Chapter IX

THE CATHOLIC MARTYRS.

State of England in the summer of 1534.

While the disturbance in Ireland was at its height, affairs in England had been scarcely less critical. The surface indeed remained unbroken. The summer of 1534 passed away, and the threatened invasion had not taken place. The disaffection which had appeared in the preceding year had been smothered for a time; Francis I. held the emperor in check by menacing Flanders, and through French influence the rupture with Scotland had been seemingly healed. In appearance the excommunication had passed off as a brutum fulmen, a flash of harmless sheet lightning, serving only to dazzle feeble eyes. The oath of succession, too, had been taken generally through the country; Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher having alone ventured to refuse. The pope had been abjured by the universities and by the convocation in both the provinces, and to these collective acts the bishops and the higher clergy had added each their separate consent.

But the government knew too well the temper of the clergy to trust to outward compliance, or to feel assured that they acquiesced at heart either in the separation from Rome, or in the loss of their treasured privileges. The theory of an Anglican Erastianism found favour with some of the higher The clergy comply with the revolution, but inwardly have little heart for it. church dignitaries, and with a section perhaps of secular priests; but the transfer to the crown of the first-fruits, which in their original zeal for a free Church of England the ecclesiastics had hoped to preserve for themselves, the abrupt limitation of the powers of convocation, and the termination of so many time-honoured and lucrative abuses, had interfered with the popularity of a view which might have been otherwise broadly welcomed; and while growing vigorously among the country gentlemen and the middle classes in the towns, among the clergy it throve only within the sunshine of the court. The rest were overawed for the moment, and stunned by the suddenness of the blows which had fallen upon them. As far as they thought at all, they believed that the storm would be but of brief duration, that it would pass away as it had risen, and that for the moment they had only to bend. The modern Englishman looks back upon the time with the light of after history. He has been inured by three centuries of division to the spectacle of a divided church, and sees nothing in it either embarrassing or fearful. The ministers of a faith which had been for fifteen centuries as the seamless vesture of Christ, the priests of a church supposed to be founded on the everlasting rock against which no power could prevail, were in a very different position. They obeyed for the time the strong hand which was upon them, trusting to the interference of accident or providence. They comforted themselves with the hope that the They bend before the storm, trusting to time. world would speedily fall back into its old ways, that Christ and the saints would defend the church against sacrilege, and that in the meantime there was no occasion for them to thrust themselves upon voluntary martyrdom.[383] But this position, natural as it was, became difficult to maintain when they were called upon not only themselves to consent to the changes, but to justify their consent to their congregations, and to explain to the people the grounds on which the government had acted. The kingdom was by implication under an interdict,[384] yet the services went on as usual; the king was excommunicated; doubt hung over the succession; the facts were imperfectly known; and the never-resting friars mendicant were busy scattering falsehood and misrepresentation. It was of the highest moment that on all these important matters the mind of the nation should if possible be set at rest; and the clergy, whose loyalty was presumed rather The clergy are called upon to explain to the people the changes which have taken place. than trusted, furnished the only means by which the government could generally and simultaneously reach the people. The clergy therefore, as we have seen, were called upon for their services; the pope's name was erased from the mass; books; the statute of appeals and the statute of succession were fixed against the doors of every parish church in England, and the rectors and curates were directed every week in their sermons to explain the meaning of these acts. The bishops were held responsible for the obedience of the clergy; the sheriffs and the magistrates had been directed to keep an eye upon the bishops; and all the machinery of centralization was put in force to compel the fulfilment of a duty which was well known to be unwelcome.

That as little latitude as possible might be left for resistance or evasion, books were printed by order of council, and distributed through the hands of the bishops, containing a minute account of the whole proceedings on the divorce, the promises and falsehoods of the pope, the opinions of the European universities, and a general epitome of the course which had beenThe order for preaching. Every preacher to deliver one sermon against the papal usurpation. pursued.[385] These were to be read aloud to the congregations; and an order for preaching was at the same time circulated, in which the minuteness of the directions is as remarkable as the prudence of them. Every preacher was to deliver one sermon at least ("and after at his liberty") on the encroachments and usurpations of the papal power. He was to preach against it, to expose and refute it to the best of his ability, and to declare that it was done away, and might neither be obeyed nor defended further. Again in all places "where the king's just cause in The archbishop's sentence to be held a thing of mere verity, not to be again called in question. his matter of matrimony had been detracted, and the incestuous and unjust [matrimony] had been set forth [and extolled]," the clergy were generally directed "to open and declare the mere verity and justice" of the matter, declaring it "neither doubtful nor disputable," but to be a thing of mere verity, and so to be allowed of all men's opinions. They were to relate in detail the pope's conduct, his many declarations in the king's favour; the first decretal, which was withheld by Campeggio, in which he had pronounced the marriage with Catherine invalid; his unjust avocation of the cause to Rome; his promises to the King of France; and finally, his engagement at Marseilles to pronounce in the King of England's favour, if only he would acknowledge the papal jurisdiction.[386] They were therefore to represent the king's conduct as the just and necessary result of the pope's duplicity. These things the clergy were required to teach, not as matters of doubt and question, but as vital certainties on which no The clergy are forbidden to preach upon disputed points of doctrine. difference of opinion could be tolerated. Finally, there were added a few wholesome admonitions on other subjects, which mark the turning of the tide from Catholic orthodoxy. The clergy were interdicted from indulging any longer in the polemics of theology. "To keep unity and quietness in the realm it" was "ordained that no preachers" should "contend openly in the pulpit one against another, nor uncharitably deprave one another in open audience. If any of them" were "grieved one with another," they were to "complain to the King's Highness or the archbishop or bishop of the diocese." They were "purely, sincerely, and justly" to "preach the scripture and words of Christ, and not mix them with men's institutions, or make men believe that the force of God's law and man's law was the like." On subjects such as purgatory, worship of saints and relics, marriage of the clergy, justification by faith, pilgrimages and miracles, they were to keep silence for one whole year, and not to preach at all.[387]

