Chapter I: Queen Jane and Queen Mary (12)

[Footnote 475: "The Queen said she could not be
safely and happily delivered, nor could anything
succeed prosperously with her, unless all the
heretics in prison were burnt _ad
unum_."--Burnet.]

{p.212} "Right Reverend Father in God," it ran, "We greet you well; and where of late we addressed our letters unto the justices of the peace, within every of the counties within this our realm, whereby, amongst other good instructions given therein for the good order of the country about, they are willed to have special regard to such disordered persons as, forgetting their duty to Almighty God and us, do lean to any erroneous and heretical opinions; whom, if they cannot by good admonition and fair means reform, they are willed to deliver unto the ordinary, to be by him charitably travelled withal, and removed, if it may be, from their naughty opinions; or else, if they continue obstinate, to be ordered according to the laws provided in that behalf: understanding now, to our no little marvel, that divers of the said misordered persons, being, by the justices of the peace, for their contempt and obstinacy, brought to the ordinary, to be used as is aforesaid, are either refused to be received at their hands, or, if they be received, are neither so travelled with as Christian charity requireth, nor yet proceeded withal according to the order of justice, but are suffered to continue in their errors, to the dishonour of Almighty God, and dangerous example of others; like as we find this matter very strange, so have we thought convenient both to signify this our knowledge, and therewithal also to admonish you to have in this behalf such regard henceforth unto the office of a good pastor and bishop, as where any such offenders shall be, by the said justices of the peace, brought unto you, ye do use your good wisdom and discretion in procuring to remove them from their errors if it may be, or else in proceeding against them, if they continue obstinate, according to the order of the laws, so as, through your good furtherance, both God's glory may be the better advanced, and the commonwealth more quietly governed."[476]

[Footnote 476: Burnet's _Collectanea_. This letter
is addressed to Bonner, and was taken from Bonner's
_Register_; but, from the form, it was evidently a
circular. The Bishop of London had not deserved to
be singled out to be especially admonished for want
of energy.]

Under the fresh impulse of this letter, fifty persons were put to death at the stake in the three ensuing months,--in the diocese of London, under Bonner; in the diocese of Rochester, under Maurice Griffin; in the diocese of Canterbury, where Pole, the archbishop designate, so soon as Cranmer should be despatched, governed through Harpsfeld, the archdeacon, and Thornton, the suffragan bishop of Dover. Of these sacrifices, which were distinguished all of them by a uniformity of quiet heroism in the {p.213} sufferers, that of Cardmaker, prebendary of Wells, calls most for notice.

The people, whom the cruelty of the Catholic party was reconverting to the Reformation with a rapidity like that produced by the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, looked on the martyrs as soldiers are looked at who are called to accomplish, with the sacrifice of their lives, some great service for their country. Cardmaker, on his first examination, had turned his back and flinched. But the consciousness of shame, and the example of others, gave him back his courage; he was called up again under the queen's mandate, condemned, and brought out on the 30th of May, to suffer at Smithfield, with an upholsterer named Warne. The sheriffs produced the pardons. Warne, without looking at them, undressed at once, and went to the stake; Cardmaker "remained long talking;" "the people in a marvellous dump of sadness, thinking he would recant." He turned away at last, and knelt, and prayed; but he had still his clothes on; "there was no semblance of burning;" and the crowd continued nervously agitated, till he rose and threw off his cloak. "Then, seeing this, contrary to their fearful expectations, as men delivered out of great doubt, they cried out for joy with so great a shout as hath not been lightly heard a greater, God be praised; the Lord strengthen thee, Cardmaker. The Lord Jesus receive thy spirit."[477] Every martyr's trial was a battle; every constant death was a defeat of the common enemy; and the instinctive consciousness that truth was asserting itself in suffering, converted the natural emotion of horror into admiring pride.

[Footnote 477: Foxe, vol. vii.]

Yet, for the great purpose of the court, the burnt-offerings were ineffectual as the prayers of the priests. The queen was allowed to persuade herself that she had mistaken her time by two months; and to this hope she clung herself, so long as the hope could last: but among all other persons concerned, scarcely one was any longer under a delusion; and the clear-eyed Renard lost no time in laying the position of affairs before his master.

The marriage of Elizabeth and Philibert had hung fire, from the invincible unwillingness on the part of Mary to pardon or in any way recognise her sister;[478] and as long as there was a hope of a child, she had not perhaps been pressed about it; but {p.214} it was now absolutely necessary to do something, and violent measures towards the princess were more impossible than ever.

[Footnote 478: A letter of Mary's to Philip on the
subject will be given in the following chapter,
which reveals the disagreement which had arisen
between them about this marriage.]

