Chapter I: Queen Jane and Queen Mary (13)

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: