continued to heap benefit upon benefit on the favoured people, even making them a present of Ireland, "which pertained to the See of Rome." The country had prospered, and the people had been happy down to the time of the late schism; from that unhappy day they had been overwhelmed with calamities.

The legate dwelt in some detail on the misfortunes of the preceding years. He then went on: "But, when all light of true religion seemed extinct, the churches defaced, the altars overthrown, the ministers corrupted, even like as in a lamp, the light being covered yet it is not quenched—even so in a few remained the confession of Christ's faith, namely, in the breast of the queen's excellency, of whom to speak without adulation, the saying of the prophet may be verified, ecce quasi derelicta: and see how miraculously God of his goodness preserved her highness contrary to the expectations of men, that when numbers conspired against her, and policies were devised to disinherit her, and armed power prepared to destroy her, yet she, being a virgin, helpless, naked, and unarmed, prevailed, and had the victory of tyrants. For all these practices and devices, here you see her grace established in her estate, your lawful queen and governess, born among you, whom God hath appointed to govern you for the restitution of true religion and the extirpation of all errors and sects. And to confirm her grace more strongly in this enterprise, lo how the providence of God hath joined her in marriage with a prince of like religion, who, being a king of great might, armour, and force, yet useth towards you neither armour nor force, but seeketh you by way of love and amity; and as it was a singular favour of God to conjoin them in marriage, so it is not to be doubted but he shall send them issue for the comfort and surety of this commonwealth.

"Of all princes in Europe the emperor hath travailed most in the cause of religion, yet, haply by some secret judgment of God, he hath not obtained the end. I can well compare him to David, which, though he were a man elect of God, yet for that he was contaminate with blood and wars, he could not build the temple of Jerusalem, but left the finishing thereof to Solomon, who was Rex pacificus. So it may be thought that the appeasing of controversies of religion in Christendom is not appointed to this emperor, but rather to his son; who shall perform the building that his father had begun, which church cannot be builded unless universally in all realms we adhere to one head, and do acknowledge him to be the vicar of God, and to have power from above—for {p.169} all power is of God, according to the saying, non est potestas nisi in Deo.

"All power being of God, he hath derived that power into two parts here on earth, which is into the powers imperial and ecclesiastical; and these two powers, as they be several and distinct, so have they two several effects and operations. Secular princes be ministers of God to execute vengeance upon transgressors and evil livers, and to preserve the well-doers and innocents from injury and violence; and this power is represented in these two most excellent persons the king's and queen's majesties here present. The other power is of ministration, which is the power of keys and orders in the ecclesiastical state; which is by the authority of God's word and example of the apostles, and of all holy fathers from Christ hitherto attributed and given to the Apostolic See of Rome by special prerogative: from which See I am here deputed legate and ambassador, having full and ample commission from thence, and have the keys committed to my hands. I confess to you that I have the keys—not as mine own keys, but as the keys of Him that sent me; and yet cannot I open, not for want of power in me to give, but for certain impediments in you to receive, which must be taken away before my commission can take effect. This I protest before you, my commission is not of prejudice to any person. I am come not to destroy, but to build; I come to reconcile, not to condemn; I am not come to compel, but to call again; I am not come to call anything in question already done; but my commission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it—for, touching all matters that be past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfulness.

"But the mean whereby you shall receive this benefit is to revoke and repeal those laws and statutes which be impediments, blocks, and bars to the execution of my commission. For, like as I myself had neither place nor voice to speak here amongst you, but was in all respects a banished man, till such time as ye had repealed those laws that lay in my way, even so cannot you receive the benefit and grace offered from the Apostolic See until the abrogation of such laws whereby you had disjoined and dissevered yourselves from the unity of Christ's Church.

"It remaineth, therefore, that you, like true Christians and provident men, for the weal of your souls and bodies, ponder what is to be done in this so weighty a cause, and so to frame your acts and proceedings as they may first tend to the glory of {p.170} God, and, next, to the conservation of your commonwealth, surety, and quietness."

The speech was listened to by such as could hear it with profound attention, and several persons were observed to clasp their hands again and again, and raise them convulsively before their faces. When the legate sat down, Gardiner gave him the thanks of parliament, and suggested that the two Houses should be left to themselves to consider what they would do. Pole withdrew with the king and queen, and Gardiner exclaimed: A prophet has "the Lord raised up among us from among our brethren, and he shall save us." For the benefit of those who had been at the further end of the hall, he then recapitulated the substance of what had been said. He added a few words of exhortation, and the meeting adjourned.

The next day, Thursday, Lords and Commons sat as usual at Westminster. The repeal of all the acts which directly, or by implication, were aimed at the papacy, would occupy, it was found, a considerable time; but the impatient legate was ready to accept a promise as a pledge of performance, and the general question was therefore put severally in both Houses whether the country should return to obedience to the Apostolic See. Among the Peers no difficulty was made at all. Among the Commons, in a house of 360, there were two dissentients—one, whose name is not mentioned, gave a silent negative vote; the other, Sir Ralph Bagenall, stood up alone to protest. Twenty years, he said, "that great and worthy prince, King Henry," laboured to expel the pope from England. He for one had "sworn to King Henry's laws," and, "he would keep his oath."[394]

[Footnote 394: The writer of the Italian "Description" says that Bagenall gave way the next day. The contemporary narrative among the Harleian MSS. says that he persisted, and refused to kneel at the absolution.]

But Bagenall was listened to with smiles. The resolution passed, the very ease and unanimity betraying the hollow ground on which it rested; and, again, devout Catholics beheld the evident work of supernatural agency. Lords and Commons had received separately the same proposition; they had discussed it, voted on it, and come to a conclusion, each with closed doors, and the messengers of the two Houses encountered each other on their way to communicate their several decisions.[395] The chancellor arranged with Pole the forms which should be {p.171} observed, and it was agreed that the Houses should present a joint petition to the king and queen, acknowledging their past misconduct, engaging to undo the anti-papal legislation, and entreating their majesties, as undefiled with the offences which tainted the body of the nation, to intercede for the removal of the interdict. A committee of Lords and Commons sate to consider the words in which the supplication should be expressed, and all preparations were completed by the evening.

[Footnote 395: "Mentre la casa alta mandava a far sapere la sua conclusione alla casa bassa, la casa bassa mandava anch' ella per fare intendere il medesimo alla casa alta, sicche i messi s' incontrarono per via; segno evidentissimo che lo Spirito di Dio lavorava in amendue i luoghi in un tempo i di una medesima conformita."—Descriptio Reductionis Angliae.]

