"Let your protestation, with the rest of your talk, give judgment against you," answered Martin. "Hinc prima mali labes: of that your execrable perjury, and the king's coloured and too shamefully suffered adultery, came heresy and all mischief into the realm."

The special charges were then proceeded with.

In reply to a series of questions, the archbishop said, that he had been twice married—once before, and once after he was in orders. In the time of Henry, he had kept his wife secretly, "affirming that it was better for him to have his own wife, than to do like other priests, having the wives of others;" and he was not ashamed of what he had done.

He admitted his writings upon the Eucharist; he avowed the authorship of the Catechism, of the Articles, and of a book against the Bishop of Winchester; and these books, and his conduct generally as Archbishop of Canterbury, he maintained and defended. His replies were entered by a notary, to be transmitted to the pope, and for the present the business of the court with him was over.

"Who can stay him that willingly runneth into perdition?" said Brookes. "Who can save that will be lost? God would have you to be saved, and you refuse it."

The archbishop was cited to appear at Rome within eighty days to answer to the charges which would there be laid against him; and in order that he might be able to obey the summons he was returned to his cell in Bocardo prison, and kept there in strict confinement.

Ridley and Latimer came next, and over them the papal mantle flung no protection.

They had been prisoners now for more than two years. What Latimer's occupation had been for all that time, little remains {p.229} to show, except three letters:—one, of but a few lines, was to a Mrs. Wilkinson, thanking her for some act of kindness:[501] another, was a general exhortation to "all unfeigned lovers of God's truth," to be constant in their faith: the third, and most noteworthy, was to some one who had an opportunity of escaping from arrest, and probable martyrdom, by a payment of money, and who doubted whether he might lawfully avail himself of the chance: there was no question of recantation; a corrupt official was ready to accept a bribe and ask no questions.

[Footnote 501: If the gift of a pot of cold water shall not be in oblivion with God, how can God forget your manifold and bountiful gifts, when He shall say unto you. "I was in prison, and you visited me." God grant us all to do and suffer while we be here as may be to His will and pleasure.—Latimer to Mrs. Wilkinson, from Bocardo: Latimer's Remains, p. 444.]

Latimer had not been one of those fanatics who thought it a merit to go in the way of danger and court persecution; but in this present case he shared the misgiving of his correspondent, and did "highly allow his judgment in that he thought it not lawful to redeem himself from the crown, unless he would exchange glory for shame, and his inheritance for a mess of pottage."

"We were created," Latimer said, "to set forth God's glory all the days of our life, which we, as unthankful sinners, have forgotten to do, as we ought, all our days hitherto; and now God, by affliction, doth offer us good occasion to perform one day of our life, our duty. If any man perceive his faith not to abide the fire, let such an one with weeping buy his liberty until he hath obtained more strength, lest the gospel suffer by him some shameful recantation. Let the dead bury the dead. Do you embrace Christ's cross, and Christ shall embrace you. The peace of God be with you for ever."[502]

[Footnote 502: Latimer's Remains, p. 429.]

Ridley's pen had been more busy: he had written a lamentation over the state of England; he had written a farewell letter, taking leave of his friends, and taking leave of life, which, clouded as it was, his sunny nature made it hard to part from: he had written comfort to the afflicted for the gospel, and he had addressed a passionate appeal to the Temporal Lords to save England from the false shepherds who were wasting the flock of Christ. But both he and Latimer had looked death steadily in the face for two years, expecting it every day or hour. It was now come.

On the 30th of September, the three bishops took their seats in the Divinity school. Ridley was led in for trial, and the {p.230} legate's commission was read, empowering them to try him for the opinions which he had expressed in the disputation at Oxford the year before, and "elsewhere in the time of perdition." They were to degrade him from the priesthood if he persisted in his heresies, and deliver him over to the secular arm.

On being first brought before the court, Ridley stood bareheaded. At the names of the cardinal and the pope, he put on his cap, like Cranmer, declining to acknowledge their authority. But his scruples were treated less respectfully than the archbishop's. He was ordered to take it off, and when he refused, it was removed by a beadle.

He was then charged with having denied transubstantiation, and the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, and was urged at length to recant. His opinions on the real presence were peculiar. Christ, he said, was not the sacrament, but was really and truly in the sacrament, as the Holy Ghost was with the water at baptism and yet was not the water. The subtlety of the position was perplexing, but the knot was cut by the crucial question, whether, after the consecration of the elements, the substance of bread and wine remained. He was allowed the night to consider his answer, but he left no doubt what that answer would be. "The bishops told him that they were not come to condemn him, their province was to condemn no one, but only to cut off the heretic from the church, for the temporal judge to deal with as he should think fit." The cowardly sophism had been heard too often. Ridley thanked the court "for their gentleness," "being the same which Christ had of the high priest:" "the high priest said it was not lawful for him to put any man to death, but committed Christ to Pilate; neither would suffer him to absolve Christ, though he sought all the means therefore that he might."

Ridley withdrew, and Latimer was then introduced—eighty years old now—dressed in an old threadbare gown of Bristol frieze, a handkerchief on his head with a night-cap over it, and over that again another cap, with two broad flaps buttoned under the chin. A leather belt was round his waist, to which a Testament was attached; his spectacles, without a case, hung from his neck. So stood the greatest man perhaps then living in the world, a prisoner on his trial, waiting to be condemned to death by men professing to be the ministers of God. As it was in the days of the prophets, so it was in the Son of man's days; as it was in the days of the Son of man, so was it in the Reformers' days; as it was in the days of the Reformers, so will it be to the {p.231} end, so long and so far as a class of men are permitted to hold power, who call themselves the commissioned and authoritative teachers of truth. Latimer's trial was the counterpart of Ridley's: the charge was the same, and the result was the same, except that the stronger intellect vexed itself less with nice distinctions. Bread was bread, said Latimer, and wine was wine; there was a change in the sacrament, it was true, but the change was not in the nature, but the dignity. He too was reprieved for the day. The following morning, the court sat in St. Mary's Church, with the authorities of town and university, heads of houses, mayor, aldermen, and sheriff. The prisoners were brought to the bar. The same questions were asked, the same answers were returned, and sentence was pronounced upon them, as heretics obstinate and incurable.

Execution did not immediately follow. The convictions for which they were about to die had been adopted by both of them comparatively late in life. The legate would not relinquish the hope of bringing them back into the superstition in which they had been born, and had lived so long; and Soto, a Spanish friar, who was teaching divinity at Oxford in the place of Peter Martyr, was set to work on them.

But one of them would not see him, and on the other he could make no impression. Those whom God had cast away, thought Pole, were not to be saved by man;[503] and the 16th of October was fixed upon as the day on which they were to suffer. Ridley had been removed from Bocardo, and was under the custody of the mayor, a man named Irish, whose wife was a bigoted and fanatical Catholic. On the evening of the 15th there was a supper at the mayor's house, where some members of Ridley's family were permitted to be present. He talked cheerfully of his approaching "marriage;" his brother-in-law promised to be in attendance, and, if possible, to bring with him his wife, Ridley's sister. Even the hard eyes of Mrs. Irish were softened to tears, as she listened and thought of what was coming. The brother-in-law offered to sit up through the night, but Ridley said there was no occasion; he "minded to go to bed, and sleep as quietly as ever he did in his life." In the morning he wrote a letter to the queen. As Bishop of London he had granted {p.232} renewals of certain leases, on which he had received fines. Bonner had refused to recognise them, and he entreated the queen, for Christ's sake, either that the leases should be allowed, or that some portion of his own confiscated property might be applied to the repayment of the tenants.[504] The letter was long; by the time it was finished, the sheriff's officers were probably in readiness.

[Footnote 503: A Rev. P. Soto accepi litteras Oxonio datas quibus me certiorem facit quid cum duobus illis haereticis egerit qui jam erant damnati, quorum alter ne loqui quidem cum eo voluit: cum altero est locutus sed nihil profecit, ut facile intelligatur a nemine servari posse quos Deus projecerit. Itaque de illis supplicium est sumptum.—Pole to Philip: Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. v. p. 47.]

[Footnote 504: Foxe, vol. vii. p. 545. It is to the discredit of Mary that she paid no attention to this appeal, and left Bonner's injustice to be repaired by the first parliament of Elizabeth. Commons Journals, 1 Elizabeth.]

The place selected for the burning was outside the north wall of the town, a short stone's throw from the southward corner of Balliol College, and about the same distance from Bocardo prison, from which Cranmer was intended to witness his friends' sufferings.

Lord Williams of Thame was on the spot by the queen's order; and the city guard were under arms to prevent disturbance. Ridley appeared first, walking between the mayor and one of the aldermen. He was dressed in a furred black gown, "such as he was wont to wear being bishop," a furred velvet tippet about his neck, and a velvet cap. He had trimmed his beard, and had washed himself from head to foot; a man evidently nice in his appearance, a gentleman, and liking to be known as such. The way led under the windows of Bocardo, and he looked up; but Soto, the friar, was with the archbishop, making use of the occasion, and Ridley did not see him.[505] In turning round, however, he saw Latimer coming up behind him in the frieze coat, with the cap and handkerchief—the workday costume unaltered, except that under his cloak, and reaching to his feet, the old man wore a long new shroud.

