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LIVES

or THE

AECHBISHOPS OF CANTEEBFEY.

. . YOL. Yll.

LONDOS

PRINTED BY S POTT I S W O O 1)E AND CO.

VEW-STREKT SQUARE

>l

LIVES

AECHBISHOPS OF CANTEEBUEY.

BY

WALTER FAEQUHAE HOOK, D.D. F.RS.

DEAN OP CHICHESTER.

VOLUaiE VII. REFORMATION PERIOD.

History -which may he called just and perfect history is of three kinds, according to the object which it propoundeth or pretendeth to represent; for it either representeth a time, or a person, or an action. The first we call Chronicles, the second Lives, and the third Narratives or Relations. Of these, altliough Chronicles be the most complete and absolute kiad of history, and hath most estimition and glory, yet Lives excelleth in profit and osr, and Narratives or Relations in verity or sincerity. Lord Bacon.

LOXDOX: EICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,

IJublisbcr in Oibinarn to f,cx llTiijfstn. 18GS.

Tfie light of translation '« reserved.

CONTENTS

OK

THE SEVENTH VOLUME.

CHAPTER III.— continued.

THOilAS CKANMER.

Dissolution of monasteries. — Reform of Canterbury Cathedral. — Visit to England of German Protestants.— Treated with incivility by the King. — Their influence with Cranmer. — Discontent of the people. — Meeting of Parliament. — Whip with six strings. — Cranmer's con- duct on the occasion. — Convocation consulted. — Persecution of Ana- baptists.— Proclamation against Sacramentaries. — Persecution of John Lambert for denying Transubstantiation. — King Henry's zeal ibr Catholicism. — Other cases of persecution. How far Cranmer was concerned in them. — Mrs. Kyme, alias Ann Askew. — Joan Bocher. — Ann of Cleves. — Catherine Howard. — Fate of Crumwell. — Arbi- trary proceedings of Cranmer. — Visitation of liis diocese. — Vidgar errors. — Conspiracy against Cranmer. — Palace at Canterbury. — Cranmer supj)orted by the King against a consjoiracy in the Council. — Parts with his wife. — His domestic life. — Anecdotes. — His ava- rice.— AccejDtance of monastic property. — IL Cranmer's theological opinions. — His zeal for circulating the translated Bible. — History of versions. — Cranmer's Catholicism. — His Sacramental doctrine. — When he renounced the dogma of Transubstantiation. — Cranmer denounced by foreign Protestants. — Violence of foreign Protes- tants against the Church of England. — Cranmer's Erastianism. — Became a soimd Churchman. — The Apostohcal Succession. — Crum- well's proceedings as Vice-gerent. — Crumwell's insolence. — Party movements. — The Book of Articles. — Synodical meeting of the two

VI CONTENTS OP THE SEVENTH VOLUME.

Provinces. — Alexander Ales. — The Bishop's Book. — Howfar Cranmev had advanced in 1537. — New movement towards Liturgical Reform. — Homilies dra^vn up. — Necessary erudition or the King's Book. — Litany translated into English. — The Primer.- — Archbishop active in repressing Protestant as well as Papist error. — III. Death of Henry VIH. — Cranmer celebrates Mass at the funeral. — Celebrates !Mass in memory of Francis I. — Protector Somerset. — Edward VI. — Corona- tion.— Cranmer's arbitrary and unconstitutional proceedings. — The General Visitation. — Unjust deposition of Gardyner. — Disgraceflil appointment of Poynet to the See of Winchester. — Bonner. — Northumberland. — Progress of the Eeformation. — Discussions on the Eucharist. — Convocation. — First Revision of the Missal. — Commis- sion appointed. — A review of our Liturgical Offices from Augustine to Osmund, from Osmund to Cranmer, from Cranmer to Juxon. — First Prayer Book of Edward VI. — Calvin and Calviuists violently opposed to Prayer Book and the English Reformation. — Second Prayer Book. — The Forty-two Articles. — The Reformatio Legum, a failure. — Northumberland's conspiracy. — How far Cranmer was im- plicated.^— Death of Edward VI. — IV. Perplexity of the Reformers. — Gardyner and Bonner.^ — The Bloody JMary.- — ^Ci-anmer unjustly accused. — His self-vindication. — Brought before the Star Chamber — Imprisoned in the Tower. — His comforting intercourse with Ridley, Bradford, and Latimer, — His delusive hopes. — A packed Convocation undoes the work of the Reformers. — Cranmer arraigned in Guildhall for treason. — Pleads guilty. — His letter to the Queen. — Sent to Oxford with Ridley and Latimer to dispute with a Com- mittee of Convocation. — Unjustifiable proceedings. - Disputes with Harpsfield. — Summoned before a Synod of Presbyters. — Condemna- tion of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. — Letter to the Council. — Not badly treated. — Pole's arrival in England. — Commission to degrade Ridley and Latimer. — Commission for degradation of Cranmer from the Pope. — Martyrdoms. — Persecutions. — Cranmer summoned to Rome. — Trial before Brookes. — His expectations of favomr from the Queen. — Letter to the Queen. — Proceedings at Rome. — Cranmer's condemnation. — Bonner's harshness. — Cranmer's degradation. — His appeal. — The recantations. — His repentance. — His execution Page 1

SUCCESSION

AHCHBISHOPS AND CONTEMPOEAEY KINGS.

Archbishops.	5 e	Consecrators.			Contemporary Kings.
William Warliam . . Thomas Cranmer . .	1502 1533	[Eich. Winchester .] J John Exeter . , . !■ ( Rich. Rochester . . ) [John Lincoln. , .] - John Exeter . . . !■ ( Hen. S. Asaph . . j	• 1503 1533	1532 1556	j Henry VII. 1 Henry VIII. (Honry VIII. ] Edward. VI. ( Mary.

TABLE

CONTEMPOKAEY SOVEEEIGNS.

1 A.D.	England.	Scotland.	Germany.	France.	Pope.	Spain.
1503	HemyVII.	James IV.	Maximilian I.	Louis XII.	Pius in. Julius II.	Ferdinand II. and Isabella.
1509	Henry VIII.		,	.	,
1513		James V.			LeoX.	,
1515	^		.	Francis I.
1516	, ,	, ,				Charles I.
1519	•	•	Charles V.	•	•	Emperor Chtxrles V.
1522	,	^ ^			Adrian VI.
1523	, ,	,	,		Clement VII.
1534	, ,			.	Paul III.	^
1542	,	Mary				.
1547	Edward VI.			Henry 11.		.
1550	,		'		Julius III.	^
1553	Mary
1555		,			Marccllinus II.
1556				Paul IV.	Philip II. 1

LIVES

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY

BOOK lY.— con^mwec?.

CHAPTEE ILL— continued.

THOMAS CRANMER.

Dissolution of monasteries. — Eeform of Canterbury Cathedral. — Visit to England of German Protestants. — Treated with incivihty by the King. — Their influence with Cranmer. — Discontent of the people. — Meeting of Parliament. — "Whip with six strings. — Cranmer's con- duct on the occasion. — Convocation consulted. — Persecution of Ana- baptists.— Proclamation against Sacramentaries. — Persecution of

John Lambert for denying Transubstantiation King Henry's zeal

for Catholicism. — Other cases of persecution. — How far Cranmer was concerned in them. — Mrs. Kyme, alias Ann Askew. — Joan Bocher. — Ann of Cleves. — Catherine Howard. — Fate of Crumwell. — Arbi- trary proceedings of Cranmer. — Visitation of his diocese. — Vulgar errors. — Conspiracy against Cranmer. — Palace at Canterbury. — Cranmer supported by the King against a conspiracy in the Council. — Parts with his wife. — His domestic life. — Anecdotes. — His ava- rice.— Acceptance of monastic property. — II. Cranmer's theological opinions. — His zeal for circulating the translated Bible. — History of versions. — Cranmer's Catholicism. — His Sacramental doctrine. — "When he renoimced the dogma of Transubstantiation. — Cranmer denounced by foreign Protestants. — Violence of foreign Protes- tants against the Church of England. — Cranmer's Erastianism. — Became a sound Churchman. — The Apostolical Succession. — Crum- weU's proceedings as Vice-gerent. — Crumwell's insolence. — Party

VOL. VII. B

L LIVES OF THE

movements. — The Book of Articles. — Synodical meeting of the two Provinces. — Alexander Ales. — The Bishop's Book. — How far Cranmer had advanced in 1537. — New movement towards Liturgical Eeform. — Homilies drawn np. — Necessary erudition or the King's Book. — Litany translated into English. — The Primer. — Archbishop active in repressing Protestant as well as Papist error. — IIL Death of Henry Vin. — Cranmer celebrates Mass at the funeral. — Celebrates Mass in memory of Francis I. — Protector Somerset. — Edward VI. — Corona- tion Cranmer's arbitrary and unconstitutional proceedings. — The

General Visitation. — Unjust deposition of Gardyner. — Disgraceful appointment of Poynet to the See of Winchester. — Bonner. — Northumberland. — Progress of the Eeformation. — Discussions on the Eucharist. — Convocation. — First Eevision of the IMissal. — Commis- sion appointed. — A review of oTir Liturgical Offices from Augustine to Osmund, from Osmund to Cranmer, from Cranmer to Juxon. — First Prayer Book of Edward VI. — Calvin and Calvinists violently opposed to Prayer Book and the English Eeformation. — Second Prayer Book. — The Forty-two Articles. — The Eeformatio Legum, a failure. — Northumberland's conspiracv. — How far Cranmer Avas im- plicated.— Death of Edward VI. — IV. Perplexity of the Eefomiers. — Gardyner and Bonner. — The Bloody Mary. — Cranmer tmjustly accused. — His self-vindication. — Brought before the Star Chamber — Imprisoned in the Tower. — His comforting intercotu-se Avith Eidley, Bradford, and Latimer. — His delusive hopes. — A packed Convocation undoes the work of the Eeformers. — Cranmer arraigned in Guildhall for treason. — Pleads guilty. — His letter to the Queen. — Sent to Oxford with Eidley and Latimer to dispute A\'ith a Com- mittee of Convocation. — Unjustifiable proceedings. — Disputes with Harpsfield. — Summoned before a Synod of Presbyters. — Condemna- tion of Cranmer, Eidley, and Latimer. — Letter to the Coimcil. — Not badly treated. — Pole's arrival in England. — Commission to degrade Eidley and Latimer. — Commission for degradation of Cranmer from the Pope. — ]\Iartyrdoms. — Persecutions. — Cranmer summoned to Eome. — Trial before Brookes. — His expectations of favour from the Queen. — Letter to the Queen. — Sham proceedings at Eome. — Cran- mer's condemnation. — Bonner's harshness. — Cranmer's degradation. — His appeal. — The recantations. — His repentance. — His execution,

CHAP. In the OTeat work which has consigned tlie name of

TTT

V ,_: - Cmniwell to an immortahty of honour or disgrace — the

cianmer. dissolution of the monastcrics — Cranmer took no active 1633-56. part. The story has been narrated in detail in the

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 3

Introductory Chapter, and need not be repeated here. chap. In defending the regulars tlie archbishop and tlie secular ^~ — . — ' clergy were not much interested, and a broad distinction Cranmer. was made between the property of the Church and the 1533-56. property of the monasteries. Although some were alarmed when Ucalegon's house was in danger, many more among the seculars were disposed to secure the safety of Church property, by sacrificmg the monks to the cupidity of the courtiers and the avarice of the king. The monasteries, though connected with the Church, formed no part of the Church system. They were decidedly anti-episcopahan institutions ; they had wasted large sums of money to purchase exemption from episcopal jurisdiction ; an account of the contentions for this privilege occupies a large portion of the monastic chronicles ; and it was not to be supposed that the bishops should be zealous in their defence. To this cause Ave may indeed attribute, in part, the ease with which they were overthrown.

To the confiscation of monastic property for the pur- pose of supplanting monasteries by schools and colleges, the public mind had been habituated from the time of Wilham of Wykeham and Chicheley, to that of Cardinal Wolsey. Against their spoliation there was not a single protest from either house of convocation, whether in the province of Canterbury or of York.

I wish we could find a protest from Cranmer against the iniquitous proceedings of Cnuiiwell, when that minis- ter, in attempting to create a public opinion against the monks, permitted his followers to turn all rehgion into ridicule. As against the monks, Crumwell succeeded ; but he created an alarm, whicli ended in a reaction, when he made it appear that by Protestantism his associates meant not a protest against popery, but a protest against all

B 2

4 LIVES OF THE

CH.\p. relioion. lu staiie plays and interludes acted in dese- 111 "' ^ i ^ ...

crated churclies the most sacred rites of Christianity were

turned into ridicule, while the ministers of religion were

exposed to the scorn and contempt of tlie grinning

populace.*

Against these proceedings, some of the suffragans of Cranmer did protest, but Cranmer himself was overawed by Crumwell ; and although, at this time, he saw little of his royal master, he applied to the man the legal fiction wdth which the law approaches the king^ and imagined that Henry YJH. could do no wrong.

By Cranmer and his party Henry, indeed, was be- lieved— and at this period of his reign, there is no reason why he should not be beheved — when he declared it to be his intention, with the property of the monas- teries, to erect schools, and to increase the number of bishoprics.

Of what took place at the gambling table in the palace, only the rumour would reach Lambeth ; and, as the man- ner is with loyal subjects, the unwelcome rumour was disbelieved, or pronounced to be a gross exaggeration. We are continually to bear in mind that much of what is known to us was unknown or only partially known to contemporaries.

The promises of the king, like other royal promises, were forgotten amidst the calls of pleasure, or the p]:'essure of business. They were recalled to his recollection, not by the eloquence of Cranmer, but by the alarming condition to which the country had been brought by Crumwell. The king was roused from the lethargy of dissipation by the disturbances in -the north and by the Pilgrimage of

* See Maitlaud's Reformation, 236 ; and Burnet, i. 303. The sub- ject is treated at length in the Introductory Chapter of this book.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 5

Grace. As liacl been the case with Wolsey, so had it ckap.

been with Criimwell ; the king left to his minister the -- , — ■

details of business, until there was an outcry among the cranmer. people, and then Henry arose like a giant. He assumed 1533-06. the direction of affairs ; he regamed the popularity he dearly loved by throwing the blame of all past miscon- duct on the minister ; and he was prepared to sacrifice the minister himself, if the sacrifice was demanded by the people.

The king was prepared to redress grievances, while he put down with a strong hand an insurrection wliich ap- proached to the nature of a rebellion. Among other things, he redeemed his pledge to parliament ; and new sees were established, though inadequately endowed, at Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Gloucester, and Chester. In certain conventual churches, in their respective dio- ceses, the cathedra, or throne, of the new bishop, was erected ; and measures were taken to establish chapters of secular clergy in those ancient cathedrals from which the regulars had now been expelled.

The reader will remember the struggle of Dunstan and Lanfranc, predecessors of Cranmer, to place any cathedrals, to which their influence might extend, in the hands of the regulars. They partially succeeded, and it became a pecuharity of the Church of England, in the middle age, with a few exceptions, chiefly in Spain, that many cathe- drals, instead of being governed by a dean and canons, were administered by a prior and his convent of monks. The seculars, who had been driven by Dimstan and Lanfranc from many of the cathedrals, were now, under Cranmer, restored to their ancient inheritance, and the monks were compelled to retire. The chapters of Can- terbury, Winchester, Durham, Ely, Xoi*wich, \YDrcester, Carlisle, and Eochester, were at this time composed of

6 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, regulars. They were under the rule of priors, some of

■ r^ — ' them mitred.

(>anmOT. ^ mitred prior was the prior of Canterbury, who, when

1533-56. he officiated, was attired almost like a bishop. In each case, the relation of the bishop of the diocese to the priory in his cathedral was theoretically that of an abbot to his convent. These priories were now converted into colleges, and new arrangements of the chapter and of the inferior officers of the establishment became necessary. Hence there existed, and still continues to exist, in the Church of England two distinct classes of cathedrals : cathedrals of the old foundation, and cathedrals of the new foundation. With the old foundations, the reformers had no occasion to interfere. These cathedrals had from their foundation been administered by the secular clergy, and they were unmolested.* To the present hour they are regulated by statutes confirmed to them in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the Norman kings, Avith powers of legislation, through which they have from time to time adapted themselves to the exigencies of the several ages through which they have passed. Although Queen Victoria has taken away the corpses formerly attached to the non- residentiary stalls, to endow new parishes or to increase the income of parishes badly endowed, those ancient stalls nevertheless remained and are claimed by the in- cumbents as freeholds.

As Canterbury was a cathedral administered by re- gulars ; it required a reform amounting almost to a revolution. In effecting the change in his cathedi'al, the

* The cathedrals of the old foundation are York, London, Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, Salisbury, and "Wells. Some of the old foundation cathedrals, it may be said, had new statutes given them ; Ave may mention Lichfield for one. But I look on these rather as new promulgations or codifications of the old.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 7

abilities of Craiimer, as a legislator, were called into play. chap.

In these matters, however, the king took a personal - — ,^

interest ; and we must admit that the superiority of Henry cranmS. in matters of detail — for he descended to details — is con- 1.333-06. spicuous.

There never was, nor was there likely to be, a good understanding between the archbishop and his chapter.

From the iniquities of the time, it was not to be ex- pected, that the great convent of Canterbury would be entirely exempt ; although we shall find the archbishop himself admitting that no charge of immorahty, in the ordinary sense of the term, could be brought against that body. But that the respectable superiors of the monastery did not take steps to discover or prevent the impostures to which some unscrupulous members of the convent had recourse, we are compelled to suspect. They did not prac- tise impostiu-es themselves, but they must have been .aware that of this offence some of the brethren were guilty, and they wilfully shut their eyes to the fact. The temptation was great. For centuries devotees had flocked to the shrine of St. Thomas, and now there was a tendency in the pubhc to treat the history and the miracles of the martyr with a sneer scarcely concealed. To sustain the fading idea of a miraculous odour pervading the pre- cincts of the cathedral, acts were resorted to which could be justified only by those who thought a righteous end would justify recourse to means of which righteousness could certainly not be predicated.

It is surprising to find how easily the pilgrimages to Canterbiu-y were suppressed. One would have supposed that the whole city and county would have resisted the abolition of a custom which brouQ;ht so much wealth to the inhabitants. But at this time, the wealthy seldom made pilgrimages to the shrine for the purposes of de-

O LIVES OF THE

CHAP. Yotion ; and the mob of pilo;rims, in the absence of the

III • . .

v—,-^ — - wealthy, instead of enriching the inhabitants, made them

CranTer. tlicir prayer. These came not to spend, but to beg. The 1533-56. grumblers, no doubt, were many, but when the autho- rities of Church and State had determined to suppress the superstition, the townspeople generally acquiesced, with a good grace ; and fierce feelings of indignation were excited when they foimd that they had been all along; victims of a delusion.

This feeling of disregard for the martyr had been gradually advancing of late years. When, in the time of Archbishop Warham, Erasmus visited Canterbury, he ex- pressed himself perfectly astonished at the number of sanctified bones produced for his inspection ; sculls, jaw- bones, teeth, hands, fingers, entire arms, all of which he and his companion, much to their disgust, were expected to kiss. He began to fear that the exhibition would have never come to an end, when the impatience of his com- panion interrupted " the zeal of the showman." It was thus he described the priest in his alb and Avith a hghted taper, who bent the knee as he indicated each sacred relic. But to the common showman a pilgrim so dis- tinguished as Erasmus was not left ; Dr. Goldwell himself, the lord prior, appeared to display certain treasures not exposed to the vulgar eye. The lord prior opened to them the shrine of which, resplendent with jewels, the least valuable part was the gold. With a white wand. Dr. Goldwell pointed out each jewel, giving its name and the name of its donor, and at the same time estimating its value. The principal gems were the gifts of sovereign princes who had knelt trembling before the queller of tyrants. In the sacristy was produced a box containing what the lord prior regarded as something more valuable than gold and precious stones — fragments of hnen, origi-

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 9

nally filtby, and now filthier through age, with which St. ckap. Thomas had been accustomed " to wipe the perspiration .. — ^ — - from his face or neck, the runnings of his nose, and all craumS. the superfluities from which the most holy human frame 1533-06. is not free." Without a periphrasis, he exhibited the pockethandkerchief of Thomas a Becket.

The jocular, sarcastic, sneering tone of Erasmus, while observing all outward demonstrations of respect, was evidently not peculiar to himself The worthy prior was accustomed to see an incredulous smile upon some from whom he had expected better things. We may mention the case of a lady — and ladies are the last to retire from acts of devotion long sanctioned : the easy, though well- bred, indifference manifested by Madame de Montreuil, when visiting the shrine, a few years after the visit just mentioned, of Erasmus, must have combined, with other circumstances, to convince the good and pious, but too credulous, prior GoldweU, and with him the wiser among his brethren, that, however much the treasures confided to their custody might be valued as works of art or as relics of piety, the time was passing, if it were not gone, when they could infuse into the admirers of St. Thomas a spirit of resistance to such a king as Henry YIII.