These instructions express distinctly the convictions of the government. It would have been well if the clergy could have accepted them as they were given, and submitted their understandings once for all to statesmen who were wiser than themselves. The majority (of the parish clergy at least) were perhaps outwardly obedient; but the surveillance which the magistrates Difficulty of securing obedience to the order. Obstructiveness of the bishops, were directed to exercise proves that the exceptions were expected to be extensive; and in many quarters these precautions themselves were rapidly discovered to be inadequate. Several even of the most trusted among the bishops attempted an obstructive resistance. The clergy of the north were notoriously disobedient. The Archbishop of York was reported to have talked loosely of "standing against" the king "unto death."[388] The Bishop of Durham fell under suspicion, and was summoned to London. His palace was searched and his papers examined in his absence; and the result, though inconclusive, was unsatisfactory.[389] The religious orders again (especially the monks of such houses as had been implicated with the Nun of And of the regular clergy. Kent) were openly recusant. At the convent at Sion, near Richmond, a certain Father Ricot preached as he was commanded, "but he made this addition, that he which commanded him to preach should discharge his conscience: and as soon," it was said, "as the said Ricot began to declare the king's title," "nine of the brethren departed from the sermon, contrary to the rule of their religion, to the great slander of the audience."[390] Indeed it soon became evident that among the regular clergy no compliance whatever was to be looked for; and the agents of the government began to contemplate the possible consequences, with a tenderness not indeed for the prospective sufferers, but for the authorities whom they would so cruelly compel to punish them. "I am right sorry," wrote Cromwell's secretary to him, "to see the foolishness and obstinacy of divers religious men, so addict to the Bishop of Rome and his usurped power, that they contemn counsel as careless men and willing to die. If it were not for the opinion which men had, and some yet have, in their apparent holiness, it made no great matter what became of them, so their souls were saved. And for my part, I would that all such obstinate persons of them as be ready to die for the advancement of the Bishop of Rome's authority were dead indeed by God's hand, that no man should run wrongfully into obloquy for their just punishment."[391]

Powers of the confessional.

But the open resistance of mistaken honesty was not the danger which the government most feared. Another peril threatened their authority, deeper and more alarming by far. The clergy possessed in the confessional a power of secret influence over the masses of the people, by which they were able at once (if they so pleased) to grant their penitents licences for insincerity, to permit them to perjure themselves under mental The clergy in some cases advise their penitents to take the oaths with a mental reservation. reservations, and to encourage them to expiate a venial falsehood by concealed disaffection. The secrets of confession were inviolable. Anathemas the most fearful forbade their disclosure; and, secured behind this impenetrable shield, the church might defy the most stringent provisions, and baffle every precaution.

From the nature of the case but little could transpire of the use or the abuse which was made at such a time of so vast a power; but Cromwell, whose especial gift it was to wind himself into the secrets of the clergy, had his sleuth-hounds abroad, whose scent was not easily baffled. The long tyranny of the priesthood produced also its natural retribution in the informations which were too gladly volunteered in the hour of revenge; and more than one singular disclosure remains among the State Papers, of language used in this mysterious intercourse. Every man who doubted whether he might lawfully abjure the pope, consulted his priest. Haughton, the Prior of Charterhouse, in all such cases, declared absolutely that the abjuration might not be made.[392] He himself refused openly; and it is likely that he directed others to be as open as himself. But Haughton's advice was as exceptional as his conduct. Father Forest, of Greenwich, who was a brave man, and afterwards met nobly a cruel death, took the oath to the king as he was required; while he told a penitent that he had abjured the pope in the outward, but not in the inward man, that he "owed an obedience to the pope which he could not shake off," and that it was "his use and practice in confession, to induce men to hold and stick to the old fashion of belief."[393]

Confession of John Staunton.

Here, again, is a conversation which a treacherous penitent revealed to Cromwell; the persons in the dialogue being the informer, John Staunton, and the confessor of Sion Monastery, who had professed the most excessive loyalty to the crown.[394] The informer, it must be allowed, was a good-for-nothing person. He had gone to the confessor, he said, to be shriven, and had commenced his confession with acknowledging "the seven deadly sins particularly," "and next the misspending of his five wits." As an instance of the latter, he then in detail had confessed to heresy; he could not persuade himself that the priest had power to forgive him. "Sir," he professed to have said to the confessor, "there is one thing in my stomach which grieveth my conscience very sore; and that is by reason of a sermon I heard yesterday of Master Latimer, saying that no man of himself had authority to forgive sins, and that the pope had no more authority than another bishop; and therefore I am in doubt whether I shall have remission of my sins of you or not, and that the pardon is of no effect."

The priest answered, "That Latimer is a false knave;" and seven or eight times he called him false knave, and said he was an eretycke. "Marry, this I heard Latimer say," the confessor continued, "that if a man come to confession, and be not sorry for his sins, the priest hath no power to forgive him. I say the pope's pardon is as good as ever it was; and he is the Head of the Universal Church, and so I will take him. Here in England the king and his parliament hath put him out; but be of good comfort, and steadfast in your faith; this thing will not last long, I warrant you. You shall see the world change shortly."

To this the informer said that he had replied, "You know how that we be sworn unto the King's Grace, and he hath already abjured the pope."

The confessor thinks that an oath loosely made may be loosely broken.

"As for that," said the priest, "an oath loosely made may be loosely broken; and by this example be ye in ease. I had an enemy come unto this church, and one of his friends and mine came unto me and said, 'Sir, I pray you let us go drink with yonder man.' And the said friend maketh such importunate suit unto me to drink with my enemy, that I promise him by my faith that I will go and drink with him; and so indeed doth drink with him. But what then," said the priest; "though I go and drink with him upon this promise, trow you that I will forgive him with my heart. Nay, nay, I warrant you. And so in like wise in this oath concerning the abjuration of the pope. I will not abjure him in my heart," said the priest, "for these Reported advice of Cranmer to the confessor of Sion. words were not spoken unto Peter for nought—'I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven'—and the pope is Peter's successor. Of this matter," said the priest, "I communed once with the Bishop of Canterbury,[395] and I told the bishop I would pray for the pope as the chief and papal head of Christ's church. And the bishop told me it was the king's pleasure that I should not. I said unto him I would do it; and though I did it not openly, yet would I do it secretly. And he said I might pray for him secretly, but in any wise do it not openly."[396]

Trifles of this kind may seem unimportant; but at the time they were of moment, for their weight was cumulative; and we can only now recover but a few out of many. Such as they are, however, they show the spirit in which the injunctions were received by a section at least of the English clergy. Nor was this the worst. We find language reported, which shows that many Maitland the Black Friar, by his science of nigromancy, foretells a counter-revolution. among the monks were watching for symptoms of the promised imperial invasion, and the progress of the Irish insurgents. A Doctor Maitland, of the order of Black Friars in London, had been "heard divers times to say, he trusted to see every man's head that was of the new learning, and the maintainers of them, to stand upon a stake, and Cranmer's to be one of them. The king," he hoped, might suffer "a violent and shameful death;" and "the queen, that mischievous whore, might be brent." "He said further, that he knew by his science, which was nigromancy, that all men of the new learning should be suppressed and suffer death, and the people of the old learning should be set up again by the power of the king's enemies from the parts beyond the sea."[397]

Feron and Hale.