And now St. Andrew's Day was come; a day, as was then hoped, which would be remembered with awe and gratitude through all ages of English history. Being the festival of the institution of the Order of the Golden Fleece, high mass was sung in the morning in Westminster Abbey; Philip, Alva, and Ruy Gomez attended in their robes, with six hundred Spanish cavaliers. The Knights of the Garter were present in gorgeous costume, and nave and transept were thronged with the blended chivalry of England and Castile. It was two o'clock before the service was concluded. Philip returned to the palace to dinner, and the brief November afternoon was drawing in when the parliament reassembled at the palace. At the upper end of the great hall a square platform had now been raised several steps above the floor, on which three chairs were placed as before; two under a canopy of cloth of gold, for the king and queen; a third on the right, removed a little distance from them, for the legate. Below the platform, benches were placed longitudinally towards either wall. The bishops sat on the side of the legate, the lay peers opposite them on the left. The Commons sat on rows of cross benches in front, and beyond them were the miscellaneous crowd of spectators, sitting or standing as they could find room. The cardinal, who had passed the morning at Lambeth, was conducted across the water in a state barge by Lord Arundel and six other peers. The king received him at the gate, and, leaving his suite in the care of the Duke of Alva, who was instructed to find them places, he accompanied Philip into the room adjoining the hall, where Mary, whose situation was supposed to prevent her from unnecessary exertion, was waiting for them. The royal procession was formed. Arundel and the Lords passed in to their places. The king and queen, with Pole in his legate's robes, ascended the steps of the platform, and took their seats.

When the stir which had been caused by their entrance was over, Gardiner mounted a tribune; and in the now fast-waning light he bowed to the king and queen, and declared the resolution {p.172} at which the Houses had arrived. Then turning to the Lords and Commons, he asked if they continued in the same mind. Four hundred voices answered, "We do." "Will you then," he said, "that I proceed in your names to supplicate for our absolution, that we may be received again into the body of the Holy Catholic Church, under the pope, the supreme head thereof?" Again the voices assented. The chancellor drew a scroll from under his robe, ascended the platform, and presented it unfolded on his knee to the queen. The queen looked through it, gave it to Philip, who looked through it also, and returned it. The chancellor then rose and read aloud as follows:—

"We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of the present parliament assembled, representing the whole body of the realm of England, and dominions of the same, in our own names particularly, and also of the said body universally, in this our supplication directed to your majesties—with most humble suit that it may by your gracious intercession and means be exhibited to the Most Reverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate, sent specially hither from our Most Holy Father Pope Julius the Third and the See Apostolic of Rome—do declare ourselves very sorry and repentant for the schism and disobedience committed in this realm and dominions of the same, against the said See Apostolic, either by making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments against the supremacy of the said See, or otherwise doing or speaking what might impugn the same; offering ourselves, and promising by this our supplication that, for a token and knowledge of our said repentance, we be, and shall be always, ready, under and with the authority of your majesties, to do that which shall be in us for the abrogation and repealing of the said laws and ordinances in this present parliament, as well for ourselves as for the whole body whom we represent. Whereupon we most humbly beseech your majesties, as persons undefiled in the offences of this body towards the Holy See—which nevertheless God by his providence hath made subject to your majesties—so to set forth this, our most humble suit, that we may obtain from the See Apostolic, by the said Most Reverend Father, as well particularly as universally, absolution, release, and discharge from all danger of such censures and sentences as by the laws of the church we be fallen in; and that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church; so as this noble realm, with all the members {p.173} thereof, may, in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apostolic and pope for the time being, serve God and your majesties, to the furtherance and advancement of his honour and glory."[396]

[Footnote 396: Foxe, vol. vi. p. 571. The petition was in Latin; but, as I have nowhere seen the original, I have not ventured to interfere with Foxe's translation. Foxe, who could translate very idiomatically when he pleased, perhaps relieved his indignation on the present occasion by translating as awkwardly as possible.]

Having completed the reading, the chancellor again presented the petition. The king and queen went through the forms of intercession, and a secretary read aloud, first, the legate's original commission, and, next, the all-important extended form of it.

Pole's share of the ceremony was now to begin.

He first spoke a few words from his seat: "Much indeed," he said, "the English nation had to thank the Almighty for recalling them to his fold. Once again God had given a token of his special favour to the realm; for as this nation, in the time of the Primitive Church, was the first to be called out of the darkness of heathenism, so now they were the first to whom God had given grace to repent of their schism; and if their repentance was sincere, how would the angels, who rejoice at the conversion of a single sinner, triumph at the recovery of a great and noble people."

He moved to rise; Mary and Philip, seeing that the crisis was approaching, fell on their knees, and the assembly dropped at their example; while, in dead silence, across the dimly-lighted hall, came the low, awful words of the absolution.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his most precious blood hath redeemed and washed us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might purchase unto himself a glorious spouse without spot or wrinkle, whom the Father hath appointed head over all his Church—he by his mercy absolves you, and we, by apostolic authority given unto us by the Most Holy Lord Pope Julius the Third, his vicegerent on earth, do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with this whole realm and the dominions thereof, from all heresy and schism, and from all and every judgment, censure, and pain for that cause incurred; and we do restore you again into the unity of our Mother the Holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Amidst the hushed breathing every tone was audible, and at the pauses were heard the smothered sobs of the queen. "Amen, amen," rose in answer from many voices. Some were really affected; some were caught for the moment with a contagion which it was hard to resist; some threw themselves weeping in {p.174} each other's arms. King, queen, and parliament, rising from their knees, went immediately—the legate leading—into the chapel of the palace, where the choir, with the rolling organ, sang Te Deum; and Pole closed the scene with a benediction from the altar.

"Blessed day for England," cries the Italian describer, in a rapture of devotion. "The people exclaim in ecstasies, we are reconciled to God, we are brought back to God: the king beholds his realm, so lately torn by divisions, at the mercy of the first enemy who would seize upon it, secured on a foundation which never can be shaken: and who can express the joy—who can tell the exultation of the queen? She has shown herself the handmaid of the Lord, and all generations shall call her blessed: she has given her kingdom to God as a thank-offering for those great mercies which He has bestowed upon her."[397]

[Footnote 397: Descriptio Reductionis Angliae: Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. v.]

And the legate; but the legate has described his emotions in his own inimitable manner. Pole went back to Lambeth, not to rest, but to pour out his soul to the Holy Father.

In his last letter he said "he had told his holiness that he had hoped that England would be recovered to the fold at last; yet he had then some fears remaining, so far estranged were the minds of the people from the Holy See, lest at the last moment some compromise might ruin all."

But the godly forwardness of the king and queen had overcome every difficulty; and on that evening, the day of St. Andrew—of Andrew who first brought his brother Peter to Christ—the realm of England had been brought back to its obedience to Peter's See, and through Peter to Christ. The great act had been accomplished, accomplished by the virtue and the labour of the inestimable sovereigns with whom God had blessed the world.

"And oh," he said, "how many things, how great things, may the church our mother, the bride of Christ, promise herself from these her children? Oh piety! oh antient faith! Whoever looks on them will repeat the words of the prophet of the church's early offspring; 'This is the seed which the Lord hath blessed.' How earnestly, how lovingly, did your holiness favour their marriage; a marriage formed after the very pattern of that of our Most High King, who, being Heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from his royal throne, to be at once the Spouse and the Son of the Virgin Mary, and be made the Comforter and the Saviour of mankind: and, in like manner, the greatest {p.175} of all the princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms, that he might come hither into this land of trouble, he, too, to be spouse and son of this virgin; for, indeed, though spouse he be, he so bears himself towards her as if he were her son, to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.[398]

[Footnote 398: This amazing comparison (for one cannot forget what Philip had been, was, and was to be) must be given in the original words of the legate:

"Quam sancte sanctitas vestra omni auctoritate studioque huic matrimonio favit; quod sane videtur prae se ferre magnam summi illius regis similitudinem, qui mundi haeres a regalibus sedibus a patre demissus fuit, ut esset virginis sponsus et filius, et hac ratione universum genus humanum consolaretur ac servaret. Sic enim hic rex maximus omnium qui in terris sunt haeres, patriis relictis regnis de illis quidem amplissimis ac felicissimis in hoc turbulentum regnum de contulit, hujusque virginis sponsus et filius est factus; ita enim erga illam se gerit tanquam filius esset cum sit sponsus, ut quod jam plane perfecit sequestrem se atque adjutorem ad reconciliandos Christo et Ecclesiae hos populos praeberet."—Pole to the Pope: Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. v.]