"The entire future," wrote Renard to the emperor, on the 27th of June, "turns on the accouchement of the queen; of which, however, there are no signs. If all goes well, the state of feeling in the country will improve. If she is in error, I foresee convulsions and disturbances such as no pen can describe. The succession to the crown is so unfortunately hampered, that it must fall to Elizabeth, and with Elizabeth there will be a religious revolution. The clergy will be put down, the Catholics persecuted, and there will be such revenge for the present proceedings as the world has never seen. I know not whether the king's person is safe; and the scandals and calumnies which the heretics are spreading about the queen are beyond conception. Some say that she has never been _enceinte_; some repeat that there will be a supposititious child, and that there would have been less delay could a child have been found that would answer the purpose.[479] The looks of men are grown strange and impenetrable; those in whose loyalty I had most dependence I have now most reason to doubt. Nothing is certain, and I am more bewildered than ever at the things which I see going on around me. There is neither government, nor justice, nor order; nothing but audacity and malice."[480]

[Footnote 479: The impression was very generally
spread. Noailles mentions it, writing on the 20th
of June to the King of France; and Foxe mentions a
mysterious attempt of Lord North to obtain a
new-born child from its mother, as having happened
within his own knowledge. The existence of the
belief, however, proves nothing. At such a time it
was inevitable, nor was there any good evidence to
connect Lord North, supposing Foxe's story true,
with the court. The risk of discovery would have
been great, the consequences terrible, and few
people have been more incapable than Mary of
knowingly doing a wrong thing.]

[Footnote 480: Renard to the Emperor, June 27:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. vi.]

The faint hopes which Renard expressed speedily vanished, and every one but the queen herself not only knew that she had no child at present, but that she never could have a child--that her days were numbered, and that if the Spaniards intended to secure the throne they must obtain it by other means than the order of inheritance. Could the war be brought to an end, Mary might live long enough to give her husband an opportunity of attempting violence; but of peace there was no immediate prospect, and it remained for the present to make the most of Elizabeth. Setting her marriage aside, it was doubtful whether the people would permit her longer confinement after the queen's {p.215} disappointment; and, willingly or unwillingly, Mary must be forced to receive her at court again.

The princess was still at Woodstock, where she had remained for a year, under the harsh surveillance of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Lord William Howard's visit may have consoled her with the knowledge that she was not forgotten by the nobility; but her health had suffered from her long imprisonment, and the first symptom of an approaching change in her position was the appearance of the queen's physician to take charge of her.

A last effort was made to betray her into an acknowledgment of guilt. "A secret friend" entreated her to "submit herself to the queen's mercy." Elizabeth saw the snare. She would not ask for mercy, she said, where she had committed no offence; if she was guilty, she desired justice, not mercy; and she knew well she would have found none, could evidence have been produced against her: but she thanked God she was in no danger of being proved guilty; she wished she was as safe from secret enemies.

But the plots for despatching her, if they had ever existed, were laid aside; she was informed that her presence was required at Hampton Court. The rumour of her intended release spread abroad, and sixty gentlemen, who had once belonged to her suite, met her on the way at Colebrook, in the hope that they might return to attendance upon her; but their coming was premature; she was still treated as a prisoner, and they were ordered off in the queen's name.

On her arrival at Hampton Court, however, the princess felt that she had recovered her freedom. She was received by Lord William Howard. The courtiers hurried to her with their congratulations, and Howard dared and provoked the resentment of the king and queen by making them kneel and kiss her hand.[481] Mary could not bring herself at first to endure an interview. The Bishop of Winchester came to her on the queen's behalf, to repeat the advice which had been given to her at Woodstock, and to promise pardon if she would ask for it.

[Footnote 481: Joanna of Castille, the emperor's
mad mother, dying soon after, masses were said for
her with some solemnity at St. Paul's. "Aux
obseques que la royne commanda estre faictes a
Londres, l'admiral d'Angleterre demontra
ouvertement avoir quelque ressentment, de ce qu'il
disoit le roy ne luy faisoit si bonne chiere et
demonstration si favorable qu'il avoit accoustume,
disant qu'il scavoit bien pourquoy s'estoit,
inferant que ce fust pour ce qu'il avoit faict
baiser les mains de Elizabetz aux gentilhommes qui
l'avoient visitez."]

Elizabeth had been resolute when she was alone and friendless, she was not more yielding now. She repeated that she had {p.216} committed no offence, and therefore required no forgiveness; she had rather lie in prison all her life than confess when there was nothing to be confessed.

The answer was carried to Mary, and the day after the bishop came again. "The queen marvelled," he said, "that she would so stoutly stand to her innocence;" if she called herself innocent, she implied that she had been "unjustly imprisoned;" if she expected her liberty "she must tell another tale."