That with a convent so occupied Cranmer should have httle or nothing in common is at once apparent ; he regarded the prior and his brethren with contempt, and they looked upon him with mingled feelings of suspicion and fear ; and yet, Thomas Goldwell, the last of the Benedictine priors of Christ Church, Canterbury, was not a contemptible person. Elected lord prior in 1517, he held the ofiice till the dissolution of the monastery. He was a man against whose moral character the Protestant inquisitors were unable to bring the shadow of a charge, and he ruled his house well. Cranmer complained of

10 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, him for not making grants sufficiently liberal to the

v- ^ — ' archiepiscopal treasmy, yet of the munificence of Prior

Cranmor. Golchvell we havc ocular demonstration to the present

1533-56. day. The student of history is reminded of Goldwell's good taste when he passes through the stately entrance into the precincts of Canterbury, which was planned and executed by the prior ; by whom was also erected the central tower of the magnificent cathedral itself He was contemplating the completion of Becket's cro"\vn. He is described by Erasmus — and a better witness could not be produced — as a man equally pious and judicious, and as by no means a bad Scotist. He complied, though not with a good grace, with the various changes which took place in the reign of Henry VIH., and had accepted the royal supremacy ; he paid a retaining fee to Crumwell ; but in theological opinions he differed from the arch- bishop. Cranmer, though holding no Protestant principles when he was appointed to the see of Canterbury, was nevertheless a man of progress, whereas Goldwell, though yielding to authority, was a decided conservative. He never willingly took a step in advance. Cranmer ad- mitted that the prior acted up to the letter of any injunctions he might receive, but he complained that he was ever ready to evade or to explain them away. Such a one, standing in the relation of the prior to the arch- bishop, must have been pecuharly offensive to Cranmer ; and in the letters of the archbishop, we find him desirous to have the prior of Canterbiu-y removed, though it was long before he succeeded. At the same time, the prior and convent, though not prepared to show any great favour to their primate, quietly met his legal demands. They incurred — which was certainly unusual — the chief expense of the banquet at the archbishop's enthronisation, and we must admit, that the treatment

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 11

they received from the archbishop was not always so gracious as mioht have been expected. On one occa-

. r. ? 1 1 1 n • 1 1111 • Thomas

sion, for example, when the archbishop thanked the prior cnmmer. for some " good and kind token " he had received from io33-o6. " your brethren and mine, not deserved as yet ;" he added, "nevertheless you should have done me much more greater pleasure if you had lent it me full of gold, not for any pleasure or delectation that I have in the thing, but for the contentation of such as I am indebted and dangered unto ; which I assure you hath grieved me more of late than any worldly thing hath done a great season ; in this I am bold to show you my necessity, thinking of good congruence I might in such lawfid necessity be more bolder of you, and you likewise of me, than to attempt or prove any foreign friends. Wherefore, trusting in your benevolence and of all my brethren for the premises, I shall so recompense the same again, according as ye shaU be weU contented and pleased withal. Thus fare ye weU." * There were faults on both sides. The convent gave less than they had been accustomed to give, but more than could be legally demanded of them. Cran- mer felt the neglect, but could not compel them to give more.

Cranmer, no doubt, had Goldwell and several of his monks, to a certain extent, in his power. The prior and some of his brethren had been compromised in the affair of Elizabeth Barton ; and the open advocacy of the im- posture by two of the body cast suspicion upon all its members. But on the other hand, GoldweU, following the example which had been set by the superiors in other great monasteries, had secured the good offices of

♦ Letter Ivii. Harl. MSS. 6,148, fol. 32, b. As abbot of the convent, the archbishop had probably some claim upon the revenues of the see, but no direct share in the dividends.

12 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. Crumwell, and lie sustained an interest in the vicegerent , by sundry little attentions and presents. An ecclesiastic

Cranmer. patronised by Crumwell might, if he acted with common 1533-56. discretion, assume an attitude of independence with re- gard to the primate.

Cranmer made no secret of his dislike of monastic institutions ; he carried out his dislike even to the cathedral chapters, though he would have been glad to convert some of the religious houses into educational institutions. With respect to Canterbury, he did not hesitate to insinuate, that of the jugglery as to miracles which had been detected and exposed in other monas- teries, the convent of Canterbury w^as not innocent. Al- though we acquit Goldwell of any direct patronage of the malpractices, in this respect, yet with respect to some of the monks his suspicions probably approached nearer to a certainty than tliose of the archbishop. But what the archbishop would expose, the prior would conceal. If wrong were done, the prior thought it were better to hush up the affair ; and Goldwell would regard tlie offence as very venial, as it had for its object to increase the de- votion of the people.

Cranmer watched the proceedings of the monastery very narrowly, and there were many persons ready to assist him in his observations and enquiries. At length, the archbishop openly declared his conviction that the blood of St. Thomas of Canterbury was but a feigned thing, and made of some red ochre or of such like matter, and he applied to the government for a commission to enquire and report.

There could be no doubt of the fact of the imposture, when once enquiry was made. Goldwell and his chapter therefore felt, that they were at the mercy of Cranmer and Crumwell, and were prepared to make the best

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 13

bargain for themselves they could. An hostility of the chap. townspeople against the monks, even when pilgrimages -y— r-^— to St. Thomas's shrine were most popular, had always Cranmer. existed ; and this hereditary animosity increased by the i •533-56, disrepute into which pilgrimages had fallen and by the spirit of the age amounting to a fanaticism against the monasteries, became inflamed to the highest pitch. In the destruction of other monasteries, Crumwell had sought to win the mob by hounding them on to plunder the monks of all that the commissioners had left; and the idea of a scramble was present to the minds, no doubt, of not a few. But the convent of Christ Church was not simply a monastery : it consisted of the members of the cathedral chaj)ter, wdio were regulars, instead of being, as they ought to have been, secular clergy. It was not the intention of Henry to destroy the cathedrals ; on the contrary, he took an interest in such establishments. The cathedral was saved because there stood the bishop's cathedra. But what has just been advanced will serve to show, why the prior and the convent were prepared to accept any terms proposed to them by the government.

A royal injunction, issued so early as 1536, for the abrogation of superstitious hohdays or festivals, had its bearing upon the convent of Canterbury. As Cranmer complained to Crumwell, that tlie injunction, though emanating from the king, was not observed by the com-t, we may infer that it was issued at the instance of the archbishop, and that it had a political rather tlian a rehgious aspect. It was, indeed, with a special view to the abohtion of the greatest of all the festivals of the Church of England as it then existed, — excepting those only which related to our Lord himself, — that orders were given that no festival should henceforth be kept during Jiarvest time ; that is, between the 1st of July and the

Thomas Cranmer.

14 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. 29th of September.* Middle- class legislation is liere per- ceptible. Land had been purchased by commercial men ; they desired to make the most of their property ; but 1533-56. owing to the multitude of holidays, during which the labouring classes were kept from work, they were by no means secure of carrjnng the hai^^est before the weather became foul. Eeadily did they, therefore, accept the in- junction which Cranmer designed to be a step in advance towards the reformation of the Church.

The Tth of July arrived. It was the feast of the trans- lation of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The archbishop was at his palace on the 6th, a day which his predecessors had long kept ostentatiously as a fast. No fast-day had been by the primates more strictly observed. Archbishop Cranmer took his place, however, in the centre of the high table in his hall, to which the public were freely admitted, and there they saw the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury enjoying a hearty meal, regahng, not on fish but on flesh.

Wliat he did himself, he directed the prior and con- vent to do by command of the king. They obeyed; they feasted on the fast-day, and the day following was regarded as ferial.

The dire ostent the fearful people viewed ;

but if they were alarmed at first, lest the insulted saint should take vengeance on the Church and town, the alarm soon subsided, and the feast of the translation was extinct.

It was an easy and a pleasant triumph, followed by a remarkable proceedmg, quite in character with the age, and conducted with a view not to satisfy the well-in- formed and educated portion of the community, but to

* Strype, 10.

ARCnBISIIOPS OF CANTERBURY. 15

make an impression upon the superstitious who required citap. to be met on their own ground. < — , —

Men did not in those days regard death in the light of cranmer. an annihilation of what was once ahve. Death was re- 1533-06. gaixled as the portal through which the sanctified passed into heaven ; and those who, not dying in the odour of sanctity, had nevertheless been exempt from mortal sin, into purgatory. The soul of the saint was supposed to be endued with greater powders, and to be furthering invisibly the ends he had in view, w^hen he was still in the flesh. Thomas a Becket was regarded as the personification of the principle of papal supremacy, as opposed to the supre- macy of the cro"wn. He had, in his death, triumphed over Henry 11. ; and Henry VHI. w^as determined to avenge himself upon the great enemy of his ancestor. He uncanonised the saint, who was henceforth to be called Bishop Becket. He would deal Avith that dead man as the papists had dealt with John Wiclif. He instituted legal proceedings against the traitor prelate. If the saint would work a miracle in vindication of himself, the king would submit to be defeated and disgraced. If the king with impunity scattered to the winds the bones of Bishop Becket, this w^ould prove the reputed saint to be not a martyr but a traitor, who, if he possessed any powers, w^as now^ unable to defend himself, much less his worshippers.

Against "Thomas Becket," sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, " the king's attorney-general exhibited an in- formation charging him with treason, contumacy, and re- bellion." On the 24th of October, 1538, a pursuivant arrived at Canterbury, and straightway demanded ad- mission into the cathedral. The monks knew why he had come, and he was received in solemn silence. With the insolence of an official arriving from the capital, and

16 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, regarding the provincials with contempt, and with the

- ;j — - irreverence also of one who, contemning superstition, had

Cranmer. discarded all religion except that which the king's govern-

1533-56. ment commanded him to accept, the pursuivant hastened through the choir ; he marched straight up to the shrine Avhere thousands upon thousands had knelt in prayer, and, with a loud irreverent voice, he summoned the defunct archbishop to appear in the king's court of justice, in person or by proxy, to answer to the charge brought acjainst him of hicrh treason.

Silence ensued. Many were still prostrate before the shrine ; their wavering hearts doubting, but not yet en- tirely rejecting, the legends relating to St. Thomas. They half expected some indication to be given of the martyr's anger, and they were there in an attitude to deprecate his wrath. For thirty days the summons was repeated.

When the last day came, all hope had expired. For the last time, the pursuivant stood before the shrine still resplendent with jewels and gold, his foot resting upon stones literally indented by the bare knees of the millions who had knelt there in earnest, if in mistaken, enthusiasm. There was a pause, and the imagination wandered to the crypt ; and it did not require much exercise of the imagi- nation to fancy that the lashes could be heard, as one after the other they fell upon the back of that proud king whom his prouder descendant was now avenging. The silence w^as broken by the hard unfeeling tone of tlie pur- suivant's voice summoning the dead to judgment. Then there was silence again —

"O"

KoX irjs ar^av 'yap sari irov aiyrjs ^dpos.

One by one the brethren retired, each for the last time bending the knee, as he passed it, to the shrine, which from childhood he had worshipped. The aged prior was

ARCHBISHOPS OF a\NTERBURY. 17

left alone. His occupation was gone. When the shrine

was demolished, what Avould be the use of Becket's

crown ? He pitied himself, the last lord prior. He

pitied his brethren ; from the consecrated palace of the 1533-06.

Kmg of Kings, which had been to many of them a happy

liome, from infancy to childhood, from childhood to old

age — they were about to be driven homeless.*

On the 16th of Xovember, a proclamation was issued setting forth the cause and manner of Becket's death — a proclamation which was drawn up with consummate skill and industry by Crumwell. All those points were dwelt upon which were seen to be most telling upon the public mind, which, however otherwise divided, was resolute in its resistance to the pope. The proclamation dwelt upon Becket's adhesion to a foreign potentate in opposition to the King of England, and represented his death as being inconsistent with the character of a saint. Listead of yielding jiis life mth meekness, he defended it to the last with the ferocity of an outlaw. As the pope was here- after to be spoken of only as the Bishop of Eome, so was St. Thomas of Canterbury ever afterwards to be described simply as Bishop Becket. His images and pictures were

* Wilkins, iii. 835, 836. Doubts of the authenticity of the narrative haA^e been started because it rests on the authority of foreigners, Sanders, Pallini, and Paul III. Yet it seems to be confirmed by the proclamation of 1539, which is considered by Dr. Lingard and Dean Stanley, regarding the case from opposite quarters, to establish its authenticity. It is not improbable that, when some of the foreign Protestants represented the proceeding as absurd, Henry VIII. tampered with the documents relating to the affair, as he did with aU the other public documents of the age. But neither Henry nor Cranmer were, at this time, Protestants, and the whole transaction is in accordance with the spirit of the age then passing away. They who take the opposite view dwell on certain mistakes in detail. It is not a point of much importance, but I have narrated the event, as according to the authorities, it occurred.

VOL. VII. C

18 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, to be destroyed. His festivals were to be abolished, the

> ^ — - service, office, antiphoiis, collects, and prayers in his

Cranmer. naiiic Were to be erased and put out of all books.* 1533-56. The destruction of the shrine of St. Thomas may be regarded as tlie final overthrow of the monastic system in England, and of the worship of saints. Of this system, Thomas a Becket was the representative to the EngUsh mind ; and if he were no longer to receive latria, it would be offered to none else. Hence the pohcy of the govern- ment to arm its officials with power in case of resistance ; to surround the overthrow of Becket's shrine with legal pomp, and to make appeal to the prejudices of the people. It was the most decided step, next to the renunciation of the papal supremacy, which had as yet been taken. Upon tliis point Cranmer's mind never afterwards wavered ; and Henry, by the retention of the abbey lands, had no choice but to support him.

The affairs of the cathedral, however, were not so bad as Prior Goldwell and his brethren had been led to suppose. When the cathedral was once more restored to the seculars, prebendal stalls, under the new constitution, were offered to those of the monks who might be willing to conform to the new statutes.

On the 20th of March, 1539, a commission was directed to the archbishop and others, authorising them to draw up a form by which, under the seal of the prior and convent, the priory of Christ Church might be surren- dered to the king. They were required to make an inventory of the goods, chattels, plate, precious ornaments, and money, belonging to the unfortunate monks ; and all that was movable was to be consigned to the master of the jewel-house in the Tower of London. The value of the jewels alone from the shrine of Becket must have * Wilkins, iii. 848.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 19

been incalculable. Of their disposal we hear little. They were soon dispersed, from the royal gaming table, among the Eussells, the Seymours and the other courtiers who sprang from the royal favour to be, no doubt, a blessing to the country, as nutritious herbs from a dung-hill.

The king, who had once more addressed his powerfid mind to business, took measures for reconstructing the chapters in those cathedrals from which the usurping monks had now been ousted. It was a kind of em- ployment in which Henry delighted, and he evidently found pleasure in letting Cranmer perceive that, occupied though he was by many things, he understood these matters quite as well as the archbishop, whose whole attention was given to ecclesiastical affairs. Henry, con- scious of his intellectual superiority, took pride in causing it to be felt in every detail of office.

His readiness to discuss and his patience u:ider con- tradiction, so long as the contradiction was confined to words, endeared him to all men of business, though per- haps many of them felt that the king, who to-day con- versed with his minister hke an intimate friend, might be as eager to sign his execution on the morrow as he had been to receive intelligence of poor Ann Boleyn's death.

The king himself drew up an extensive scheme, or, as Cranmer calls it, a device, for the re-establishment of the chapter of Canterbury Cathedral, which he intended should be a model for all the cathedrals of the new foundation. One of the reasons why the king took such a personal interest m these proceedings was that he sought, through the new dioceses he established, and through the reorganisation of the cathedral chapters, where such new organisation was required, to conceal or cover the iniquitous uses to which he had applied so much of the monastic property. He so prided himself

1533-56.

20 LIVES OF THE

CH.vp. upon his sell erne or device for the reformation of Canter-

• r^ — • bury Cathedral that he directed Sadler, his ambassador

Cranmer. to Scotkud, to lay it before the Scotch king, " that he 1533-56. might see the useful purposes to ivhich religious houses might be applied." *

The scheme, a copy of which has been preserved, is admirable. He proposed to establish a provost, twelve prebendaries, six preachers, readers or professors of humanity, divinity, civil law, and physic ; twenty stu- dents of divinity, ten to have exhibitions at Oxford, and ten at Cambridge ; sixty grammar scholars, with a master ; eight petty canons to sing in the choir, twelve singing men, ten choristers, a choir master, a gospeler, an epi- stoler, two sacristans, a butler and under butler, a caterer, a chief cook, an under cook, two porters, twelve alms- men, and various subordinate officers : all of them tho- roughly endowed, having a separate fund for repairs, and for charitable distributions. f

Nothing was done in a niggardly spirit. All was designed to place the chapter of the Metropolitan Church on a footing which would enable it to maintain the character for a splendid hospitality by which it had been distinguished from the first foundation of our Church and its metropolitan cathedral by Augustine. A copy of the scheme was sent to the archbishop, and another copy to the prior and convent.

Cranmer objected — writing to Crumwell, for the arch- bishop was not the king's chief adviser and commu- nicated with him through the only real minister of the crown at this time — to the appointment of prebendaries. He would have both name and office abolished. In fact, he was ambitious to have the sole management of the cathedral ; but, as usual, he had no plan of * Sadler's State Papers. f Remains, i. 291.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY, 21

his own: lie could only criticise the scheme or device craf.

. in.

which was sent to him. He begrudfred the endow- ^ — . — '

• o AA Thomas

ment of the prebendaries, amounting to about, £1,200 a Cranmer. year, according to the present valuation ; and he main- io33-56. tained, that the money might be " altered to a more expedient use." He proposed that, instead of preben- daries, there should be established twenty divines, with a diminished income ; and that the whole apparatus of readers and professors should be rejected as useless.

Although the cathedral establishments have not, of late years, been rendered so serviceable in the cause of rehgion as might have been wished, yet it is to the abuse of pa- tronage that the fault is to be chiefly traced ; and they will probably never become what they are designed to be, a provision for learned men — those who are not called to be pastors, but whose business it is to edify the body of Christ,* — until every canon or prebendary be compelled to perpetual residence, and be prohibited, under any pre- tence, from holding; a livino; m commendam with a stall. A pastor should devote the whole of his time to his flock, but as God has appointed in His church not only pastors but also prophets and teachers, there ought to be provision made for those, who are to be employed in learned labours for the perfecting of the saints.

But although the archbishop had not shown much administrative wisdom in the management of the convent, and although he was obstructive rather than co-operative in the formation of the new chapter, he was anxious to secure for himself the patronage ; and passing over the venerable and munificent prior, he urged the appointment of Dr. Crome as the first dean.f Of this no complaint can

* Ephes. iv. 10, 11.

•)■ The influence of the archbishop with the king was not sufficient to prevent him from making a mere political appointment, and Nicolas

22 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, be fairly made, for Dr. Crome was a reformer, and Dr.

-^ — r-^ — ' Gold well would have been a hindrance to the archbishop

Cranmtr. i^i many of the measures which he was already devising

1533-56. fQj. i]^Q (TQod of the Church. Dr. Goldwell was offered

the first stall next to the dean in the new foundation, or

a pension on his retirement. He naturally did not choose

to take the second place in a cathedral over which he had

long presided, if not wisely yet with munificence, and

he accepted a pension equivalent to what Avould now

amount to £800 a year.*

The pensions settled on other members of the priory, who refused appointments under the new system, were here, and elsewhere, considerable ; and from documents in the augmentation office, we infer that they were re- gularly paid.

The treatment of the priory of Christ Church, which had, for many years, formed the chapter of the cathedral, is the more worthy of note since it tends to contradict the accusations brought wholesale against rehgious houses by Protestant inquisitors of Crumwell's appointment. Among the convents most maligned, was that of Christ Church, Canterbury. We have seen that in one respect, for the gross impostures of the inferior members winked at by the superiors, the convent deserved condemnation.

Wotton became the first dean of Canterbury under the new founda- tion. Cranmer's endeavour to obtain power over his chapter was only the continuation of an old controversy. To a secular chapter the diocesan was only the visitor ; in a chapter of regulars he was regarded as the abbot, but there was a continual struggle to make his authority merely nominal. This dispute has prevailed at Canterbury from the earliest times. The archbishop's power as de jure abbot was reduced to the merest form in the twelfth century.