"When your holiness first chose me as your legate, the queen was rising up as a rod of incense out of trees of myrrh, and as frankincense out of the desert. And how does she now shine out in loveliness? What a savour does she give forth unto her people. Yea, even as the prophet saith of the mother of Christ, "before she was in labour she brought forth, before she was delivered she hath borne a man-child." Who ever yet hath seen it, who has heard of the similitude of it? Shall the earth bring forth in a day, or shall a nation of men be born together? but Mary has brought forth the nation of England before the time of that delivery for which we all are hoping!"

Unable to exhaust itself in words, the Catholic enthusiasm flowed over in processions, in sermons, masses, and Te Deums. Gardiner at Paul's Cross, on the Sunday succeeding, confessed his sins in having borne a part in bringing about the schism. Pole rode through the city between the king and queen, with his legate's cross before him, blessing the people. When the news reached Rome Julius first embraced the messenger, then flung himself on his knees, and said a Paternoster. The guns at St. Angelo roared in triumph. There were jubilees and masses of the Holy Ghost, and bonfires, and illuminations, and pardons, and indulgences. In the exuberance of his hopes, the pope sent a nuncio to urge that, in the presence of this great mercy, peace should be made with France, where the king was devoted to the church; the Catholic powers would then have the command of Europe, and the heretics could be destroyed.[399] One thing only {p.176} seemed forgotten, that the transaction was a bargain. The papal pardon had been thrust upon criminals, whose hearts were so culpably indifferent that it was necessary to bribe them to accept it; and the conditions of the compromise, even yet, were far from concluded.

[Footnote 399: Pallavicino.]

The sanction given to the secularisation of church property was a cruel disappointment to the clergy, who cared little for Rome, but cared much for wealth and power. Supported by a party in the House of Commons who had not shared in the plunder, and who envied those who had been more fortunate,[400] the ecclesiastical faction began to agitate for a reconsideration of the question. Their friends in parliament said that the dispensation was unnecessary. Every man's conscience ought to be his guide whether to keep his lands or surrender them. The queen was known to hold the same opinion, and eager preachers began to sound the note of restitution.[401] Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented the bishops immediately after with a series of remarkable requests. The pope, in the terms on which he was reinstated, was but an ornamental unreality; and the practical English clergy desired substantial restorations which their eyes could see and their hands could handle.

[Footnote 400: Renard to the Emperor: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 401: "It was this morning told me by one of the Emperor's council, who misliked much the matter, that a preacher of ours whose name he rehearsed, beateth the pulpit jollily in England for a restitution of abbey lands. It is a strange thing in a well-ordered commonwealth that a subject should be so hardy to cry unto the people openly such learning, whereby your winter work may in the summer be attempted with some storm. These unbridled preachings were so much misliked in the ill-governed time as men trusted in this good governance it should have been amended; and so may it be when it shall please my Lords of the Council as diligently to consider it, as it is more than necessary to be looked unto. The party methinketh might well be put to silence, if he were asked now, being a monk, and having professed and vowed solemnly wilful poverty, he can with conscience keep a deanery and three or four benefices."—Mason to Petre: MS. Germany, bundle 16, Mary, State Paper Office. It is not clear who the offender was. Perhaps it was Weston, Dean of Westminster and Prolocutor of Convocation.]

They demanded, therefore, first, that if a statute was brought into parliament for the assurance of the church estates to the present possessors, nothing should be allowed to pass prejudicial to their claims "on lands, tenements, pensions, or tythe rents, which had appertained to bishops, or other ecclesiastical persons."

They demanded, secondly, the repeal of the Statute of Mortmain, and afterwards the abolition of lay impropriations, the {p.177} punishment of heretics, the destruction of all the English Prayer-books and Bibles, the revival of the act De Haeretico Comburendo, the re-establishment of the episcopal courts, the restoration of the legislative functions of Convocation, and the exemption of the clergy from the authority of secular magistrates.

Finally, they required that the church should be restored absolutely to its ancient rights, immunities, and privileges; that no Premunire should issue against a bishop until he had first received notice and warning; that the judges should define "a special doctrine of Premunire," and that the Statutes of Provisors should not be wrested from their meaning.[402]

[Footnote 402: Demands of the Lower House of Convocation, December, 1554; printed in Wilkins's Concilia.]

The petition expressed the views of Gardiner, and was probably drawn under his direction. Had the alienated property been no more than the estates of the suppressed abbeys, the secular clergy would have acquiesced without difficulty in the existing disposition of it. But the benefices impropriated to the abbeys which had been sold or granted with the lands, they looked on as their own; the cathedral chapters and the bishops' sees, which had suffered from the second locust flight under Edward, formed part of the local Anglican Church: and Gardiner and his brother prelates declared that, if the pope chose to set aside the canons, and permit the robbing of the religious orders, he might do as he pleased; but that he had neither right nor powers to sanction the spoliation of the working bishops and clergy. Thus the feast of reconciliation having been duly celebrated, both Houses of Parliament became again the theatre of fierce and fiery conflict.

There were wide varieties of opinion. The lawyers went beyond the clergy in limiting the powers of the pope; the lawyers also said the pope had no rights over the temporalities of bishops or abbots, deans, or rectors; but they did not any more admit the rights of the clergy. The English clergy, regular and secular, they said, had held their estates from immemorial time under the English crown, and it was not for any spiritual authority, domestic or foreign, to decide whether an English king and an English parliament might interfere to alter the disposition of those estates.

On other questions the clerical party were in the ascendant; They had a decided majority in the House of Commons; in the Upper House there was a compact body of twenty bishops; and Gardiner held the proxies of Lord Rich, Lord Oxford, Lord {p.178} Westmoreland, and Lord Abergavenny. The queen had created four new peers; three of whom, Lord North, Lord Chandos, and Lord Williams, were bigoted Catholics; the fourth, Lord Howard, was absent with the fleet, and was unrepresented. Lord North held the proxy of Lord Worcester; and the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Montague, and Lord Stourton acted generally with the chancellor. Lord Russell was keeping out of the way, being suspected of heresy; Wentworth was at Calais; Grey was at Guisnes; and the proxies of the two last noblemen, which in the late parliament were held by Arundel and Paget, were, for some unknown reason, now held by no one. Thus, in a house of seventy-three members only, reduced to sixty-nine by the absence of Howard, Russell, Wentworth, and Grey, Gardiner had thirty-one votes whom he might count upon as certain; he knew his power, and at once made fatal use of it.