But the causes which had compelled the court to send for her, forbade them equally to persist in an impotent persecution. They had desired only to tempt her into admissions which they could plead in justification for past or future severities. They had failed, and they gave way.

A week later, on an evening in the beginning of July, Lady Clarence, Mary's favourite attendant, brought a message, that the queen was expecting her sister in her room. The princess was led across the garden in the dusk, and introduced by a back staircase into the royal apartments. Almost two years had elapsed since the sisters had last met, when Mary hid the hatred which was in her heart behind a veil of kindness. There was no improvement of feeling, but the necessity of circumstances compelled the form of reconciliation.

Elizabeth dropped on her knees. "God preserve your majesty," she said; "you will find me as true a subject to your majesty as any; whatever has been reported of me, you shall not find it otherwise."

"You will not confess," the queen said; "you stand to your truth: I pray God it may so fall out."

"If it does not," said Elizabeth, "I desire neither favour nor pardon at your hands."

"Well," Mary bitterly answered, "you persevere in your truth stiffly; belike you will not confess that you have been wrongly punished?"

"I must not say so, your majesty," Elizabeth replied.

"Belike you will to others?" said the queen.

"No, please your majesty," answered the princess. "I have borne the burden, and I must bear it. I pray your majesty to have a good opinion of me, and to think me your true subject, not only from the beginning but while life lasteth."

The queen did not answer, she muttered only in Spanish, "_Sabe Dios_," "God knows," and Elizabeth withdrew.[482]

[Footnote 482: Foxe; Holinshed.]

It was said that, during the interview, Philip was concealed {p.217} behind a curtain, anxious for a sight of the captive damsel whose favour with the people was such a perplexity to him.

At this time, Elizabeth was beautiful; her haughty features were softened by misfortune; and as it is certain that Philip, when he left England, gave special directions for her good treatment, so it is possible that he may have envied the fortune which he intended for the Prince of Savoy; and the scheme which he afterwards attempted to execute, of making her his own wife on the queen's death, may have then suggested itself to him as a solution of the English difficulty. The magnificent girl, who was already the idol of the country, must have presented an emphatic contrast with the lean, childless, haggard, forlorn Mary; and he may easily have allowed his fancy to play with a pleasant temptation. If it was so, Philip was far too careless of the queen's feelings to conceal his own. If it was not so, the queen's haunting consciousness of her unattractiveness must have been aggravated by the disappointment of her hopes, and she may have tortured herself with jealousy and suspicion.

At all events, Mary could not overcome her aversion. Elizabeth was set at liberty, but she was not allowed to remain at the court. She returned to Ashridge, to be pursued, even there, with petty annoyances. Her first step when she was again at home was to send for her friend Mrs. Ashley; the queen instantly committed Mrs. Ashley to the Fleet, and sent three other officers of her sister's household to the Tower; while a number of gentlemen suspected of being her adherents, who had remained in London beyond their usual time of leaving for the country, were ordered imperiously to their estates.[483]

[Footnote 483: Le dict conseil voyant que plusieurs
gentilhommes s'assembloient a Londres, et
communicquoient par ensemble, qu'ils se tenoient a
Londres, contre ce qu'est accoustume en Angleterre,
qu'est que ceulx qu'ilz eu moien ne demeurent a
Londres en l'este, ains au pays pour la chaleur et
maladies ordinaires qu'ilz y reignent, et que
toutes les dicts gentilhommes sont heretiques, ains
este pour le plus part rebelles, les autres parens
et adherens de Elizabetz, leur a faict faire
commandement de se retirer chascun en sa maison et
se separer; qu'ilz ont prins mal et en out fait
grandes doleances, en pretendant qu'ilz estoient
gens de bien, qu'ilz n'estoient traistres.--Renard
to the Emperor: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]

But neither impatience nor violence could conceal the fatal change which had passed over Mary's prospects. Not till the end of July could she part finally from her hopes. Then, at last, the glittering dream was lost for the waking truth; then at once from the imagination of herself as the virgin bride who was to bear a child for the recovery of a lost world, she was precipitated into the poor certainty that she was a blighted and {p.218} a dying woman. Sorrow was heaped on sorrow; Philip would stay with her no longer. His presence was required on the continent, where his father was about to anticipate the death which he knew to be near, and, after forty years of battling with the stormy waters, to collect himself for the last great change in the calm of a monastery in Spain.

It was no new intention. For years the emperor had been in the habit of snatching intervals of retreat; for years he had made up his mind to relinquish at some time the labours of life before relinquishing life itself. The vanities of sovereignty had never any particular charm for Charles V.; he was not a man who cared "to monarchise and kill with looks," or who could feel a pang at parting with the bauble of a crown; and when the wise world cried out in their surprise, and strained their fancies for the cause of conduct which seemed so strange to them, they forgot that princes who reign to labour, grow weary like the peasant of the burden of daily toil.

Many influences combined to induce Charles to delay no longer in putting his resolution in effect.

The Cortes were growing impatient at the prolonged absence both of himself and Philip, and the presence of the emperor, although in retirement, would give pleasure to the Spanish people. His health was so shattered, that each winter had been long expected to be his last; and although he would not flinch from work as long as he was required at his post, there was nothing to detain Philip any more in England, unless, or until, the succession could be placed on another footing. To continue there the husband of a childless queen, with authority limited to a form, and with no recognised interest beyond the term of his wife's life, was no becoming position for the heir of the throne of Spain, of Naples, the Indies, and the Low Countries.

Philip was therefore now going. He concealed his intention till it was betrayed by the departure of one Spanish nobleman after another. The queen became nervous and agitated, and at last he was forced to avow part of the truth. He told her that his father wanted to see him, but that his absence would not be extended beyond a fortnight or three weeks; she should go with him to Dover, and, if she desired, she could wait there for his return.[484] Her consent was obtained by the mild deceit, and it was considered afterwards that the journey to Dover might be too much for her, and the parting might take place at Greenwich.

[Footnote 484: Noailles, vol. v. pp. 77-82.]

{p.219} On the 3rd of August, the king and queen removed for a few days from Hampton Court to Oatlands; on the way Mary received consolation from a poor man who met her on crutches, and was cured of his lameness by looking on her.[485]

[Footnote 485: Machyn's _Diary_.]

On the 26th, the royal party came down the river in their barge, attended by the legate; they dined at Westminster on their way to Greenwich, and as rumour had said that Mary was dead, she was carried through the city in an open litter, with the king and the cardinal at her side. To please Philip, or to please the people, Elizabeth was invited to the court before the king's departure; but she was sent by water to prevent a demonstration, while the archers of the guard who attended on the queen, were in corslet and morion.[486]

[Footnote 486: Noailles, vol. v. pp. 98, 99, 123.]

On the 28th, Philip went. Parliament was to sit again in October. It would then be seen whether anything more could be done about the succession. On the consent or refusal of the legislature his future measures would depend. To the queen he left particular instructions, which he afterwards repeated in writing, to show favour to Elizabeth; and doubting how far he could rely upon Mary, he gave a similar charge to such of his own suite as he left behind him.[487] Could he obtain it, he would take the princess's crown for himself; should he fail, he might marry her; or should this too be impossible, he would win her gratitude, and support her title against the dangerous competition of the Queen of Scots and Dauphiness of France.

[Footnote 487: Elle a bonne part en la grace dudict
Seigneur Roy, lequel par plusieurs lettres qu'il
escript a la royne sa femme la luy recommende,
comme aussy il a faict particulierement et par
soubz main aux principaux seigneurs Espaignolz qui
sont demourez en ce lieu.--Ibid. p. 127.]

On these terms the pair who had been brought together with so much difficulty separated after a little more than a year. The cardinal composed a passionate prayer for the queen's use during her husband's absence.[488] It is to be hoped that she was {p.220} spared the sight of a packet of letters soon after intercepted by the French, in which her husband and her husband's countrymen expressed their opinions of the marriage and its consequences.[489] The truth, however, became known in England, although in a form under which the queen could turn from it as a calumny.

[Footnote 488: Domine Jesu Christe, qui es verus
sponsus animae meae, verus Rex ac Dominus meus qui me
ad Regni hujus gubernacula singulari tua
providentia ac benignitate vocatam, cum antea essem
derelicta et tanquam mulier ab adolescentia
abjecta, eum virum in matrimonium et regni
societatem expetere voluis ti, _qui plus caeteris
imaginem tuam quam in sanctitate et justitia mundo
ostendisti in suis meisque actionibus dirigendis
exprimeret, et expetitum dedisti_, cujus nunc
discessum moerens defleo--quaeso per illum
pretiosissimum sanguinem quem pro me sponsa tua
proque illo et omnibus in ara crucis effudisti, ut
hunc meum dolorem ita lenias, ita purges, ita
temperes, ut quoties ille sanctis suis consiliis
mihi adest, quoties per litteras quae ad salutem
hujus populi tui pertinent commendat, toties illum
praesentem esse, teque unicum consolatorem in medio
nostro adesse sentiam, utque in illo te semper amem
atque glorificem. Obsecro, Domine, ut in nobis tua
imago sic indies per tuam gratiam renovetur in
conspectu populi tui, quern nobis gubernandum
commisisti, ut cum is justitiae tuae severitatem, in
iis quae amiserat dum hi regnarent qui a recta fide
declinantes sanctitatem et justitiam expulerunt,
jam pridem senserit, quae nunc per tuam
misericordiam recuperaverit sub illorum Regno quos
nunquam a recta fide declinare es passus, cum
gratiarum actione laetus intelligat ut uno ore tarn
nos quam populus noster Deum patrem per te ejus
unicum filium in unitate Spiritus glorificemus, ad
nostram ipsorum et piorum omnium salutem et
consolationem. Amen.--_Epist._ Reg. Pol. vol. v.]