* It is presumed that Goldwell died in 1553, as his name does not appear in the exchequer return of pensions payable to retired members of religious houses in that or any subsequent year.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 23

But the charge of immorahty, beyond what is imphecl in this assertion, except among a few individuals, who were _,

' ^ '^ 1 i* 1 1 Thomas

justly punished, is disproved by the fact, that of the twelve Cranmer. prebendaries appointed by the archbishop or the king, as 1533-56. they divided the patronage, eight had been monks of the dissolved monastery ; or rather, we might say, all had been monks except two, for both Thomas Gold well and WilHam Wychope, though they preferred a pension, had each the option of a stall.

The ten minor canons and nine scholars, or choristers, were reappointed, and pensions or gratuities were offered to all for whom the dean and chapter were unable to find suitable situations.* We are consequently brought to this alternative — either the inquisitors appointed by CrumweU were hbellers or Thomas Cranmer was a patron of immorahty.

One transaction must be noted, as it tends to the credit of Cranmer's character. When the commission for regu- lating the constitution of the cathedral body was sitting, the reform of the school passed under review. The predominant middle-class feeling here displayed itself, and it was proposed to exclude the children of the poor.

The usual arguments, with which we were famihar some thirty or forty years ago, were produced. The children of husbandmen, it was said, were " more meet for the plough and to be artificers than to occupy the place of the learned sort." This notion Cranmer nobly combated. He pointed to the fact, that the children

* The amount of pensions granted to monks who were ousted from their houses throughout the country was considerable, and tells in favour of the monasteries. Men against whom no charge coidd be brought were bribed to resign. To the superiors of houses the pensions varied, according to modern computation, from £2,000 a year to £60. Priors of cells generally received from £130 to £200. This also speaks for the credit of the king's goverament.

24 LIVES OF THE

of the poor were often endowed " with more singular gifts of nature, which are also gifts of God, such as Cranmer. cloqucnce, memory, apt pronunciation, sobriety, and such 1533-oG. like, and that also commonly they were more apt to apply to their study than is the gentleman's son delicately educated." He combated the vulgar notion that, " if the poor man's son received the same advantages of education as the son of the rich, there would be none to perform the humbler duties of life ; and as we have, it was urged, as much need of ploughmen as of any other state, so that all sorts of men should not go to school."

He contended that to refuse to afford to children with high intellectual capabilities the means and opportunity of cultivating their endowments was to act du^ectly in opposi- tion to the God who gave tliem, and, said the archbishop with eloquent sarcasm : — " to say the truth, I take it that none of us all liere, being gentlemen born (as I think),* but had our beginning that way, from a low base parentage : and through the benefit of learning, and other civil knowledge, for the most part all gentlemen ascend to their estate."

It was in the interests of learning, rather than in the interests of the poor, that Cranmer argued ; though in doing so, the rights of the poor were vindicated. The difficulty, at this time, was to prevail upon men to accept a learned education. They were bribed to do so by the offer of a cheap education ; and of that education the poor, if so minded, had as much right to avail them- selves as the rich. Of that right the middle classes, now rising into importance, would have deprived the poor, the consequence of which exclusiveness would have been an insult to the industrial classes, while its tendency would have been also to diminish the number of scholars.

* Strype, 126. Was the parenthesis designed as an attack upon Crumwell ? None of the commissioners were high-born.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. lo

This point Cranmer carried ; but although the arch- chap.

bishop defended his cathedral, when attempts were made r-^— -

to compel the chapter to grant long leases in favour of the cranmer. courtiers, his relations to the cathedral body, if not un- 1533-56. friendly, never became intimate.

We now revert to general history. It had long been an object with Cranmer to induce the king to estabhsh political relations ■v^^th the German princes ; for he foresaw clearly that this would open the way to further reformations in the church.

At his suggestion Melancthon had been frequently invited by the king to visit England ; and Melancthon had always declined. His reason, as assigned in his private correspondence, was his conviction that Henry had only a political and not a rehgious object in view.* This was probably the feeling prevalent among the German princes. But affairs on the Continent were so unsettled in the year 1538, that on the renewal of negotiations with them on the part of Henry they sent an embassy to England. It was a legation singidar in its character, the members of it appearing before the kmg in a two-fold character, that of ambassadors and that of divines ; mi- nisters of man and ministers of God. They were not on that account the less welcome to Henry, who was not unwilling to display his abiUties as a statesman and his learning, which was not inconsiderable, as a theologian. He even proposed to conduct a theological discussion Avith them in person. At the head of the embassy were Francis Burgrat, chancellor to the Elector of Saxony; George a Boyneburgh, a nobleman of Hesse ; and Frederick Myconius, superintendent of the reformed church at Gotha.f They represented John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and Phihp, Landgrave of Hesse, and came for the * Bumet, Strype, Seckendorf. j Ibid,

26 LIVES OF THE

CH.ip. ostensible purpose of forming a league against the pope,

. /- - and, by a consultation with the English divines, of drawing

CranmeJ. ^P ^ commou Coufessiou of faith. But an obstacle pre- 1633-06. sented itself at the commencement of their proceedings. It was proposed that the Church of England should accept as its doctrinal formulary the Confession of Augsburg. To this indignity Henry, always right-hearted when the honour of the country was concerned, would not for a moment consent. He had no objection to discuss the articles, and to hear what the Protestants had to say. He had no objection, if, after discussion, the Protestants were found to be Catholic or orthodox, to blend these articles with an Enghsh formulary ; but a German formulary the Church of England must not accept ; rather, on the con- trary, the Germans must subscribe to a Confession of faith drawn up in England. Soon after the arrival of the legation, a royal commission was issued for a con- ference with the Protestants ; and the commission re- presented fairly the two great sections of the Church of England, the men of the old learning and the men of the new learning. At the head of the former was the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Tonstal, and the latter were under the leadership of the Primate himself. While the dis- cussion related to the chief articles of belief, there was Httle or no difference of opinion. The confession asserted the Catholic faith. But when the Protestants insisted on certain reforms requisite to reduce the Church of England to their own level, then were opened the flood-gates of controversy, which the king had no inclination, at the present time, to close. The archbishop laboured to effect a compromise between the opposing parties, and the position of his mind at this time, qualified him to act as a mediator. He would accept the regulations and the dogijias of the Church of England as they had been

AKCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 27

transmitted ; but, with the exception of the dogma of ch.\p. transubstantiation, he was wilhng, or rather desirous, to — -^ — '

• n 1 t n Tjy 1 Thomas

make great concessions for the sake of peace, it he Cranmer. may be said to have had any definite object in view, it was 1533-56. to unite all parties who were opposed to the pope, by in- ducing or compeUing them to adopt one Confession of faith.

On transubstantiation, ere long to become the test of orthodoxy on the part of the papist, the dogma for the denial of wliich hfe was to be sacrificed on the part of the Protestants, nothing was now said. The Lutherans had tacitly agreed, that it should be an open question, and well would it have been for the peace of Christendom if to that determination they had been permitted to adhere. Besides, the difference between consubstantiatiou and transubstantiation appeared so slight that they were wilhng to avoid discussion. But the points on which the Lutherans insisted were the administration of the Eucharist in both kinds, the renunciation of the practice of private masses,* and the constrained cehbacy of the clergy.

On the latter point Cranmer felt a personal interest, but probably he would have preferred that the subject should not at this time be mooted.

The cehbacy of the clergy was, as all admitted, not a divine law ; it was a disciphuary regulation of the Church. A regulation of the Church, however, admitted of a dis- pensation from the Church. Dispensations for marriage had been occasionaUy granted by the pope ; and the papal power to grant dispensations had now been con- ferred upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. He, being himself a married man, had granted his dispensations

* This was to them important, because their object was to convert the mass into a commimion.

28 LIVES OP THE

^m^ liberally, and many of the clergy had not acted with his "■-— ^> — ' own discretion. Instead of keepino; their wives in a state

1 nomas , ^ t^

Cranmer. of Oriental seclusion, they had paraded them before the io32-o6. -^vorld, some of their wives having previously lived with them as concubines. This had militated against pubhc opinion ; a large majority of the laity being especially pre- judiced against a married clergy. It would have been, therefore, for his advantage, and for the benefit of the clergy who liad acted under his dispensation, to have avoided for the present any discussion on the merits of the case. On the other subjects, Cranmer's opinion ac- corded with those of the Germans, with this difference, that they considered as essential, what he desired to see refoi'med w^ithout admitting that a reform w^as obliga- tory, or to be immediately enforced. On the subject of auricular confession, his opinion was perhaps now, what in his catechism he declared it to be ten years later. At that time, he desired to leave it optional, but he did not wish to see the practice wholly aban- doned.

* Henry soon perceived, that the legation appeared at his court in the capacity of missionaries rather than as am- bassadors ; that what to him was of secondary was to them of primaiy importance ; and he knew that in that charac- ter they were unpopular. When he came to converse with them on politics, he found that they were inclined to treat him as if the German princes were his equals, whereas the King of England was the equal not of the princes but of their emperor. The proud and patriotic Henry would not permit the German princes to approach him, except as an aristocracy seeking the protection of a sovereign. He was willing to form an alliance with the Germans against the pope, but not as one of a league ; if a league was formed, the King of England must be their

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 29

leader, and of that league the sovereign head.* He must chap. be to them not less than the emperor now was. Henry ■ — -r-^ —

• 1 n • T, Thomas

was always a patriot ; he was not a foreigner, or the son cmnmer. of a foreigner. 1533-06.

. It was this feehng on the part of Henry, which induced him to treat the legation with an amount of discourtesy and neglect which was perceived and resented. The archbishop complained of it ; and in a letter which he wrote to Crumwell, we have a description of the kind of treatment to which the representatives of the German princes were subjected : —

Concerning the orators of Grermany, I am advertised that they are very evil lodged where they be ; for besides the multi- tude of rats daily and nightly running in their chambers (which is no small disquietness), the kitchen standeth directly against their parlour where they daily dine and sup, and by reason thereof the house savoureth so ill that it offendeth all men that come into it. Therefore, if your lordship do but offer them a more commodious house to demore in, I doubt not but that they will accept that offer most thankfully. Albeit, I am sure that they will not remove for this time, f

The conservatives, now supported by the king, refused to be persuaded by the archbishop, when he urged them

* Bishop Gardyner had urged this on another occasion. " The king," he says, "is a sovereign magistrate, vested with imperial jiu-is- diction ; and in consequence of that prerogative, head of the Church of England : but the princes of Germany are but dukes at the highest. They are no more than subordinate governors, and such as make no scruple to own their emperor for their chief lord. Now, since we prove the king head of the Church of England, from his civil supre- macy, it win follow by parity of reason that the emperor is head of the Churches in Germany. Things standing thus, which way can these princes be in a condition to perfect a treaty, or settle an agreement of religion, between us ? Which way can this be done, without the con- sent of his imperial majesty the head of their Church ? " — Collier, iv. 323.

I Remains, letter ccxxxi. Cotton MSS. Cleop. E. v. f. 212.

30 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, to concede to the very moderate proposals of the Germans ;

— ^^ and all that the archbishop could obtain for his friends

Cranmer. was a dlsmlssal from tlie king so courteous and civil, as

1533-56. almost to amount to the incivility of showing, that the hour

of their departure was an hour of relief to the royal mind.

This visit of the German Lutherans to England was,

however, a crisis in the life of Archbishop Cranmer.

Their private conversation made a more lasting impression

upon the archbishop's mind, than their discussions in

public ; and at this period, those seeds of Protestantism

were sown in his mind which, in the subsequent reign,

produced such abundant fruit.

As regards the king, his attention was now withdrawn from continental affairs by the immediate exigencies of the home government. Henry, by virtue of his conceded supremacy, had decided upon the dissolution of the mona- steries ; but it did not follow that the confiscated property should all of it pass into the royal treasury. The heirs and representatives of the founders of rehgious houses, who had always reserved certain privileges for themselves, might fairly claim the property, if it were to be alienated from the uses to which it had been devoted by their pious ancestors. It is said, that Cranmer and some of the clersiy who acted with him, proposed that a portion of it should be dedicated to the service of religion and charity. If the proposal was ever formally made, I have seen no proof of it ; and I should doubt its ever having taken a more formal shape than that of a suggestion in the ser- mons of Latimer. The clergy did not concern themselves much about monastic property, and some of them, as was the case with Cranmer, shared in the spoils. Still, enough was said and done to render it necessary to secure it for the king by the provisions of an act of parliament. Crum- well therefore received orders to prepare a bill, or he may

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 31

himself have suggested the proceeding, although for the chap. introduction of such a measure a more inconvenient time - — ,J — • could not have been chosen. The disturbances in Lincoln- cranmer. shire and the insurrection in Yorkshire, which assumed the 1533-56. liifirh-soundins^ title of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and al- most amounted to a rebellion, had indeed been put down by the strong arm and the energetic measures of the king. But no one can read the state papers of the period with- out perceiving, that the government had been thoroughly alarmed, and had still grounds for anxiety.* Henry, moreover, on enquiry, found that the strength of the in- surrection lay in the honest fear that the king — led astray by his plebeian counsellor, more obnoxious, on account of his humble origin, to the common people than to the aristocracy — was about to overthrow the ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and with them the rights and hberties of the people — the veiy throne itself. As we have seen it to be invariably the case in all preceding insurrections, so was it now : loyalty to the king was pro- claimed, and perhaps felt ; it was only to rescue him from his counsellors that the people rose. Those counsellors had already confiscated the lesser monasteries ; they had pronounced sentence on the abbeys and greater mona- steries ; and where was all this to stop ? Monastic pro- perty having been confiscated, would not church property follow ? At the same time complaint was made of new inventions, contrary to the law of God ; it was felt to be a hardship that the Pater Noster was turned into an Our Father, and that the Ten Commandments should be said in English instead of the Latin, to which the people were accustomed. The feelings of discontent were not confined to the lower orders of society ; the king became aware, that the lay lords in parliament, though ready to draw

* State Papers, i. 526.

^9

LIVES OF THE

CHAP.

ni.

Thomas Cranmer.

1533-56.

their swords and to die, if need sliould be, in the king's quarrel, felt that the people had right on their side ; and in both houses of parliament the reformations already ac- complished were cordially snpported by a minority of the lords spiritual.* The difficulties of the government were also increased by those blasphemous publications, of which mention has been made, and which, under pretence of zeal in the Protestant cause, had already made that cause to stink in the nostrils of peaceable and quiet subjects, who had meekly submitted to changes in the Church authorised by convocation and parliament, but who were piously alarmed when they found every species of wrong and robbery encouraged under the name of religion. These had been, by Crumwell, it will be remembered, coun- tenanced, in order that the public mind might be inflamed against the monasteries ; but it was very frequently found in the plays Avhich he patronised, that while the monks were held up to ridicule, no fact or person was held sacred. His ability, when now he yielded to the superior judgment of the king, and was prepared to carry his measures, in being able to maintain his character as a man of God, among the Puritans, will be admired or censured, as it is viewed from the intellectual or the moral side.

The king was determined first to proclaim to the in-

* After the passing of the act, a contemporary Protestant wrote thus : — " How mercyfuUy, how plentifully and purely hath God sende his worde mito us here in England ! Agayne, how unthankfully, how rebelliously, how carnally and unwillingly do we receive it ! Who ys there almost that will have a Bible but he must be compelled thereto ? How loth be our priestes to teach th' commaundements, the articles of the faith, and the Pater Noster in English ! Agayne, how unwillinge be the people to lerne it ! Yee they gest at it, calling it the new Pater Noster and new lernynge ; fo that as, helpe me God, if Ave amend not, I feare we shalbe in moare bondage and blindnes then ever we vrere." — Archaiologia, xxiii. 59.

.\RCHBISIIOPS OF CANTERBURY, 33

siirgeiits that they liad suffered tliemselves to be un- necessarily alarmed ; and then to keep the advocates of Protestantism within certain hmitations and boundaries, by introducing a bill-^which afterwards became known 1533-06. and reprobated as the act of six articles, or, as the Puritans, who liked to give hard names to hard acts, were wont to call it, " the whip with six strings."

By this bill the King hoped to pacify the conservatives, whom the late events had rendered numerous. The bill was to satisfy them that no revolution was intended, and to give answer to the question. Where is this to stop ? They would then, it was hoped, submit to the appropriation, on the part of the king, of the confiscated abbey lands ; and tlie agents of Crumwell were busy among all classes of the people to win their assent. The old aristocracy felt that their claim to the lands their ancestors had given away was not likely to be admitted, and to them was held out a promise of due consideration when the spoils were divided. The younger courtiers and new-made lords were aware that by royal favour, so capriciously exercised, their own turn would come ; or that by success at the royal gambhng table, they would themselves profit by an act so profitable to the king. The House of Commons was satisfied by the prospect held out to it, that the enriched king would never more demand a subsidy of his people. Henry was, no doubt, sincere when he made a promise to that effect; but the sincerity of a gambler depends upon a cast of the dice. To pay his debts of honour was, in his opinion, more important than to keep his promise to the Commons.

This is not surprising ; but what does surprise us is, to find that in this parliament, which gave the coup de grace to the monastic institute, there sat twenty-seven abbots, of whom eighteen voted at the second, and seventeen at

VOL. VIl. D

34 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, the third rcadinc; of the bill which transferred the pro- III • •

• r^ — - perty of their houses to the treasurj^ of the king. There

Cranmer. had been considerable jobbing in the monasteries, as 1532-56. soon as it was known that on their dissolution the kinfj was determined. Long leases, which amounted to dona- tions of estates, were made ; and Crumwell probably had the means of exposing some of the abbots who with their brethren had acted thus dishonourably; although, in making the best of these circumstances, the abbots themselves may have thought that they were only doing what was perfectly justifiable. The abbots also and priors were hberally pensioned, and few suffered ma- terially, so far as they were personally concerned.

So important in the eyes of Henry did the work of this ])arliament, which was to abolish for ever a time-honoured institution of the countr}^, appear to be, that he deter- mined upon opening it Avith more than ordinary cere- mony, together with a solemn religious service. He was not one of those weak men who despise little things, and he fully appreciated the importance to all, except a few — rather pretenders to wisdom than really wise — of a coup de theatre. Minutely did the king therefore arrange all the particulars of an equestrian procession from Westminster Palace to Westminster Abbey, and of the rehgious procession within the sacred walls of that splendid edifice. From the gentlemen and squires, who headed the procession, to the dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons, each wdth his squire at his side, and all on horseback,, the king attended to every detail. The archbishop's horse awaited him, as he landed at Westminster, at the head of the steps ; and riding by the side of the Archbishop of York, the two primates, each having his cross borne before him, headed the bishops and abbots.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. So

When they disinoimted at the king's " lighting place," the west door of the abbey was thrown open, and a splendid vista was revealed to the eye. The lord abbot was there in pontijicalibus^ with mitre, with pastoral staff pointing inwards, with his gloves, and his sandals : to all outward appearance, and except in minute particulars which did not attract the eye of the uninitiated, he was accoutred as a bisliop. His brethren arranged themselves two and two in their splendid copes. Wlien the king's procession entered the abbey, they proceeded on foot up the nave to the choir, where the king took his seat in " his place royal." At the south side sat the Archbishop of York, attended by his suffragans of Durham and Carlisle ; the lords spiritual occupied the south side of the chancel, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbuiy, by whose side stood the Bisliop of Eochester, his cross- bearer.

Assisted by two abbots in j^ontificalibu.s the Bishop of Carlisle, as chaplain of the House of Lords, sang the mass of the Holy Ghost, When the mass, at which Cranmer assisted, was concluded, the archbishop, at the head of the House of Lords, proceeded to the Parliament House. Here the king, being seated on the throne, the Lord Chamberlain declared, in general terms, the causes and intent for wdiich the parliament had been summoned. So carefully did Heniy attend to every detail which might invest the present parliament with a character of more than ordinary importance, and so intent was he on shifting the blame of the dissolution of the monasteries from his o'wn shoulders to those of the three estates of the realm, that he directed the Journal of the House of Lords to commence with this solemn sentence : —

A parliament commenced and held at Westminster on the

D -2

36 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. 28tli day of the month of April, in the year of the reign of the

- J . most dread and powerful prince Henry the Eighth by the grace

Thomas ^f q^^j King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, 1533-56. Lord of Ireland, and on Earth Supreme Head of the Chm-ch of England, the Thirty-first.

To the praise and glor}'^ of the Omnipotent God, the honour, decorum, peace, quiet, tranquillity, security, and reformation of the whole realm, commonwealth, and sovereignty of England, in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, after solemn mass fitly and devoutly celebrated, and the Divine aid most humbly implored and in- voked, on Monday, viz. the 28th day of the month of April, in the year of the reign of the said Lord King the thirty-first, on the first day of this Parliament, the Lord King himself in the Chamber, commonly called the Parliament Chamber, within his Palace of Westminster, sat on his royal throne, being then present the nobles and lords of the whole realm of England both temporal and spiritual, with the commons then summoned to Parliament and convoked by royal mandate.*

On consulting the journals, we discover no report of a debate, or even a bint that any discussion, at any time, took place ; but we have indirect evidence, to which we shall presently refer, that some discussions certainly took place.