[Footnote 505: The execution, however, was doubtless appointed to take place on that spot, that Cranmer might see it. An old engraving in Foxe's Martyrs represents him as on the leads of the Tower while the burning was going forward, looking at it, and praying.]

"Oh! be ye there?" Ridley exclaimed.

"Yea," Latimer answered. "Have after as fast as I can follow."

Ridley ran to him and embraced him. "Be of good heart, brother," he said. "God will either assauge the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it." They knelt and prayed together, and then exchanged a few words in a low voice, which were not overheard.

Lord Williams, the vice-chancellor, and the doctors were seated on a form close to the stake. A sermon was preached, {p.233} "a scant one," "of scarce a quarter of an hour;" and then Ridley begged that for Christ's sake he might say a few words.

Lord Williams looked to the doctors, one of whom started from his seat, and laid his hand on Ridley's lips—

"Recant," he said, "and you may both speak and live."

"So long as the breath is in my body," Ridley answered, "I will never deny my Lord Christ and his known truth. God's will be done in me. I commit our cause," he said, in a loud voice, turning to the people, "to Almighty God, who shall indifferently judge all."

The brief preparations were swiftly made. Ridley gave his gown and tippet to his brother-in-law, and distributed remembrances among those who were nearest to him. To Sir Henry Lee he gave a new groat, to others he gave handkerchiefs, nutmegs, slices of ginger, his watch, and miscellaneous trinkets; "some plucked off the points of his hose;" "happy," it was said, "was he that might get any rag of him."

Latimer had nothing to give. He threw off his cloak, stood bolt upright in his shroud, and the friends took their places on either side of the stake.

"O Heavenly Father," Ridley said, "I give unto thee most humble thanks, for that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee even unto death. Have mercy, O Lord, on this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies."

A chain was passed round their bodies, and fastened with a staple.

A friend brought a bag of powder and hung it round Ridley's neck.

"I will take it to be sent of God," Ridley said. "Have you more, for my brother?"

"Yea, sir," the friend answered. "Give it him betimes then," Ridley replied, "lest ye be too late."

The fire was then brought. To the last moment, Ridley was distressed about the leases, and, bound as he was, he entreated Lord Williams to intercede with the queen about them.

"I will remember your suit," Lord Williams answered. The lighted torch was laid to the faggots. "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley," Latimer cried at the crackling of the flames; "Play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God's, grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," cried Ridley. "Domine, recipe spiritum meum."

{p.234} "O Father of Heaven," said Latimer, on the other side, "receive my soul."

Latimer died first: as the flame blazed up about him, he bathed his hands in it, and stroked his face. The powder exploded, and he became instantly senseless.

His companion was less fortunate. The sticks had been piled too thickly over the gorse that was under them; the fire smouldered round his legs, and the sensation of suffering was unusually protracted. "I cannot burn," he called; "Lord have mercy on me; let the fire come to me; I cannot burn." His brother-in-law, with awkward kindness, threw on more wood, which only kept down the flame. At last some one lifted the pile with "a bill," and let in the air; the red tongues of fire shot up fiercely, Ridley wrested himself into the middle of them, and the powder did its work.

The horrible sight worked upon the beholders as it has worked since, and will work for ever, while the English nation survives—being, notwithstanding, as in justice to those who caused these accursed cruelties, must never be forgotten—a legitimate fruit of the superstition, that, in the eyes of the Maker of the world, an error of belief is the greatest of crimes; that while for all other sins there is forgiveness, a mistake in the intellectual intricacies of speculative opinion will be punished not with the brief agony of a painful death, but with tortures to which there shall be no end.

But martyrdom was often but a relief from more barbarous atrocities. In the sad winter months which were approaching, the poor men and women, who, untried and uncondemned, were crowded into the bishops' prisons, experienced such miseries as the very dogs could scarcely suffer and survive. They were beaten, they were starved, they were flung into dark, fetid dens, where rotting straw was their bed, their feet were fettered in the stocks, and their clothes were their only covering, while the wretches who died in their misery were flung out into the fields where none might bury them.[506]

[Footnote 506: Foxe, vols. vii. viii., passim, especially vol. vii. p. 605. Philpot's Petition, Ibid. p. 682; and an account of the Prisons at Canterbury, vol. viii. p. 255. At Canterbury, after Pole became archbishop, his archdeacon, Harpsfeld, had fifteen prisoners confined together, of whom five were starved to death; the other ten were burnt. But before they suffered, and while one of those who died of hunger still survived, they left on record the following account of their treatment, and threw it out of a window of the castle:—

"Be it known to all men that shall read, or hear read, these our letters, that we, the poor prisoners of the castle of Canterbury, for God's truth, are kept and lie in cold irons, and our keeper will not suffer any meat to be brought to us to comfort us. And if any man do bring in anything—as bread, butter, cheese, or any other food—the said keeper will charge them that so bring us anything (except money or raiment), to carry it thence again; or else, if he do receive any food of any for us, he doth keep it for himself, and he and his servants do spend it; so that we have nothing thereof: and thus the keeper keepeth away our victuals from us; insomuch that there are four of us prisoners there for God's truth famished already, and thus it is his mind to famish us all. And we think he is appointed thereto by the bishops and priests, and also of the justices, so to famish us; and not only us of the said castle, but also all other prisoners in other prisons for the like cause to be also famished. Notwithstanding, we write not these our letters to that intent we might not afford to be famished for the Lord Jesus' sake, but for this cause and intent, that they having no law so to famish us in prison, should not do it privily, but that the murderers' hearts should be openly known to all the world, that all men may know of what church they are, and who is their father."—Foxe, vol. viii. p. 255.]

{p.235} Lollard's Tower and Bonner's coal-house were the chief scenes of barbarity. Yet there were times when even Bonner loathed his work. He complained that he was troubled with matters that were none of his; the bishops in other parts of England thrust upon his hands offenders whom they dared not pardon and would not themselves put to death; and, being in London, he was himself under the eyes of the court, and could not evade the work.[507] Against Bonner, however, the world's voice rose the loudest. His brutality was notorious and unquestionable, and a published letter was addressed to him by a lady, in which he was called the "common cut-throat and general slaughter-slave to all the bishops in England."[508] "I am credibly informed," said this person to him, "that your lordship doth believe, and hath in secret said, there is no hell. The very Papists themselves begin now to abhor your bloodthirstiness, and speak shame of your tyranny. Every child can call you by name, and say, 'Bloody Bonner is Bishop of London!' and every man hath it as perfect upon his fingers' ends as his Paternoster, how many you for your part have burned with fire and famished in prison this three-quarters of a year. Though your lordship believe neither heaven nor hell, neither God nor devil, yet if your lordship love your own honesty, you were best to surcease from this cruel burning and murdering. Say not but a woman gave you warning. As for the obtaining your popish purpose in suppressing of the truth, I put you out of doubt, you shall not obtain it so long as you go this way to work as you do. You have lost the hearts of twenty thousand that were rank Papists within this twelve months."

[Footnote 507: See especially his conversation with Philpot: Foxe, vol. vii. p. 611.]

[Footnote 508: Godly Letter addressed to Bonner: Ibid. p. 712.]

In the last words lay the heart of the whole matter. The {p.236} martyrs alone broke the spell of orthodoxy, and made the establishment of the Reformation possible.

In the midst of such scenes the new parliament was about to meet. Money was wanted for the crown debts, and the queen was infatuated enough still to meditate schemes for altering the succession, or, at least, for obtaining the consent of the legislature to Philip's coronation, that she might bribe him back to her side.[509]

[Footnote 509: Pour le faire plustost retourner elle fera toutes choses incredible en ce dict parlement en faveur dudict Sieur.... L'on dict que l'occasion pour laquelle le dict parlement a este assemble, ne tend a aultre fin que pour faire s'il est possible tomber le gouvernement absolu de ce royaulme entre les mains de ce roy.—Noailles to the King of France, October 21: Ambassades, vol. v.]

As the opening of the session approached, Elizabeth was sent again from the court to be out of sight and out of reach of intrigue; and Mary had the mortification of knowing that her sister's passage through London was a triumphal procession. The public enthusiasm became so marked at last that the princess was obliged to ride forward with a few servants, leaving the gentlemen who were her escort to keep back the people. Fresh alarms, too, had risen on the side of the papacy. Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV. as he was now named, on assuming the tiara, had put out a bull among his first acts, reasserting the decision of the canons on the sanctity of the estates of the church, and threatening laymen who presumed to withhold such property from its lawful owners with anathemas. In a conversation with Lord Montague, the English ambassador at Rome, he had used language far from reassuring on the concessions of his predecessor; and some violent demonstration would undoubtedly have been made in parliament, had not Paul been persuaded to except England especially from the general edict.

Even then the irritation was not allayed, and a whole train of sorrows was in store for Mary from the violent character of Caraffa. Political popes have always been a disturbing element in the European system. Paul IV., elected by French influence, showed his gratitude by plunging into the quarrel between France and the Empire. He imprisoned Imperialist cardinals in St. Angelo; he persecuted the Colonnas on account of their Imperialist tendencies, levelled their fortresses, and seized their lands. The Cardinal of Lorraine hastened to Rome to conclude an alliance offensive and defensive on behalf of France; and the queen, distracted between her religion and her duty as a wife, saw Philip on the point of being drawn into parricidal hostility {p.237} with his and her spiritual father. Nay, she herself might be involved in the same calamity; for so bitter was the English humour that the liberal party in the council were inclined to take part in the war, if they would have the pope for an enemy; and Philip would be too happy in their support to look too curiously to the motives of it.[510]

[Footnote 510: Ce soit ung argument plus grand que tout aultre pour faire entrer ceulx cy a la guerre ouverte; estant ceste nation comme ung chascung scait fort ennemie de sadict Sainctite.—Noailles to Montmorency: Ambassades, vol. v. p. 188.]

A calamity of a more real kind was also approaching Mary. She was on the point of losing the only able minister on whose attachment she could rely. Gardiner's career on earth was about to end.

On the 6th of October, Noailles described the Bishop of Winchester as sinking rapidly, and certain to die before Christmas,[511] yet still eager and energetic, perfectly aware of his condition, yet determined to work till the last.

[Footnote 511: Same to the same.—Ibid. p. 150.]

Noailles himself had two hours' conversation with him on business: when he took his leave, the chancellor conducted him through the crowded ante-chamber to the door, leaning heavily on his arm. "The people thought he was dead," he said, "but there was some life in him yet."

Notwithstanding his condition, he roused himself for the meeting of parliament on the 21st; he even spoke at the opening, and he was in his place in the House of Lords on the second day of the session; but his remaining strength broke down immediately after, and he died at Whitehall Palace on the 13th of November. The Protestants, who believed that he was the author of the persecution, expected that it would cease with his end; they were deceived in their hopes, for their sufferings continued unabated. In their opinion of his conduct they were right, yet right but partially.

Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was the pupil of Wolsey, and had inherited undiminished the pride of the ecclesiastical order. If he went with Henry in his separation from the papacy, he intended that the English Church should retain, notwithstanding, unimpaired authority and undiminished privileges. The humiliations heaped upon the clergy by the king had not discouraged him, for the Catholic doctrine was maintained unshaken, and so long as the priesthood was regarded as a peculiar order, gifted with supernatural powers, so long as the sacraments were held essential conditions of {p.238} salvation, and the priesthood alone could administer them, he could feel assured that, sooner or later, their temporal position would be restored to them.

Thus, while loyal to the royal supremacy, the Bishop of Winchester had hated heresy, and hated all who protected heresy with a deadly hatred. He passed the Six Articles Bill; he destroyed Cromwell; he laboured with all his might to destroy Cranmer; and, at length, when Henry was about to die, he lent himself, though too prudently to be detected, to the schemes of Surrey and the Catholics upon the regency. The failure of those schemes, and the five years of arbitrary imprisonment under Edward, had not softened feelings already more than violent. He returned to power exasperated by personal injury; and justified, as he might easily believe himself to be, in his opinion of the tendencies of heresy, by the scandals of the Protestant administration, he obtained, by unremitting assiduity, the re-enactment of the persecuting laws, which he himself launched into operation with imperious cruelty.

Yet there was something in Gardiner's character which was not wholly execrable. For thirty years he worked unweariedly in the service of the public; his judgment as a member of council was generally excellent; and Somerset, had he listened to his remonstrances, might have saved both his life and credit. He was vindictive, ruthless, treacherous, but his courage was indomitable. He resisted Cromwell till it became a question which of the two should die, and the lot was as likely to have fallen to him as to his rival. He would have murdered Elizabeth with the forms of law or without, but Elizabeth was the hope of all that he most detested. He was no dreamer, no high-flown enthusiast, but he was a man of clear eye and hard heart, who had a purpose in his life which he pursued with unflagging energy. Living as he did in revolutionary times, his hand was never slow to strike when an enemy was in his power; yet in general when Gardiner struck, he stooped, like an eagle, at the nobler game, leaving the linen-drapers and apprentices to "the mousing owls." His demerits were vast; his merits were small, yet something.

"Well, well," as some one said, winding up his epitaph, "Mortuus est, et sepultus est, et descendit ad inferos; let us say no more about him."[512]

[Footnote 512: Special Grace appointed to have been said at York on the Accession of Elizabeth.—Tanner MSS., Bodleian Library.]

To return to the parliament. On the 23rd of October a bull {p.239} of Paul IV, confirming the dispensation of Julius, was read in the House of Commons.[513] On the 29th the crown debts were alleged as a reason for demanding a subsidy. The queen had been prevented from indulging her desire for a standing army. The waste and peculation of the late reign had been put an end to; and the embarrassments of the treasury were not of her creation. Nevertheless the change in social habits, and the alteration in the value of money, had prevented the reduction of the expenditure from being carried to the extent which had been contemplated; the marriage had been in many ways costly, and large sums had been spent in restoring plundered church plate. So great had been the difficulties of the treasury, that, although fresh loans had been contracted with the Jews, the wages of the household were again two years in arrear.

[Footnote 513: Commons Journals, 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary.]

Parliament showed no disposition to be illiberal; they only desired to be satisfied that if they gave money it would be applied to the purpose for which it was demanded. The Subsidy Bill, when first introduced, was opposed in the House of Commons on the ground that the queen would give the keys of the treasury to her husband; and after a debate, a minority of a hundred voted for refusing the grant.[514] The general spirit of the Houses, however, was, on the whole, more generous. Two fifteenths were voted in addition to the subsidy, which the queen, on her side, was able to decline with thanks.[515] The money question was settled quietly, and the business of the session proceeded.

[Footnote 514: Commons Journals, 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary.—Noailles to the Constable, October 31.]

[Footnote 515: Commons Journal. Noailles says that the queen demanded the fifteenths, and that the Commons refused to grant them. The account in the Journals is confirmed by a letter of Lord Talbot to the Earl of Shrewsbury.—Lodge's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 207.]

If her subjects were indifferent to their souls, Mary was anxious about her own. On the 11th of November, a bill was read a first time in the House of Lords, "whereby the king's and queen's majesties surrendered, and gave into the hands of the pope's holiness the first-fruits and tenths of all ecclesiastical benefices." The reception of the measure can be traced in the changes of form which it experienced. The payment of annates to the See of Rome was a grievance, both among clergy and laity, of very ancient standing. The clergy, though willing to be relieved from paying first-fruits to the crown, were not so loyal to the successors of St. Peter as to desire to restore their contributions into the old channel; while the laity, who from {p.240} immemorial time had objected on principle to the payment of tribute to a foreign sovereign, were now, through their possession of the abbey lands and the impropriation of benefices, immediately interested parties. On the 19th of November fifty members of the House of Commons waited, by desire, upon the queen, to hear her own resolutions, and to listen to an admonition from the cardinal.[516] On the 20th a second bill was introduced, "whereby the king's and queen's majesties surrendered and gave the first-fruits and tenths into the hands of the laity."[517] The crown would not receive annates longer in any form; and as laymen liable to the payment of them could not conveniently be required to pay tribute to Rome, it was left to their consciences to determine whether they would follow the queen's example in a voluntary surrender.

[Footnote 516: Mr. Speaker declared the queen's pleasure to be spoken yesterday, for to depart with the first-fruits and tenths; and my Lord Cardinal spake for the tithes and impropriations of benefices to be spiritual.—Commons Journals, November 20: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary.]

[Footnote 517: Lords Journals.]

Even then, however, the original bill could not pass so long as the pope's name was in it, or so long as the pope was interested in it. As it left the Lords, it was simply a surrender, on behalf of the crown, of all claims whatever upon first-fruits of benefices, whether from clergy or laity. The tenths were to continue to be paid. Lay impropriators should pay them to the crown. The clergy should pay them to the legate, by whom they were to be applied to the discharge of the monastic pensions, from which the crown was to be relieved. The crown at the same time set a precedent of sacrifice by placing in the legate's hands unreservedly every one of its own impropriations.[518]

[Footnote 518: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. iv.]