For two parliaments the liberal party had prevented him from recovering the power of persecution. He did not attempt to pass the Inquisitorial Act on which he was defeated in the last session. But the act to revive the Lollard Statutes was carried through the House of Commons in the second week in December; on the 15th it was brought up to the Lords; and although those who had before fought the battle of humanity, struggled again bravely in the same cause, this time their numbers were too small; they failed, and the lives of the Protestants were in their enemies' hands.[403] Simultaneously Gardiner obtained for the bishops' courts their long-coveted privilege of arbitrary arrest and discretionary punishment, and the clergy obtained, as they desired, the restoration of their legislative powers. The property question alone disintegrated the phalanx of orthodoxy, and left an opening for the principles of liberty to assert themselves. The faithful and the faithless among the laity were alike participators in church plunder, and were alike nervously sensitive when the current of the reaction ran in the direction of a demand for restitution.

[Footnote 403: "La chambre haulte y faict difficulte pour ce que l'auctorite et jurisdiction des evesques est autorizee et renouvellee, et que le peine semble trop griefve. Mais l'on tient qu'ilz s'accorderont par la pluralite."—Renard to the Emperor, December 21: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

Here, therefore, Paget and his friends chose their ground to maintain the fight.

It has been seen that Pole especially dreaded the appearance of any sort of composition between the country and the papacy. The submission had, in fact, been purchased, but the purchase ought to be disguised. As soon, therefore, as the parliament {p.179} set themselves to the fulfilment of their promise to undo the acts by which England had separated itself from Rome, the legate required a simple statute of repeal. The pope had granted a dispensation; it was enough, and it should be accepted gratefully: the penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly interest; the returning prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet, had made no conditions; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in the terms of it, to the pope's benevolence to them.

The holders of the property, on the other hand, thinking more of the reality than the form, were determined that the Act of Repeal should contain, as nearly as possible, a true statement of their case. They had made conditions, and those conditions had been reluctantly complied with; and, to prevent future errors, the nature of the compact ought to be explained with the utmost distinctness. They had replaced the bishops in authority, and the bishops might be made use of at some future time, indirectly or directly, to disturb the settlement. A fresh pontiff might refuse to recognise the concessions of his predecessors. The papal supremacy, the secularisation of the church property, and the authority of the episcopal courts should, therefore, be interwoven inextricably to stand or fall together; and as the lawyers denied the authority of the Holy See to pronounce upon the matter at all, the legal opinion might be embodied also as a further security.

After a week of violent discussion, the lay interest in the House of Lords found itself the strongest. Pole exclaimed that, if the submission and the dispensation were tied together, it was a simoniacal compact; the pope's holiness was bought and sold for a price, he said, and he would sooner go back to Rome, and leave his work unfinished, than consent to an act so derogatory to the Holy See. But the protest was vain; if the legate was so anxious, his anxiety was an additional reason why the opposition should persevere; if he chose to go, his departure could be endured.[404]

[Footnote 404: "Le parlement faict instance que, en statut de la dicte obedience la dicte dispense soit inseree, ce que le dict cardinal ne veult admettre, a ce que ne semble la dicte obedience avoir este rachetee; et est passee si avant la dicte difficulte que le dict cardinal a declare qu'il retourneroit plutot a Rome et delaisseront la chose imparfaite que consentir a chose contre l'auctorite dudict S. Siege, et de si grande prejudice."—Renard to the Emperor, December: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

So keen was the debate that there was not so much as a Christmas recess. Christmas Day was kept as a holyday. On {p.180} the 26th the struggle began again, and, fortunately, clouds had risen between the House of Commons and the court. Finding more difficulty than he expected in embroiling England with France, Philip, to feel the temper of the people, induced one of the peers to carry a note to the Lower House to request an opinion whether it was not the duty of a son to assist his father. An answer was instantly returned that the question had been already disposed of by the late parliament in the marriage treaty, and the further discussion of it was unnecessary.[405] Secretary Bourne, at the instigation of Gardiner, proposed to revive the claims on the pensions; but he met with no better reception. And the court made a further blunder. Mary had become so accustomed to success, that she assured herself she could obtain all that she desired. The object of the court was to secure the regency for Philip, with full sovereign powers, should she die leaving a child; should she die childless, to make him her successor. The first step would be Philip's coronation, which had been long talked of, and which the House of Commons was now desired to sanction. The House of Commons returned a unanimous refusal.[406]

[Footnote 405: "Ces jours passez, il y eust ung personnaige de la haulte chambre, auquel il sembla pour ne perdre temps debvoir porter, (comme il fist) un billette a la basse par laquelle il mettait en advant s'il n'estoit pas raisonnable que le filz secourust le pere, voullant dire de ce roy a l'Empereur. Ce qui fut si bien recueilly du tiers estat, si promptment et avecques grande raison respondu, comme par le dernier parlement et le traite de mariaige d'entre ce roy et royne cela avoit este et estoit tellement considere, qu'il n'estoit plus besoing mettre telles choses en advant pour les faire entrer a la guerre."—Noailles to the King of France: Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 76.]

[Footnote 406: "Je vous puis dire, Sire, que toutes ces choses ont passe bien loing de l'esperance qu'il avoit, puisqu'il s'attendoit de se faire couronner, comme despuis six jours il en avoit particulierement faict rechercher ceulx de la basse chambre dudict parlement qui luy out tous d'une voix rejette."—Noailles to the King of France: Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 137.]

The effects of these cross influences on the papal statute, though they cannot be traced in detail, must have been not inconsiderable. At length, on the 4th of January, after passing backwards and forwards for a fortnight between the two Houses, the Great Bill, as it was called, emerged, finished, in the form of a petition to the crown:—

"Whereas," so runs the preamble,[407] "since the 20th year of King Henry VIII., of famous memory, much false and erroneous doctrine hath been taught, preached, and written, partly by divers natural-born subjects of this realm, and partly being brought in hither from sundry foreign countries, hath been sown {p.181} and spread abroad within the same—by reason whereof as well the spiritualty as the temporalty of your highness's realm and dominions have swerved from the obedience of the See Apostolic, and declined from the unity of Christ's Church, and so have continued until such time as—your majesty being first raised up by God, and set in the seat royal over us, and then by his divine and gracious Providence knit in marriage with the most noble and virtuous prince the king our sovereign lord your husband—the pope's holiness and the See Apostolic sent hither unto your majesties, as unto persons undefiled, and by God's goodness preserved from the common infection aforesaid, and to the whole realm, the Most Reverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate de Latere, to call us again into the right way, from which we have all this long while wandered and strayed; and we, after sundry and long plagues and calamities, seeing, by the goodness of God, our own errours, have knowledged the same unto the said Most Reverend Father, and by him have been and are (the rather at the contemplation of your majesties) received and embraced into the unity of Christ's Church, upon our humble submission, and promise made for a declaration of our repentance to repeal and abrogate such acts and statutes as had been made in parliament since the said 20th year of the said King Henry VIII., against the supremacy of the See Apostolic, as in our submission exhibited to the said most Reverend Father in God, by your majesties appeareth—it may like your majesty, for the accomplishment of our promise, that all such laws be repealed. That is to say:—

[Footnote 407: 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8.]

"The Act against obtaining Dispensations from Rome for Pluralities and non-Residence.[408]

[Footnote 408: 21 Henry VIII. cap. 13.]