In the May weather of 1534, two Middlesex clergy, "walking to and fro in the cloyster garden at Sion, were there overheard compassing sedition and rebellion." John Hale, an eager, tumultuous person, was prompting his brother priest, Robert Feron, with matter for a pamphlet, which Feron was to write against the king.[398] "Syth the realm of England was first a realm," said Hale, "was there never in it so great a robber and piller of the commonwealth read of nor heard of as is our king..... He is the most cruellest capital heretic, defacer and treader under foot of Christ and of Feron hopes that Henry's death may be like that of the manqueller Richard. his church, continually applying and minding to extinct the same; whose death, I beseech God, may be like to the death of the most wicked John, sometime king of this realm, or rather to be called a great tyran than a king; and that his death may be not much unlike to the end of that manqueller Richard, sometime usurper of this imperial realm. And if thou wilt deeply look upon his life, thou shalt find it more foul and more stinking than a sow wallowing and defiling herself in any filthy place."

The Irish will persevere in the quarrel, and the Welsh will join them.

These words were spoken in English; Feron translated them into Latin, and wrote them down. Hale then continued: "Until the king and the rulers of this realm be plucked by the pates, and brought, as we say, to the pot, shall we never live merrily in England, which, I pray God, may chance, and now shortly come to pass. Ireland is set against him, which will never shrink in their quarrel to die in it; and what think ye of Wales? The noble and gentle Ap Ryce,[399] so cruelly put to death, and he innocent, as they say, in the cause. Three parts of England be against the king. I think not contrary, but they will join and take part with the Irish, and so invade our realm. If they do so, doubt ye not but they shall have aid and strength enough in England. For this is truth: three parts of England be against the king, as he shall find if he need. For of truth, they go about to bring this realm into such miserable condition as is France; which the commons see, and perceive well enough a sufficient cause of rebellion and insurrection in this realm. And truly we of the church shall never live merrily until that day come."[400]

The persecuting laws against the Catholics.

These informations may assist us in understanding, if we cannot forgive, the severe enactments—severely to be executed—which were passed in the ensuing parliament.

It is a maxim of sound policy, that actions only are a proper subject of punishment,—that to treat men as offenders for their words, their intentions, or their opinions, is not justice, but tyranny. But there is no rule which is universally applicable. The policy of a state of war is not the policy of a state of peace. And as a soldier in a campaign is not at liberty to criticise openly the cause for which he is fighting; as no general, on his army going into action, can permit a subordinate to decline from his duty in the moment of danger, on the plea that he is dissatisfied with the grounds of the quarrel, and that his conscience forbids him to take part in it; so there are times when whole nations are in a position analogous to that of an army so circumstanced; when the safety of the State depends upon unity of purpose, and when private persons Effect of circumstances upon policy. must be compelled to reserve their opinions to themselves; when they must be compelled neither to express them in words, nor to act upon them in their capacity of citizens, except at their utmost peril. At such times the salus populi overrides all other considerations; and the maxims and laws of calmer periods for awhile consent to be suspended. The circumstances of A modern analogy. the year 1848 will enable us, if we reflect, not upon what those circumstances actually were, but on what they easily might have been, to understand the position of Henry VIII.'s government at the moment of the separation from Rome. If the danger in 1848 had ceased to be imaginary,—if Ireland had broken into a real insurrection,—if half the population of England had been Socialist, and had been in secret league with the leaders of the Revolution in Paris for a combined attack upon the State by insurrection and invasion,—the mere passing of a law, making the use of seditious language an act of treason, would not have been adequate to the danger. Influential persons would have been justly submitted to question on their allegiance, and insufficient answers would have been interpreted as justifying suspicion. Not the expression only, of opinions subversive of society, but the holding such opinions, however discovered, would have been regarded and treated as a crime, with the full consent of what is called the common sense and educated judgment of the nation.[401]

If for "opinions subversive of society," we substitute allegiance to the papacy, the parallel is complete between the year 1848, as it would then have been, and the time when the penal laws which are considered the reproach of the Tudor governments were passed against the Roman Catholics. I assume that the Reformation was in itself right; that the claims of the pope to an English supremacy were unjust; and that it was good and wise to resist those claims. If this be allowed, those laws will not be found to deserve the reproach of tyranny. We shall see in them but the natural The Romanism of the sixteenth century not the Romanism of the nineteenth. resource of a vigorous government placed in circumstances of extreme peril. The Romanism of the present day is a harmless opinion, no more productive of evil than any other superstition, and without tendency, or shadow of tendency, to impair the allegiance of those who profess it. But we must not confound a phantom with a substance; or gather from modern experience the temper of a time when words implied realities, when Catholics really believed that they owed no allegiance to an heretical sovereign, and that the first duty of their lives was to a foreign potentate. This perilous doctrine was waning, indeed, but it was not dead. By many it was actively professed; and among those by whom it was denied there were few except the Protestants whom it did not in some degree embarrass and perplex.

Parliament meets, November 3. The king is declared supreme Head of the Church.

The government, therefore, in the close of 1534, having clear evidence before them of intended treason, determined to put it down with a high hand; and with this purpose parliament met again on the 3d of November. The first act of the session was to give the sanction of the legislature to the title which had been conceded by convocation, and to declare the king supreme Head of the Church of England. As affirmed by the legislature, this designation meant something more than when it was granted three years previously by the clergy. It then implied that the spiritual body were no longer to be an imperium in imperio within the realm, but should hold their powers subordinate to the crown. It was now an assertion of independence of foreign jurisdiction; it was the complement of the Act of Appeals, rounding off into completeness the constitution in Church and State of the English nation. The act is short, and being of so great importance, I insert it entire.

Act of Supremacy.

"Albeit," it runs, "the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme Head of the Church of England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in their convocation, yet nevertheless, for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ's religion within this realm of England, and to repress and extirp all errours, heresies, and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same: Be it enacted, by authority of this present parliament, that the King our Sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme Head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof as all the honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities, to the said dignity belonging and appertaining; and that our said Sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errours, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed—most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue in Christ's religion, and for the conservation of the peace, unity, and tranquillity of this realm—any usage, custom, foreign lawes, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding."[402]

The meaning and value of the title. It becomes the gage of the battle.

Considerable sarcasm has been levelled at the assumption by Henry of this title; and on the accession of Elizabeth, the crown, while reclaiming the authority, thought it prudent to retire from the designation. Yet it answered a purpose in marking the nature of the revolution, and the emphasis of the name carried home the change into the mind of the country. It was the epitome of all the measures which had been passed against the encroachments of the spiritual powers within and without the realm; it was at once the symbol of the independence of England, and the declaration that thenceforth the civil magistrate was supreme within the English dominions over church as well as state.[403]

Whether the king was or was not head of the church, became now therefore the rallying point of the struggle; and the denial or acceptance of his title the test of allegiance or disloyalty. To accept it was to go along with the movement heartily and completely; to deny it was to admit the rival sovereignty of the pope, and with his sovereignty the lawfulness of the sentence of excommunication. It was to imply that Henry was not only not head of the church, but that he was no longer lawful King of England, and that the allegiance of the country must be transferred to the Princess Mary when the pope and the emperor should give the word. There might be no intention of treason; the motive of the opposition might be purely religious; but from the nature of the case opposition of any kind would abet the treason of others; and no honesty of meaning could render possible any longer a double loyalty to the crown and to the papacy.