Business commenced on the 5tli of May, when, at the king's suggestion, a committee was appointed to report upon the different opinions now in vogue on the subject of religion, and to suggest a measure for the promotion of unity. Here it was that the angry discussions must have occurred, if angry discussions there were. The committee was selected very fairly from members, as we should now say, of opposite sides of the house. At the head of the men of the " nev/ learning " sat the Archbishop of Canterbury, while the men of tlie " old learn- ing " found a leader in the Archbishop of York. It is

* Lords' Joui"uals, i. 103.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 37

probable that the committee was formed under the con- chap. viction that they would not be able to come to an ^-^-r-^ — • agreement, and that therefore tlie suggestion of the Cranmer. measure to be adopted would be left to the government. 1533-06.

Crumwell was nommated to serve on the committee. This nomination must have placed him in an awkward position ; he could not side with tlie Protestants, and certainly had no ambition to give a triumph to the Papists. He was appointed to serve on the committee out of deference to his office as vicegerent, but he probably never attended ; for, while the committee was sitting, he was busily engaged in carrying through the house the great measnre which he and the king had at heart : for the statute of six articles was not their first or chief object. The dissolution of the monasteries had been effected by an act of the royal supremacy ; but the appropriation of the confiscated property by the crown required an act of par- liament, without which the legality of sales and leases might have been called in question. How careful Heniy was to produce on the minds of the public the right im- pression, may be seen from the preamble to the bill. The preamble to bills in this reign are of httle service as historical documents, for the king had no special regard to truth ; but they are serviceable as showing what the king wished to impress as truth upon the minds of his subjects. He first created a pubhc opinion, and then sustained it.

Where divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prior- esses, and other ecclesiastical crovernors and sovernesses of divers monasteries, abbathies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hos- pitals, houses of friars, and other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places within this our sovereign Lord, the King's realm of England and Wales, of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills, and assents, without constraint, coaction, or

38 LIVES OF TKE

CITAP. compulsion of an}'^ manner of person or person?, sithen the

, ^^^ fourth day of February the twenty-seventh year of the reign of

Thomas our now most dread sovereign Lord, Ly the due order and course ,-oo ',. of the common laws of this his realm of EnQ;land, and Ly their sufficient writings of record, under their covenant and common seals, have severally given, granted, and by the same their writings severally confirmed all their said monasteries, abbathies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious ecclesiastical houses and places, and all their sites, circuits, and precincts of the same, and all and singular their manors, lordships, granges, meases, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, rents, reversions, services, words, tithes, pensions, portions, churches, chapels, advowsons, patronages, annuities, rif^hts, entries, conditions, commons, leets, courts, liberties, privileges, and franchises, appertaining or in any wise belonging to any such monastery, abbathy, priory, nunnery, college, hos- pital, house of friars, and other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places, or to any of them, by w^hatsoever name or corporation they or any of them were then named or called, and of wha.t order, habit, religion, or other kind or quality so- ever they or any of them w'ere then reputed, known, or taken, to have and to hold all the said monasteries, abbathies, priories, nimneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other reli- gious and ecclesiastical houses and places, sites, circuits, pre- cincts, manors, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, rents, reversions, services, and all other the premisses, to our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors for ever, and the same their said monasteries, abbathies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places, sites, circuits, precincts, manors, lordships, errancies, meases, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, rents, reversions, services, and other the premisses, voluntarily, as is aforesaid, have renounced, left, and forsaken, and every of them hath renounced, left, and forsaken.*

From an examination of the Lords' Journals, I am led to the conclusion that, when a government measure was

* Statutes p,t Large, ii. 20;').

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 39

iutrocluced into the House of Lords, no division was ch.ip. called for, or permitted ; but tliat those who declined to -- — ^^ — • vote in favour of it obtained permission to stay away, cmnmcr. The two archbishops and their suffragans assented to the iJ33-56. confiscation of the monastic property ; and though it is possible, as it is sometimes stated, that they suggested a better application of it, yet this does not appear. Of the abbots, as I have already had occasion to remark, eighteen sanctioned the second reading of the bill by their presence. We may presume that, at the third reading, some oppo- sition was intended ; for on that occasion the king him- self attended, as if for the purpose of overawing the members. Henry was accustomed, throughout his reign, to attend occasionally the debates in the house. Ko one knew better than he how to assume, and when to throw off, the trappings of royalty ; he made his appear- ance without ceremony on these occasions, and generally, as far as I can discover, when he had a personal object to carry. What is very remarkable is, that he never once attended when the bill was introduced which was intended to abolish diversity of opinion on certain articles concerning the Christian religion — " the whip Avith six strings."

The preliminary measures to the mtroduction of this bill were taken on the 16th of May. On that day, there was a full attendance in the house, and among the lords spiritual sat the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was natural that Crumwell should shrink from introducing a measure which, though he could not have anticipated all the clamour it excited among his former supporters and friends, he was quite aware would be to them very un- palatable. The bill, therefore, was confided to the Duke of Norfolk. He remarked that there was no probability of their receiving a report from the committee appointed

40 LIVES OF THE

CHAr. ou the 5th of iMay, and therefore he submitted tlie six

III. . . .

— -r— ^ articles to be freelj^ discussed, not ni committee, but by

Thomas Cmnmer. the wholc llOUSC.

1533-56. ^"'i;ig gj^ questions to be discussed were the follow- ing :—

1. Whether the Eucharist be really the body of our Lord without transubstantiation.

2. Whether the Eucharist should be given to tlie people in both kinds.

3 Whether vows of chastity made by men and women ought to be observed de jure divino.

4. Whether de jure divino private masses should be retained.

5. Whether it be lawful de jure divino for priests to marry.

6. Whether de jure divino auricular confession is necessary.

We cannot say that the house came to any hasty decision on these important questions ; and it is neces- sary, for tlie elucidation of this portion of Craumer's history, that, by a reference to the Lords' Journals, we should trace the passage of this bill through the house, and note the attendances both of the king and of the archbishop.

The questions were proposed, as we have just seen, on the 16th of May. On the 19th tlie king was present ; but it was not to discuss these questions. The reason of the royal presence is to be found in the fact that this day was read, for the third time, the bill to enable the king to apply to his own purposes the confiscated property of the dissolved monasteries ; nothing was said on the subject of the six articles.

The appropriation to the crown of the monastic property being the great woi-k of tlie session, tlie parlia-

AKCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 41

ment was prorogued by commission, on tlie 23rd of May. chap.

It had been found that the temporal peers had been un- - ^^^'

wilhng to engage in a theological discussion ; and instead cvanm!'r of debating the articles in the whole house, they had i533-5o appointed a committee of the lords spiritual to confer •with the king as to the answer to be returned to the questions which had been already propounded. The king evidently assumed that whatever might be determined in a committee so constituted would be at once accepted and adopted by the house. Consequently, when parha- ment resumed its sittings on the last day of May, the lord chancellor brought a message from the kina, stating that not only the lords spiritual, but his majesty himself acting with them, had studied the whole subject, and had laboured so as to have arrived at a unanimous conclusion. He desired, therefore, that a statute should be enacted, not, observe, to compel his subjects to subscribe to the articles, but, which is a very different thing, to prohibit them from speaking against the articles whicli would now become part and parcel of the law of the land. Two committees were then appointed, each to recommend the draft of the statute ; the house reserving to itsfelf the right of adopting, rejecting, or modifying them as might seem to the house expedient. The committees consisted, one of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop of St. Asaph, and Dr. Petre ; and the other of the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of Durham and Winchester, with Dr. Tregonwell.

It was probably foreseen that by the two committees thus formed and prepared to act on discordant principles, nothing satisfactory would be done ; and again, therefore, the king took the matter into his own hands. A draft of a bill of pains and penalties was prepared by the king him^^elf, and Avas introduced into the house on tlie 7t]i of

42 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. June by the Archbishop of York.* Hence we may -— -.-^ — fairly suppose that the Archbishop of Canterbuiy, as he

Cranmer. was uot cmployecl ou the occasion, had given an opinion

io33-5G. luifavourable to the proposed measure.

But other steps had been taken before the bill of pains and penalties was introduced. The judgment of convo- cation on the questions proposed for discussion had been sought for and obtained. The convocation held a session on the 2nd of June, and the lower house being repre- sented by its prolocutor, the answers returned were : —

1. That in tlie blessed sacrament of the altar, by the strength and efficacy of Christ's mighty word, it being spoken by a priest, is present really the natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesu Christ, conceived of the Virgin jNIary, under the form of bread and wine. And that after consecration there remaineth no other substance but the substance of his foresaid natural body. 2. That communion in both kinds is not necessary ad salidem, by the law of Grod, to all persons ; and that it is to be believed and not doubted of, but that in the flesh and form of bread is the very blood, and in the blood under the form of wine is the very flesh, as well apart as though they were both together. 3. That priests after the order of priesthood received, as afore, may not marry by the law of God. 4. That vows of chastity or widow- hood by man or woman made to Grod advisedly be to be observed by the law of God, and that it exempteth them from other liber- ties of Christian people, which without that they might enjoy. 5. That it is meet and necessary that private masses be continued and admitted in this our English Church and congregation, as

* That the bill was drawn by the king is a known fact. — "Wilkins, ill. 848. Ex. MS. Cott. Cleop. E. v. fob 313. It has been said that some of the more stringent clauses were inserted at the suggestion of the bishops, contrary to the inclination of the king. This gratuitous asser- tion is contradicted by facts. On the merits or demerits of the bill the bishops were divided. The primate and many of his suffragans Avere the chief opponents to the bill. And it is difficult to understand why the bishops should be truculent, and the murderer of his wives and friends have a monopoly of mercy.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CA^"TERBURY. 45

whereby good Christian people ordering themselves accordingly do receive both godly and goodly consolations and benefits. And it is agreeable also to God's law. 6. That auricular con- fession is expedient to be retained and continued, used and fre- i533_56 quented in the Church of God.*

iUthough, on the 7tli of June, the bill was introduced by the Archbishop of York, yet Cranmer was in his place, that is to say, he Avas present when the bill was read the first time. All who were present voted for it ; the member of the house who dissented from a measure signified his dissent by absenting himself. On the 9 th of June the bill was read a second time, and on the 10th it w^as read the third time by the law officers of the crown. On both of these occasions Cranmer Avas in his place. He was also m the house on the 14th, when the bill was returned with amendments from the Commons, which amendments being accepted, the amended bill was read a first and second time. He was present on the 16th, when the bill was read a third time. He did not attend on the 17th, when no public business was transacted ; and neither he nor the Archbishop of York was in his place on the 24th.

On that day there was a conference between the Lords and the Commons to make a slight alteration in the biU. It had not yet received the royal assent, but, as it had passed the two houses, it required all married clergymen to put away their wives on that very day — the feast of St. John the Baptist. This would have secured for the married clergy the respite of nearly a year, and it was now resolved that the act should come into operation on the 12th of the following month. Although Cranmer had been present at all the readings of the bill of pains and penalties

* "Wilkins, iii. 84.5. Ex. reg. Cranmer, fol. 9, et ex. veg. rionvoc. et Excerpt. Heylin.

44 LIVES or THE

ciiAr, previously to this amendment, liis absence from tlie third

v__^J ' reading of the amended bill is no sign of his disapproving

Crannier. of tlio penalties, and he was present at a later honr of the 1033-56. same day, when the king in person gave to the bill his royal assent, and then prorogued the parliament. The king was not present on any single occasion when this bill was discussed ; * and it is not probable, after the draft had been decided upon in the royal councils, that any opposition to it would be offered. But that there was a decided opposition to the bill, we know from the testi- mony of Cranmer himself, who appealed to Gardyner in the next reign, daring him to deny the assertion if he could. The king did in some way or other silence the opposition, but he was not unopposed ; the objections made had been urged at the committee meetings.

That this act concerning the punishment of those who " either violate or impugn the articles aforesaid " isjustly called a bloody act, if w^e liave regard to its enactments, everj^one will admit.

They are as follows : —

/ I. If any person by word, writing, printing, cyphering, or any

otherwise do preach, teach, dispute, or hold opinion, that in the blessed sacrament of the altar, under form of bread and wine (after the consecration thereof), there is not present really the natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, conceived by the Virgin Mary; or that after the said consecration there remaineth any substance of bread and wine, or any other sub-

* And yet in his address to the Devonshire rebels, in the next reign, Cranmer asserts that the bill would not have been passed unless the " King's Majesty had himself come to the Parliament House." Cranmer's memory perhaps failed him, as was not improbable after the lapse of several years, and he may have confounded the presence of the king at the discussions on the monastery bill with those that took place on the bill of six articles. His assertion is, however, of great value as stating the sti-ength of the opposition.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTEUBURV. 45

stance but the substance of Christ, G-od and Man ; or tliat in CHAP.

the flesh under the form of bread is not the very body of Christ; > ^ — ■

or that with the blood, under the form of wine, is not the very Q.^°^gr. flesh of Christ as well apart as though they were both together; i533_o6. or affirm the said sacrament to be of other substance than is aforesaid ; or deprave the said blessed sacrament : then he shall be adjudged as an heretic, and suffer death by burning, and shall forfeit to the king all his lands, tenements, hereditaments, goods, and chattels, as in case of high treason.

II. That if any person preach in any sermon or collection openly made, or teach in any common school or congregation, or obstinately affirm, or defend that the communion of the blessed sacrament in both kinds is necessary for the health of man's soul, or ou^ht or should be ministerd in both kinds ; or that it is necessary to be received by any person, other than priests, being at mass and consecrating the same :

III. Or that any man, after the order of priesthood received, may marry or contract matrimony :

IV. Or that any man or woman which advisedly hath vowed or professed, or should vow or profess, chastity or widowhood may marry or contract marriage :

V. Or that private masses be not lawful, or not laudable, or should not be used, or be not agreeable to the laws of God:

VI. Or that auricular confession is not expedient and neces- sary to be used in the Church of God : he shall be adjudged to suffer death, and forfeit land and goods as a felon.

If any priest, or other man or woman, which advisedly hath vowed chastity or widowhood do actually marry or contract matrimony with another ; or any man which is or hath been a priest do carnally use any woman to whom he is or hath been married, or with whom he hath contracted matrimony, or openly be conversant or familiar with any such woman : both the man and the woman shall be adjudged felons. Commissions also shall be awarded to the bishop of the diocese, his chancellor, commissary, and others, to enquire of the heresies, felonies, and offences aforesaid. And also justices of peace in their ses- sions, and every steward, under-sfeward, and deputy-steward, in their leet or law-day, by the oaths of twelve men, have

40 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, authority to enquire of all the heresies, felonies, and offences , rz . aforesaid.*

Cranmer. Ih^o the liistoiy of tliis act I have entered the more 1033-56. fully, that the reader may judge for himself how far a story current of Cranmer's conduct on this occasion is substantiated by a reference to facts. The authority for the story is Foxe, and his statement has been repeated, Avith more or less of eulogy or of rhetoric, by one writer after another. The following is Foxe's statement : —

At the time of setting forth of the six articles mention was made before in the story of King Henry VIII., how adventurously this Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, standing, as it were, j^ost alone against the whole parliament, disputing and replying three days together against the said articles.

Insomuch that the king, when neither he could mistake his reasons, and yet would needs have these articles to pass, re- quired him to absent himself, for the time, out of the chamber, while the act should pass, and so he did, and how the king after- wards sent all the lords of the parliament to Lambeth to cheer his mind again, that he might not be discouraged.

Foxe refers for his authority, when speaking of Cranmer, to Ealph Morice, his secretary, an authority we have be- fore consulted and quoted ; and that Morice was the authority of Foxe for this statement here made is certain from his employing the very peculiar expression adopted by Morice, " post alone." This interesting document re- mained in manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, until the year 1859, when it was published by the Camden Society, under the able editorship of Mr. Nichols, who has illustrated it by valu- able and learned notes. The passage in Morice runs thus : —

But if at the prince's pleasure in cause of religion at any tyme he was forced to give place, that was don with suche humble * Pari, lli-st. iii. 149.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBUEY. 47

protestation, and so knyt upp f(;r the savegarde of his faithe and CHAP.

TTT

conscience, that it hadd byn better his good will had never byn ^ ^ ,

requestid, than so to relente or give over. Which moste dan- Thomas gerouslie (besides sondrie tymes else) he speciallie attemptid 2,-33_5g when the VI articles by parliament passed, and when my lorde Crumwell was in the Tower, at that tyme the booke of articles of our religion was newlie pennyd ; for even at that season, the hole rablemente, which he toke to be his frendes, being commis- sioners with hym, forsoke hym, and his opinion in doctrine, and so leaving him post alone, revolted altogether on the parte of Stephen Gardyner bisshopp of Wynchester, as by name bisshopp Heathe, Shaxton, Thirlby [erasecZ], Daye, and all other of the meaner sorte, by whome theis so named were chiefelie ad- vaunced and preservid unto thair dignities.*

We have here a specimen of the manner in vrhicli Foxe could amphfy and adorn a subject, without adhering strictly to the truth or violently opposing it. It has been justly observed that "Foxe speaks largely of tlie stand made by Cranmer against the six articles, while Morice says httle."f

Foxe actually transfers to Cranmer's conduct in parlia- ment w^hat Morice says of his conduct when sitting in the conference upon the necessary doctrine and erudition of any Christian man.

The statement, with its full embeUishments, as told in the storj^ of King Henry Vm., is, after mentioning the act of six articles, thus presented to the reader : —

Everie man seeing the kings minde so fully addict upon poli- tike respectes to have these articles passe forward, few or none in all that parliament would appeare, which either could per- ceive that was to be defended, or durst defend that they under- stood to be true, save onelie Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury who then being married (as is supposed) like a constant patron of God's cause, took upon him the earnest defence of the truth

* Narratives of the Reformation, ^. 2-18. f Nichols, 248.

48 LIVES OF THE

cn.AJ. oppressed in the parliament, three daies together disp\iting ^^^- , ao-aiust those wicked six articles, bringing forth such allegations

Thomas aud authorities as might easilie have helped the cause, Xisi j^nrs * raajor vicisset, ut scepe solet, meliorem. Who in the said dis- putation, behaved himselfe "SNath such humble modesty, and with such obedience in words towards his prince protesting the cause not to be his, but the cause of Almighty God, that neither his enterprise was misliked of the king, and again his reasons and allegations were so strong that well they could not be re- futed. Wherefore the king (who ever bare speciall favour unto him) well liking his zealous defence, only willed him to depart out of the parliament house into the councell chamber, for a time (for a safeguard of his conscience) till the act should passe and be granted ; which he notwithstanding, with humble protestation refused to doe.*

Everyone will be ready to believe that Craiimer did not hesitate to urge every objection "whicli might occur to him against a measure wliich interfered directly with liis domestic comfort ; and until the political object of the bill was explained to him, and he was assured that it would not be carried out to its full extent for the repres- sion of all religious opinion, it is very probable that his opposition was eager and eloquent. We have repeated instances of Henry's encouraging great boldness of speech in those whose real opinions he desired to elicit ; but wlien the king's determination was known, that the bill, of wliich he himself produced the draft, was to pass, we know from better authority than that of Foxe that Cranmer gave in his adhesion. George Constantyne, re- porting to Crumwell a conversation he had with the Dean of Westbury, mentions the complaint made by the dean that my Lord of Canterbury did not stick to his opposi- tion. He adds the following remarkable sentence, which shows how cordially the bill had been supported by

* Wordsworth, Ecc. Biog. iii. 474.

AKCHBISHOrS OF CANTERBURY.

49

CrumwelL* In answer to the complaint of the dean, George Constantyne said : —

Well we know not the woike of Grod. If it be his pleasure it ys as easy for hym to overcome with few as with many ; but I thinke veryly that my Lorde Privey Seale persuaded my Lorde of Cantorbury and that for other considerations than we do know; or els I am sure avoyding the kynges indignation he wold not haue subscribed, which in deade he shuld in conscience rather haue aventured, if he were not in conscience therto persuaded. I praye you what hath it avayled the Bishop of Eoch ester to subscribe : he had as good a charter of his life as the best of them ? As I can heare, my Lorde Privey Seale ys utterly per- suaded as the acte ys.-f*

The truth is, that neither Crumwell nor the king had any religious object in view, when this bill was brought into the House of Lords ; and Cranmer was no doubt per- suaded to withdraw his opposition by having its pohtical object clearly set before him.