In this form the measure went down to the Commons, where it encountered fresh and violent opposition. To demand a subsidy in one week, and in the next to demand permission to sacrifice a sixth part of the ordinary revenue, was inconsistent and irrational. The laity had no ambition to take upon themselves the burdens of the clergy. On the 27th there was a long discussion;[519] on the 3rd of December the bill was carried, but with an adverse minority of a hundred and twenty-six, against a majority of a hundred and ninety-three.[520]

[Footnote 519: Commons Journals.]

[Footnote 520: Ibid. The temper of the opposition may be gathered from the language of a pamphlet which appeared on the accession of Elizabeth.

The writer describes the clergy as "lads of circumspection, and verily filii hujus saeculi." He complains of their avarice in inducing the queen, "at one chop, to give away fifty thousand pounds and better yearly from the inheritance of her crown unto them, and many a thousand after, unto those idle hypocrites besides."

He then goes on:—

"And yet this great profusion of their prince did so smally serve their hungry guts, like starven tikes that were never content with more than enough; at all their collations, assemblies, and sermons, they never left yelling and yelping in pursuit of their prey, Restore! Restore! These devout deacons nothing regarded how some for long service and travail abroad, while they sat at home—some for shedding his blood in defence of his prince's cause and country, while they with safety, all careless in their cabins, in luxe and lewdness, did sail in a sure port—some selling his antient patrimony for purchase of these lands, while they must have all by gift a God's name—they nothing regarding, I say, what injury to thousands, what undoing to most men, what danger of uproar and tumult throughout the whole realm, and what a weakening to the State, should thereby arise; with none of these matters were they moved a whit, but still held on their cry, Restore! Restore!"

"And that ye may be sure they meant nothing more than how to have all, and that with all haste; after that their Pope, this seditious Paul IV., that now is, had sent hither his bulls and his thunderbolts for that cause, and other (and yet little restored, because the world, indeed, would not be so faced out of their livelihood) sundry of our prelates, like hardy champions, slacke not a whit themselves to thrust lords out of their lands, and picked quarrels to their lawful possessions. Well. Let nobility consider the case as they list; but, as some think, if the clergy come to be masters again, they will teach them a school point. Christ taught the young man that perfection was in vade, vende, et da, not in mane, acquire, accumula."—Grace to be said at the Accession of Elizabeth: Tannes MSS., Bodleian Library.]

{p.241} Language had been heard in both Houses, during the debates, of unusual violence. Bradford's letter on the succession was circulating freely among the members, and the parliament from which the queen anticipated so much for her husband's interests proved the most intractable with which she had had to deal.[521] After the difficulty which she had experienced with the first-fruits, she durst not so much as introduce the question of the crown.[522] She attempted a bill for the restoration of the forfeited lands of the Howards, but it was lost.[523] The Duchess of Suffolk,[524] with {p.242} several other persons of rank, had lately joined the refugees on the Continent; she attempted to carry a measure for the confiscation of their property, and failed again.[525] A sharp blow was dealt also at the recovered privileges of ecclesiastics. A man named Benet Smith, who had been implicated in a charge of murder, and was escaping under plea of clergy, was delivered by a special act into the hands of justice.[526] The leaven of the heretical spirit was still unsubdued. The queen dissolved her fourth parliament on the 9th of December; and several gentlemen who had spoken out with unpalatable freedom were seized and sent to the Tower. She was unwise, thought Noailles; such arbitrary acts were only making her day by day more detested, and, should opportunity offer, would bring her to utter destruction.

[Footnote 521: Noailles.]

[Footnote 522: Michele, the Venetian ambassador, in his curious but most inaccurate account of England during this reign, states that the queen had it in her power to cut off Elizabeth from the succession, but that she was prevented from doing it by Philip. Michele's information suffered from the policy of Venice. Venice held aloof from the complications of the rest of Europe, and her representatives were punished by exclusion from secrets of state. The letters of Noailles might be suspected, but the correspondence of Renard with Charles V. leaves no doubt whatever either as to the views of the Spaniards towards Elizabeth, of their designs on the crown, or of the causes by which they were baffled.]

[Footnote 523: Noailles to the King of France, December 16.]

[Footnote 524: The witty Katherine Brandon, widow of Henry VIII.'s Charles Brandon, married to Richard Bertie. She was a lady of advanced opinions, between whom and the Bishop of Winchester there were some passages-at-arms. She dressed a dog in a rochet on one occasion, and called it Bishop Gardiner.

Gardiner himself said that he was once at a party at the Duke of Suffolk's, and it was a question who should take the duchess down to dinner. She wanted to go with her husband; but as that could not be, "My lady," said Gardiner, "taking me by the hand, for that my lord would not take her himself, said that, forasmuch as she could not sit down with my lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom she loved worst."—Holinshed.]

[Footnote 525: Et de mesme fust rejette audict parlement a la grande confusion de ladicte dame ung aultre bill, par lequel elle vouloit confisquer les personnes et biens de ceulx qui sont transfuges de ce royaulme despuis son advenement a la couronne.—Noailles to the King of France, December 16: Ambassades, vol. v.]

[Footnote 526: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. 17.]

Unwise she was indeed, and most unhappy. When the poor results of the session became known to Philip, he sent orders that such of his Spanish suite as he had left behind him should no longer afflict themselves with remaining in a country which they abhorred; he summoned them all to come to him except Alphonso, his confessor. "The queen wept and remonstrated; more piteous lamentations were never heard from woman." "How," exclaimed a brother of Noailles,[527] "is she repaid now for having quarrelled with her subjects, and set aside her father's will! The misery which she suffers in her husband's absence cannot so change her but that she will risk crown and life to establish him in the sovereignty, and thus recall him to her side. Nevertheless, she will fail, and he will not come. He is weary of having laboured so long in a soil so barren; while she who feels old age stealing so fast upon her, cannot endure to lose what she has bought so dearly."

[Footnote 527: Francois de Noailles to Madame de Roye: Ambassades, vol. v.]

Nothing now was left for Mary but to make such use as she {p.243} was able of the few years of life which were to remain to her. If Elizabeth, the hated Anne Boleyn's hated daughter, was to succeed her on the throne, and there was no remedy, it was for her to work so vigorously in the restoration of the church that her labours could not afterwards be all undone. At her own expense she began to rebuild and refound the religious houses. The Grey Friars were replaced at Greenwich, the Carthusians at Sheene, the Brigittines at Sion. The house of the Knights of St. John in London was restored; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster gave way to Abbot Feckenham and a college of monks. Yet these touching efforts might soften her sorrow but could not remove it. Philip was more anxious than ever about the marriage of Elizabeth; and as Mary could not overcome her unwillingness to sanction by act of her own Elizabeth's pretensions, Philip wrote her cruel letters, and set his confessor to lecture her upon her duties as a wife.[528] These letters she chiefly spent her time in answering, shut up almost alone, trusting no one but Pole, and seeing no one but her women. If she was compelled to appear in public, she had lost her power of self-control; she would burst into fits of violent and uncontrollable passion; she believed every one about her to be a spy in the interest of the Lords. So disastrously miserable were all the consequences of her marriage, that it was said, the pope, who had {p.244} granted the dispensation for the contraction of it, had better grant another for its dissolution.[529] Unfortunately there was one direction open in which her frenzy could have uncontrolled scope.

[Footnote 528: Among the surviving memorials of Mary, none is more affecting than a rough copy of an answer to one of these epistles, which is preserved in the Cotton Library. It is painfully scrawled, and covered with erasures and corrections, in which may be traced the dread in which she stood of offending Philip. Demander license de votre Haultesse, is crossed through and altered into Supplier tres humblement. Where she had described herself as obeissante, she enlarged the word into tres obeissante; and the tone throughout is most piteous. She entreats the king to appoint some person or persons to talk with her about the marriage. She says that the conscience which she has about it she has had for twenty-four years; that is to say, since Elizabeth's birth. Nevertheless, she will agree to Philip's wish, if the realm will agree. She is ready to discuss it; but she complains, so far as she dares complain, of the confessor. The priests trouble her, she says. "Alfonsez especialement me proposoit questions si obscures que mon simple entendement ne les pouvoit comprehendre, comme pour exemple il me demandoit qui estoit roy au temps de Adam, et disoit comme j'estoy obligee de faire ceste marriage par ung article de mon Credo, mais il ne l'exposoit.... Aultres choses trop difficiles pour moy d'entendre ... ainsy qu'il estoit impossible en si peu de temps de changer ... conscience.... Votre Haultesse escript en ses dictes lettres que si le consent de ce royaulme iroyt au contraire, Votre Haultesse en imputeroit la coulpe en moy. Je supplie en toute humilite votre Haultesse de differer ceste affaire jusques a votre retour; et donques Votre Haultesse sera juge si je seray coulpable ou non. Car autrement je vinray en jalousie de Votre Haultesse la quelle sera pire a moy que mort; car j'en ay commence deja d'en taster trop a mon grand regret," etc.—Cotton MSS., Titus, B. 2: printed very incorrectly in Strype's Memorials, vol. vi. 418.]

[Footnote 529: Noailles.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his trial and his citation to Rome, addressed to the queen a singular letter; he did not ask for mercy, and evidently he did not expect mercy: he reasserted calmly the truth of the opinions for which he was to suffer; but he protested against the indignity done to the realm of England, and the degradation of the royal prerogative, "when the king and queen, as if they were subjects in their own realm, complained and required justice at a stranger's hand against their own subjects, being already condemned to death by their own laws." "Death," he said, "could not grieve him much more than to have his most dread and gracious sovereigns, to whom under God he owed all obedience, to be his accusers in judgment before a stranger and outward power."[530]

[Footnote 530: Cranmer to Queen Mary: Jenkins, vol. i. p. 369. This protest was committed to Pole to answer, who replied to it at length.

The authority of the pope in a secular kingdom, the legate said, was no more a foreign power than "the authority of the soul of man coming from heaven in the body generate on earth." "The pope's laws spiritual did no other but that the soul did in the body, giving life to the same, confirming and strengthening the same;" and that it was which the angel signified in Christ's conception, declaring what his authority should be, that he should sit super domum David, which was a temporal reign, ut confirmet illud et corroboret, as the spiritual laws did.

The quotation is inaccurate. The words in the Vulgate are, Dabit illi Dominus sedem David patris ejus: et regnabit in domo Jacob in aeternum.

The letter contains another illustration of Pole's habit of mind. "There was never spiritual man," he says, "put to execution according to the order of the laws of the realm but he was first by the canon laws condemned and degraded; whereof there be as many examples afore the time of breaking the old order of the realm these last years, as hath been delinquents. Let the records be seen. And specially this is notable of the Bishop of ——, which, being imprisoned for high treason, the king would not proceed to his condemnation and punishment afore he had the pope's bull given him...."

The historical argument proceeded smoothly up to the name, which, however, was not and is not to be found. Pole was probably thinking of Archbishop Scrope, who, however, unfortunately for the argument, was put to death without the pope's sanction.—Draft of a Letter from Cardinal Pole to Cranmer: Harleian MSS. 417.]

The appeal was intended perhaps to provoke the queen to let him die with his friends, in whose example and companionship he felt his strength supported. But it could not be; he was the spectator of their fate, while his own was still held at a distance before him. He witnessed the agonies of Ridley; and the long imprisonment, the perpetual chafing of Soto the Spanish friar, {p.245} and the dreary sense that he was alone, forsaken of man, and perhaps of God, began to wear into the firmness of a many-sided susceptible nature. Some vague indication that he might yield had been communicated to Pole by Soto before Christmas,[531] and the struggle which had evidently commenced was permitted to protract itself. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, the father of the Reformed Church of England, could be brought to a recantation, that one victory might win back the hearts which the general constancy of the martyrs was drawing off in tens of thousands. Time, however, wore on, and the archbishop showed no definite signs of giving way. On the 14th of December, a mock trial was instituted at Rome; the report of the examination at Oxford was produced, and counsel were heard on both sides, or so it was pretended. Paul IV. then pronounced the final sentence, that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, having been accused by his sovereigns of divers crimes and misdemeanours, it had been proved against him that he had followed the teachings of John Wicliff and Martin Luther of accursed memory;[532] that he had published books containing matters of heresy, and still obstinately persisted in those his erroneous opinions: he was therefore declared to be anathema, to be deprived of his office, and having been degraded, he was to be delivered over to the secular arm.

[Footnote 531: Pole to Philip: Epistolae Reg. Pol., vol. v. p. 47.]

[Footnote 532: Damnatae memoriae. Sentence Definitive against Thomas Cranmer: Foxe, vol. viii.]

There was some delay in sending the judgment to England. It arrived at the beginning of February, and on the 14th, Thirlby and Bonner went down to finish the work at Oxford. The court sat this time in Christ Church Cathedral. Cranmer was brought to the bar, and the papal sentence was read. The preamble declared that the cause had been heard with indifference, that the accused had been defended by an advocate, that witnesses had been examined for him, that he had been allowed every opportunity to answer for himself. "O Lord," he exclaimed, "what lies be these! that I, being in prison and never suffered to have counsel or advocate at home, should produce witness and appoint counsel at Rome; God must needs punish this shameless lying."

Silence would perhaps have been more dignified; to speak at all was an indication of infirmity. As soon as the reading was finished, the archbishop was formally arrayed in his robes, and when the decoration was completed, Bonner called out in exultation:

{p.246} "This is the man that hath despised the pope's holiness, and now is to be judged by him; this is the man that hath pulled down so many churches, and now is come to be judged in a church; this is the man that hath contemned the blessed sacrament of the altar, and now is come to be condemned before that blessed sacrament hanging over the altar; this is the man that, like Lucifer, sat in the place of Christ upon an altar[533] to judge others, and now is come before an altar to be judged himself."[534]

[Footnote 533: An allusion to a scaffold in St. Paul's Church, on which Cranmer had sat as a commissioner; said to have been erected over an altar.]

[Footnote 534: Foxe, vol. viii. p. 73.]

Thirlby checked the insolence of his companion. The degradation was about to commence, when the archbishop drew from his sleeve an appeal "to the next Free General Council that should be called." It had been drawn after consultation with a lawyer, in the evident hope that it might save or prolong his life,[535] and he attempted to present it to his judges. But he was catching at straws, as in his clearer judgment he would have known. Thirlby said sadly that the appeal could not be received; his orders were absolute to proceed.

[Footnote 535: Cranmer to a Lawyer: Jenkins, vol. i. p. 384.]

The robes were stripped off in the usual way. The thin hair was clipped. Bonner with his own hands scraped the finger points which had been touched with the oil of consecration; "Now are you lord no longer," he said, when the ceremony was finished. "All this needed not," Cranmer answered; "I had myself done with this gear long ago."

He was led off in a beadle's threadbare gown, and a tradesman's cap; and here for some important hours authentic account of him is lost. What he did, what he said, what was done or what was said to him, is known only in its results, or in Protestant tradition. Tradition said that he was taken from the cathedral to the house of the Dean of Christ Church, where he was delicately entertained, and worked upon with smooth words, and promises of life. "The noblemen," he was told, "bare him good-will; he was still strong, and might live many years, why should he cut them short?" The story may contain some elements of truth. But the same evening, certainly, he was again in his cell; and among the attempts to move him which can be authenticated, there was one of a far different kind; a letter addressed to him by Pole to bring him to a sense of his condition.

"Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ," so the legate addressed a prisoner in the expectation of {p.247} death,[536] "hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed; for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds. There are some who tell me that, in obedience to this command, I ought not to address you, or to have any dealings with you, save the dealings of a judge with a criminal. But Christ came not to judge only, but also to save; I call upon you, not to enter into your house, for so I should make myself a partaker with you; my desire is only to bring you back to the church which you have deserted.

[Footnote 536: Epist. Reg. Pol., vol. v. p. 248. I am obliged to abridge and epitomise.]

"You have corrupted Scripture, you have broken through the communion of saints, and now I tell you what you must do; I tell you, or rather not I, but Christ and the church through me. Did I follow my own impulse, or did I speak in my own name, I should hold other language; to you I should not speak at all; I would address myself only to God; I would pray him to let fall the fire of Heaven to consume you, and to consume with you the house into which you have entered in abandoning the church.[537]

[Footnote 537: Car se je n'ecourtois que les mouvemens de la nature, se je ne vous parlois qu'en mon nom, je vous tiendrois un autre langage au plutot je ne vous dirois rien; je m'entretiendrois avec Dieu seul at je lui demanderois de faire tomber le feu du ciel pour vous consumer avec cette maison ou vous avez passe en abandonnant l'Eglise. The letter was only known to the editor of Pole's remains in a French translation. I do not know whether the original exists, or whether it was in Latin or in English.]

"You pretend that you have used no instruments but reason to lead men after you; what instrument did the devil use to seduce our parents in Paradise? you have followed the serpent; with guile you destroyed your king, the realm, and the church, and you have brought to perdition thousands of human souls.

"Compared with you, all others who have been concerned in these deeds of evil, are but objects of pity; many of them long resisted temptation, and yielded only to the seductions of your impious tongue; you made yourself a bishop—for what purpose, but to mock both God and man? Your first act was but to juggle with your king, and you were no sooner primate, than you plotted how you might break your oath to the Holy See; you took part in the counsels of the evil one, you made your home with the wicked, you sat in the seat of the scornful. You exhorted your king with your fine words, to put away his wife; you prated to him of his obligations to submit to the judgment of the {p.248} church;[538] and what has followed that unrighteous sentence? You parted the king from the wife with whom he had lived for twenty years; you parted him from the church, the common mother of the faithful; and thenceforth throughout the realm law has been trampled under foot, the people have been ground with tyranny, the churches pillaged, the nobility murdered one by the other.

[Footnote 538: The innumerable modern writers who agree with Pole on the iniquity of the divorce of Catherine forget that, according to the rule which most of us now acknowledge, the marriage of Henry with his brother's wife really was incestuous—really was forbidden by the laws of God and nature; that the pope had no more authority to dispense with those laws then than he has now; and that if modern law is right, Cranmer did no more than his duty.]

"Therefore, I say, were I to make my own cries heard in heaven, I would pray God to demand at your hands the blood of his servants. Never had religion, never had the church of Christ a worse enemy than you have been; now therefore, when you are about to suffer the just reward of your deeds, think no more to excuse yourself; confess your sins, like the penitent thief upon the cross.

"Say not in your defence that you have done no violence, that you have been kind and gentle in your daily life. Thus I know men speak of you; but cheat not your conscience with so vain a plea. The devil, when called to answer for the souls that he has slain, may plead likewise that he did not desire their destruction; he thought only to make them happy, to give them pleasure, honour, riches—all things which their hearts desired. So did you with your king: you gave him the woman that he lusted after; you gave him the honour which was not his due, and the good things which were neither his nor yours; and, last and worst, you gave him poison, in covering his iniquities with a cloak of righteousness. Better, far better, you had offered him courtesans for companions; better you and he had been open thieves and robbers. Then he might have understood his crimes, and have repented of them; but you tempted him into the place where there is no repentance, no hope of salvation.

"Turn then yourself, and repent. See yourself as you are. Thus may you escape your prison. Thus may you flee out of the darkness wherein you have hid yourself. Thus may you come back to light and life, and earn for yourself God's forgiveness. I know not how to deal with you. Your examination at Oxford has but hardened you; yet the issue is with God. I {p.249} at least can point out to you the way. If you, then, persist in your vain opinions, may God have mercy on you."

The legate, in his office of guide, then travelled the full round of controversy, through Catholic tradition, through the doctrine of the sacraments and of the real presence, where there is no need to follow him. At length he drew to his conclusion:

"You will plead Scripture to answer me. Are you so vain, then, are you so foolish, as to suppose that it has been left to you to find out the meaning of those Scriptures which have been in the hands of the fathers of the church for so many ages? Confess, confess that you have mocked God in denying that he is present on the altar; wash out your sins with tears; and in the abundance of your sorrow you may find pardon. May it be so. Even for the greatness of your crimes may it be so, that God may have the greater glory. You have not, like others, fallen through simplicity, or fallen through fear. You were corrupted, like the Jews, by earthly rewards and promises. For your own profit you denied the presence of your Lord, and you rebelled against his servant the pope. May you see your crimes. May you feel the greatness of your need of mercy. Now, even now, by my mouth, Christ offers you that mercy; and with the passionate hope which I am bound to feel for your salvation, I wait your answer to your Master's call."

The exact day on which this letter reached the archbishop is uncertain, but it was very near the period of his sentence. He had dared death bravely while it was distant; but he was physically timid; the near approach of the agony which he had witnessed in others unnerved him; and in a moment of mental and moral prostration Cranmer may well have looked in the mirror which Pole held up to him, and asked himself whether, after all, the being there described was his true image—whether it was himself as others saw him. A faith which had existed for centuries, a faith in which generation after generation have lived happy and virtuous lives; a faith in which all good men are agreed, and only the bad dispute—such a faith carries an evidence and a weight with it beyond what can be looked for in a creed reasoned out by individuals—a creed which had the ban upon it of inherited execration; which had been held in abhorrence once by him who was now called upon to die for it. Only fools and fanatics believe that they cannot be mistaken. Sick misgivings may have taken hold upon him in moments of despondency, whether, after all, the millions who received the Roman supremacy might not be more right than the thousands {p.250} who denied it; whether the argument on the real presence, which had satisfied him for fifty years, might not be better founded than his recent doubts. It is not possible for a man of gentle and modest nature to feel himself the object of intense detestation without uneasy pangs; and as such thoughts came and went, a window might seem to open, through which there was a return to life and freedom. His trial was not greater than hundreds of others had borne, and would bear with constancy; but the temperaments of men are unequally constituted, and a subtle intellect and a sensitive organisation are not qualifications which make martyrdom easy.

Life, by the law of the church, by justice, by precedent, was given to all who would accept it on terms of submission. That the archbishop should be tempted to recant, with the resolution formed, notwithstanding, that he should still suffer, whether he yielded or whether he was obstinate, was a suspicion which his experience of the legate had not taught him to entertain.

So it was that Cranmer's spirit gave way, and he who had disdained to fly when flight was open to him, because he considered that, having done the most in establishing the Reformation, he was bound to face the responsibility of it, fell at last under the protraction of the trial.

The day of his degradation the archbishop had eaten little. In the evening he returned to his cell in a state of exhaustion:[539] the same night, or the next day, he sent in his first submission,[540] which was forwarded on the instant to the queen. It was no sooner gone than he recalled it, and then vacillating again, he drew a second, in slightly altered words, which he signed and did not recall. There had been a struggle in which the weaker nature had prevailed, and the orthodox leaders made haste to improve their triumph. The first step being over, confessions far more humiliating could now be extorted. Bonner came to his cell, and obtained from him a promise in writing, "to submit to the king and queen in all their laws and ordinances, as well touching the pope's supremacy, as in all other things;" with an engagement further "to move and stir all others to do the like," and to live in quietness and obedience, without murmur or grudging; his book on the sacrament he would submit to the next general council.

[Footnote 539: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 129.]

[Footnote 540: Forasmuch as the king's and queen's majesties, by consent of parliament, have received the pope's authority within this realm, I am content to submit myself to their laws herein, and to take the pope for chief head of this Church of England so far as God's laws and the customs of this realm will permit.—Thomas Cranmer.]

{p.251} These three submissions must have followed one another rapidly. On the 16th of February, two days only after his trial, he made a fourth, and yielding the point which he had reserved, he declared that he believed all the articles of the Christian religion as the Catholic Church believed. But so far he had spoken generally, and the court required particulars. In a fifth and longer submission,[541] he was made to anathematise particularly the heresies of Luther and Zuinglius; to accept the pope as the head of the church, out of which was no salvation; to acknowledge the real presence in the Eucharist, the seven sacraments as received by the Roman Catholics, and purgatory. He professed his penitence for having once held or taught otherwise, and he implored the prayers of all faithful Christians, that those whom he had seduced might be brought back to the true fold.

[Footnote 541: Of this fifth submission there is a contemporary copy among the MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was the only one known to Foxe; and this, with the fact of its being found in a separate form, gives a colour of probability to Mr. Southey's suspicion that the rest were forgeries. The whole collection was published by Bonner, who injured his claims to credit by printing with the others a seventh recantation, which was never made, and by concealing the real truth. But the balance of evidence I still think is in favour of the genuineness of the first six. The first four lead up to the fifth, and the invention of them after the fifth had been made would have been needless. The sixth I agree with Strype in considering to have been composed by Pole, and signed by Cranmer.]

The demands of the church might have been satisfied by these last admissions; but Cranmer had not yet expiated his personal offences against the queen and her mother, and he was to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs.

A month was allowed to pass. He was left with the certainty of his shame, and the uncertainty whether, after all, it had not been encountered in vain. On the 18th of March, one more paper was submitted to his signature, in which he confessed to be all which Pole had described him. He called himself a blasphemer, and a persecutor; being unable to undo his evil work, he had no hope, he said, save in the example of the thief upon the cross, who when other means of reparation were taken from him, made amends to God with his lips. He was unworthy of mercy, and he deserved eternal vengeance. He had sinned against King Henry and his wife; he was the cause of the divorce, from which, as from a seed, had sprung up schism, heresy, and crime; he had opened a window to false doctrines of which he had been himself the most pernicious teacher; especially he reflected with anguish that he had denied the presence {p.252} of his Maker in the consecrated elements. He had deceived the living and he had robbed the souls of the dead by stealing from them their masses. He prayed the pope to pardon him; he prayed the king and queen to pardon him; he prayed God Almighty to pardon him, as he had pardoned Mary Magdalen; or to look upon him as, from his own cross, He had looked upon the thief.[542]

[Footnote 542: Recantations of Thomas Cranmer: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 393.]

The most ingenious malice could invent no deeper degradation, and the archbishop might now die. One favour was granted to him alone of all the sufferers for religion—that he might speak at his death; speak, and, like Northumberland, perish with a recantation on his lips.

The hatred against him was confined to the court. Even among those who had the deepest distaste for his opinions, his character had won affection and respect; and when it was known that he was to be executed, there was a widespread and profound emotion. "Although," says a Catholic who witnessed his death, "his former life and wretched end deserved a greater misery, if any greater might have chanced to him; yet, setting aside his offence to God and his country, beholding the man without his faults, I think there was none that pitied not his case and bewailed not his fortune, and feared not his own chance, to see so noble a prelate, so grave a councillor, of so long-continued honours, after so many dignities, in his old years to be deprived of his estate, adjudged to die, and in so painful a death to end his life."[543]

[Footnote 543: Death of Cranmer, related by a Bystander: Harleian MSS., 442. Printed, with some inaccuracies, by Strype.]

On Saturday, the 21st of March, Lord Williams was again ordered into Oxford to keep the peace, with Lord Chandos, Sir Thomas Brydges, and other gentlemen of the county. If they allowed themselves to countenance by their presence the scene which they were about to witness, it is to be remembered that but a few years since, these same gentlemen had seen Catholic priests swinging from the pinnacles of their churches. The memory of the evil days was still recent, and amidst the tumult of conflicting passions, no one could trust his neighbour, and organised resistance was impracticable.

The March morning broke wild and stormy. The sermon intended to be preached at the stake was adjourned, in consequence of the wet, to St. Mary's, where a high stage was erected, on which Cranmer was to stand conspicuous. Peers, knights, {p.253} doctors, students, priests, men-at-arms, and citizens, thronged the narrow aisles, and through the midst of them the archbishop was led in by the mayor. As he mounted the platform many of the spectators were in tears. He knelt and prayed silently, and Cole, the Provost of Eton, then took his place in the pulpit.

Although, by a strained interpretation of the law, it could be pretended that the time of grace had expired with the trial; yet, to put a man to death at all after recantation was a proceeding so violent and unusual, that some excuse or some explanation was felt to be necessary.

Cole therefore first declared why it was expedient that the late archbishop should suffer, notwithstanding his reconciliation. One reason was "for that he had been a great causer of all the alterations in the realm of England; and when the matter of the divorce between King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine was commenced in the court of Rome, he, having nothing to do with it, sate upon it as a judge, which was the entry to all the inconvenients which followed." "Yet in that Mr. Cole excused him—that he thought he did it, not out of malice, but by the persuasion and advice of certain learned men."

Another occasion was, "for that he had been the great setter-forth of all the heresy received into the church in the latter times; had written in it, had disputed, had continued it even to the last hour; and it had never been seen in the time of schism that any man continuing so long had been pardoned, and that it was not to be remitted for example's sake."

"And other causes," Cole added, "moved the queen and council thereto, which were not meet and convenient for every one to understand."[544]

[Footnote 544: Narrative of the Execution of Thomas Cranmer: MS. Harleian, 422. Another account gives among the causes which Cole mentioned, that "it seemed meet, according to the law of equality, that, as the death of the Duke of Northumberland of late made even with Sir Thomas More, Chancellor, that died for the Church, so there should be one that should make even with Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; and because that Ridley, Hooper, and Ferrars were not able to make even with that man, it seemed that Cranmer should be joined with them to fill up their part of equality."—Foxe, vol. viii. p. 85. Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 133.]

The explanations being finished, the preacher exhorted his audience to take example from the spectacle before them, to fear God, and to learn that there was no power against the Lord. There, in their presence, stood a man, once "of so high degree—sometime one of the chief prelates of the church—an archbishop, the chief of the council, the second person of the realm: of long time, it might be thought, in great assurance, a king on his side;" {p.254} and now, "notwithstanding all his authority and defence, debased from a high estate unto a low degree—of a councillor become a caitiff, and set in so wretched estate that the poorest wretch would not change conditions with him."

Turning, in conclusion, to Cranmer himself, Cole then "comforted and encouraged him to take his death well by many places in Scripture; bidding him nothing mistrust but that he should incontinently receive that the thief did, to whom Christ said, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Out of Paul he armed him against the terrors of fire, by the words, The Lord is faithful, and will not suffer you to be tempted beyond that which you are able to bear; by the example of the three Children, to whom God made the flame seem like a pleasant joy; by the rejoicing of St. Andrew on his cross; by the patience of St. Lawrence on the fire." He dwelt upon his conversion, which, he said, was the special work of God, because so many efforts had been made by men to work upon him, and had been made in vain. God, in his own time, had reclaimed him, and brought him home.

A dirge, the preacher said, should be sung for him in every church in Oxford; he charged all the priests to say each a mass for the repose of his soul; and finally, he desired the congregation present to kneel where they were, and pray for him.

The whole crowd fell on their knees, the archbishop with them; and "I think," says the eye-witness,[545] "that there was never such a number so earnestly praying together; for they that hated him before, now loved him for his conversion, and hopes of continuance: they that loved him before could not suddenly hate him, having hope of his confession; so love and hope increased devotion on every side."

[Footnote 545: MS. Harleian, 422.]

"I shall not need," says the same writer, "to describe his behaviour for the time of sermon, his sorrowful countenance, his heavy cheer, his face bedewed with tears; sometimes lifting his eyes to heaven in hope, sometimes casting them down to the earth for shame—to be brief, an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out of his eyes, retaining ever a quiet and grave behaviour, which increased the pity in men's hearts."

His own turn to speak was now come. When the prayer was finished, the preacher said, "Lest any man should doubt the sincerity of this man's repentance, you shall hear him speak before you. I pray you, Master Cranmer," he added, turning to him, "that you will now perform that you promised not long {p.255} ago; that you would openly express the true and undoubted profession of your faith."

"I will do it," the archbishop answered.

"Good Christian people," he began, "my dear, beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, I beseech you most heartily to pray for me to Almighty God, that he will forgive me all my sins and offences, which be many and without number, and great above measure; one thing grieveth my conscience more than all the rest, whereof, God willing, I shall speak more; but how many or how great soever they be, I beseech you to pray God of his mercy to pardon and forgive them all."

Falling again on his knees:—

"O Father of heaven," he prayed, "O Son of God, Redeemer of the world, O Holy Ghost, three Persons and one God, have mercy upon me, most wretched caitiff and miserable sinner. I have offended both heaven and earth more than my tongue can express; whither then may I go, or whither should I flee for succour? To heaven I am ashamed to lift up mine eyes, and in earth I find no succour nor refuge. What shall I do? Shall I despair? God forbid! Oh, good God, thou art merciful, and refusest none that come to thee for succour. To thee, therefore, do I come; to thee do I humble myself, saying, O Lord, my sins be great, yet have mercy on me for thy great mercy. The mystery was not wrought that God became man, for few or little offences. Thou didst not give thy Son, O Father, for small sins only, but for all and the greatest in the world, so that the sinner return to thee with a penitent heart, as I do at this present. Wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, whose property is always to have mercy; although my sins be great, yet is thy mercy greater; wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, for thy great mercy. I crave nothing, O Lord, for mine own merits, but for thy Name's sake, and, therefore, O Father of heaven, hallowed be thy Name."

Then rising, he went on with his address:—

"Every man desireth, good people, at the time of his death, to give some good exhortation that others may remember after his death, and be the better thereby; for one word spoken of a man at his last end[546] will be more remembered than the sermons {p.256} made of them that live and remain. So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may speak something at my departing whereby God may be glorified and you edified.

[Footnote 546: Shakspeare was perhaps thinking of this speech of Cranmer when he wrote the magnificent lines which he placed in the mouth of the dying Gaunt:—

"O, but they say, the tongues of dying men Enforce attention, like deep harmony: Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain: For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. He, that no more must say, is listened more Than they whom youth and ease have taught to gloze; More are men's ends marked, than their lives before: The setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last; Writ in remembrance more than things long past."

"But it is an heavy case to see that many folks be so doted upon the love of this false world, and be so careful for it, that of the love of God or the world to come, they seem to care very little or nothing; therefore this shall be my first exhortation—that you set not over-much by this glozing world, but upon God and the world to come; and learn what this lesson meaneth which St. John teacheth, that the love of the world is hatred against God.

"The second exhortation is, that next unto God, you obey your king and queen willingly, without murmur or grudging, not for fear of them only, but much more for the fear of God, knowing that they be God's ministers, appointed of God to rule and govern you, and therefore whosoever resisteth them resisteth God's ordinance.

"The third exhortation is, that you live all together like brethren and sisters: but, alas! pity it is to see what contention and hatred one man hath against another, not taking each other for brethren and sisters, but rather as strangers and mortal enemies. But I pray you learn and bear well away the lesson, to do good to all men as much as in you lieth, and hurt no man no more than you would hurt your own natural brother or sister. For this you may be sure, that whosoever hateth his brother or sister, and goeth about maliciously to hinder or hurt him, surely, and without all doubt, God is not with that man, although he think himself never so much in God's favour.

"The fourth exhortation shall be to them that have great substance and riches of this world, that they may well consider and weigh these three sayings of the Scriptures. One is of our Saviour Christ himself, who saith that it is a hard thing for a rich man to come to heaven; a sore saying, and spoken of Him that knoweth the truth. The second is of St. John, whose saying is this: He that hath the substance of this world, and seeth his brother in necessity, and shutteth up his compassion and mercy from him, how can he say he loveth God? The third {p.257} is of St. James, who speaketh to the covetous and rich men after this manner: Weep and howl for the misery which shall come upon you; your riches doth rot, your clothes be moth-eaten, your gold and silver is cankered and rusty, and the rust thereof shall bear witness against you, and consume you like fire; you gather and hoard up treasure of God's indignation against the last day. I tell them which be rich, ponder these sentences; for if ever they had occasion to show their charity, they have it now at this present; the poor people being so many, and victuals so dear; for although I have been long in prison, yet have I heard of the great penury of the poor."