The new Treason Act.

The act conferring the title was in consequence followed by another, declaring the denial of it to be treason. It was necessary to stop the tongues of the noisy mutinous monks, to show them once for all that these high matters were no subjects for trifling. The oath to the succession of the Princess Elizabeth partially answered this purpose; and the obligation to take that oath had been extended to all classes of the king's subjects;[404] but to refuse to swear to the succession was misprision of treason only, not high treason; and the ecclesiastics (it had been seen) found no difficulty in swearing oaths which they did not mean to observe. The parliament therefore now attached to the statute of supremacy the following imperious corollary:—

For the better security of the realm, it is enacted, That any person who, by words, writing, or otherwise, deprives the king or queen of any one of their just titles, shall be held guilty of high treason.

"Forasmuch as it is most necessary, both for common policy and duty of subjects, above all things to prohibit, provide, restrain, and extinct all manner of shameful slanders, perils, or imminent danger or dangers, which might grow, happen, or arise to their sovereign lord the king, the queen, or their heirs, which, when they be heard, seen, or understood, cannot be but odible and also abhorred of all those sorts that be true and loving subjects, if in any point they may, do, or shall touch the king, the queen, their heirs or successors, upon which dependeth the whole unity and universal weal of this realm; without providing wherefore, too great a scope should be given to all cankered and traitorous hearts, willers and workers of the same; and also the king's loving subjects should not declare unto their sovereign lord now being, which unto them both hath been and is most entirely beloved and esteemed, their undoubted sincerity and truth: Be it therefore enacted, that if any person or persons, after the first day of February next coming, do maliciously wish, will, or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of the dignity, title, or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce by express writing or words that the king our sovereign lord should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown, &c., &c., that all such persons, their aiders, counsellors, concertors, or abettors, being thereof lawfully convict according to the laws and customs of the realm, shall be adjudged traitors, and that every such offence in any of the premises shall be adjudged high treason."[405]

The act made still more comprehensive, in the interpretation of it.

The terrible powers which were thus committed to the government lie on the surface of this language; but comprehensive as the statute appears, it was still further extended by the interpretation of the lawyers. In order to fall under its penalties it was held not to be necessary that positive guilt should be proved in any one of the specified offences; it was enough if a man refused to give satisfactory answers when subjected to official examination.[406] At the discretion of the king or his ministers the active consent to the supremacy might be required of any person on whom they pleased to call, under penalty to the recusant of the dreadful death of a traitor. So extreme a measure can only be regarded as a remedy for an evil which was also extreme; and as on the return of quiet times the parliament made haste to repeal a law which was no longer required, so in the enactment of that law we are bound to believe that they were not betraying English liberties in a spirit of careless complacency; but that they believed truly that the security of the state required unusual precautions. The nation was standing with its sword half drawn in the face of an armed Europe, and it was no time to permit dissensions in the camp.[407] Toleration Retributive justice. is good—but even the best things must abide their opportunity; and although we may regret that in this grand struggle for freedom, success could only be won by the aid of measures which bordered upon oppression, yet here also the even hand of justice was but commending the chalice to the lips of those who had made others drink it to the dregs. They only were likely to fall under the Treason Act who for centuries had fed the rack and the stake with sufferers for "opinion."

Appointment of suffragan bishops.

Having thus made provision for public safety, the parliament voted a supply of money for the fortifications on the coast and for the expenses of the Irish war; and after transferring to the crown the first-fruits of church benefices, which had been previously paid to the See of Rome, and passing at the same time a large and liberal measure for the appointment of twenty-six suffragan bishops,[408] they separated, not to meet again for more than a year.

Cardinal Farnese is chosen pope.

Meanwhile, at Rome a change had taken place which for the moment seemed to promise that the storm after all might pass away. The conclave had elected as a successor to Clement a man who, of all the Italian ecclesiastics, was the most likely to recompose the quarrels in the church; and who, if the genius or the destiny of the papacy had not been too strong for any individual will, would perhaps have succeeded in restoring peace to Christendom. In the debates upon the divorce the Cardinal Farnese had been steadily upon Henry's side. He had maintained from the first the general justice of the king's demands. After the final sentence was passed, he had urged, though vainly, the reconsideration of that fatal step; and though slow and cautious, although he was a person who, as Sir Gregory Cassalis described him, "would accomplish little, but would make few mistakes,"[409] he had allowed his opinion upon this, as on other matters connected with the English quarrel, to be generally known. He was elected therefore by He is chosen by French influence, in the hope he will pursue a liberal and conciliating policy. French influence[410] as the person most likely to meet the difficulties of Europe in a catholic and conciliating spirit. He had announced his intention, immediately on Clement's death, of calling a general council at the earliest moment, in the event of his being chosen to fill the papal chair; and as he was the friend rather of Francis I. than of the emperor, and as Francis was actively supporting Henry, and was negotiating at the same moment with the Protestant princes in Germany, it seemed as if a council summoned under such auspices would endeavour to compose the general discords in a temper of wise liberality, and that some terms of compromise would be discovered where by mutual concessions Catholic and Protestant might meet upon a common ground.

The moment was propitious for such a hope; for the accession of a moderate pope coincided with the reaction in Germany which followed the scandals at Munster and the excesses of John of Leyden; and Francis pictured to himself a coalition between France, England, and the Lutherans, which, if the papacy was attached to their side, would be strong enough to bear down opposition, and reconstitute the churches of Europe upon the basis of liberality which he seemed to have secured for the church of France. The flattering vision in the autumn of the following year dazzled the German princes. Perhaps in the novelty of hope it was encouraged even by the pope, before he had felt the strong hand of fate which ruled his will.

To Charles V. the danger of some such termination of the great question at issue appeared most near and real. Charles, whose resentment at the conduct Anxiety and alarm of the emperor. of England united with a desire to assert his authority over his subjects in Germany, beheld with the utmost alarm a scheme growing to maturity which menaced alike his honour, his desire of revenge, his supremacy in Europe, and perhaps his religious convictions. A liberal coalition would be fatal The mission of the Count of Nassau to Paris with proposals for a league. to order, to policy, to truth; and on the election of Cardinal Farnese, the Count de Nassau was sent on a secret mission to Paris with overtures, the elaborate condescension of which betrays the anxiety that must have dictated them. The emperor, in his self-constituted capacity of the Princess Mary's guardian, offered her hand with the English succession to the Duke of Angoulesme. From the terms on which he was thought to stand with Anne Boleyn, it was thought possible that Henry might consent;[411] he might not dare, as d'Inteville before suggested, to oppose the united demands of France and the Empire.[412] To Margaret de Valois the Count was to propose the splendid temptation of a marriage with Philip.[413] If Francis would surrender the English alliance, the emperor would make over to him the passionately coveted Duchy of Milan,[414] to be annexed to France on the death of the reigning Duke. In the meantime he would pay to the French king, as "tribute for Milan," a hundred thousand crowns a year, as an acknowledgment of the right of the house of Valois. Offers such as these might well have tempted the light ambition of Francis. If sincere, they were equivalent to a surrender of the prize for which the emperor's life had been spent in contending, and perilous indeed it would have been for England if this intrigue had been permitted to succeed. But whether it was that Francis too deeply distrusted Charles, that he preferred the more The emperor's offers are rejected by Francis. hazardous scheme of the German alliance, or that he supposed he could gain his object more surely with the help of England, the Count de Nassau left Paris with a decisive rejection of the emperor's advances; and in the beginning of January, De Bryon, the High Admiral of France, was sent to England, to inform Henry of what had passed, and to propose for Elizabeth the marriage which Charles had desired for the Princess Mary.

De Bryon sent to England. De Bryon's instructions were remarkable. To consolidate the alliance of the two nations, he was to entreat Henry at length to surrender the claim to the crown of France, which had been the cause of so many centuries of war. In return for this concession, Francis would make over to England, Gravelines, Newport, Dunkirk, a province of Flanders, and "the title of the Duke of Lorrayne to the town of Antwerp, with sufficient assistance for the recovery of the same." Henry was not to press Francis to part from the papacy; and De Bryon seems to have indicated a hope that the English king might retrace his own steps. The weight of French influence, meanwhile, was to be pressed, to induce the pope to revoke and denounce, voyd and frustrate the unjust and slanderous sentence[415] given by his predecessor; and the terms of this new league were to be completed by the betrothal of the Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Angoulesme.[416]

There had been a time when these proposals would have answered all which Henry desired. In the early days of his reign he had indulged himself in visions of empire, and of repeating the old glories of the Plantagenet kings. But in the peace which was concluded after the defeat of Pavia, he showed that he had resigned himself to a wiser policy,[417] and the surrender of a barren designation would cost him little. In his quarrel with the pope, also, he had professed an extreme reluctance to impair the unity of the church; and the sacrifices which he had made, and the years of persevering struggle which he had endured, had proved that in those Change in Henry's character. professions he had not been insincere. But Henry's character was not what it had been when he won his title of Defender of the Faith. In the experience of the last few years he had learnt to conceive some broader sense of the meaning of the Reformation; and he had gathered from Cromwell and Latimer a more noble conception of the Protestant doctrines. He had entered upon an active course of legislation for the putting away the injustices, the falsehoods, the oppressions of a degenerate establishment; and in the strong sense that he had done right, and nothing else but right, in these measures, he was not now disposed to submit to a compromise, or to consent to undo anything which he was satisfied had been justly done, in consideration of any supposed benefit which he could receive from the pope. He was anxious to remain in communion with the see of Rome. He was willing to acknowledge in some innocuous form the Roman supremacy. But it could be only on his own terms. The pope must come to him; he could not go to the pope. And the papal precedency should only again be admitted in England on conditions which should leave untouched the Act of Appeals, and should preserve the sovereignty of the crown unimpaired.

Henry's reply to the overtures of the French king. The pope must make the first move towards a reconciliation.

He replied, therefore, to the overtures of Francis, that he was ready to enter into negotiations for the resignation or his title to the crown of France, and for the proposed marriage.[418] Before any other step was taken, however, he desired his good brother to insist that "the Bishop of Rome" should revoke the sentence, and "declare his pretended marriage with the Lady Catherine naught;" "which to do," Henry wrote (and this portion of his reply is written by his own hand), "we think it very facile for our good brother; since we do perceive by letters [from Rome] both the opinions of the learned men there to be of that opinion that we be of; and also a somewhat disposition to that purpose in the Bishop of Rome's self, according to equity, reason, and the laws both positive and divine." If there was to be a reconciliation with the Holy See, the first advance must be made on the Bishop of Rome's side; and Cromwell, in a simultaneous despatch, warned Francis not "to move or desire his Grace to the violation of any laws recently passed, as a thing whereunto he would in no wise condescend or agree."[419]

Henry distrusts Francis.

Henry, however, felt no confidence either in the sincerity of the pope, or in the sincerity of the French king, as he haughtily showed. He did not even trust De Bryon's account of the rejection of the overtures of the emperor. "If it happeneth," he wrote, "that the said Bishop will obstinately follow the steps of his predecessor, and be more inclined to the maintenance of the actions and sentences of his see than to equity and justice, then we trust that our good brother—perceiving the right to stand on our side, and that not only the universities of his whole realm and dominions hath so defined, but also the most part of the rest of Christendom, and also the best learned men of the Bishop of Rome's own council, now being called for that purpose—will fully and wholly, both he and his whole realm, adhere and cleave to us and our doings in this behalf; and we herein desire shortly to have answer, which we would be right loth should be such as whereupon we might take any occasion of suspicion; trusting, further, that our said good brother will both promise unto us upon his word, and indeed perform, that in the meantime, before the meeting of our deputies,[420] he nor directly nor indirectly shall practise or set forth any mean or intelligence of marriage, or of other practices with the emperour."[421]

The pope makes indirect advances, which are received also with coldness.

So cold an answer could have arisen only from deep distrust; it is difficult to say whether the distrust was wholly deserved. Analogous advances, made indirectly from the pope were met with the same reserve. Sir Gregory Cassalis wrote to Cromwell, that Farnese, or Paul III., as he was now called, had expressed the greatest desire to please the king. He had sent for lawyers out of Tuscany, on whose judgment he had great reliance, and these lawyers had given an opinion that the pope might ex officio annul the first marriage as Henry desired, and pronounce the second valid.[422] January. This was well, but it did not go beyond words; and of these there had been too many. The English government had fed upon "the cameleon's dish," "eating the air promise crammed," till they were weary of so weak a diet, and they desired something more substantial. If the pope, replied Cromwell, be really well disposed, let him show his disposition in some public manner, "of his own accord, with a desire only for the truth, and without waiting till the King's Majesty entreat him."[423] It would have been more courteous, and perhaps it would have been more just, if the French overtures had been met in a warmer spirit; for the policy of Francis required for the time a cordial understanding with England; and his conduct seems to prove that he was sincerely anxious to win the pope to complacency.[424] But Henry's experience guided him wisely with the Roman Bishop; and if he had been entangled into confidence in Farnese, he would have been entangled to his ruin.

The language of the papacy had been inconsistent, but its conduct had been uniform.

The spring of 1535 was consumed in promises, negotiations, and a repetition of the profitless story of the preceding years. Suddenly, in the midst of the unreality, it became clear that one man at least was serious. Henry, with an insurgent Ireland and a mutinous England upon his hands, had no leisure for diplomatic finesse; he had learnt his lesson with Clement, and was not to be again deceived. The language of the Roman see had been inconsistent, but the actions of it had been always uniform. From the first beginning of the dispute to the final break and excommunication, in the teeth of his promises, his flatteries, his acknowledgments, Clement had been the partisan of Catherine. When the English agents were collecting the opinions of the Italian universities, they were thwarted by his emissaries. He had intrigued against Henry in Scotland; he had tampered with Henry's English and Irish subjects; he had maintained a secret correspondence with Catherine herself. And so well had his true feelings and the true position of the question been understood by the papal party in England, that at the very time when at Marseilles and elsewhere the pope himself was admitting the justice of the king's demand, the religious orders who were most unwavering in their allegiance to the papacy, were pressing their opposition to the divorce into rebellion.

Until the pope, therefore, shows some change in action, the penal laws may not be arrested.

When, therefore, the chair of St. Peter was filled by a new occupant, and language of the same smooth kind began again to issue from it, the English government could not for so light a cause consent to arrest their measures, or suspend the action of laws which had been passed from a conviction of their necessity. Whatever might become of French marriages, or of the cession of a corner of the Netherlands and a few towns upon the coast in exchange for a gaudy title, the English Reformation must continue its way; the nation must be steered clear among the reefs and shoals of treason. The late statutes had not been passed without a cause; and when occasion came to enforce them, were not to pass off, like the thunders of the Vatican, in impotent noise.

The martyrdoms of Catholics and Protestants analogous to deaths in battle.

Here, therefore, we are to enter upon one of the grand scenes of history; a solemn battle fought out to the death, yet fought without ferocity, by the champions of rival principles. Heroic men had fallen, and were still fast falling, for what was called heresy; and now those who had inflicted death on others were called upon to bear the same witness to their own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war between two armies of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in open action, but on the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler weapons of passive endurance. Each party were ready to give their blood; each party were ready to shed the blood of their antagonists; and the sword was to single out its victims in the rival ranks, not as in peace among those whose crimes made them dangerous to society, but, as on the field of battle, where the most conspicuous courage most challenges the aim of the enemy. It was war, though under the form of peace; and if we would understand the true spirit of the time, we must regard Catholics and Protestants as gallant soldiers, whose deaths, when they fall, are not painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are equally able to admire, even where we cannot equally approve their cause. Courage and self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an enemy and in a friend. And while we exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs bought England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration to those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset of the old faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged with the light of its dying glory.

The monks of the London Charterhouse.

Secretary Bedyll, as we saw above, complained to Cromwell of the obstinacy of certain friars and monks, who, he thought, would confer a service on the country by dying quietly, lest honest men should incur unmerited obloquy in putting them to death. Among these, the brethren of the London Charterhouse were specially mentioned as recalcitrant, and they were said at the same time to bear a high reputation for holiness. In a narrative written by a member of this body, we are brought face to face, at their time of trial, with one of the few religious establishments in England which continued to deserve the name; and we may see, in the scenes which are there described, the highest representation of struggles which graduated variously according to character and temper, and, without the tragical result, may have been witnessed in very many of the monastic houses. The writer was a certain Maurice Channey, probably an Irishman. He went through the same sufferings with the rest of the brethren, and was one of the small fraction who finally gave way under the trial. He was set at liberty, and escaped abroad; and in penance for his weakness, he left on record the touching story of his fall, and of the triumph of his bolder companions.

Story of Maurice Channey.

He commences with his own confession. He had fallen when others stood. He was, as he says, an unworthy brother, a Saul among the prophets, a Judas among the apostles, a child of Ephraim turning himself back in the day of battle—for which his cowardice, while his brother monks were saints in heaven, he was doing penance in sorrow, tossing on the waves of the wide world. The early chapters contain a loving lingering picture of his cloister life—to him the perfection of earthly happiness. It is placed before us, in all its superstition, its devotion, and its simplicity, the counterpart, even in minute details, of the stories of the Saxon recluses when monasticism was in the young vigour of its life. St. Bede or St. Cuthbert might have found himself in the house of the London Carthusians, and he would have had few questions to ask, and no duties to learn or to unlearn. The form of the buildings would have seemed more elaborate; the notes of the organ would have added richer solemnity to the services; but Unity of the monastic life. the salient features of the scene would have been all familiar. He would have lived in a cell of the same shape, he would have thought the same thoughts, spoken the same words in the same language. The prayers, the daily life, almost the very faces with which he was surrounded, would have seemed all unaltered. A thousand years of the world's history had rolled by, and these lonely islands of prayer had remained still anchored in the stream; the strands of the ropes which held them, wearing now to a thread, and very near their last parting, but still unbroken. What they had been they were; and, if Maurice Channey's description had come down to us as the account of the monastery in which Offa of Mercia did penance for his crimes, we could have detected no internal symptoms of a later age.

Channey's description of it.

His pages are filled with the old familiar stories of visions and miracles; of strange adventures befalling the chalices and holy wafers;[425] of angels with wax candles; innocent phantoms which flitted round brains and minds fevered by asceticism. There are accounts of certain fratres reprobi et eorum terribilis punitio—frail brethren and the frightful catastrophes which ensued to them.[426] Brother Thomas, who told stories out of doors, apud sæculares, was attacked one night by the devil; and the fiend would have strangled him but for the prayers of a companion. Brother George, who craved after the fleshpots of Egypt, was walking one day about the cloister when he ought to have been at chapel, and the great figure upon the cross at the end of the gallery turned its back upon him as it hung, and drove him all but mad. Brother John Daly found fault with his dinner, and said that he would as soon eat toads—Mira res! Justus Deus non fraudavit eum desiderio suo—his cell was for three months filled with toads. If he threw them into the fire, they hopped back to him unscorched; if he killed them, others came to take their place.

But these bad brothers were rare exceptions. In general the house was perhaps the best ordered in England. The hospitality was well sustained, the charities were profuse, and whatever we may think of the intellect which could busy itself with fancies seemingly so childish, the monks were Character of Haughton, the prior. true to their vows, and true to their duty as far as they comprehended what duty meant. Among many good, the prior John Haughton was the best. He was of an old English family, and had been educated at Cambridge, where he must have been the contemporary of Latimer. At the age of twenty-eight he took the vows as a monk, and had been twenty years a Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation. He is described as "small in stature, in figure graceful, in countenance dignified." "In manner he was most modest; in eloquence most sweet; in chastity without stain." We may readily imagine his appearance; with that feminine austerity of expression which, as has been well said, belongs so peculiarly to the features of the mediæval ecclesiastics.