"The Act that no person shall be cited out of the Diocese where he or she dwelleth.[409]

[Footnote 409: 23 Henry VIII. cap. 9.]

"The Act against Appeals to the See of Rome.[410]

[Footnote 410: 24 Henry VIII. cap. 12.]

"The Act against the Payment of Annates and First-fruits to the See of Rome.[411]

[Footnote 411: 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The Act was repealed, but the annates were not restored.]

"The Act for the Submission of the Clergy.[412]

[Footnote 412: 25 Henry VIII. cap. 19.]

"The Act for the Election and Consecration of Bishops.[413]

[Footnote 413: 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20.]

"The Act against Exactions from the See of Rome.[414]

[Footnote 414: 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21.]

"The Act of the Royal Supremacy.[415]

[Footnote 415: 26 Henry VIII. cap. 1.]

{p.182} "The Act for the Consecration of Suffragan Bishops.[416]

[Footnote 416: 26 Henry VIII. cap. 14.]

"The Act for the Reform of the Canon Law.[417]

[Footnote 417: 27 Henry VIII. cap. 15.]

"The Act against the Authority of the Pope.[418]

[Footnote 418: 28 Henry VIII. cap. 10.]

"The Act for the Release of those who had obtained Dispensations from Rome.[419]

[Footnote 419: 28 Henry VIII. cap. 16.]

"The Act authorising the King to appoint Bishops by Letters Patent.[420]

[Footnote 420: 31 Henry VIII. cap. 9.]

The Act of Precontracts and Degrees of Consanguinity.[421]

[Footnote 421: 33 Henry VIII. cap. 38.]

The Act for the King's Style.[422]

[Footnote 422: 35 Henry VIII. cap. 3.]

The Act permitting the Marriage of Doctors of Civil Law."[423]

[Footnote 423: 37 Henry VIII. cap. 17.]

In the repeal of these statutes the entire ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII. was swept away; and, so far as a majority in a single parliament could affect them, the work was done absolutely and with clean completeness.

But there remained two other acts collaterally and accidentally affecting the See of Rome; for the repeal of which the court was no less anxious than for the repeal of the Act of Supremacy, where the parliament were not so complaisant.

Throughout the whole reaction under Mary there was one point on which the laity never wavered. Attempts such as that which has been just mentioned were made incessantly, directly or indirectly, to alter the succession and cut off Elizabeth. They were like the fretful and profitless chafings of waves upon a rock. The two acts on which Elizabeth's claims were rested[424] touched, in one or other of their clauses, the papal prerogative, and were included in the list to be condemned. But, of these acts, "so much only" as affected the See of Rome was repealed. The rest was studiously declared to continue in force.

[Footnote 424: 28 Henry VIII. cap. 7; 35 Henry VIII. cap. 1.]

Yet, with this reservation, the parliament had gone far in their concessions, and it remained for them to secure their equivalent.

They reinstated the bishops, but, in giving back a power which had been so much abused, they took care to protect—not, alas! the innocent lives which were about to be sacrificed—but their own interests. The bishops and clergy of the Province of Canterbury having been made to state their case and their claims, in a petition to the crown, they were then compelled formally to relinquish those claims; and the petition and the relinquishment were embodied in the act as the condition of the {p.183} restoration of the authority of the church courts.[425] In continuation, the Lords and Commons desired that, for the removal "of all occasion of contention, suspicion, and trouble, both outwardly and inwardly, in men's conscience," the pope's holiness, as represented by the legate, "by dispensation, toleration, or permission, as the case required," would recognise all such foundations of colleges, hospitals, cathedrals, churches, schools, or bishoprics as had been established during the schism, would confirm the validity of all ecclesiastical acts which had been performed during the same period; and, finally, would consent that all property, of whatever kind, taken from the church, should remain to its present possessors—"so as all persons having sufficient conveyance of the said lands, goods, and chattels by the common laws, or acts, or statutes of the realm, might, without scruple of conscience, enjoy them without impeachment or trouble, by pretence of any general council, canon, or ecclesiastical law, and clear from all dangers of the censures of the church." The petitions, both of clergy and parliament, the act went on to say, had been considered by the cardinal; and the cardinal had acquiesced. He had undertaken, in the pope's name, that the possessors of either lands or goods should never be molested either then or in time to come, in virtue of any papal decree, or canon, or council; that if any attempt should be made by any bishop or other ecclesiastic to employ the spiritual weapons of the church to extort restitution, such act or acts were declared vain and of none effect. The dispensation was pronounced, nor could the legate's protests avail to prevent it from appearing in the act. He was permitted, only in consideration of the sacrifice, to interweave amidst the legal technicalities some portion of his own feeling. The impious detainers of holy things, while permitted to maintain their iniquity, were reminded of the fate of Belshazzar, and were urged to restore {p.184} the patines, chalices, and ornaments of the altars. The impropriators of benefices were implored, in the mercy of Christ, to remember the souls of the people, and provide for the decent performance of the services of the churches.[426]

[Footnote 425: "Albeit, by the laws of the Church, the bishops and clergy were the defenders and protectors of all ecclesiastical rights, and would therefore in nature be bound to use their best endeavours for the recovery of the lands and goods lost to the Church during the late schism, they, nevertheless, perceiving the tenures of those lands and goods were now complicated beyond power of extrication, and that the attempt to recover them might promote disaffection in the realm, and cause the overthrow of the present happy settlement of religion, preferring public peace to private commodity, and the salvation of souls to worldly possessions, did consent that the present disposition of those lands and goods should remain undisturbed. They besought their Majesties to intercede with the legate for his consent, and, for themselves, they requested, in return, that the lawful jurisdiction of the Church might be restored."—1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec. 31.]

[Footnote 426: "Et licet omnes res mobiles ecclesiarum indistincte iis qui eas tenent relaxaverimus, eos tamen admonitos esse volumus ut ante oculos habentes divini judicii severitatem contra Balthazarem Regem Babylonis, qui vasa sacra non a se sed a patre a templo ablata in profanos usus convertit, ea propriis ecclesiis si extant vel aliis restituant, hortantes etiam et per viscera misericordiae Jesu Christi obtestantes eos omnes quos haec res tangit, ut salutis suae non omnino immemores hoc saltem efficiant, ut ex bonis ecclesiasticis maxime iis quae ratione personatuum et vicariatuum populi ministrorum sustentationi fuerint specialiter destinata, seu aliis cathedralibus et aliis quae nunc extant inferioribus ecclesiis curam animarum exercentibus, ita provideatur, ut eorum pastores commode et honeste juxta eorum qualitatem et statum sustentari possint, et curam animarum laudabiliter exercere."—1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec. 31.]

Here the act might have been expected to end. The nature of the transaction between the parliament and the pope had been made sufficiently clear. Yet, had nothing more been said, the surrender of their claims by the clergy would have implied that they had parted with something which they might have legitimately required. Under the inspiration of the lawyers, therefore, a series of clauses were superadded, explaining that, notwithstanding the dispensation, "The title of all lands, possessions, and hereditaments in their majesties' realms and dominions was grounded in the laws, statutes, and customs of the same, and by their high jurisdiction, authority royal, and crown imperial, and in their courts only, might be impleaded, ordered, tried, and judged, and none otherwise:" and, therefore, "whosoever, by any process obtained out of any ecclesiastical court within the realm or without, or by pretence of any spiritual jurisdiction or otherwise, contrary to the laws of the realm, should inquiet or molest any person or persons, or body politic, for any of the said lands or things above specified, should incur the danger of Premunire, and should suffer and incur the forfeitures and pains contained in the same."[427]

[Footnote 427: Ibid.]

Vainly the clergy had entreated for a limitation or removal of Premunire. That spectre remained unexorcised in all its shadowy terror; and while it survived, the penitence of England went no deeper than the lips, however fine the words and eloquent the phrases in which it was expressed. As some compensation, the Mortmain Act was suspended for twenty years. Yet, as if it were in reply to Pole's appeal, a mischievous provision {p.185} closed the act, that, notwithstanding anything contained in it, laymen entitled to tithes might recover them with the same readiness as before the first day of the present parliament.[428]

[Footnote 428: 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec. 31.]

Such was the great statute of reconciliation with Rome, with which, in the inability to obtain a better, the legate was compelled to be satisfied, and to reconsider his threat of going back to Italy.

This first conflict was no sooner ended than another commenced. The Commons would not consent that Philip should be crowned; but, as the queen said she was enceinte, provision had to be made for a regency, and a bill was introduced into the Upper House which has not survived, but which, in spirit, was unfavourable to the king.[429] Gardiner, in the course of the debate, attempted to put in a clause affecting Elizabeth,[430] but the success was no better than usual. The act went down to the Commons, where, however, it was immediately cancelled. Though the Commons would give Philip no rights as king, they were better disposed towards him than the Lords; and they drew another bill of their own, in which they declared the father to be the natural and fitting guardian of the child. The experience of protectorates, they said, had been uniformly unfortunate, and should the queen die leaving an heir, Philip should be regent of the realm during the minority; if obliged to be absent on the Continent, he might himself nominate his deputy;[431] and so long as it should be his pleasure to remain in England, his person should be under the protection of the laws of high treason.

[Footnote 429: "It was suspected," says Renard, "que le dict act se proposoit a maulvais fin, qu'il estoit contre les traictez et capitulation de marriage pour hereder la couronne qui venoit de maulvais auteurs quilz plustot desiroient le mal dudict S. roy et inquietude dudict royaulme que le bien."—Renard to the Emperor: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 347.]

[Footnote 430: Ibid. vol. iv. p. 348.]

[Footnote 431: "Et que en son absence il y pourra nommer qui luy plaira."—Ibid. vol. iv. p. 348.]

Taking courage from the apparent disposition of the House, the friends of the court proposed that, should the queen die childless, the crown should devolve absolutely upon him for his life.[432] But in this they were going too far. The suggestion was listened to coldly; and Philip, who had really calculated on obtaining from parliament, in some form or other, a security for his succession, despatched Ruy Gomez to Brussels, to consult the {p.186} emperor on the course which should be pursued.[433] On the whole, however, could the bill of the House of Commons be carried, Renard was disposed to be contented; the queen was confident in her hopes of an heir, and it might not be worth while to irritate the people unnecessarily about Elizabeth.[434] The clause empowering Philip to govern by deputy in his absence was especially satisfactory.[435]

[Footnote 432: "Aulcuns particuliers proposaient en ladicte chambre basse que le dict S. roy deust demeurer roy absolut dudict royaulme mourant ladicte dame sans hoirs sa vie durant."—Ibid. vol. iv. p. 348.]

[Footnote 433: "Ruy Gomez est alle vers l'Empereur pour faire entendre les difficultez qu'ilz trouvent de faire demeurer ceste couronne a son dict filz, au cas que la royne sa femme allast de vie a trespaz sans enfans, et d'aultant qu'ilz ont congneu la volunte de ceulx cy estre bien loin de leur intention; et pour ce scavoir par quelz moyens il semblera bon audict Empereur qu'on puisse mettre cela en termes devant la fin de ce parlement."—Noailles.]

[Footnote 434: "Et quant a la declaration de bastardise l'on n'est d'opinion qu'elle se doige entamer aux dict parlement, puisque l'apparence d'heretier est certaine et pour l'evident et congneue contrariete que seroit en toute le royaulme."—Renard to the Emperor: Granvelle Papers, p. 348.]

[Footnote 435: Ibid.]

But the peers, whom the Commons had refused to consult on the new form of the measure, would not part so easily with their own opinions; they adopted the phraseology of the Lower House, but this particular and precious feature in it they pared away. The bill, as it eventually passed, declared Philip regent till his child should be of age, and so long as he continued in the realm; but, at the same time, fatally for the objects at which he was aiming, it bound him again to observe all the articles of the marriage treaty, "which, during the time that he should hold the government, should remain and continue in as full force and strength, as if they were newly inserted and rehearsed in the present act."[436]

[Footnote 436: 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 10.]

The disposition of the House of Lords was the more dangerous, because the bishops, of course, voted with the government, and the strength of the opposition, therefore, implied something like unanimity in the lay peers. The persecuting act had been carried with difficulty, and in the reconciliation with Rome the legate had been studiously mortified. On the succession and the coronation the court had been wholly baffled; and in the Regency Bill they had obtained but half of what they had desired. At the least Mary had hoped to secure for the king the free disposal of the army and the finances, and she had not been able so much as to ask for it. Compelled to rest contented with such advantages as had been secured, the court would not risk the results of further controversy by prolonging the session; and on the 16th of January, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the {p.187} king and queen came to the House of Lords almost unattended, and with an evident expression of dissatisfaction dissolved the parliament.[437]

[Footnote 437: "Ilz sont pour cejourdhuy bien esloignez de ce qu'ilz pensoient faire il y a six sepmaines en ce parlement, ou ilz faisoient compte que ne pouvant couronner ce roy ou luy faire succeder ce royaulme, a tout le moings de luy en faire tumber l'administration, avecques tel pouvoir sur les forces et finances qu'il en eust pen disposer a sa volunte. Toutefois la chose a prins telle issue que pour ce coup il fault qu'il se contente a beaucoup moings qu'il ne s'attendoit.

"Ce qui a tellement despleu a cedict roy et royne, que le 16 de ce mois ilz allerent par eau tous deulx clorre et terminer ledict parlement, sur les quatre heures du soir, assez petitement accompaignez et sans aulcune ceremonie, monstrans et faisans congnoistre a ung chascun avoir quelque grand mescontentement contre l'assemble d'icelluy."—Noailles to the Constable: Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 153.]

I have been particular in relating the proceedings of this parliament, because it marks the point where the flood tide of reaction ceased to ascend, and the ebb recommenced. From the beginning of the Reformation in 1529, two distinct movements had gone on side by side—the alteration of doctrines, and the emancipation of the laity from papal and ecclesiastical domination. With the first, the contemporaries of Henry VIII., the country gentlemen and the peers, who were the heads of families at the period of Mary's accession, had never sympathised; and the tyranny of the Protestants while they were in power had converted a disapproval which time would have overcome, into active and determined indignation. The papacy was a mixed question; the Pilgrims of Grace in 1536, and the Cornish rebels in 1549, had demanded the restoration of the spiritual primacy to the See of St. Peter, and Henry himself, until Pole and Paul III. called on Europe to unite in a crusade against him, had not determined wholly against some degree of concession. In the pope, as a sovereign who claimed reverence and tribute, who interfered with the laws of the land, and maintained at Rome a supreme court of appeal—who pretended a right to depose kings and absolve subjects from their allegiance—who held a weapon in excommunication as terrible to the laity as Premunire was terrible to ecclesiastics—in the pope under this aspect, only a few insignificant fanatics entertained any kind of interest.