The abhorrence with which this statute has been re- garded is to be traced, to a great extent, to the mistake of supposing, that it -was a statute introduced through the influence of a religious faction to enable those by whom it was formed to persecute their opponents. That sucli a

* Arcliaeologia, xxiii. 59.

■]■ This is a proof that it was with a political, not a religions, motive that this statute was enacted. It Avas an act obtained by the govern- ment of which Crumwell Avas the head. If it were a religions act, and he took part in introducing the measure antagonistic to his conscience he Avas certainly not the saint which he is represented to be by party Avriters. If it Avas a political measure, he could justify his conduct, and we are the less surprised at his retaining his place at the head of the extreme or infidel Protestants. That the King did not consider the act as indicating any change in his religious vieAvs appears from his still keeping up his correspondence AA'ith the Germans, and in his refusal to Jnan-y the Duchess of Modena — a papist — and negotiating for a mar- riage Avith a Protestant Princess.

VOL. VII. E

CHAP. III.

Thomas Cranmer.

1533-56.

50

LIVES OF THE

CHAP. III.

Thomas Cranmer.

lo33-56.

measure it was not is proved by that which perplexes those who only view the subject in its religious aspect; the subjection of all parties, papist and protestant, to the pen- alties of the act. The government did not care for either party, but it was determined that those who on either side disturbed the peace of the realm, should be punished. Tlie question was simply, will you obey the law — the law which requires you to admit the royal supremacy, and the law wliich requires you not to cavil against transubstantiation. This subject has been thoroughly sifted by Dr. Mait- land, a writer to whose accuracy of statement Mr. Hallam bears honourable testimony, though in his opinions on ecclesiastical affairs he differs from him widely. Maitland shows, that instead of there being any commission insti- tuted in London, according to the statement of writers fol- lowing the lead of Foxe, there was no enforcement of the act during the first year,* — a circumstance that establishes the fact, that it was not regarded as a party triumph ; or rather we should say, that those who attempted to give it that character were immediately put down by the govern- ment. Foxe states, that those who refused to subscribe to the articles were so numerous " that they suffered daily." As the act was in force eight years, this implies some thousands of martyrdoms, taking the low^est estimate of one a day, whereas Dr. Maitland has shown tliat, during the eight years, there were only twenty-five prosecutions under the act ; and with respect to these t^venty-five, it is doubtful, whether it was for a violation of tliis precise law

* In decided opposition to the statement of Foxe, followed by Strype and others, George Constantyne, reporting to Crumwell his con- versation with the Dean of Westbury, informs him : — " I told the Dean I could not hear of any Conmiission that was out for this last act." Nevertheless, he adds, with the caustic humour Avhich all along pervades his narrative, " I will advise all my friends to keep out of danger." This was the object of the act, not to persecute but to terrify.

AECHBISIIOPS OF CANTERBURY. 51

that they were condemned, or whether the persons said to have been prosecuted would not have suffered for treason or heresy even if this statute had not been called into ex- istence. 1533-56.

I am not defending the statute, but I wish to impress it upon the mind of any reader who desires to study the history of this reign, that the statute was one which political circumstances, not religious rancour, called into existence, and that the object of the government was not to advance any particular religious system, but simply to prevent the peace of the country from being disturbed by that violence, by which the controversiahsts on either side too often disgraced their cause. It appears to me, that Dr. Maitland is correct when he says, " I believe that the king was roused by an idea that the church, of which he was resolved to be the supreme head, was likely to be overthrown by a torrent of what he considered infidelity and blasphemy, and that he devised and insisted on, and would have, and carried, such a measure as he thought was suited to check the frightful evil.

" Such I beheve to have been the origin of the act. Subsequent events convince us, that it was meant to intimidate rather than to hurt, to pacify the people rather than to destroy and slaughter them by wholesale. Nothing but the spirit of party and passion, the withering blight of all truth in history, can represent it as a statute seriously intended to be executed according to the letter. But it did much without proceeding to such extremities as it threatened. It was meant to frighten the people, and it did frighten them. By tliose means it did two things which, whether right or wrong, good or bad, were undoubtedly of very great importance at that time, and in their consequences. In the first place, it caused many of the more violent partizans of the Eeformation to quit

52 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, the country, and secondly it made those who s ayed at --^-r-^ — ' home more quiet and peaceable." * Cranmer. Cranmcr had sent his wife in his alarm to Germany, as 1533-56. soon as the act was passed, but from the manner in which the king joked with him upon the subject, it is clear that he did not intend that the penalties should be incurred by anyone Avho did not clearly defy the law. Some malignant persons might endeavom^ to involve an ob- noxious neighbour in the meshes of the law ; but the government, having secm^ed the peace of the country, was tolerant, and, during the last years of Henry's reign, a protestant feeling increased among the people whom the late excesses of ultra protestantism had alarmed.

Hemy VIII. was not a blood-thirsty tyrant, and never contemplated with delight the misery of others. That he could dandle his baby in his ai'ms and fondle his wife, is mentioned as something extraordinary, by those who forget that a very tigress can purr round her young ones. The thing really extraordinary in Henry is, that he, who could one day demoralise his wife by making her an idol, and could, at another time, hang about the neck of his friend with the fondness of a school-boy, should the next day hear of their heads rolling on a scaffold stained by their blood, not only unmoved, not merely with complacency, but actually with exultation. The bell that announced to liim the death of Ann Boleyii soinided a note of assignation to her rival. One day he could almost hug his children until in his embrace they were breathless, and on another day brand them with the mark of illegitimacy. And yet of this man it is no contradiction to say, that his cruelty was not that of one whose hardened heart knows not what humanity is ; it was only the cruelty in the exercise of wdiich upon

* Maitland, " Eeformation," 270.

ARCnBISHOPS OF CANTEEBURY. Oo

individuals, his \andictive rather than his malio-nant char

III passions were indulged. And of this statute, which is - — .-^—

called his bloody act, we must judge accordingly. Cranmir.

The story of Cranmer witli reference to the passing of 1533-56. this statute is embellished by Foxe, and it has been repeated by others, with the object, of which they are more or less conscious, of making the good archbishop appear a bolder man than he really was, and with the object also of leaving an impression upon the mind, that being in advance of the age, he was opposed to what we call persecution, but Avhat would appear to him as the prosecution of persons who had violated the law. There were, however, braver men than Cranmer who did not hesitate to admit, that in the service of Hemy YIII. bold men mio-ht become cowards.

One man we know was "Justus et tenax propositi," of whom it could be said,

Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit soUda.

More defied the tyrant by a passive resistance, and yet to Sir Thomas More, John, Duke of Xorfolk, himself no craven, had the baseness to say, as Eoper tells the anecdote, ""By the mass, Mr. More, it is perilous striving with princes, for by God's body, Mr. More, indignatio principis mors est."

No one was more thoroughly comdnced of this, than the archbishop whom the " vultus instantis tyranni " con- verted into the judge, and not a just one, of Sir Thomas More himself.

As to the persecution of heretics, it is absurd to sup- pose, that to this part of the act Cranmer had any objection. It was only in the preceding October, that he sat in judgment and sentenced to the stake, or rather

54 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, handed over to the cml power, four iinfortmiate ana- > — r^ — - baptists, three men and one woman. Cranmer. The reader will observe that a distinction is to be made

1533-56. between the Marian persecutions and those of the reign of Henry YIII. Tlie Marian persecutions w^ere generally the result of rehirious fanaticism : but though reliojion was the pretext, the persecutions of Henry VIII. were those not of the rehgionist, but of the pohtician. The elector of Hesse, himself a Protestant, had exhorted Henry not to tolerate the Anabaptists ; and they had certainly done enough to alarm a pohtician anxious to restore a dis- turbed country to peace and quiet. The Anabaptists attributed the sacrament of baptism to the devil, an extreme assertion, in which the most vehement opponents of baptismal grace would scarcely in these days concur. This and other absurd religious tenets shocked the religious feehngs of the age, but the real charge against them was that, to use a modern term, they were socialists. They had in Holland been hurried on by their enthusiasm into acts of violence, tumult and sedition. They had even formed a plan, fortunately detected in time, to reduce the city of Leyden to ashes. They had elected John of Munster their king, and to him it had been revealed, as it was said, that God had presented him with the cities of Amsterdam, Deventer and Wesel, and thither he despatched his emissaries to preach sedition and carnage. The amount of disturbance which they caused, and the support which they received, during a period of temporary success, are sufficient to attest their influence and power among the humbler classes of society.*

There is no doubt that the pohtical opinions, if not the i-(4igious notions, of the Anabaptists had already spread in England. These were the men who rushed furiously,

* Mosheim, cd. Stiibbs, iii. H2.

ARCHBISHOPS OP CAXTERBUKT. 00

when Cmmwell "let slip his dogs of war," upon the chap. Universities ; and what was to restrain them from attack- - — ~^^— ing the castle of the noble, or the mansion of the mer- cranmer. cliant ? When certain Dutchmen, holding the opinions 1533-56. of the Anabaptists, arrived in England, the government was aware that they came with a mischievous intent, and though they were few in number, and without influence, yet the amount of mischief which a few fanatics might accomplish, when religion was made the pretext for rob- bins: men of their g;oods, was well known. As the manner then was, it w^as determined to proceed against these political offenders on the score of their religion. A royal commission was issued, in October, 1538, to Cranmer and others, for the purpose of " proceeding against them, of restoring the penitent, of delivering the obstinate to the secular arm, and of destroying their books." Cranmer de- livered them over to the secular arm. The consequence was, that three men and a woman were brought before Paul's Cross with faggots tied to their backs. Two of the men appear, for some reason or other, to have received a respite, but one man and one Avoman were taken to Smithfield, and there burnt.*

A proclamation was issued, in tlie Xovember following, against Sacramentaries as well as Anabaptists. The latter were required to leave the kingdom, and the Sacrament- aries were warned to abstain from disputing about the Eucharist, under the penalty of forfeiting their lives. This penalty was incurred, almost immediately after the procla- mation, by JohuxS icholson, alias Lambert, and in this perse- cution Cranmer bore his part and must share the obloquy.

The prosecution of John Lambert may appear to con- tradict what has been said of the political character of the prosecutions under Hemy, but the contradiction is

* Stow's Aunal?, 52G; Jortin's Erasmus, i. 357.

5G LIVES OF THE

CHAP, rather apparent than real. Henry's position was, that

- ,J ' although the Church of England had renounced the pope,

Cranmcr. the Chiu-cli adhcrcd strictly to all Catholic doctrine. The 1533-56. Papists urged, on the contrary, that the renunciation of the Papacy led to the renunciation of all that was Cathohc and orthodox in the Church. They pointed especially to the Sacramentaries, who denied that any grace was at- tached to the Sacraments and were vehement in their denunciation of the dogma of transubstantiation. That no toleration of heresy was permitted in his realm, by the king who had assumed the title of the supreme head of the Church of England, Henry determined to proclaim to the world, and he availed himself of the opportunity which now occurred, to do so.

John Lambert was born in Norfolk, and going to Cambridge, was converted from popery by Bilney. He afterwards became a friend of Frith and of the yet more illustrious Tj^ndale, to whom we are indebted to the present hour, for his version of the Bible, the basis upon wliich all subsequent translations have rested. Li the time of the late archbishop he was brought into trouble by expressing his opinions too freely and was in custody at Warham's death, to be released by Cranmer when he was appointed to the primacy. He had been for some time at Antwerp, and, while he was abroad, he permitted himself to be hurried into the errors of ultra-Protest- antism, and became a Sacramentary. On his return to England, he found few who would sympathise with him in his extreme opinions, and when those opinions were making some progress in the world, there were still fewer Avho cared to assert them openly. He lived, therefore, in retirement, and earned a scanty livelihood by keeping a school in London. As his opinions advanced, his « scholars declined in number, and he had now taken up

AECHBISIIOPS OF CANTERBURY. 0/

his freedom iii the Grocer's Companj^ Avitli a view of chap. supporting himself by trade. He was attracted on one -— .-^ — ■ occasion, to St. Peter's Church, Cornhill when Dr. Tajdor, cranmer. afterwards bishop of Lincohi, was preaching. The 1533-56. preacher attacked the principles of Zuinghus, and Lam- bert could not restrain himself : he waited upon Dr. Taylor in the vestry, and, in terms of civility and respect, offered to dispute with him on the dogma of transubstantiation. Dr. Taylor declined, on the plea that he had not leisure to enter into a discussion. Lambert, whose blood was now up, committed his thoughts to paper ; and Dr. Taylor, with no evil intention, showed the paper to Dr. Barnes, himself a Protestant.

By a Protestant Dr. Barnes meant a Lutheran, and a Lutheran held the doctrine of consubstantiation. He regarded the extreme opinions of the Sacramentaries as peculiarly dangerous, because they seemed to him to pre- sent a serious impediment to the progress of the Eeforma- tion. He advised Taylor to institute proceedings against Lambert in the archbishop's court, evidently expecting that, under a tlireat of prosecution, Lambert would modify his statements.

We have seen in the case of former archbishops, that they shrunk, in general, from proceeding against heretics ; and to avoid a prosecution they first endeavoured pri- vately to prevail upon the reputed heretic to recant. Li the present instance, the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Latimer, was staying with the archbishop, and the two prelates laboured, but in vain, to persuade Lambert to save his life by subscribing to the dogma of tran- substantiation. Cranmer then cited the Sacramentary to stand upon his defence in the archbishop's comt. Lam- bert appealed to the king. The king determined to avail himself of the opportunity of proving to the world the

58 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. Catholicism or orthodoxy of tlie supreme head of the ^-}}}l— Eaghsh Church. He sat liimself in the court of appeal, c^-anmer. A summous was issucd to all the magnates of the realm 1533-56. to attend. In " the king's palace called the ^ATiitehall, a throne or seat royal was erected for the king's majesty, scaffolds for all the lords, and a stage for Nicholson or Lambert." * The place is thus described by Hall.f On the day appointed the king appeared seated upon tiie throne " all in white." The king's guard was in white, and the clotli of state was wliite. The lords spiritual sat on his right hand, the lords temporal on Ms left. The judges were also present and the king's counsel. There was an incredible number of spectators. Before this remarkable assembly Lambert was summoned. He had not anticipated that his trial w^ould be conducted with such circumstances of worldly pomp, and was evidently embarrassed. He was not prepared for such an array, and though his determination never forsook hmi, he became nervous, confused, and abashed. His whole demeanour, nevertheless, was that of a perfect gentleman, ready to show all courtesy to others, but resolute to maintain his own position. But as in a man so circumstanced we might expect, while from his conclu- sions which he had before arrived at, he would not shrink, the arguments which had antecedently satisfied him he could not command. Tlie business of the day was commenced by a speech from the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Sampson. He stated that the meeting had not been convened to call in question any article of faith, for though his majesty had

* Foxe says that the king was urged to take this step by Gardyner, for -\vhich there is not a particle of authority. Crimiwell was at this time Henry's adviser ; but Foxe, Burnet, and other craters of that school attribute every wrong doing in this reign to Gardyner, and most ridiculously claim for Cranmer everything that Avas done right. This course is pecviliarly provoking to the honest enquirer.

t Hall, 826.

AECHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 59

emancipated liis churcli and realm from papal usurpations, chap. he was determined to maintain the Catholic religion intact ; -^ — r-^ — - l)ut the king, being supreme head, had determined to cranmer. confute and condemn the heresy of the man w]io stood 1533-06. before him. It is worth while to remark on the coarse- ness and vulgarity of the king's conduct, because it shows that a judge did not at that time feel it necessary to com- port himself as a gentleman — a circumstance which ought to be borne in mind when we shall have to record similar unfeeling coarseness in subordinate judges hereafter. As a counsel in these days thinks he may browbeat a ^vitness, we find a similar system of browbeating on the bench itself, down to the time of the Eevolution.

The king exclaimed, with his usual jocular familiarity of manner : " Ho, ho, good fellow, and what is thy name ? " On learning that the culprit had two names, the king in the same tone exclaimed, that he would not trust a man who had two names, no, not though he were his brother. Lambert pleaded on his knees, that he was driven to the expedient by persecution ; and began with courtesy, — for in a man determined to maintain his own, it were unfair to call it flatteiy, — to pay a comphment to the king both for his learning and for his benignity iii condescending person- ally to see justice done to his subjects, however humble. He was proceeding in a speech evidently prepared, when the poor man, already showing symptoms of nervousness, was " worse confounded " by an interruption on the part of the king : " I came not here to hear my praises pointed out in my presence. Briefly, without further purpose, go to the matter." Thus rebuffed — interrupted in the speech which he had prepared, the accused stood speechless. The king, seeing but not pitying, his perplexity, sternly cried out, " Why standest thou still ; answer plainly. Is the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar or not .^ "

GO LIYES OF THE

CHAP. " I reply," said Lambert, " in the words of St. Austin, Our

. ^^^:l^ Lord's Body is present in tlie Eucharist after a certain

c^anmcr. manner." " Answer me not," exclaimed the royal theo- 1 J33-56. logian, " out of St. Austin or any other, but tell me plainly, Is the Body of Christ there or not ? " Lambert saw that he was now to pursue his own line of defence and vindi- cation, and his spirit being roused, he raised himself and manfully, emphatically, and as .he was required, briefly said : " I deny the Eucharist to be the Body of Christ." " Mark well, then," rejoined the king, " thou shalt be con- demned by Christ's own words. Hoc est corpus meum."

This argument was supposed to be irrefragable in regard to those who were w^illing to abide by the Bible and the Bible only ; and here the king, as if in triumph, paused.

The controversy now devolved upon the Primate and the other divines who had been summoned to attend. Cranmer evidently commiserated the unfortunate man — he could sympathise with one whose nerves were unstrung when called upon to act so conspicuous and unexpected a part ; and even if he could not have sympathised with him, Cranmer must have admired the noble simphcity with which, when Lambert was not permitted to guard his position by certain explanations, he at once avowed his belief. The kindness and courtesy of Cranmer's address may be contrasted favourably with the unfeeling manner of the king, so utterly devoid of Christian courtesy. " Brother Lambert," said the Archbishop of Canterbury, " let this matter be argued between us so indifferently, that if I convince you this your argument to be false by the Scrip- tures, you will willingly refuse the same ; but if you shall prove it to be true by the manifest testimonies of the Scriptures, I promise I will willingly embrace the same."*

* Burnet, for some reason or other, speaks of Cranmer as holding DOW tlie dogma of consubstautiation. Cranmer himself, when asked

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 61

Perhaps there is nothing which redounds more to the chap. credit of Cranmer, than the manner in which he com- • — ^—^ ported himself at this trial Of the argument with Lam- cranmer. bert the archbishop had clearly the best. Lambert main- io33-56. tained that oiu: Lord's body could not be in two places at one and the same time. The archbishop referred to our Lord's appearance to St. Paul on his way to Damascus, to show that, as the rays of the sun may be in many places on earth, while the sun nevertheless remains stationary in the firmanent, so there might be a sense in which our Lord, though at the right hand of power, might cause his presence to be felt on earth.

Lambert could only defend his own position by lapsing into the most fearful rationalism, and by denying the reality of our Lord's appearance to St. Paul. Lambert's whole argument must have damaged his cause. The Bishop of Winchester is said to have been provoked by the arch- bishop's calmness and kindness to the prisoner, and to have rushed into the argument before his turn. Put, however tliat may liave been, the discussion continued until it was dark. The torches were already lighted in the hall, and the wearied king thought it time to bring the controversy to a close.

The king reverted to what had been previously said, that the object of the meeting was not to discuss an article of faith, which every one of his subjects was bound to beheve because it was the law ; but that its intent was to convince the gainsayer, if possible, and if not, to condemn him : therefore he now adroitly asked Lambert whether he were satisfied by what he had heard ; whether it was his resolution, in short, to hve or die.

To have given a triumph to the royal theologian by

what doctrine he held at Lambert's trial, s<aid, " lie maintained then the Papist's doctrine."

62 LIVES OF TUE

CHAP, appearing to have been convinced by liis argument, would . ^^- . have gained for Lambert not hfe only, but honour. But Thomas ^earied and worn though he was, he did not relax in 1533-56. his manner, and continued tenax propositi. He replied that he committed his soul to God, and his body to the clemency of the king's majesty. The king, without any symptom of pity, exclaimed : " Then die you must ; for a iDatron of heretics I will never be ; " and Crumwell im- mediately rose to read the sentence of condemnation.

The sentence was carried into execution ; and the death of Lambert was attended by circumstances of pecuhar horror, into which it is not necessary here to enter.

By party writers, on one side an attempt is made to represent Cranmer as a persecutor, and on the other, to explain away his share in the religious persecutions under the reigns of Henry and Edward, and to make him appear as tolerant as — so far as the rack and the stake are concerned — men are. compelled to be in the nine- teenth century.