[Footnote 489: Il me fauldroit faire ung
merveilleux discours pour vous rendre compte de
tous les propoz qui font dans les dictes lettres.
Je vous diray seulment ce qui plus tousche et
regarde le lieu ou vous estes. Et premierement la
royne a tant enchante et ensorcele ce beau jeune
prince son mary que de luy avoir faict croyre ung
an entier qu'elle estoit grosse pour le retenir
pres d'elle, dont il se trouve a present si confus
et fasche qu'il n'a plus delibere de retourner
habiter ceste terre, promettant a tous ses
serviteurs que s'il peult estre une fois en
Espaigne qu'il n'en sortira plus a si maulvaise
occasion, etc....--Le Protonotaire de Noailles a M.
de Noailles: _Ambassades_, vol. v. p. 136.]

Before the meeting of parliament, a letter was published, addressed to the Lords of the Council, by a certain John Bradford.[490] The writer accounted for his knowledge of the secrets which he had to tell, by saying that he had lived in the household of one of the Spanish noblemen who were in attendance on Philip; that he had learnt the language unknown to his master, and had thus overheard unguarded conversations. He had read letters addressed to Philip, and letters written by him and by his confidential friends; and he was able to say, as a thing heard with his own ears, and seen with his own eyes, that the "Spaniards minded nothing less than the subversion of the English commonwealth." In fact, he repeated the rumours of the summer, only more circumstantially, and with fuller details. Under pretence of improving the fortifications, Philip intended to obtain command of the principal harbours and ports; he would lay cannon on the land side, and gradually bring in Spanish troops, the queen playing into his hands; and as soon as peace could be made with France, he would have the command of the fleet and the sea, and could do what he pleased.[491]

[Footnote 490: Not the martyr; he had been
despatched by Bonner among the victims of the
summer; but a person otherwise-known.]

[Footnote 491: "Ye will say, How could this fellow
know their counsel?--I was chamberlain to one of
the privy council, and with all diligence gave
myself to write and read Spanish, which thing once
obtained I kept secret from my master and my
fellow-servants, because I might be trusted in my
master's closet or study, where I might read such
writing as I saw daily brought into the council
chamber."--John Bradford to the Lords of the
Council: Strype's _Memorials of the Reformation_.]

{p.221} "I saw," the writer continued, "letters sent from the emperor, wherein was contained these privities,--that the king should make his excuse to the queen that he would go to see his father in Flanders, and that immediately he would return--seeing the good simple queen is so jealous over my son. (I term it," said Bradford, "as the letter doth.") "We," said the emperor, "shall make her agree unto all our requests before his return, or else keep him exercised in our affairs till we may prevail with the council, who, doubtless, will be won with fair promises and great gifts, politicly placed in time." "In other letters I have read the cause disputed, that the queen is bound by the laws of God to endue her husband in all her goods and possessions, so far as in her lieth; and they think she will do it indeed to the uttermost of her power. No man can think evil of the queen, though she be somewhat moved when such things are beaten into her head with gentlemen; but whether the crown belongs to the queen or the realm, the Spaniards know not, nor care not, though the queen, to her damnation, disherit the right heir apparent, or break her father's entail, made by the whole consent of the realm, which neither she nor the realm can justly alter."[492]

[Footnote 492: Elizabeth, when she came to the
throne, refused to admit that she was under any
real obligation to Philip. She was entirely right
in her refusal. The Spaniards had sworn, if
possible, to make away "with all those which by any
means might lay claim to the crown."

"I call God to record," Bradford continues, "I have
heard it with mine ears, and seen the said persons
with mine eyes, that have said, if ever the king
obtain the crown, he would make the Lady Elizabeth
safe from ever coming to the same, or any of our
cursed nation. For they say, that if they can find
the means to keep England in subjection, they would
do more with the land than with all the rest of his
kingdoms. I speak not of any fool's communication,
but of the wisest, and that no mean persons. Yea,
and they trust that there shall means be found
before that time to despatch the Lady Elizabeth
well enough by the help of assured traitors, as
they have already in England plenty, and then they
may the more easier destroy the others when she is
rid out of the way.

2. I speak not this, as some men would take it, to
move dissension; for that were the best way for the
Spaniards to come to their prey. Such a time they
look for, and such a time they say some nobleman
hath promised to provide for them.

3. God is my witness that my heart will not suffer
me for very shame to declare such vile reports as I
have heard them speak against the queen, and yet
her Grace taketh them for her faithful friends. The
Spaniards say, that if they obtain not the crown,
they may curse the time that ever the king was
married to a wife so unmeet for him by natural
course of years; but and if that may be brought to
pass that was meant in marriage-making, they shall
keep old rich robes for high festival days.

"Alas, for pity! Ye be yet in such good estate that
ye may, without loss of any man's life, keep the
crown and realm quietly. If ye will hear a fool's
counsel, keep still the crown to the right
succession in your hands, and give it to no foreign
princes. Peradventure her Grace thinketh the king
will keep her the more company and love her the
better, if she give him the crown. Ye will crown
him to make him chaste contrary to his nature. They
have a saying--'The baker's daughter is better in
her gown than Queen Mary without the crown.' They
say, 'Old wives must be cherished for their young
fair gifts.' 'Old wives,' they say, 'for fair words
will give all that they have.' But how be they used
afterwards? Doth the queen think the king will
remain in England with giving him the realm? The
council of Spain purposeth to establish other
matters; to appoint in England a viceroy with a
great army of Spanish soldiers, and let the queen
live at her beads like a good antient lady."--John
Bradford to the Earls of Arundel, Shrewsbury,
Derby, and Pembroke: Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi.
p. 340, etc.]

Struggle as the queen might against such a representation of {p.222} her husband's feelings towards her, it was true that he had left her with a promise to return; and the weeks went, and he did not come, and no longer spoke of coming. The abdication of the emperor would keep him from her, at least, till the end of the winter. And news came soon which was harder still to bear; news, that he, whom she had been taught to regard as made in the image of our Saviour,[493] was unfaithful to his marriage vows,[494] Bradford had spoken generally of the king's vulgar amours; other accounts convinced her too surely that he was consoling himself for his long purgatory in England, by miscellaneous licentiousness. Philip was gross alike in all his appetites; bacon fat was the favourite food with which he gorged himself to illness;[495] his intrigues were on the same level of indelicacy, and his unhappy wife was forced to know that he preferred the society of abandoned women of the lowest class to hers.

[Footnote 493: Prayer written by Cardinal Pole for
Queen Mary: _supra_.]

[Footnote 494: Noailles to the King of France,
October 21: _Ambassades_, vol. v.]

[Footnote 495: Noailles to Montmorency, December 5:
Ibid.]

The French ambassador describes her as distracted with wretchedness, speaking to no one except the legate. The legate was her only comfort; the legate and the thing which she called religion.

Deep in the hearts of both queen and cardinal lay the conviction that if she would please God, she must avoid the sin of Saul. Saul had spared the Amalekites, and God had turned his face from him. God had greater enemies in England than the Amalekites. Historians have affected to exonerate Pole from the crime of the Marian persecution; although, without the legate's sanction, not a bishop in England could have raised a finger, not a bishop's court could have been opened {p.223} to try a single heretic. If not with Pole, with whom did the guilt rest? Gardiner was jointly responsible for the commencement, but after the first executions, Gardiner interfered no further; he died, and the bloody scenes continued. Philip's confessor protested; Philip himself left the country; Renard and Charles were never weary of advising moderation, except towards those who were politically dangerous. Bonner was an instrument whose zeal more than once required the goad; and Mary herself, when she came to the throne, was so little cruel, that she would have spared even Northumberland himself. When the persecution assumed its ferocious aspect, she was exclusively under the direction of the dreamer who believed that he was born for England's regeneration. All evidence concurs to show that, after Philip's departure, Cardinal Pole was the single adviser on whom Mary relied. Is it to be supposed that, in the horrible crusade which thenceforward was the business of her life, the papal legate, the sovereign director of the ecclesiastical administration of the realm, was not consulted, or, if consulted, that he refused his sanction? But it is not a question of conjecture or probability. From the legate came the first edict for the episcopal inquisition; under the legate every bishop held his judicial commission; while, if Smithfield is excepted, the most frightful scenes in the entire frightful period were witnessed under the shadow of his own metropolitan cathedral. His apologists have thrown the blame on his archdeacon and his suffragan: the guilt is not with the instrument, but with the hand which holds it. An admiring biographer[496] has asserted that the cruelties at Canterbury preceded the cardinal's consecration as archbishop, and the biographer has been copied by Dr. Lingard. The historian and his authority have exceeded the limits of permitted theological misrepresentation. The administration of the see belonged to Pole as much before his consecration as after it; but it will be seen that eighteen men and women perished at the stake in the town of Canterbury alone,--besides those who were put to death in other parts of the diocese--and five were starved to death in the gaol there--after the legate's installation. He was not cruel; but he believed that, in the catalogue of human iniquities, there were none greater than the denial of the Roman Catholic Faith, or the rejection of the Roman bishop's supremacy; and that he himself was chosen by Providence for the re-establishment of both. Mary was driven to madness by the disappointment {p.224} of the grotesque imaginations with which he had inflated her; and where two such persons were invested by the circumstances of the time with irresponsible power, there is no occasion to look further for the explanation of the dreadful events of the three ensuing years.