But experience had proved that to a nation cut off from the centre of Catholic union, the maintenance of orthodoxy was impossible: the supremacy of the pope, therefore, came back as a tolerated feature in the return to the Catholic faith, and the ecclesiastical courts were reinstated in authority to check unlicensed {p.188} extravagance of opinion. Their restored power, however, was over opinion only; wherever the pretensions of the church would come in collision with the political constitution, wherever they menaced the independence of the temporal magistrate or the tenure of property, there the progress of restoration was checked by the rock, and could eat no further into the soil. The pope and the clergy recovered their titular rank, and in one direction unhappily they recovered the reality of power. But the temporal spoils of the struggle remained with the laity, and if the clergy lifted a hand to retake them, their weapons would be instantly wrenched from their grasp.

If the genuine friends of human freedom had acquiesced without resistance in this conclusion, if the nobility had contented themselves with securing their worldly and political interests, and had made no effort to restrain or modify the exercise of the authority which they were giving back, they might be accused of having accepted a dishonourable compromise. But they did what they could. They worked with such legal means as were in their power, and for two parliaments they succeeded in keeping persecution at bay; they failed in the third, but failed only after a struggle. The Protestants themselves had created, by their own misconduct, the difficulty of defending them; and armed unconstitutional resistance was an expedient to be resorted to, only when it had been seen how the clergy would conduct themselves. English statesmen may be pardoned if they did not anticipate the passions to which the guardians of orthodoxy were about to abandon themselves. Parliament had maintained the independence of the English courts of law. It had maintained the Premunire. It had forbidden the succession to be tampered with. If this was not everything, it was something—something which in the end would be the undoing of all the rest.

The court and the bishops, however, were for the present absolute in their own province. The persecuting acts were once more upon the Statute Book; and when the realities of the debates in parliament had disappeared, the cardinal and the queen could again give the rein to their imagination. They had called up a phantom out of its grave, and they persuaded themselves that they were witnessing the resurrection of the spirit of truth, that heresy was about to vanish from off the English soil, like an exhalation of the morning, at the brightness of the papal return. The chancellor and the clergy were springing at the leash like hounds with the game in view, fanaticism and revenge {p.189} lashing them forward. If the temporal schemes of the court were thwarted, it was, perhaps, because Heaven desired that exclusive attention should be given first to the salvation of souls.

For all past political offences, therefore, there was now an amnesty, and such prisoners as remained unexecuted for Wyatt's conspiracy were released from the Tower on the 18th of January. On the 25th a hundred and sixty priests walked in procession through the London streets, chanting litanies, with eight bishops walking after them, and Bonner carrying the host. On the 28th the cardinal issued his first general instructions. The bishops were directed to call together their clergy in every diocese in England, and to inform them of the benevolent love of the Holy Father, and of the arrival of the legate with powers to absolve them from their guilt. They were to relate the acts of the late parliament, with the reconciliation and absolution of the Lords and Commons; and they were to give general notice that authority had been restored to the ecclesiastical courts, to proceed against the enemies of the faith, and punish them according to law.

A day was then to be fixed on which the clergy should appear with their confessions, and be received into the church. In the assignment of their several penances, a distinction was to be made between those who had taught heresy and those who had merely lapsed into it.

When the clergy had been reconciled, they were again in turn to exhort the laity in all churches and cathedrals, to accept the grace which was offered to them; and that they might understand that they were not at liberty to refuse the invitation, a time was assigned to them within which their submissions must be all completed. A book was to be kept in every diocese, where the names of those who were received were to be entered. A visitation was to be held throughout the country at the end of the spring, and all who had not complied before Easter day, or who, after compliance, "had returned to their vomit", would be proceeded against with the utmost severity of the law.[438]

[Footnote 438: Instructions of Cardinal Pole to the Bishops: Burnet's Collectanea.]

The introduction of the Register was the Inquisition under another name. There was no limit, except in the humanity or the prudence of the bishops, to the tyranny which they would be enabled to exercise. The cardinal professed to desire that, before heretics were punished with death, mild means should {p.190} first be tried with them;[439] the meaning which he attached to the words was illustrated in an instant example.

[Footnote 439: The opinion of Pole, on the propriety of putting men to death for nonconformity, was strictly orthodox. He regarded heretics, he said, as rebellious children, with whom persuasion and mild correction should first be tried. "Nec tamen, negarim fieri posse," he continued, "ut alicujus opiniones tam perniciosae existant, ipseque jam corruptus tam sit ad corrumpendos alios promptus ac sedulus ut non dubitarim dicere eum e vita tolli oportere et tanquam putridum membrum e corpore exsecari. Neque id tamen priusquam ejus sanandi causa omnis leviter medendi tentata sit ratio."—Pole to the Cardinal of Augsburg: Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. iv.]

The instructions were the signal for the bishops to commence business. On the day of their appearance, Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstal, and three other prelates, formed a court in St. Mary Overy's Church, in Southwark; and Hooper, and Rogers, a canon of St. Paul's, were brought up before them.

Rogers had been distinguished in the first bright days of Protestantism. He had been a fellow-labourer with Tyndal and Coverdale, at Antwerp, in the translation of the Bible. Afterwards, taking a German wife, he lived for a time at Wittenberg, not unknown, we may be sure, to Martin Luther. On the accession of Edward, he returned to England, and worked among the London clergy till the end of the reign; and on Mary's accession he was one of the preachers at Paul's Cross who had dared to speak against the reaction. He had been rebuked by the council, and his friends had urged him to fly; but, like Cranmer, he thought that duty required him to stay at his post, and, in due time, without, however, having given fresh provocation, he was shut up in Newgate by Bonner.

Hooper, when the unfortunate garment controversy was brought to an end, had shown by his conduct in his diocese that in one instance at least doctrinal fanaticism was compatible with the loftiest excellence. While the great world was scrambling for the church property, Hooper was found petitioning the council for leave to augment impoverished livings out of his own income.[440] In the hall of his palace at Gloucester a profuse hospitality was offered daily to those who were most in need of it. The poor of the city were invited by relays to solid meat dinners, and the bishop with the courtesy of a gentleman dined with them, and treated them with the same respect as if they had been the highest in the land. He was one of the first persons arrested after Mary's accession, and the cross of persecution at once happily made his peace with Ridley. In an affectionate interchange of letters, the two confessors exhorted each other {p.191} to constancy in the end which both foresaw, determining "if they could not overthrow, at least, to shake those high altitudes" of spiritual tyranny.[441] The Fleet prison had now been Hooper's house for eighteen months. At first, on payment of heavy fees to the warden, he had lived in some degree of comfort; but as soon as his deprivation was declared, Gardiner ordered that he should be confined in one of the common prisoners' wards; where "with a wicked man and a wicked woman" for his companions, with a bed of straw and a rotten counterpane, the prison sink on one side of his cell and Fleet ditch on the other, he waited till it would please parliament to permit the dignitaries of the Church to murder him.[442]

[Footnote 440: Privy Council Register, Edward VI. MS.]

[Footnote 441: Correspondence between Hooper and Ridley: Foxe, vol. vi.]

[Footnote 442: Account of Hooper's Imprisonment, by himself: Foxe, vol. vi.]

These were the two persons with whom the Marian persecution opened. On their appearance in the court, they were required briefly to make their submission. They attempted to argue; but they were told that when parliament had determined a thing, private men were not to call it in question, and they were allowed twenty-four hours to make up their minds. As they were leaving the church Hooper was heard to say, "Come, brother Rogers, must we two take this matter first in hand and fry these faggots?" "Yea, sir, with God's grace," Rogers answered. "Doubt not," Hooper said, "but God will give us strength."

They were remanded to prison. The next morning they were brought again before the court. "The queen's mercy" was offered them, if they would recant; they refused, and they were sentenced to die. Rogers asked to be allowed to take leave of his wife and children. Gardiner, with a savage taunt, rejected the request. The day of execution was left uncertain. They were sent to Newgate to wait the queen's pleasure. On the 30th, Taylor of Hadley, Laurence Sandars, rector of All Hallows, and the illustrious Bradford, were passed through the same forms with the same results. Another, a notorious preacher, called Cardmaker, flinched, and made his submission.

Rogers was to "break the ice," as Bradford described it.[443] On the morning of the 4th of February the wife of the keeper of Newgate came to his bedside. He was sleeping soundly, and she woke him with difficulty to let him know that he was wanted. The Bishop of London was waiting, she said, to degrade him from the priesthood, and he was then to go out and die. Rubbing {p.192} his eyes, and collecting himself, he hurried on his clothes. "If it be thus." he said, "I need not tie my points." Hooper had been sent for also for the ceremony of degradation. The vestments used in the mass were thrown over them, and were then one by one removed. They were pronounced deposed from the priestly office, incapable of offering further sacrifice—except, indeed, the only acceptable sacrifice which man can ever offer, the sacrifice of himself. Again Rogers entreated permission to see his wife, and again he was refused.

[Footnote 443: Bradford to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer: Foxe.]

The two friends were then parted. Hooper was to suffer at Gloucester, and returned to his cell; Rogers was committed to the sheriff, and led out to Smithfield. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. There was a general conviction among them, which was shared probably by Pole and Gardiner, that the Protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." When Rogers appeared, therefore, the exultation of the people in his constancy overpowered the horror of his fate, and he was received with rounds of cheers. His family, whom he was forbidden to part with in private, were waiting on the way to see him—his wife with nine little ones at her side and a tenth upon her breast—and they, too, welcomed him with hysterical cries of joy, as if he were on his way to a festival.[444] Sir Robert Rochester was in attendance at the stake to report his behaviour. At the last moment he was offered pardon if he would give way, but in vain. The fire was lighted. The suffering seemed to be nothing. He bathed his hands in the flame as "if it was cold water," raised his eyes to heaven, and died.

[Footnote 444: "Cejourdhuy a este faicte la confirmation de l'alliance entre le Pape et ce Royaulme par ung sacrifice publique et solempnel d'ung docteur predicant nomme Rogerus, lequel a este brule tout vif pour estre Lutherien; mais il est mort persistant en son opinion, a quoy la plus grand part de ce peuple a prins tel plaisir qu'ilz n'ont eu craincte de luy faire plusieurs acclamations pour comforter son courage; et mesmes ses enfans y ont assistes le consolantes de telle facon qu'il sembloit qu'on le menast aux nopces."—Noailles to Montmorency: Ambassades, vol. iv.]

The same night a party of the royal guard took charge of Hooper, the order of whose execution was arranged by a mandate from the crown. As "an obstinate, false, and detestable heretic," he was to be burned in the city "which he had infected with his pernicious doctrines;" and "forasmuch as being a vainglorious person, and delighting in his tongue," he "might persuade the people into agreement with him, had he liberty to use it," care was to be taken that he should not speak either at {p.193} the stake or on his way to it.[445] He was carried down on horseback by easy stages; and on the forenoon of Thursday, the 7th, he dined at Cirencester, "at a woman's house who had always hated the truth, and spoken all evil she could of him." This woman had shared in the opinion that Protestants had no serious convictions, and had often expressed her belief that Hooper, particularly, would fail if brought to the trial. She found that both in him and in his creed there was more than she had supposed; and "perceiving the cause of his coming, she lamented his case with tears, and showed him all the friendship she could."

[Footnote 445: Mandate for the execution of Hooper: Burnet's Collectanea.]

At five in the evening he arrived at Gloucester. The road, for a mile outside the town, was lined with people, and the mayor was in attendance, with an escort, to prevent a rescue. But the feeling was rather of awe and expectation, and those who loved Hooper best knew that the highest service which he could render to his faith was to die for it.

A day's interval of preparation was allowed him, with a private room. He was in the custody of the sheriff; "and there was this difference observed between the keepers of the bishops' prisons and the keepers of the crown prisons, that the bishops' keepers were ever cruel; the keepers of the crown prisons showed, for the most part, such favour as they might."[446] After a sound night's rest, Hooper rose early, and passed the morning in solitary prayer. In the course of the day, young Sir Anthony Kingston, one of the commissioners appointed to superintend the execution, expressed a wish to see him. Kingston was an old acquaintance, Hooper having been the means of bringing him out of evil ways. He entered the room unannounced. Hooper was on his knees, and, looking round at the intruder, did not at first know him. Kingston told him his name, and then, bursting into tears, said:—

[Footnote 446: Foxe.]

"Oh, consider; life is sweet and death is bitter; therefore, seeing life may be had, desire to live, for life hereafter may do good."

Hooper answered:—

"I thank you for your counsel, yet it is not so friendly as I could have wished it to be. True it is, alas! Master Kingston, that death is bitter and life is sweet; therefore I have settled myself, through the strength of God's Holy Spirit, patiently to pass through the fire prepared for me, desiring you and others to commend me to God's mercy in your prayers."

{p.194} "Well, my Lord," said Kingston, "then there is no remedy, and I will take my leave. I thank God that ever I knew you, for God appointed you to call me, being a lost child. I was both an adulterer and a fornicator, and God, by your good instruction, brought me to the forsaking of the same."

They parted, the tears on both their faces. Other friends were admitted afterwards. The queen's orders were little thought of, for Hooper had won the hearts of the guard on his way from London. In the evening the mayor and aldermen came, with the sheriffs, to shake hands with him. "It was a sign of their good will," he said, "and a proof that they had not forgotten the lessons which he used to teach them." He begged the sheriffs that there might be "a quick fire, to make an end shortly;" and for himself he would be as obedient as they could wish.

"If you think I do amiss in anything," he said, "hold up your fingers, and I have done; for I am not come hither as one enforced or compelled to die; I might have had my life, as is well known, with worldly gain, if I would have accounted my doctrine falsehood and heresy."