Such was the society of the monks of the Charterhouse, who, in an era too late for their continuance, and guilty of being unable to read the signs of The monks espouse the side of Queen Catherine. the times, were summoned to wage unequal battle with the world. From the commencement of the divorce cause they had espoused instinctively the queen's side; they had probably, in common with their affiliated house at Sion, believed unwisely in the Nun of Kent; and, as pious Catholics, they regarded the reforming measures of the parliament with dismay and consternation. The year 1533, says Maurice,[427] was ushered in with signs in heaven and prodigies upon earth, as if the end of the world was at hand; as indeed of the monks and the monks' world the end was truly at hand. And then came the spring of 1534, when the act was passed cutting off the Princess Mary from the succession, and requiring of all subjects of the realm an oath of allegiance to Elizabeth, and a recognition of the king's marriage with Queen Anne. Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher went to the Tower, as we saw, rather than swear; and about the same time the royal commissioners appeared at the Charterhouse to require the submission of the brethren. The regular clergy through the kingdom had bent to the storm. The conscience of the London Carthusians was less elastic; they were They are required to take the oath of allegiance, and refuse. the first and, with the exception of More and Fisher, the only recusants. "The prior did answer to the commissioners," Maurice tells us, "that he knew nothing of such matters, and could not meddle with them; and they continuing to insist, and the prior being still unable to give other answer, he was sent with Father Humphrey, our proctor, to the Tower." There he remained for a month; and at the end of it he was persuaded by "certain good and learned men"[428] The prior is persuaded to submit, sub conditione. that the cause was not one for which it was lawful to suffer. He undertook to comply, sub conditione, with some necessary reservations, and was sent home to the cloister. As soon as he returned, the brethren assembled in their chapter-house "in confusion and great perplexity," and Haughton told them what he had promised. He would submit, he said, and yet his misgivings foretold to him that a submission so made could not long avail. "Our hour, dear brethren," he continued, "is not yet come. In the The prior's dream. The monks hesitate, But at last yield. same night in which we were set free I had a dream that I should not escape thus. Within a year I shall be brought again to that place, and then I shall finish my course." If martyrdom was so near and so inevitable, the remainder of the monks were at first reluctant to purchase a useless delay at the price of their convictions. The commissioners came with the lord mayor for the oath, and it was refused. They came again, with the threat of instant imprisonment for the whole fraternity; "and then," says Maurice, "they prevailed with us. We all swore as we were required, making one condition, that we submitted only so far as it was lawful for us so to do. Thus, like Jonah, we were delivered from the belly of this monster, this immanis ceta, and began again to rejoice like him, under the shadow of the gourd of our home. But it is better to trust in the Lord than in princes, in whom is no salvation; God had prepared a worm that smote our gourd and made it to perish."[429]

This worm, as may be supposed, was the act of supremacy, with the statute of treasons which was attached to it. It was ruled, as I have said, that inadequate answers to official inquiry formed sufficient ground for prosecution under these acts. But this interpretation was not generally known; nor among those who knew it was it certain whether the crown would avail itself of the powers which it thus possessed, or whether it would proceed only against such offenders as had voluntarily committed themselves The convent hears of the Treason Act. to opposition. In the opening of the following year [1535] the first uncertainty was at an end; it was publicly understood that persons who had previously given cause for suspicion might be submitted to question. When this bitter news was no longer doubtful, the prior called the convent together, and gave them notice to prepare for what was coming. They lay already under the shadow of treason; and he anticipated, among other evil consequences of disobedience, the immediate dissolution of the house. Even he, with all his forebodings, was unprepared for the course which would really be taken with them. "When we were all in great consternation," writes our author, "he said to us:—

The prior's address.

"'Very sorry am I, and my heart is heavy, especially for you, my younger friends, of whom I see so many round me. Here you are living in your innocence. The yoke will not be laid on your necks, nor the rod of persecution. But if you are taken hence, and mingle among the Gentiles, you may learn the works of them, and having begun in the spirit you may be consumed in the flesh. And there may be others among us whose hearts are still infirm. If these mix again with the world, I fear how it may be with them; and what shall I say, and what shall I do, if I cannot save those whom God has trusted to my charge?'

"Then all who were present," says Channey, "burst into tears, and cried with one voice, 'Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and earth shall witness for us how unjustly we are cut off.'

"The prior answered, sadly,—'Would, indeed, that it might be so; that so dying we might live, as living we die—but they will not do to us so great a kindness, nor to themselves so great an injury. Many of you are of noble blood; and what I think they will do is this: Me and the elder brethren they will kill; and they will dismiss you that are young into a world which is not for you.If it may be so, the prior will make himself anathema for his brethren. If, therefore, it depend on me alone—if my oath will suffice for the house—I will throw myself for your sakes on the mercy of God. I will make myself anathema; and to preserve you from these dangers, I will consent to the king's will. If, however, they have determined otherwise—if they choose to have the consent of us all—the will of God be done. If one death will not avail, we will die all.'

"So then, bidding us prepare for the worst, that the Lord when he knocked might find us ready, he desired us to choose each our confessor, and to confess our sins one to another, giving us power to grant each other absolution.

The brethren make their preparations.

"The day after he preached a sermon in the chapel on the 59th Psalm,—'O God, Thou hast cast us off, Thou hast destroyed us;'[430] concluding with the words, 'It is better that we should suffer here a short penance for our faults, than be reserved for the eternal pains of hell hereafter;'—and so ending, he turned to us and bade us all do as we saw him do. Then rising from his place he went direct to the eldest of the brethren, who was sitting nearest to himself, and kneeling before him, begged his forgiveness for any offence which in heart, word, or deed, he might have committed against him. Thence he proceeded to the next, and said the same; and so to the next, through us all, we following him and saying as he did, each from each imploring pardon."

Thus, with unobtrusive nobleness, did these poor men prepare themselves for their end; not less beautiful in their resolution, not less deserving the everlasting remembrance of mankind, than those three hundred who in the summer morning sate combing their golden hair in the passes of Thermopylæ. We will not regret their cause; there is no cause for which any man can more nobly suffer than to witness that it is better for him to die than to speak words which he does not mean. Nor, in this their hour of trial, were they left without higher comfort.

"The third day after," the story goes on, "was the mass of the Holy Ghost, and God made known his presence among us. For when the host was lifted up, there came as it were a whisper of air, which breathed upon our faces as we knelt. Some perceived it with the bodily senses; all felt it as it thrilled into their hearts. And then followed a sweet, soft sound of music, at which our venerable father was so moved, God being thus abundantly manifest among us, that he sank down in tears, and for a long time could not continue the service—we all remaining stupified, hearing the melody, and feeling the marvellous effects of it upon our spirits, but knowing neither whence it came nor whither it went. Only our hearts rejoiced as we perceived that God was with us indeed."