[Footnote 496: Phillips.]

The victims of the summer were chiefly undistinguished persons: Cardmaker and Bradford alone were in any way celebrated; and the greater prisoners, the three bishops at Oxford, the court had paused upon--not from mercy--their deaths had been long determined on; but Philip, perhaps, was tender of his person; their execution might occasion disturbances; and he and his suite might be the first objects on which the popular indignation might expend itself. Philip, however, had placed the sea between himself and danger, and if this was the cause of the hesitation, the work could now go forward.

A commission was appointed by Pole in September, consisting of Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, Holyman, Bishop of Bristol, and White, Bishop of Lincoln, to try Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, for obstinate heresy. The first trial had been irregular; the country was then unreconciled. The sentence which had been passed therefore was treated as non-existent, and the tedious forms of the papacy continued still to throw a shield round the archbishop.

On Saturday, the 7th of September,[497] the commissioners took their places under the altar of St. Mary's Church, at Oxford. The Bishop of Gloucester sat as president, Doctors Story and Martin appeared as proctors for the queen, and Cranmer was brought in under the custody of the city guard, in a black gown and leaning on a stick.

[Footnote 497: Foxe says the 12th; but this is
wrong.--See Cranmer's letter to the Queen: Jenkins,
vol. i. p. 369.]

"Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury," cried an officer of the court, "appear here, and make answer to that which shall be laid to thy charge; that is to say, for blasphemy, incontinency, and heresy; make answer to the Bishop of Gloucester, representing his holiness the pope."

The archbishop approached the bar, bent his head and uncovered to Story and Martin, who were present in behalf of the crown, then drew himself up, put on his cap again, and stood fronting Brookes. "My lord," he said, "I mean no contempt to your person, which I could have honoured as well as any of the others; but I have sworn never to admit the authority of the Bishop of Rome in England, and I must keep my oath."

{p.225} The president remonstrated, but without effect, and then proceeded to address the archbishop, who remained covered:[498]--

[Footnote 498: Exhortation of the Bishop of
Gloucester to Thomas Cranmer: _Cotton MSS.,
Vespasian_, A. 25. A copy, more rounded and
finished, is given by Foxe, in his account of
Cranmer's trial: but the latter has the appearance
of having been touched up afterwards.]

"My lord, we are come hither at this present to you, not intruding ourselves by our own authority, but sent by commission, as you know, by the pope's holiness partly; partly from the king's and queen's most excellent majesties; not utterly to your discomfort, but rather to your comfort if you will yourself. For we are come not to judge you immediately, but to put you in remembrance of that which you have been partly judged of before, and shall be thoroughly judged of ere long.

"Neither our coming or commission is to dispute with you, but to examine you in matters which you have already disputed in, taught, and written; and of your resolute answers in those points and others, to make relation to them that shall give sentence on you. If you, of your part, be moved to come to a uniformity, then shall not only we take joy of our examination, but also they that have sent us. Remember yourself then, _unde excideris_, from whence you have fallen. You have fallen from the unity of your mother, the Holy Catholic Church, and that by open schism. You have fallen from the true and received faith of the same Catholic Church, and that by open heresy. You have fallen from your fidelity and promise towards God, in breaking your orders and vow of chastity, and that by open apostasy. You have fallen from your fidelity and promise towards God's vicar-general, the pope, in breaking your oath made to his holiness at your consecration, and that by open perjury. You have fallen from your fidelity and allegiance towards God's magistrate, your prince and sovereign lady the queen, and that by open treason, whereof you are already attainted and convicted. Remember, _unde excideris_, from whence you have fallen, and in what danger you have fallen.