As usual, the truth hes between the two extremes, and this perhaps is the fittest place to consider the subject. The case of Lambert has been presented to the reader, who will see from the narrative, how easily, by the sup- pression of some of the circumstances, Cranmer may be painted to us as a willing, or, on the other hand, as an unwilhna: asrent in the condemnation of that noble-minded, althouo;h much mistaken man.

But in the other two cases it is difficult to see how Cranmer is even indirectly implicated.

In the prosecution of ]\L*s. Kyme the archliishop clearly was not called upon, even officially, to act. Mrs. Kyme was the sister of a Lincolnshire knight, Sir Philip Askew. She married Mr. Kyme ; and the husband and wife

ARCHBISHOrS OF CAXTEEBUKY. 63

differed so entirely upon the subject of religion, that they separated, apparently by mutual consent, and not pro- bably by any sentence of an ecclesiastical court, against the jurisdiction of which the lady Avould have protested. 1533-06. Although she professed to be guided by the Bible only, she considered herself divorced, and assumed her maiden, which has become her historical name, Ann Askew.* She rendered herself conspicuous in violating the statute of the six articles, and was committed to custody previous to a trial for denying the dogma of transubstantiation. At the same time, for the same offence, Cranmer's friend Shaxton, who on the passing of the statute had resigned his bishopric, was committed to prison. As had alwa^'s been the custom, certain divines were appointed to confer with the accused, and if possible to induce them to renounce their reputed heresy. On this occasion, the Bishop of London, Dr. Bonner, the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Heath, Dr. Eobinson, and Dr. Eedmayn visited Bishop Shaxton and Mrs. Kyme or Ann Askew. ^Yith Bishop Shaxton, no doubt to Cranmer's great delight, these divines succeeded, f Bishop Shaxton became a

* Slie was probably an Anabaptist. It is stated, on the authority of Melanchthon, tliat the Anabaptists held that the marriage between a person holding Anabajjtism ceased to be valid if the husband or the Avife of an Anabaptist refused to conform to his creed. The passage is quoted in the brief history of Anabaptism in England. London, 1738, p. 48.

f Cranmer at this time held the dogma of tran substantiation, and must have rejoiced to know that his friend had saved his life by accepting what Cranmer believed to be the truth. Shaxton knew what his recantation meant — it meant that he was henceforth to leave the party to which he had been hitherto attached. Having accepted the distingiiishing dogma of the Papists, he henceforth became more and more devoted to that party. He is hardly dealt with by those who treat his consistency as a crime. His conduct rather shows that he did not merely recant to save his life, but that he was really persuaded to return to a dcgma in the acceptance of which he had been educated.

64 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, believer in transubstantiation, and immediately en-

^ — r^ — - deavoiired to persuade Mrs. Kyme to foUoAV liis example.

Cranm'er. " He Came to mc," she said, " and counselled me to recant,

1533-56. as \q l^ad done. I said to Mm that it had been good for

him if he had never been born."

The lady persevered in repudiating the dogma, and ^Yas handed over to the civil power, and died a martyr to her opinions. It is a sad story, and it raises mdignant feelings in a modern reader, but what had the Arch- bishop of Canterbury to do with it ? She was cited before her ordinary, who was not the archbishop, l3ut the Bishop of London. If the Archbishop of Canterbury had presided, in the court of his suffragan, the thing was so contrary to all precedent that it would have been noticed, and cer- tainly Bonner was not the man to tolerate an insult offered to himself and his court.

The other case is perplexing to the panegyiists of Cranmer, as it rests on the authority of one who was, in general, accustomed so to colour his facts as to reflect credit on the archbishop. Foxe perhaps did not think the archbish'^'P in error in burning Joan Butcher, or Bocher, sometimes called the maid of Kent, but he re- peated a story without investigation which he thought tended to elevate the character of another hero whom he would present to us as overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the boy-king Edward VI. His story is repeated by Burnet and Strype, and so has passed into our histories. It runs as follows : —

He (the king) always spared and favoured the life of man, as in a certain dissertation of his once appeared, had with ^Master Cheke, in favouring the life of heretics ; in so much that when Joan Butcher should be burned, all the council could not move him to put to his hand, but were fain to get Dr. Cranmer to persuade witli him, and yet neither could be with much labour

1533-56.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. G5

induce the king so to do, saying, What, my Lord, will you have CHAP. me to send her quick to the devil, in her error? so that Dr. ^^-^•_^ Cranmer himself confessed, that he had never so much to do in Thomas all his life, as to cause the king to put to his hand, saying, that he would lay all the charge thereof upon Cranmer before aod.^

Now for this story Foxe does not assign any authority. It rested on hearsay : and even the report of the supposed transaction was not widely current, or it would have reached Sanders, by whom not the shghtest allusion to the story is made. Tliis is the more remarkable, since he does refer to the taunt which Joan Bocher addressed to her judges, when she said : —

" It is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It was not long ago since you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet ye came yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will needs burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end \'ou will come to believe this also, when you have read the Scriptures and understand them." f

On reference to the Privy Council Book we find, that Joan Butcher or Bocher was executed under a writ de hceretico co?nburendo, addressed to the Sheriff of London, and issued out of the Court of Chancery, upon the authority of a war- rant not signed by the king, but by the council. The young king was not accustomed to attend the council, neither was he considted, except on special occasions when his attendance was required by a committee. At this meeting of council, moreover, Cranmer was not present. The per- sons present on the day referred to were — the Lord Chan- cellor, the Lord High Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord High Chamberlain, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Paget, the Bishop of Ely, Mr. Treasurer, Mr. Comptroller,

* Soamos, Hist. Ref. iii. 544. f Soaines, Hist. Eef. iii. 546.

VOL. VII. P

66 LIVES OF THE

Master of the Horse, Mr. Yice-chamberlain, Sir Ealf Sadler, and Sir Edmund Xorth, Tlie council were the de facto Cranmer. rulcrs of the kingdom, and on the 27th of April 1550, the 1533-56. following is the entry on their journal : — "A warrant to the Lord Chancellor to make out a writ to the Slieriff of London for the execution of Joan of Kent, condemned to be burnt for certain detestable opinions of heresy." In short, Edward did not sign the document. Cranmer felt certainly no eager desire to enforce a punishment which he knew woidd be inflicted as a matter of course, or he would have attended the council ; and all the tears of the young king, and the difficulty of Cranmer to persuade him to put his hand to the warrant, is an affecting inci- dent, wliich, repeated by all writers of this period of history, has no foundation in fact.* That young Edward was not a youth easily moved to compassion we may judge from his heartless conduct towards his uncle ; and his entry with respect to the execution of Joan Bocher is so cold, as in itself to give the he to the charge brought against Cranmer of being " importunate for blood": —

May 2. Joan Bocher, otherwise called the Maid of Kent, was burnt for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mar}', being condemned the year before but kept in hope of conversion. And on the 30th of April the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely were to persuade her ; but she withstood them and reviled the preacher at her death.f

We have already seen that Cranmer was by nature a mild, indulgent, kind-hearted man. He Avas not a man likely to take pleasure in human suffering, and if a heretic could be induced to recant, no one assuredly would have

* Mr. Coxe, in his preface to Craumer's works, has gone through this case concisely and with much ability. f Edward's Journal, in Burnet.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CAXTERBURT. 6T

rejoiced more than he. It is not probable, that he should chap. have been sent to persuade a headstrong boy ; for he was . — ,.: — . much more likely to have shed the tears of pity than the cranmer. fanatical youth, who not long after proved that, of the two, io33-56. his will was the stronger, since he persuaded Cranmer to commit an offence for which the Primate afterwards re- pented, and perhaps lost his life. At the same time, it were absurd to suppose, that Cranmer would not have signed the warrant, if he had been present at the trial. He miglit have pitied the culprit, even as George III. may have pitied Dr. Dodd while signing his death-warrant ; or as a magistrate, at a later period, might have commiserated the criminal who had stolen a sheep to save his family from starvation. That the sensibilities of a generous na- ture would have been moved had Cranmer witnessed the sufferings of a fellow-creature, is perfectly compatible with his deciding, when the question was considered in the abstract, that a heretic ought to die. In the very first year of his primacy, one of the most learned and amiable of the Reformers, John Fryth, died for denying the dogma of transubstantiation, and of his case Cranmer could write carelessly to his friend Hawkins : —

" Other news have we none notable, but that one Fryth which was in the Tower in prison, was appointed by the King's grace to be examined before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Wynchestre, my Lord of Suffolke, my Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wylteshere, whose opinion was so notably erroneous, that we could not dispatch him, but was fain to leave him to the determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said opinion is of such nature that he thought it not neces- sary to be believed as an article of our faith, that there is the very corporeal presence of Christ, within the host and sacrament of the altar, and holdeth of this point most after the opinion of <Fcolampadiu5, and surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him to leave that his imagination, but for all

f2

1533-56,

68 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, that we could do therein, he would not apply to any counsel : ^^^- notwithstanding now he is at a final end, with all examinations,

Thomas for my Lord of London hath given sentence and delivered him to the secular power, where he looketh every day to go unto the fire. And there is also condemned with him one Andrew, a tailor of London, for the selfsame opinion." *

lu the case of Joan Bocher, the archbishop was the judge who sentenced her to death, and so far from being asliamed of it, the wliole process, together with others of the same kind, ranging over four years, from 1548 to 1551, is carefully narrated in Cranmer's register. In tlie Commission for the trial of Joan Bocher, we find the name of Hugh Latimer, as well as tliat of Thomas, by Divine permission, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all Eng- land and Metropolitan. They found her guilty of assert - ino; " the accursed and intolerable error, the damnable and scandalous opinion, opposed, contradictory, and repugnant to the Catholic faith, that although she beheved that the Word was made flesh in the Yhgin's womb, yet she did not beheve that Clmst took flesh of the Virgin ; because the flesh of the Virgin being the outward man, was sin- fully gotten and born in sin, but the Word, by the consent of the inward man, of the Virgin was made flesh. To this damnable error, directly contrary to the Cathohc faith, she with malicious pertinacity obstinately adhered ; and therefore the aforesaid Thomas, Archbishop of Canter- biu-y. Primate of all England and Metropohtan, with his assessors, acting under the advice of certain persons learned in the law, and certain professors of theology, having first excommunicated her, delivered her up to the secular power." The sentence was proclaimed on the ast day of April, in the year 1549, in St. Mary's Chapel, in the Cathedral of St. Paid, in the presence of * Letter xiv. Harl. MSS. G148, fol. 23.

I

^KCHEISnOPS OF CANTERBUEt. 69

the assessors of the archbishop, among whom sat Hugh Lathner.*

Thomas

Dming the year which elapsed between the sentence Cranmer. and its being carried into execution, the unfortunate i^33-o6. woman was lodged first at the house in Smithfield, usually occupied by Lord Eich, the chancellor ; and she was after- wards removed to the priory of St. Bartholomew. She was not, therefore, treated with undue severity, and every attempt was made to induce her to recant. She had long been a notorious or celebrated character, and from time to time, had caused some trouble to the government. Before the free circulation of the Bible was allowed, she was a vendor of T}mdairs Testaments, and clandestinely disposed of them among the ladies of the comt. She had also been the friend of 'Mis. Kyme.

We have thus the history of Cranmer 's mind as regards those prosecutions, which we have happily learned to re- gard as persecutions. He may have been as tender-hearted as many a modern judge, whom we have seen weeping on the bench ; but the feelings of the man were not to inter- fere with the duties of the magistrate. Perhaps, too, with all her heroism, Joan's conduct may not have been such as to conciliate her judges. When, on the 2nd of May 1550, she was burnt at Smithfield, and a sermon, as usual, was preached to improve the occasion, her last dpng speech and confession was, " You lie like a rogue ; go read the Scriptm-es."

Upon another occasion we find Cranmer inflicting, with- out compunction, a barbarous punishment upon a poor man of whom the archbishop complained to the Privy Council that he had forged a grant to himself of the office of beads- man in the city of Canterbury. The council ordered the

* Reg. Cranmer, fol. 74, b. The processes are printed from the Ilegister in Wilkins, iv, 39, 45 ; and in Buruet, v. 246, ed. Pocock.

70 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, arclibisliop to cause one of the criminal's ears to be nailed III .

V- — r^ — - to the pillory on the next market-day, to remain in that

Cranmer. sitiuition diuing the market, with a paper declaring his

1533-56. offence in large letters. The archbishop obeyed.*

These are horrible things to record, and the sentence passed upon a heretic is narrated with the more disgust from the terrible uatm^e of the punishment. But there is no reason why we should expect Cranmer to be in ad- vance of his age ; nor can he be charged with inconsistency wdien, as a judge, he punished the culprit, whom as a man he pitied.

I have wished to bring this whole subject under one point of view without attending to the sequence of events. We must now return to the historical position from whicli we have digressed, and we find Cranmer implicated in the miserable case of the Lady Ann of Cleves.

The only event of interest in the history of Queen Jane, the successor of Ann Boleyn, in which Cranmer was per- sonall}^ concerned, is that which relates to the baptism of her child, to whom the king, with hearty English feeling, gave the popular name of Edward. The archbishop was associated as sponsor with the Lady Mary, afterwards Queen of England, and the Duke of Norfolk. No theo- logical differences of opinion, at that time, kept religious parties separate. The coml was divided in its sympathies between joy for the birth of the prince and grief for the death of the queen his mother ; who, if we set aside her heartless conduct towards the late Queen Ann, had con- ducted herself, as Lord Herbert says, \A\h discretion, and had borne her faculties meekly. Twelve hundred masses were said for the repose of her soul, and a solemn dirge at St. Paul's. If there was a tendency to Protestantism on the part of the king and of Cranmer — the king wdio

* Proceedings of Privy Council, 117, 118.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 71

ordered these masses and the archbisliop who oiBciated at ch.\p.

III. them — it was not at this time much developed. — , — ■

Great as was the king's grief, yet for the sake of his cranmer. country he overcame it. His mind reverted to the pohcy 1533-56. of his great minister Wolsey, and with a \dew of strength- ening his aUiauces abroad, he determined to select a foreign princess for his wife.* The Duchess Dowager of Milan and Mary of Guise refused liim — the last-named lady because she was betrothed to the King of Scots ; the former, indi- cating the estimation of Hemy's character abroad, because she had only one head. If she had possessed two heads, she would gladly have placed one of them at the disposal of his majesty. He also thought of one of the two sisters of IMary of Guise, but insisted that they shoidd be first brought for inspection to Calais — a proposal rejected by the gallantry of Francis I.

Henry had also been an admirer of Madame de Mon- treuil.f But there would probably have been an insiu:- mountable obstacle to any one of these marriages, in that they would have requh-ed a dispensation from the pope. Wlien the emperor heard, that the king was projecting a matrimonial alliance with one of the German princesses, he offered his services to prevail upon the Duchess of JMilan to give him her hand. When, however, the subject came seriously under consideration, the king declined to stultify himself and to retrace his steps by receiving a dispensation from the pope, whose authority lie had rejected ; and at last, he made up his mind to wed the Lady Ann, a sister of the reigning Duke of Cleves. Aware of the ridicide to which he had exposed himself in requiring the King of

* State Papers, i. 574.

t Among the State Papers, i. 583, in a letter from Penison to Crumwell, there is a curious account of the presents made to this lady on her journey through England.

72 LIVES OF THE

CHAP. France to produce the ladies of his coiu't for inspection, III v_-,J — ' as a horse-dealer would trot out his horses at a fair ;

Cranmer. hc was couteuted with demanding that lady's portrait —

1533-56. a circumstance which led to much inconvenience, and

eventually into a violation of the moral law, in which

Cranmer was involved.

I have entered, at some length,.into the history of these

royal flirtations, or rather matrimonial speculations, because

they tend to refute the notion that the marriage witli Ann

of Cleves was the result of a grand mancEu\Te, on the part

of Cnimwell and the Protestants, to force the kins; into a

Protestant alhance. The notion, that the Protestants and

Papists formed at this time, two clearly defined parties

in the state, each contending for the formation of a

ministry, Gardyner at the head of one and Cranmer at

the head of the other, is certainly not borne out

by historical evidence. All the country was agreed on

one point, namely, the rejection of the papal and the

assertion of the royal supremacy. The men of the new

learning would push the reforms consequent upon this

fact to an extreme ; the men of the old learning were

conservatives, and would advance no further. And what

w^as the Protestantism of Henry and Cranmer ? Henry

had defined his position with firmness — a rejection of the

pope but a maintenance of old Cathohc or orthodox

tiTith. The only difference between him and Cranmer

was, that Cranmer had discovered, that some portion of

what was now assumed to be Cathohc truth, held " from

the beginning everywhere and by all," was not really

such ; and Henry was not unwilling, when Cranmer could

prove his assertions, to accept and enforce them ; but as

for Protestantism, as the word was then understood, the

only point on which the Church of England accorded with

the foreign Protestants was that both rejected the pope.

ARCHBISHOrS OF CANTERBURY. 73

As regards Cnmiwell, his religion was purely political : char when he desired to rouse the people against the monks, - — r— - he patronised the most violent preachers of the Protestant cranmer. faction ; when that was accomplished, he was prepared, io3S-56. in order to preserve the peace of the country, to support the statute of the six articles.

That Henry was influenced by Crumwell to select the Lady Ann, and that the latter in consequence fell under the royal displeasure, when the king repudiated his marriage with that princess, is a purely gratuitous assertion, contradicted by facts. For it is certain, that after the marriage Crumwell not only continued but increased in favour, and was advanced to the Earldom of Essex,

But, be this as it may, a treaty of marriage was entered into with the httle court of Cleves ; and the sister of the Duke was selected to become the Queen Consort of Eng- land. Courtiers and painters thought fit to pay their homage to the rising sun ; and the lady, though marked with the small-pox,* was, from the omission of any allusion to that defect, painted as a beauty and described as perfection. f Although at this period. Protestantism was unpopular in England, yet the people, from pohtical

* Even after lier arrival in England, to those who only saw her at a distance she appeared, in the words of Hall, as " a brave lady," and her " good visage " is mentioned. We may presume, therefore, that the personal disgust which Henry felt was from her disfigurement, not seen at a distance, by the small-pox.

I Thus was she represented to Henry, when he had determined upon the marriage, but I find among the State Papers a letter which shows that Crumwell had been otherwise informed. Hutton, writing to Crumwell in December, 1537, says: — " The Dewke of Clevis hathe a daughter, but I here no great preas neyther of hir personage nor beawtie." (State Papers, viii. 5.) After this Crumwell would hardly have taken an active part in promoting the match if he had not seen tliat his royal master was deteimined upon it.

74 LIVES OF THE

CHAP . considerations or prejudices, were decidedly in favoin' of

. — ^ — - the marriage with the Lady Ann.

Craumer. When all the preliminaries were arranged, preparations

1533-56. were made for her reception in England on a scale of magnificence never surpassed. A full description of it may be found in the Chronicle of Hall.

The archbishop repaired to Canterbury, where the representatives of all parties in the state were assembled. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord Dacre, Lord Montjoye, and a large company of knights and esquires, with the lords of the exchequer, all in the richest uniforms, were com- missioned to welcome her to England. The primate was attended by the Bishops of Ely, St. Asaph, and St. Davids, together with the suffragan of Dover. The queen elect had landed at Deal on St. John's day, the 27th of De- cember. Here the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, and the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Sampson, received her, and she was conducted by them to Dover Castle ; she rested till the following Monday, when she commenced her progress to London. The primate and tlie other magnates of the land who had assembled at Canterbury, met her on Barham Downs, and escorted her into the city. She was not entertained by the primate ; but was lodged at St. Augustine's, which had now lapsed to the Crown, and here she was entertained at the king's expense. The archbishop seems to have preceded her to London, or rather to Greenwich, there to make ready for the marriage.

Hall is again grandiloquent in describing the meeting of Henry and the Lady Ann, at Greenwich. Here, in the king's procession, which must have been a magnificent display, the primate rode, attended by his suffragans, " apparelled," as the chronicler informs us, " in black satin."

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. iO

On the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, under circum- char stances of unusual splendour, Archbishop Cranmer per- -...^ , " ^' formed the marriage ceremony, and afterwards celebrated cranmer. mass in the king's closet. After mass, he partook of wine io33-56. and spices. It does not appear, that Cranmer was ad- mitted into the secrets of the king, or that he was, at this time, aware of the antipathy which Henry felt against the unfortunate lady, whom he had selected for his wife. But this subject soon came officially before the archbishop. Into the offensive and disgusting details of the divorce case I am not about to enter. What must be said may be stated briefly. The king determined to put away his wife ; and Archbishop Cranmer was required to conduct the repudiation of that injured and insulted lady,* accord- ing to those forms of law which the king loved to observe, whenever they coidd be rendered subservient to his will. The case was regularly submitted to convocation; and when the judgment of convocation had been given, an act of parliament, based upon that judgment, was obtained. It is to be remarked how all parties sought to divide the blame. The archbishop, instead of deciding the case in his own court, first took the precaution of consulting the convocation ; as to the members of convocation, they were so fearfid of being personally responsible, that they, to the number of two hundred, gave their assent to the divorce.f In the act of parliament it is said, that the

* If anyone were in duty bound to expose the character of Henry VIII., an investigation of this case would prove him to be void of the common feelings of a gentleman, a Chriptian, a man. Perhaps there is not in historical literature a viler document than that in which he assigned his reasons for seeking a divorce. He cared not what he did or said, if only he could carry his object.

I I give the numbers as I find them ; but there must be some mistake. There are not two hundred members of the Convocation of Canterbury.

76 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, marriage, as solemnised by the king and the Lady Ann of > — ,^ — ' Cleves, is by the iudfiment of the cleruv of tlie Church of Cranmer. England in their convocation adjudged and pronounced 1533-56. to be void. To this sentence the Lady Ann had given her consent, and therefore it was enacted that the king " shall be at liberty to marry any other woman, and she any other man." Li what follows we have another, out of the many instances that might be adduced, of the httle account, at this time taken of human life, for it is enacted, that " it shall be high treason by word and deed to ac- count, take, judge or believe the said marriage to be good, or to do or procure anything to the repeal of this act."

I have already had occasion to remark, that while all reference to the proceedings against Ann Bolejm has been erased from the register at Lambeth, the divorce case of Ann of Cleves is given in full. And hence we infer, that the two cases were regarded by the archbishop with very different feelings ; and indeed the delight of the Lady Ann of Cleves in escaping, with her life, from the embraces of her husband, was so evident as, in her instance, to render the divorce, if an act of injustice, still an act of mercy. It was well, indeed, for the country that the Lady Ann of Cleves was a woman of no strong passions.* She preferred the enjoyment of a splendid establishment in England, which was afforded her, to the precarious sup- port she was offered in a petty continental court. After the first great wrong to which she submitted, without remonstrance, she had no cause for complaint. To all who did not oppose his will, or involve him in trouble, Henry was one of the kindest and best humoured of men. Wlien

* From the conversations reported to liave taken place between her and her ladies, we are to infer, after making due allowance for the manners of the age, that she was a coarse-minded woman, who took a utilitarian view of all things brought imder her notice.

ARCHBISHOPS OF C.\XTERBUKY. 77

Ann of Cleves retired from his bed, he was at all times careftd, that every mark of attention and even of kind- ness should be manifested towards her ; and the people, cranmer. commiserating the fate of a lady who had been so grossly io33-56. insulted by ihe king, regarded her with feelings of re- spect and pity.

The absurdity of supposing the king to be sincere in the alarm which he professed to feel, and which he required his courtiers to express, lest at his death there should be a disputed succession to the throne, is glaringly apparent on this occasion. He had done all he could to vitiate the claim to be made upon the throne by his daughters ; his son was a child, not in vigorous health, and if Henry were to have issue by another marriage, a pretender to the throne might have easily disputed the legitimacy of the divorce from Ann of Cleves, obtained under circumstances so unparalleled and unprecedented. But Henry cared not for his theories when his passions were roused ; and he caused the proceedings against his insulted wife to be conducted with the greater expedition, as he had fallen in love — I again use the word love, in his instance, under a protest — with Catherine Howard.

In this case also Cranmer was concerned, and acted with discretion and kindness so far as circumstances would allow. Catherine beinoj the dauQ-hter of Lord Edmund Howard, was a niece of the Duke of Norfolk and a cousin-german of Ann Boleyn. It was as suitable a match as that which had been just dissolved ; for an English duke is more than the equal of a German prince, and royal blood flowed in the veins of the Howards. She had been appointed maid of honom* to the Lady Ann of Cleves, the late queen ; but it is supposed that she was unnoticed by Henry until she excited his admiration at a dinner given by the Bishop of Wmchester; when the

iS LIVES OF THE

CHAP, mighty monarch professed himself her slave. In regard » — r^ — ' to the time when the marriage between the king and Cranmer. Catlicrinc took place, there is as much mystery as there 1533-56. was about tlie marriage of Ann Boleyn ; and gossip among the courtiers insinuated that the marriage was consum- mated before it was solemnised.*

All that is known is, that on the 8th of August 1540, the Lady Catherine was introduced by Hemy at Hampton Court as his queen. The amorosity publicly evinced by a bridegroom, not young but " burly and big," towards a blooming, bright-eyed girl still in her teens, and remark- able for being in stature small and slender, provoked a smile in the English court, and was mentioned, for the amusement of his royal master, by the Ambassador of France. From tliis happy dream Cranmer was to awaken his royal friend. While the young queen was sharing with her devoted husband the splendid hospitalities, by wdiich the aristocracy of the North endeavoured to win back the royal favour, and to prove, that it was not against the king, but against his ministers, that rebellious thoughts were lately entertained ; -wdiile Catherine by her inimitable grace was winning all hearts ; a man named Lossells, or Lascelles, came to Cranmer and informed him, on the authority of his sister, who had been servant to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, tliat the queen had before her marriage been seduced by one Francis Derham, and had been guilty of gross acts of immorality. To the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Hertford, who were the ministers left in charge of the government, the archbishop communicated the disclosure. It was agreed between them, that tlie fact ought not to be concealed from the king. The archbishop " could not find it in his heart " to make the statement verbally, and he determined to

* Depeches de Merillac.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 79

communicate it to liis majesty in writing. Cranmer acted chap. with delicacy and caution. He waited till the royal -^ — ,^ — family returned to Hampton Court, desirous, probably, of cranmer. being at hand to assist in consohng the king, whose 1533-56. affliction he knew would be as passionate as his anger. He went with the council to Hampton Court, and there he was told, that, on the festival of All Saints, the king had determined to receive the Holy Communion with his queen, and that he had directed his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Holbeach, to draw up a form of tlianks- giving, that he might express his gratitude to Almighty God for the blessing he now enjoyed in an amiable and loving wife. It would seem that Cranmer had not the heart to interfere with the enjoyments of that day. It must be borne in mind that he had not come to accuse the queen of adultery, but merely to disclose certain dis- reputable actions in her unmarried hfe. He possibly thought, as we gather from his conduct afterwards, that the amorous monarch might overlook the past, if he could obtain a proof of his wife's fidelity to her mar- riage vow, and a pledge of that fidehty for the time to come. The archbishop permitted that day to pass.* On the morrow, being the feast of AU Souls, the king, the queen, and Cranmer all assisted at mass ; and as they were returning from mass, Cranmer placed in the king's hands a paper which he requested the king to read in private.

Hemy would not, at first, believe what he read. For reasons already mentioned more than once, and from the

* This is tlie order of events as I gather it from the letter of the Privy Council to Paget. The statement is confused. The 1st of November was and is All Saints' day, the 2nd all Souls' day. All- hallow's day was a synonym of All Saints' day ; but, by an oversight, the title of AllhaUows is applied by the Council to All Souls' day.

80 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, destruction of the official documents, it is impossible to -- — ,J — - retiu-n a verdict either of guilty or of not guilty, in this or Cranmer. ii^ ^^7 pnblic trials of this reign. We may say, that from 1533-56. tlie evidence we possess, the case is not proved against the queen ; and we may, with this proviso, venture upon an opinion. I have no occasion to enter further into the subject ; but having read the proceedings of the Privy Council and the various State papers, I may be permitted to say, that while no one doubts the truth of the charges brought against the poor girl before the time of her mar- riage, I think that everything tends to show, that she was not guilty of adultery ; but that after she had become the king's wife, she conducted herself with great j^ropriety. I suspect that, though she was only nineteen, and he old enough to be her father, she was truly attached to the king, and that it was by the real affection evinced by her, that the king was fascinated. But her story is one of the saddest of the many sad stories which history has to tell. She had lost her mother in early life, and she never had a maternal friend. She lived in the house of her grand- mother ; but that grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, not only did not rule her family well, but, being an unprincipled woman, of a violent temper, sometimes applied her fists to the correction of the men as well as tlie women of her household, and at other times treated as a joke what, in any but a disorderly house, would be regarded as a grave offence. Francis Derham, a bold man, occupied an inferior position in her family, though dis- tontly related to the Howards. He availed himself of his opportunities to seduce Catherine while she was yet little more than a precocious child. She was, though frivolous, quick and clever, not absolutely beautiful, but of such superlative grace as to be more admired than persons whom an artist would have rej^arded as handsomer. She

AKCHBISHOFS OF CA^'TERBURY. 81

was short of money, and was not able, except tliroii(?h chap.

" . . Ill

Derham's assistance, to procm^e the httle elegancies per- -- — r^ — •

taining to her station. While flattered by liis admiration cranmer.

of her, before she had attracted the notice of others, she 1533-56.

placed herself under obhgations to him, until at last she

could deny him nothing. Wlien people remarked, that

he took hberties with her which, as she was approaching

womanhood, ought not to be permitted, he called her his

little wife, and she did not repudiate the title. The old

duchess, who appears to have been folly itself, looked

upon this as a flirtation carried rather too far ; but talked

loosely on the subject.

At length- they parted. Xo one knew what became of Derham, but he was supposed to be engaged in acts of piracy ; for in that age, persons caUing themselves gen- tlemen did not lose their gentility by being suspected of robbery by sea or by land ; it was in detection that, witli the penalty, came the disgrace. Those persons, how- ever, of the duchess's household who knew or suspected what had occmTcd, were more in number than could have been the case if it had not been part of Derham's pohcy, to make it appear that he was merely romping with a child ; but they too had been dispersed. The woman who knew most of these miserable circumstances, who had been most in the confidence of Catherine, who had acted as her secretary, and communicated with her para- mour until all communication with him had ceased — Joan Bidmer — was settled at York. To say that a person had migi'ated from the South of England to York amounted almost to what would be meant in these days if we were to say of a man that he has gone to the colonies.

All seemed to have been forgotten ; and Catherine, taught by past experience, the experience of a poor girl without a female friend to advise her, became the model

VOL. VII. G

82 LIVES OF THE

CH.\p. of propriety. By nothing about her was the king, accord- >- — ^ — ' ing to his own statement, more enamoured, than by her

Cranmer. " uotable appearance of honor, cleanness, and maidenly

1533-56. behaviour." *

As soon as Catherine became Queen Consort of Eng- land, they who had been the witnesses or abettors of the sins, we might almost say of her childhood, came out of their secret hichng-places, or from the retirements of private life, and Avere seen at court. By their very appearance, they were demanding an amount of hush money, or an equivalent in high appointments, which the poor young queen could not supply or procure. A terrible letter came from York, from the wickedest of the de- stroyers of the queen, which must have made lier very sick at heart. She strufif^led to free herself, but what coidd she do ? This question is easily answered by those wlio can view this subject dispassionately from a distance. We can say, that she ouglit not to liave done the things which she did. She committed indiscretions ; how were they to be avoided ? Here was the terrible Francis Derham, a man imbruted in selfishness and without a single feelincr of a gentleman. He, to the last, confirmed the assertion of the queen ; they both admitted that they had, at one time, Hved together as man and wife, but both denied that there had been the slightest familiarity between them after Catherine's marriage with the king. But there was the fact, that she could not refuse him, when he demanded, a place in her royal household. All who knew anything of her past misconduct were ever in her presence, their very looks brinfrino; daffojers to her soul. Any one of them misfht utter a word whicli would be her doom. We are not surprised to read of secret messages, and various communications made through Lady Eochford, the piu-port of which is not

* See letter from Crunnvell to Paget, 352.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 83

known, tliougli we feel sure, that tliey related to the one ce.\p. subject. ■ .-^— ■

There was a near relation of the queen, named Cul- cranmer. pepper, whom she made her confidant ; and with whom, 1533-06. tlirough Lady Eochford, she had frequent communications by letter. When the Court was at Pontefi'act, the queen had an interview with her kinsman Culpepper in the night, in the presence of Lady Eochford ; he declared to the latest hour of life, defying the rack as well as the axe, that there never was anything approaching to criminality in this or any other interview with the queen ; and where there were such obvious reasons why there should be such interviews, and why they should be clandestine, we may believe him, if we are charitably disposed ; and the side of charity is generally the side of justice. But that inter- view cost Culpepper his life.

This is the story, as far as we can gather it from exist- ing materials. There was the original offence — this is admitted, but it is not proved ; perhaps we shall some of us think the opposite position fully established — that Catherine was not guilty' of that adultery which was laid to her charge, and for which she died.

The king at first hoped, that the accusation brought against his wife for immorality before her marriage would prove to be unfounded. So convinced was he of her innocence, that he caused her at first to be treated with great consideration, and was careful to prevent any scandal injurious to her reputation that might arise from the secret investigation into her conduct wdiich he appointed. When it was admitted by the queen herself, that she had kept this secret from him, his vindictive passions were roused, and could only be satiated by her blood.

Cranmer, who was peculiarly free from vindictive feelings, and who easily forgave, did not understand his

G 2

84 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, royal master. He supposed, that all tlie king required . — ^ — . was a divorce ; and the archbishop therefore urged the Cranmer. quecii to admit the existence of a precontract between 1533-56. herself and Derham. This slie pertinaciously refused to do. If she would admit the precontract, then the arch- bishop could pronounce sentence of divorce, and the poor young woman would be dismissed with a tarnished reputation, but with her life. She still refused. It is difficult to understand why, unless it was from sucli hatred of Derham, that she revolted from what would have bound her to him for hfe, if the lives of both were spared.

The archbishop was commissioned to have an interview with her, and to obtain a confession of her guilt. There still exists a letter from the archbishop to the king, very touching ; the poor girl being terrified almost to deatli ; and evidently feeling affection for the king, whose love, on the contrary, had turned into hatred.

Cranmer laboured earnestly in lier cause ; but in vain. A bill of attainder passed through parliament, and on the loth of February 1542, England was degraded by another legal murder. One is filled with horror at the nature of the man, who could give orders that the head should roll on the scaffold which a few weeks before had rechned on his breast — the head of one who, with all her faults, was as an angel of light compared to the wretched being who pronounced on her the sentence of death, and then revelled on his blood-stained throne. The confessions in this reign made on the scaffold were either previously composed by the government ; or, if other words were uttered, the reporter shaped them according to the will of him whose will it was death to gainsay. Catherine was attended to the scaffold by her confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln ; and afterwards, when Hemy too had gone

ARCHBISHOrS OF CANTERBURY. 85

to his account, he recorded the last words of Catherine Howard to have been —

As to the act, my reverend Lord, for which I stand con- demned, God and his holy angels I take to witness, on my soul's 1533-56. salvation, that I die guiltless, never having so abused my sove- reign's bed. What other sins and follies of youth I have committed I will not excuse ; but am assured that for them God hath brought this punishment upon me, and will in his mercy remit them, for which I pray you, pray with me unto his Son and my Saviour Jesus Christ.*

By those who determine to find a religious motive for all the actions of this reign, as they attribute the death of Ann Boleyn to a conspiracy on the part of the Papists, so they opine that a Protestant conspiracy led to the death of Catherine Howard. The facts of history do not bear out either suspicion. Tliat there was a conspiracy against Ann Boleyn we must admit, but the leading spirit in that conspiracy was, we can little doubt, Thomas Crumwell, who is regarded as the head of the Protestant party ; it remains to be proved whether there were any conspiracy at all against Catherine Howard. The most bitter of her enemies were men of the old learning ; and so far from her having been under the influence of Norfolk or Gardyner, we hear not the name of the latter after the dinner-party at Avhich the king fell in love with her ; while in a family feud Catherine took part against her uncle the duke, who became her enemy. It is ridiculous to suppose, that the counsellors of such a king as Henry could have imagined that he would have tolerated the interference in pohtical affairs of a girl of nineteen, or that such a girl as Catherine would do anything but defer to the judgment, opinion, and will of such a husband as Heniy.

I have entered more fully into this subject, because it

* Speed, 1030.

86 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, has been insinuated, tliat Cranmer, afraid of sliarino; the

III . .

^- — ^ — ' fate of Crumwell, was at the head of this conspiracy ; that

Cranmer. he conspircd with Norfolk and Gardyner to ruin the un- 1533-56. fortunate queen. Not only is this disproved, but the very assertion is directly opposed to the whole cliaracter of Cranmer. If we are told, that through fear, moral more than physical, he was at any time induced to belie his principles, we might give credit to the assertions of tlie accuser ; but Cranmer's was a character simple and un- suspecting even to weakness ; his whole nature would have revolted from anything so degrading as a conspi- racy merely to sustain tliat political power which, in point of fact, he neither possessed nor desired to possess. Both these points are established by what little remains to be told of Cranmer's history during the reign of Henry YIII.

It seems as if Henry delighted to raise his favourites to a giddy pinnacle of greatness, that their fall might be the heavier when, in his caprice or his vengeance, lie thought fit to hurl them to the bottom of the pit. Not long before the execution of the fifth queen of Henry VIII., Thomas Crumwell, Earl of Essex, had to plead in vain for his life, in terms tiie more offensively abject when contrasted with his previous haughtiness of demeanour. His letter to the king concluded in the following terms : " Written at the Tower with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your Highness most miserable prisoner and poor slave. I cry for mercy, mercy — mercy ! "

Let the reader compare the abject cowardice of Crumwell with the Christian courage exhibited by Sir Thomas More.

Self-confident, self-reliant, returning frown for frown with the proud peers, who ill brooked to see the plebeian upstart take precedence of all but royalty in the land, the Earl of Essex appeared in his place in the House of Lords

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 87

on the morning of the 10th of June, 1540. Before evening he was a prisoner in the Tower. He was arrested at the council board under a charge of high treason, by the Duke of Norfolk. 1533-56.

It is impossible to discover the real grounds of his appreliension, unless light shall be hereafter thrown upon the subject by communications made to foreign courts. The principal evidence against him has been suppressed, because probably it would have implicated the king, whose " slave " he had been. He was condemned under the iniquitous statute, which admitted of attainder without trial. It is incorrect to state, as is sometimes done, that he was the author of that statute ; he was rather the reviver of it. The preamble tells us nothing except the fact, which is patent, that he took bribes to hold people harmless who had violated the law. The enormous wealth which he had accumulated within a very few years, is sufficient to show how unscrupulous he must have been as to the means by which it was raised ; but it was impossible to substantiate against him a charge of high treason. It was only by the will of a Parhament as stern and arbitrary as its master that he could be condemned as a traitor ! Why Crum- well should be given up to the vengeance of the people, at this particular juncture of affairs, it is difficult to sur- mise and useless to conjecture. So it was ; he who was yesterday all powerful, found himself on the next day a friendless traitor. When it was known that Crumwell was in the Tower, the joy of the whole nation, and of all parties in the nation, was as if a victory had been won. The peers envied and hated liim ; the clergy feared him, for he had hinted significantly, that the Church pro- perty might share the fate of the monastic property ; the men of the old learning abhorred the innovator ; and although Protestants, in after ages, under the leadership

88 LIVES OF THE

of Foxe, have declared him to be " a most vahant soldier and captain of Christ, studious in a flagrant zeal, to set forth the truth of the Gospel,"* yet, at the time of his 1533-56. death, he was reputed even by them as one who had betrayed their cause, who had supported, if he did not suggest, the statute of the six articles. Cranmer alone had the boldness to come forward in his defence, knowing that, whatever his faults may have been, he certainly was not a traitor to the king. Cranmer was never ad- mitted into the secret counsels of the king, for Henry respected his virtue too much to employ him in his duty work. Cranmer looked therefore upon the case unpre- judiced, and judged it on its own merits. He speaks of Crumwell as his friend. This was especially generous at the time. The word friend, however, is not to be re- garded in the real de])th of meaning which may be at- tached to that sacred word. He merely meant what is still meant in parliament, when one member speaks of another, with whom he has happened to be associated in politics, as his honom^able friend. f They who read the correspondence of Cranmer and Crumwell will be aware, that there was not much either of intimacy or congeniality between the two great men. Cranmer's letter to the king on behalf of Crumwell has not been found entire. For what has been preserved of it we are indebted to Lord Herbert. It must be presented to the reader J: —

I heard yesterday in your grace's council that he (Crumwell) is a traitor, yet who cannot be sorrowful and araazed that he should be a traitor against your majesty, he that was so ad-

* Foxe, V. 403.

I It would appear from letter cclvii. that Crumwell was, for some reason or other, in Cranmer's pay. The archbishop sent him £20 for . his half-year's fee.

:}: Lord Plerbert, 519.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 89

vanced by jour majesty ; he -whose surety was ouly by your CHAP.

majesty ; he who loved your majesty, as I ever thought, no less ^^^ ,

than God ; he who studied always to set forwards whatsoever Thomas was your majesty s will and pleasure ; he that cared lor no man s n .-gn-g displeasure to serve your majesty ; he that was such a servant in my judgment, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and ex- perience, as no prince in this realm ever had ; he that was so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons, that few could be so secretly conceived, but he detected the same in the begin- ning? If the noble princes of memory, King John, Henry II.,* and Eichard II., had had such a counsellor about them, I suppose that they should never have been so traitorously aban- doned and overthrown as those good princes were. ... I loved him as my friend, for so I took him to be ; but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace, singularly above all other. But now if he be a traitor, I am sorry that I ever loved him, or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason is discovered in time ; but yet again I am very sorrowful ; for who shall your grace trust here- after, if you might not trust him? Alas ! I bewail and lament your grace's chance herein. I wot not whom your grace may trust. But I pray Grod continually, night and day, to send such a counsellor in his place whom your grace may trust, and who for all his qualities can and will serve your grace like to him, and that will have so much solicitude and care to preserve yoiu- grace from all dangers as I ever thought he had ... (14 June, 1540).t

As we have often to complain, the coudiict of Cranmer did not correspond with his words. On referring to the journals of the House of Lords, we find the bill of attahi- der introduced on the 17th of June. The archbishop Avas not present. The bill was read the second and third time on the 19th of June, when Cranmer v^as in his place, and it "was read without a dissentient voice. He was present at all

* Cranmer was not profound in his history. Henry is certainly the name given in Cranmer's letter ; for Henry read Edward. I Remains, letter cclviii.

90- LIVES OF THE

CHAP, the other processes of the bill, until it had received the

TTT

^_ — ^ - royal assent. Had proof been, in the meantime, introduced

Cranmer. sufficicnt to Satisfy the archbishop's mind, or, having ex- 1533-56. pressed his opinion, was he overawed ? To speak openly and then to obey, this was his avowed principle as a poli- tician. Crumwell was beheaded on the 28th of July, 1540. It is frequently supposed that Cranmer, after this, re- tired from pubhc life, and that the king for the rest of his reign committed the affairs of state to the Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Gardyner. But this assertion is more easily made than proved ; it is, indeed, to apply the notions and principles of the nineteenth century to the in- terpretation of the actions of the sixteenth. A minister in the time of Hemy YIII. was as different from what a minister is, in the reign of Queen Victoria, as a clerk in a pubhc office in these days differs from tlie head of his department. When a minister obtained influence over the royal mind he was called a favourite, and it was as a favourite that he retained that influence. Wolsey was all powerful because he managed the king ; he saved the king. trouble, and though he ruled, he never showed that he ruled. Crumwell was employed by the king to re- plenish the treasury, as he had promised to do, but he was not admitted to his friendship ; and when the king- had delighted the people by the condemnation of Crum- well, Hemy sought counsel from no one. He became, in the strongest sense of the word, his own minister. This is proved by the State Papers of his time. Even when Wolsey was in power, there were some occasions on which Henry did not consult his favourite minister ; and it may be inferred that there were many more on which he acted without the ad\dce of his council.*

* Proceedings of the Privy Council, vii. pref. p. xii. Two remark- able examples of tlie secret manner in Avhich Henry VIII. sometimes

ARCHBISHOPS OF CAXTliEBURY. 91

Cranmer never iatnided an opinion except when asked, and was very little about the Coiu-t. The same may be said of Gardyner. Henry's insight into character was one of the characteristics of his powerfid mind ; and that 1533-06. he understood the character of Gardyner is clear from what he said of him to Sir Anthony Browne : " that none could use or rule Gardyner but his royal self, so trouble- some was his nature, and so certain was he to cumber all with w^hom he was associated."*

Such a man was not hkely to gain much influence over Heniy's mind ; and Gardjmer was well aware that Henry would not tolerate the proffer of ad\^ce unasked. Both Wolsey and CrumweU fell, partly at least, from jealousy on the part of the king. They had made themselves so useful, that in both instances, the " Ego et Eex mens " was imphed even if the presumptuous formula was not actually used.

The exclusion of Gardyner from the Eegency of Edward YL, by the will of Henry YHL, is sufficient to show, that he had not that power, in the latter years of Henry, which is sometimes attributed to him ; and for the withdrawal of which those who gratuitously assert the existence of his power are unable to account.

conducted affairs are given in the " State Papers." Part of the instruc- tions with which Dr. Knight, the principal secretary, was fiu-nished on his mission to Eome, in 1527, were concealed even from Wolsey him- self (vol. i. 277) ; and in August, 154:1, when Henry contemplated an intervieAV with James V. of Scotland, for which purpose passports under the Great Seal were indispensable, he directed the Lord Chan- cellor to prepare them, without disclosing the circumstance to any member of the Privy Council in London ; and he was commanded to make no more persons privy to the instruments than could pos- sibly be avoided, all of whom were to be solemnly sworn to the strictest secrecy. (Ibid. pp. 680, 681.) * Ridley's Ridley, 183.

92- LIVES OF THE

CHAP. It is a remarkable circumstance, that while under the -^ — ■- — ' act of supremac}", the administration of which the king Cranmer. had confidcd to Cnimwell, the persecutions were so 1533-56. numerous as to defy calculation ; under the statute of six articles, more apparently blood-thirsty, they were com- paratively few. V/e may doubt, if the administration of the last-mentioned statute had been confided to Gardyner, whether this would have been the case. The object with Henry was to prevent any party from having the pre- dominance ; and to have placed the power in the hands of a party leader would have been to stultify the whole policy of the king. The king's pohcy was to preserve the tran- quilhty of the countr}-, and for the furtherance of this object the Privy Council was invested with enormous, almost inquisitorial, powers. These powers were employed not onlj^ in the detection of treasonable designs, and the punishment of sedition j but if the public peace were Hkely to be disturbed the Privy Council would descend to the investigation of the grounds of a family dispute, or it would take part, not always the partof justice, in a private quarrel. In their body, parties were formed, and party hatred could only be appeased by the blood of an opponent. But the king's eye was upon the council. Henry knew the character of every man he employed, and if any, instead of labouring for the public good, were furthering objects either of malice or self-aggrandizement they were not likely to escape detection. He suffered no man to defraud the country but himself; and though he allowed Crumwell to take his percentage out of the spoils of the monasteries, when he exceeded what the kin^^ re^zarded as his fair perquisites, it was by his blood only that he could expatiate his offence.

Of this we shall pr&sently liave a remarkable instance ; but we must first follow the archbishop to his diocese.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CA^N'TERCURY. 93

As an administrator Cranmer had not been succe.<sfal. chap. In some things, he was sufficiently arbitrary-, calhng in the -^ — ,-i_- royal authority, wlien his powers as metropolitan were cranmer. disputed. ISTothing could have been more arbitrary, as 1533-56. we have seen, than the measures he adopted to silence the clergy, immediately after sentence of divorce had been pronounced against Katharine I. He knew that if the expectants of preferment would be cautious, yet the feel- ings of the great body of the clergy were in accordance with those of the nation in general, and that against the iniquitous divorce they would have exerted their elo- quence. In consequence he prohibited all the clergy of his diocese from preaching, except those who had ob- tained a license from himself. C^ranmer was not the hero whom the countenance of an urgent tyrant could not move. With the same object in vieAv, that of preventing the clergy from denouncing the divorce, he had entered upon a metropolitical visitation in 1535, of which we have spoken before, and which evinced on his part more of zeal than of sound judgment.

In the next reign, we shall find Cranmer guilty — never of cruelty, but still of harsh measures, to silence op- ponents ; no measure being more arbitrary than that which subjected the Church to a royal visitation. Be- cause a metropohtical visitation was opposed by his suf- fragans, he seems, as a punishment, to have resorted to that extraordinary measure of appointing a royal com- mission of enquiry.

But, not to anticipate ; now in 1543, the archbishop had leisure for a diocesan visitation. A proof that the statute of the six articles was not vigorously enforced is to be seen at once, in the condition of the diocese. Super- stitions were still prevalent, and by many of the clergy encouraged as rehgious observances. Images were re-

94 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, tained in the churches, and it was said, that they had III . . '

-- — r^ — - power to heal tliose among the sick who paid to them

Cranmer their dcvotious. Holy Water was esteemed as efFicacious 1533-06. against thunder, hghtning, and evil spirits. Holy Candles were employed for the purposes of vindictive sorcery. In one place red-hot coals were poured upon the grave of one who had been chaplain to the archbishop, to signify the death such a heretic deserved. Such was superstition in the one extreme ; on the other side, there were men of the new learning who spoke of the ordinances of the Church as mere acts of conjuring to fill the pockets of the clergy, who were represented as pro- fessors of legerdemain. Others taught it .to be the bounden duty of a Christian man to eat eggs, butter, and cheese in Lent.* All this is intelligible, but we are sur- prised to find, that some there were, who went so far as to decline preaching in favour of the royal supremacy. Even against the archbishop's chaplain, Dr. Eidley, and against his brother. Archdeacon Cranmer, charges were brought; against the first, for teaching that, although auricular con- fession was a godly means through which the sinner might come to the priest for counsel, yet it was simply a law of the Church, and not appointed by scripture ; against the archdeacon, for removing candles from before a high altar in Canterbur}% and for destroying a sacred image. A prebendaiy of the cathedral was indicted for declaiming against prayer in the M.dgar tongue.

It redounds to the credit of Cranmer, that he re- sorted, under these circumstances, to no harsh measures of coercion or repression. Although the statute of the six articles prevented him from defending the refomiers, so many men of the old learning might have been brought

* An amusing list of the cases which came before the archbishop on this occasion is given in Strype, I. cxxv.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTEKBURY. 95

to destruction for neglecting to assert the royal supremacy, chap.' tliat, if his temper had been vindictive, he might have — ^ — ■ ^v^ought the death of many who now reviled him and cranmtr. hoped, through the statute, to bring the archbishop and 1533-06. his followers into difficulties. Instead of this, and knowing the king's intention, that the act shoidd only give him powers wdiich he might use at his discretion, Cranmer did what he could to prevent it from being perverted into the means of persecution, by obtaining permission from the king to introduce a measure, sometimes spoken of as a mitigation of tlie preceding act, although, more properly speaking, it was explanatory of it. He repre- sented to the king, that the extreme severity of the penalties by wdiich the articles were enforced rendered the enforcement of them a thing impossible. It w^as pro- vided, therefore — to render it almost impossible to apply the statute to the pm^poses of religious faction — that no person should be put to trial for any offence against the six articles but upon the oath of twelve men ; that the presentments should be made within one year after the offence had been committed ; that no person should be arrested for any such offence before he should be in- dicted ; and that any accusation for speaking in opposition to the act should be preferred within forty days of the alleged dehnquency. The moderation of the archbishop was less efficacious, because wherever he went he ap- peared as a party man — not indeed as a Protestant, but as an advocate of the men of the new learnino' ; and the reactionary spirit against the reformation, pre- valent throughout the country, was especially strong in Kent.

There was in the Pri^y Council a strong party of the men of the old learning. That Gardpier, in whose mind, as in that of Bonner, a reaction had already taken place, had

96 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, much influence in the Council is highly probable ; but - — r^— ■ the circumstances we are about to relate show, tliat he was Cranmer. i^ot morc iu tlic sccrct couucils of the king than any

1533-06. other of the counsellors. Gardyner cordially hated Cran- mer, and was the leader, with the Duke of Xoifolk, of that faction which hoped to work his disgrace and ruin. At one period of his life, expecting the archbishopric, Gardyner had been most zealous in the cause of the divorce and of the supremacy, but tlie elevation of Cranmer had rendered him no longer zealous in supporting the kiner, thougli he dared not oppose him. His party ^vas in com- munication with the reactionaries, and especially with the discontented people in Kent. It appears, that a supposition prevailed that the king had changed his opinions ; and a conspiracy was consequently formed against Cranmer. Evidence was to be produced before the Council, that the archbishop had deterred people from preaching, unless they were friendly to the men of the new learning; that he had caused certain images to be removed, though they had not been abused to superstitious purposes ; that he had corresponded with the German reformers, and liad contributed to the support of some of their friends. We can hardly imagine anythmg weaker than their cause, and certainly Cranmer could not, as yet, have gone far in the direction of Protestantism, when his most malicious enemies could not bring against him any accusation stronger than this. All would depend upon the humour of the king. The majority of the Council were to be shocked at such a deviation from the royal will, the king was to be exasperated, and Cranmer sent to the Tower.

But nothing could escape the vigilance of the king, resolved as he was to preserve the peace of the country. To him the conspiracy became known.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 97

The archbishop was at Lambeth. He heard the sound chap. of music on the water ; such as betokened the passing of _I:^^L_ the royal barge. He immediately repaired to the bridge c^anmer. or quay, to salute his royal master as he passed. The 1533-06. king was on his way to Chelsea ; but when he saw the archbishop, he told the watermen to pull near the shore, and desired the archbishop to come on board. Xo sooner was he seated, than with a merry voice he said : " Ah, my chaplain, I have news for you ; I now know who is the greatest heretic in Kent." He then pulled out of liis sleeve a paper containing the charges brought against the archbishop ; signed by certain prebendaries and justices of the county. He desired the archbishop to inspect the document. To the astonishment and amusement of the king, the archbishop, as the custom then was in address- ing royalty, bent his knee and entreated the king to appoint a commission, by which the truth of what was alleged might be ascertained, " so that from the highest to the lowest they might be well punished, for an ex- ample to others, if they had done otherwise than became them." * " Marry," said the king, " that will I do, for I have such affiance and confidence in your fidehty, that I will commit the examination hereof wholly unto you and such as you shall appoint." Morice, the archbishop's secretary, who is our authority, tells us : " Then said my Lord Cranmer, that will not, if it please your grace, seem indifferent." " Well," said the king, " it shall be none otherwise ; for surely I reckon you will tell me the truth ; yea, of yourself, if you have offended. And, therefore, make no more ado ; but let a commission be made out to you and such other as you shall name, whereby I may understand how this confederacy came to pass." " And so," continues Morice, " a commission was made

* Morice, 252. VOL. VII. H

98 LIVES OF THE

CHAP, out to my Lord Cranmer, Dr. Coxe, his cliancellor, and ■ — ^ — ' Dr. Bellasis, a master iu Chancer j, afterwards Archdeacon Cranmer. of Colchcstcr, and Mi\ Husscy, his registrar ; " and pro- 1533-56. ceeding to Canterbury,* the commissioners entered upon their investigation. The chancellor and registrar — ap- pointed in the spirit of fairness on account of their official position by the archbishop — were men of the old learning, and his secret enemies. Through their artifices nothing was discovered or disclosed, and it seemed that their report would be that a false alarm had been raised, Morice, however, the archbishop's secretary, saw through their manoeuvres, and communicated his suspicions to Dr. Butts, the royal physician, ■with whom, through Shakspeare, we are all of us acquainted. By Dr. Butts the king was informed of what was taking place, and to the surprise of the chancellor and registrar, even of the archbishop himself, Mr., afterwards Sir Anthony Denny, and Dr. Leigh, made their appearance as additional members, by the king's appointment, of the commission. They immediately nominated nine or ten gentlemen to search the houses of the suspected prebendaries and magistrates ; and in a wonderfully short space of time a correspondence was discovered, which not only proved the conspiracy, but involved in its guilt some persons of greater pohtical importance than the prebendaries of Canterbury and the magistrates of Kent. Several of the conspirators were committed to prison, there to remain during the ai'chbishop's pleasure. All that he required of them was, that they should give him some security not to conspire against him for the time to come. " And so," says Morice, " a parliament being at hand, great labour was made by their friends for a general

* Strype says tliey sat at Faversliam, but Morice was present at the proceedings.

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pardon, which Aviped away all pimishment and correction chap.

for the same, specially my Lord Cranmer being a man -.^ , .

that delighted not in revenging." * Cranmer.

The archbishop was deeply grieved to find among the 1533-06. conspirators some who had been distinguished by his patronage, and whom he had hitherto regarded as his friends. He generously, however, forgave them all ; and even, with respect to these, received them back into favour.

To add to the troubles of the archbishop, at the end of this year the palace at Canterbury was burnt to the ground, and in the flames perished some of his friends, his brother-in-law being one. The archbishop was on this account exempted from the expense of maintaining the Viceroy of Sicily, in making preparations for whose en- tertainment the accident occurred.

When the parhament assembled, notwithstanding the generosity of the archbishop in not opposing the bill of indemnity, which was to whitewash those who had lately conspired against his fair fame and his life itself, consider- able animosity against him was displayed. Sir John Gost- wick, M.P. for Bedfordshire, accused the primate of heresy against the sacrament of the altar. On that point Cran- mer certainly had not yet expressed any change of opinion, and it was only on vague report that Sir John made his attack. The speech was reported to the king, " who marvellously stormed at the matter, calling openly Gostwick a varlet, and said he had played a villainous part so to abuse in open parliament the primate of the

* Foxe of course implicates Gardyner in the conspiracy, and is followed by most writers, but his name is not mentioned by Morics. A nephew of his was one of the conspirators, and the bishop made no secret of his hostility to the primate, though he does not appear to have committed himself to the present plot.

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CHAP, realm, specially being in favour with his prince as he was.

•^ ^ — - ' What will tliey (quoth the king) do with him if I were

Cranmer. gouc ? ' Whcrcupou the king sent word unto Mr. Gost- 1533-56. wick after this sort : 'Tell that varlet Gostwick that if he do not acknowledge his fault unto my Lord of Canterbury, and so reconcile himself towards him that he may become his good lord, I will surely both make him a poor Gost- wick and otherwise punish him to the example of others.' Now Gostwick, hearing of this hemous tlu^at from the king's majesty, came with all possible speed unto Lam- beth, and there submitted himself in such sorrowful case, that my lord out of hand not only forgave all the offence, but also went directly unto the king, for the obtaining of the king's favour again, which he obtained veiy hardly, upon condition that the king might hear no more of his meddling that way." *

From this time till the year 1545, the archbishop hved in peace, pursuing his studies as we have before related, and preparing for those further reforms which Henry encourased him to desio'n, and which were carried into effect in the next reign. But in the year just mentioned he lost his great friend in the council, the Duke of Suffolk, and his enemies were prepared once more to attempt his ruin.

The archbishop was at Lambeth, and had retired to rest, when at about eleven o'clock a boat arrived from the opposite side of the river, and Sir Anthony Denny was announced as the bearer of a message from the king. The archbishop was required " incontinently " to wait upon the king's majesty at Westminster. He immediately took boat for the palace. Henry had that morning been informed by his Privy Council that "the archbishop, with his learned men, had so infected the whole realm

* Morice, 254.

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with tlieir unsavomy doctrine, that three parts of the chap. land were become abominable heretics ; and that it ^^ — ^ — - might prove dangerous to the king, being hke to pro- Thomas

T 1 , • T Cranmer.

duce such commotions and uproars as were sprung up j533_-g in Germany. And therefore they desired that the arch- bishop might be committed unto the Tower, until he might be exammed." The king was very strait in granting this. They told him " that the archbishop, being one of the Privy Council, no man dared to object matter against him, unless he were first committed to durance : which being done, men would be bold to tell the truth, and say their consciences." *

The persons who thus applied for the king's permission to commit Cranmer are the persons who are generally supposed to have made Henry their puppet, for it is not uncharitable to assume that the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Winchester w^ere the persons who took the lead in this factious movement in the Privy Council. If they could have controlled the king in private they would not have thus come before him as a deputation from his council. The king yielded to their solicitation, and per- mitted them to call the archbishop before them the next day, and if they saw cause to commit him to the Tower.

We are glad to know that Henry had still left in liim some sense of justice, and felt what was due to a man on whose friendship he could under all his difficulties rely. He thought more of Cranmer 's heart than his head, while he was flattered by knowing how entirely on the king's judgment tlie archbishop relied.

On reaching Whitehall the archbishop found the king pacing the long gallery in great pertm^bation of mind. Heniy immediately mentioned what had happened in the morning. He stated the charges brought against the

* Strype, I. 177.

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Thomas Cranmer.

1533-66.

arclibisliop by the council, and acknowledged that he had yielded to their petition that he should be committed to the Tower. He concluded with saying : " but whether I have done well or no, what say you, my lord?" The archbishop thanked the king for his consideration and kind- ness in thus giving him warning, and added that he was contented to be committed to the Tower for the trial of his doctrine, so that he might be " indifferently heard ; " and he expressed his con\iction that his majesty would see him fairly used. I give the rest of this scene in the words of Morice, which may be regarded as the ipsissima verba of Cranmer himself. The king, after the archbishop had expressed his willingness to go to the Tower, ex- claimed : —

Oh Lord Grod ! what fond