The people listened breathless, "intending upon the conclusion."

"And now," he went on, "forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life past and all my life to come, either to live with my Saviour Christ in joy, or else to be ever in pain with wicked devils in hell; and I see before mine eyes presently either heaven"—and he pointed upwards with his hand—"or hell," and he pointed downwards, "ready to swallow me. I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith, without colour or dissimulation; for now it is no time to dissemble. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; in every article of the Catholic faith; every word and sentence taught by our Saviour Christ, his apostles, and prophets, in the Old and New Testament.

"And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here I now renounce and refuse,[547] as things {p.258} written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, if it might be; and that is, all such bills and papers as I have written and signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue; and forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be the first burnt. As for the pope, I utterly refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Anti-Christ, with all his false doctrine; and as for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester."

[Footnote 547: There are two original contemporary accounts of Cranmer's words—Harleian MSS., 417 and 422—and they agree so far almost word for word with "The Prayer and Saying of Thomas Cranmer a little before his Death," which was published immediately after by Bonner. But we now encounter the singular difficulty, that the conclusion given by Bonner is altogether different. The archbishop is made to repeat his recantation, and express especial grief for the books which he had written upon the Sacrament.

There is no uncertainty as to what Cranmer really said; but, inasmuch is Bonner at the head of his version of the speech has described it as "written with his own hand," it has been inferred that he was required to make a copy of what he intended to say—that he actually wrote what Bonner printed, hoping to the end that his life would be spared; and that he would have repeated it publicly, had he seen that there was a chance of his escape. Finding, however, that his execution had been irrevocably determined on, he made the substitution at the last moment.

There are many difficulties in this view, chiefly from the character of the speech itself, which has the stamp upon it of too evident sincerity to have been composed with any underhand intentions. The tone is in harmony throughout, and the beginning leads naturally to the conclusion which Cranmer really spoke.

There is another explanation, which is to me more credible. The Catholics were furious at their expected triumph being snatched from them. Whether Cranmer did or did not write what Bonner says he wrote, Bonner knew that he had not spoken it, and yet was dishonest enough to print it as having been spoken by him, evidently hoping that the truth could be suppressed, and that the Catholic cause might escape the injury which the archbishop's recovered constancy must inflict upon it. A man who was capable of so considerable a falsehood would not have hesitated for the same good purpose to alter a few sentences. Pious frauds have been committed by more religious men than Edmund Bonner. See the Recantation of Thomas Cranmer, reprinted from Bonner's original pamphlet: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 393.]

So far the archbishop was allowed to continue, before his astonished hearers could collect themselves. "Play the Christian man," Lord Williams at length was able to call; "remember yourself; do not dissemble." "Alas! my lord," the archbishop answered, "I have been a man that all my life loved plainness, and never dissembled till now, which I am most sorry for." He would have gone on; but cries now rose on all sides, "Pull him down," "Stop his mouth," "Away with him," and he was borne off by the throng out of the church. The stake was a quarter of a mile distant, at the spot already consecrated by the deaths of Ridley and Latimer. Priest and monks "who did rue[548] to see him go so wickedly to his death, ran after him, exhorting him, while time was, to remember himself." But Cranmer, having flung down the burden of his shame, had recovered his strength, and such words had no longer power to trouble him. He approached the stake with "a cheerful countenance," undressed in haste, and stood upright in his shirt. Soto and another Spanish friar continued expostulating; but finding they could effect nothing, one said in Latin to the other, "Let us go from him, for the devil is within him." An Oxford {p.259} theologian—his name was Ely—being more clamorous, drew from him only the answer that, as touching his recantation, "he repented him right sore, because he knew that it was against the truth."

[Footnote 548: Harleian MS., 422. Strype has misread the word into "run," losing the point of the expression.]

"Make short, make short!" Lord Williams cried, hastily.

The archbishop shook hands with his friends; Ely only drew back, calling, "Recant, recant," and bidding others not approach him.

"This was the hand that wrote it," Cranmer said, extending his right arm; "this was the hand that wrote it, therefore it shall suffer first punishment." Before his body was touched, he held the offending member steadily in the flame, "and never stirred nor cried." The wood was dry and mercifully laid; the fire was rapid at its work, and he was soon dead. "His friends," said a Catholic bystander, "sorrowed for love, his enemies for pity, strangers for a common kind of humanity, whereby we are bound to one another."

So perished Cranmer. He was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than he had effected by his teaching while alive. Pole was appointed the next day to the See of Canterbury; but in other respects the court had overreached themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept the recantation, they would have left the archbishop to die broken-hearted, pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn; and the Reformation would have been disgraced in its champion. They were tempted, by an evil spirit of revenge, into an act unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws; and they gave him an opportunity of redeeming his fame, and of writing his name in the roll of martyrs. The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a single and peculiar trial. The apostle, though forewarned, denied his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which He would build His church.



{p.260} CHAPTER V.

CALAIS.

Not far from Abingdon, on the London road, was a house belonging to a gentleman named Christopher Ashton. Here, on their way to and fro between the western counties and the capital, members of parliament, or other busy persons, whom the heat of the times tempted from their homes, occasionally called; and the character of the conversation which was to be heard in that house, may be gathered from the following depositions. On the 4th of January, Sir Nicholas Arnold looked in, and found Sir Henry Dudley there.

"Well, Sir Nicholas, what news?" said Ashton.

"None worth hearing," Arnold answered.

"I am sure you hear they go about a coronation," Dudley said.

"I hear no such matter," said Arnold. "The news that are worth the hearing, are in such men's heads that will not utter them, and the rest are not to be credited."[549]

[Footnote 549: Saying of Sir Nicholas Arnold: MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. vii.]

"There be news come out of Flanders, as I heard from Sir Peter Mewtas," said Ashton, laughing, to another visitor:[550] "The king has written to the queen that he will not come hither a great while, or, as men think, any more; and the queen was in a rage, and caused the king's picture to be carried out of the privy chamber, and she in a wonderful storm, and could not be in any wise quieted."[551]

[Footnote 550: The conversations with Ashton were sometimes at his own house; sometimes at an inn by the waterside, near Lambeth; sometimes at other places. The localities are not always easy to make out.]

[Footnote 551: Deposition of Thomas White: MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. vii.]

"They have put me in the Tower for their pleasures," said Sir Anthony Kingston; "but so shall they never do more."[552]

[Footnote 552: Wotton to the Queen, cypher: French MSS., bundle 13. State Paper Office. Kingston was one of the members of the House of Commons who was imprisoned at the close of the late session, for the freedom of his language in parliament. He was "Vice-Admiral of the Ports about the Severn," and a man of large influence in the Welsh Marches.]

At another time Sir Henry Peckham was alone with Ashton. {p.261} Peckham[553] had been one of the sharers in the forfeited estates of the Duke of Norfolk. He was obliged to relinquish his grant, with but small compensation, and he complained of his treatment. Ashton bade him "be of good cheer."

[Footnote 553: Younger son of Sir Edward Peckham, Cofferer of the Household, and Member of Council under Edward VI.]

"If you will keep my counsel," Ashton said, "I will tell you news that will bring your land again or it be long."

Peckham promised to be secret.

"Sir Anthony Kingston," Ashton continued, "and a great many of the western gentlemen, are in a confederacy to send the queen's highness over to the king, and make the Lady Elizabeth queen, and to marry the Earl of Devonshire to the said Lady Elizabeth. The laws of the realm will bear it, that they may do it justly; and Sir Anthony Kingston hath required me to hearken to King Henry VIII.'s will; for there is sufficient matter for our purpose, as Sir Anthony doth tell me. I pray, if you can, help me to it."

Peckham said it was to be had in the Rolls. Ashton did not like to put himself in the way of suspicion by asking to see it publicly, and begged Peckham to obtain a copy for him elsewhere.

"I will show you a token," he then said, and took out half a broken penny; "the other half is with Sir Anthony, and whensoever I do send this same to Sir Anthony, then will he be in readiness with ten thousand men within three days upon receipt of this token." If Lord Pembroke's men made resistance on the Marches, Kingston would cut them off, and would be in London in twenty days at furthest. And "when this is done," Ashton continued, "your father shall be made a duke; for I tell you true, that the Lady Elizabeth is a jolly liberal dame, and nothing so unthankful as her sister is; and she taketh this liberality of her mother, who was one of the bountifullest women in all her time or since; and then shall men of good service and gentlemen be esteemed."