"You were sometime, as I and other poor men, in mean estate. God hath called you from better to better, from higher to higher, and never gave you over till he made you, _legatum natum_, Metropolitan Archbishop, Primate of England. Who was more earnest then in defence of the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament of the altar than ye were? Then was your candle shining to be a light to all the world, set on high on a pinnacle. But after you began to fall from the unity of the Catholic Church by open schism, and would no {p.226} longer acknowledge the supremacy of the pope's holiness by God's word and ordinance;--and that by occasion, that you, in whose hands then rested the sum of all, being primate, as was aforesaid, would not, according to your high vocation, stoutly withstand the most ungodly and unlawful request of your prince touching his divorce, as that blessed martyr, St. Thomas of Canterbury, sometime your predecessor, did withstand the unlawful requests of the prince of his time, but would still not only yield and bear with things not to be borne withal, but also set a-flame the fire already kindled--then your perfections diminished; then began you, for your own part, to fancy unlawful liberty. Then decayed your conscience of your former faith, your former promise, the vow of chastity and discipline after the order of priesthood; and when good conscience was once cast off, then followed after, as St. Paul noteth, a shipwreck in the faith. Then fell you from the faith, and out of the Catholic Church, as out of a sure ship, into a sea of dangerous desperation; for out of the church, to say with St. Cyprian, there is no hope of salvation at all. To be brief; when you had forsaken God, his Spouse, his faith, and fidelity to them both, then God forsook you; and as the apostle writeth of the ingrate philosophers, delivered you up _in reprobum sensum_, and suffered you to fall from one inconvenience to another, as from perjury into schism, from schism into a kind of apostasy, from apostasy into heresy, from heresy into traitory, and so, in conclusion, from traitory into the highest displeasure and worthiest indignation of your most benign and gracious queen."[499]

[Footnote 499: The address concluded with a prolix
exhortation to repentance, which I omit. It may be
read in a form sufficiently accurate in Foxe.]

When the bishop ceased, the crown proctors rose, and demanded justice against the prisoner in the names of the king and queen.

"My lord," Cranmer replied, "I do not acknowledge this session of yours, nor yet yourself my mislawful judge; neither would I have appeared this day before you, but that I was brought hither; and therefore here I openly renounce you as my judge, protesting that my meaning is not to make any answer as in a lawful judgment, for then I would be silent; but only for that I am bound in conscience to answer every man of that hope which I have in Jesus Christ."

He then knelt, and turning towards the west with his back to the court and the altar, he said the Lord's Prayer. After which, he rose, repeated the creed, and said--

{p.227} "This I do profess as touching my faith, and make my protestation, which I desire you to note; I will never consent that the Bishop of Rome shall have any jurisdiction in this realm."

"Mark, Master Cranmer," interrupted Martin, "you refuse and deny him by whose laws you do remain in life, being otherwise attainted of high treason, and but a dead man by the laws of the realm."

"I protest before God I was no traitor," said the archbishop. "I will never consent to the Bishop of Rome, for then I should give myself to the devil. I have made an oath to the king, and I must obey the king by God's law. By the Scripture, the king is chief, and no foreign person in his own realm above him. The pope is contrary to the crown. I cannot obey both, for no man can serve two masters at once. You attribute the keys to the pope and the sword to the king. I say the king hath both."

Continuing the same argument, the archbishop entered at length into the condition of the law and the history of the Statutes of Provisors and Premunire: he showed that the constitution of the country was emphatically independent, and he maintained that no English subject could swear obedience to a foreign power without being involved in perjury.

The objection was set aside, and the subject of oaths was an opportunity for a taunt, which the queen's proctors did not overlook. Cranmer had unwillingly accepted the archbishopric when the Act of Appeals was pending, and when the future relations of England with the See of Rome, and the degree of authority which (if any) the pope was to retain, were uncertain. In taking the usual oaths, therefore, by the advice of lawyers, he made an especial and avowed reservation of his duty to the crown;[500] and this so-called perjury Martin now flung in his teeth.

[Footnote 500: Although the circumstances of the
time called properly for an open declaration of
this kind on the part of Cranmer, yet every one of
his predecessors, from the time of Edward I., must
have been inducted with a tacit understanding of
the same kind. If a bishop had been prosecuted
under the Statutes of Provisors, his oath to the
Papacy would have been no more admitted as an
excuse by the Plantagenet sovereigns, than the oath
of a college Fellow to obey the statutes of the
founder would have saved him from penalties under
the House of Hanover had he said mass in his
college chapel. Because Cranmer, foreseeing an
immediate collision between two powers, which each
asserted claims upon him, expressed in words a
qualification which was implied in the nature of
the case--it was, and is (I regret to be obliged to
speak in the present tense), but a shallow sarcasm
to taunt him with premeditated perjury.]

"It pleased the king's highness," Cranmer replied, "many and sundry times to talk with me of the matter. I declared that, if I accepted the office of archbishop, I must receive it at {p.228} the pope's hands, which I neither would nor could do, for his highness was the only supreme governor of this church in England. Perceiving that I could not be brought to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome, the king called Doctor Oliver and other civil lawyers, and devised with them how he might bestow it on me, enforcing me nothing against my conscience, who informed him I might do it by way of protestation. I said, I did not acknowledge the Bishop of Rome's authority further than as it agreed with the word of God, and that it might be lawful for me at all times to speak against him; and my protestation did I cause to be enrolled, and there I think it remaineth."

"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."