The government are in no haste to enforce the statutes.

Comforted and resolute, the brotherhood awaited patiently the approach of the commissioners; and they waited long, for the crown was in no haste to be severe. The statutes had been passed in no spirit of cruelty; they were weapons to be used in case of extremity; and there was no attempt to enforce them until forbearance was misconstrued into fear. Sir Thomas More and the Bishop of Rochester remained unquestioned in the Tower, and were allowed free intercourse with their friends. The Carthusian monks were left undisturbed, although the attitude which they had assumed was notorious, and although the prior was known to forbid his penitents in confession to acknowledge the king's supremacy. If the government was at length driven to severity, it was because the clergy forced them to it in spite of themselves.

Conduct of the clergy.

The clergy had taken the oath, but they held themselves under no obligation to observe it; or if they observed the orders of the crown in the letter, they thwarted those orders in the spirit. The Treason Act had for awhile overawed them; but finding that its threats were confined to language, that months passed away, and that no person had as yet been prosecuted, they fell back into open opposition, either careless of the consequences, or believing that the government did not dare to exert its powers. The details of their conduct during the spring months of this year I am unable to discover; but it was such as at length, on the 17th of April, provoked the following circular to the lords-lieutenant of the various counties:[431]—

Circular of the 17th of April. The clergy in divers places continue to pray for the pope.

"Right trusty and well-beloved cousin, we greet you well; and whereas it has come to our knowledge that sundry persons, as well religious as secular priests and curates in their parishes and in divers places within this our realm, do daily, as much as in them is, set forth and extol the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, otherwise called the Pope; sowing their seditious, pestilent, and false doctrines; praying for him in the pulpit and making him a god; to the great deceit of our subjects, bringing them into errours and evil opinions; more preferring the power, laws, and jurisdiction of the said Bishop of Rome than the most holy laws and precepts of Almighty God: We therefore, minding not only to proceed for an unity and quietness among our said subjects, but also greatly coveting and desiring them to be brought to a knowledge of the mere verity and truth, and no longer to be seduced with any such superstitious and false doctrines The king commands that all persons so doing shall be arrested. of any earthly usurper of God's laws—will, therefore, and command you, that whensoever ye shall hear of any such seditious persons, ye indelayedly do take and apprehend them, or cause them to be apprehended and taken, and so committed to ward, there to remain without bail or mainprize, until, upon your advertisement thereof to us and to our council, ye shall know our further pleasure.Henry R."

The Carthusians are called upon to acknowledge the royal supremacy.

In obvious connexion with the issue of this publication, the monks of the Charterhouse were at length informed that they would be questioned on the supremacy. The great body of the religious houses had volunteered an outward submission. The London Carthusians, with other affiliated establishments, had remained passive, and had thus furnished an open encouragement to disobedience. We are instinctively inclined to censure an interference with persons who at worst were but dreamers of the cloister; and whose innocence of outward offences we imagine might have served them for a shield. Unhappily, behind the screenwork of these poor saints a whole Irish insurrection was blazing in madness and fury; and in the northern The reason for the conduct of the government. English counties were some sixty thousand persons ready to rise in arms. In these great struggles men are formidable in proportion to their virtues. The noblest Protestants were chosen by the Catholics for the stake. The fagots were already growing which were to burn Tyndal, the translator of the Bible. It was the habit of the time, as it is the habit of all times of real danger, to spare the multitude but to strike the leaders, to make responsibility the shadow of power, to choose for punishment the most efficacious representatives of the spirit which it was necessary to subdue.

The influence of the Carthusians, with that of the two great men who were following the same road to the same goal, determined multitudes in the attitude which they would assume, and in the duty which they would choose. The Carthusians, therefore, were to be made to bend; or if they could not be bent, to be made examples in their punishment, as they had made themselves examples in their resistance. They were noble and good; but there were others in England good and noble as they, who were not of their fold; and whose virtues, thenceforward more required by England than cloistered asceticisms, had been blighted under the shadow of the papacy. The Catholics had chosen the alternative, either to crush the free thought which was bursting from the soil, or else to be crushed by it; and the future of the world could not be sacrificed to preserve the exotic graces of mediæval saints. They fell, gloriously and not unprofitably. They were not allowed to stay the course of the Reformation; but their sufferings, nobly borne, sufficed to recover the sympathy of after-ages for the faith which they professed. Ten righteous men were found in the midst of the corruption to purchase for Romanism a few more centuries of tolerated endurance.

To return to the narrative of Maurice Channey. Notice of the intention of the government having been signified to the order, Father Webster and Father Lawrence, the priors of the two daughter houses of Axholm and Belville, came up to London three weeks after Easter, and, with Haughton, presented themselves before Cromwell with an entreaty to be excused the The prior with three others are sent to the Tower, submission. For answer to their petition they were sent to the Tower, where they were soon after joined by Father Reynolds, one of the recalcitrant monks of Sion. These four were brought on the 26th of April before a committee of the privy council, of which Cromwell was one. The act of supremacy was laid before them, and they were required to signify their acceptance of it. They refused, and two days after they were brought to And brought to trial, April 28. trial before a special commission. They pleaded all "not guilty." They had of course broken the act; but they would not acknowledge that guilt could be involved in disobedience to a law which was itself unlawful. Their words in the Tower to the privy council formed the matter of the charge against them. It appears from the record that on their examination, "they, treacherously machinating and desiring to deprive the king our sovereign lord of his title of supreme Head of the Church of England, did openly declare and say, the king our sovereign lord is not supreme Head on earth of the Church of England."[432]

Haughton's language at the bar.

But their conduct on the trial, or at least the conduct of Haughton, spared all difficulty in securing a conviction. The judges pressed the prior "not to shew so little wisdom as to maintain his own opinion against the consent of the realm." He replied, that he had resolved originally to imitate the example of his Master before Herod, and say nothing. "But since you urge me," he continued, "that I may satisfy my own conscience and the consciences of these who are present, I will say that our opinion, if it might go by the suffrages of men, would have more witnesses than yours. You can produce on your side but the parliament of a single kingdom; I, on mine, have the whole Christian world except that kingdom. Nor have you all even of your own people. The lesser part is with you. The majority, who seem to be with you, do but dissemble, to gain favour with the king, or for fear they should lose their honours and their dignities."

Cromwell asked him of whom he was speaking. "Of all the good men in the realm," he replied; "and when his Majesty knows the truth, I know well he will be beyond measure offended with those of his bishops who have given him the counsel which he now follows."

"Why," said another of the judges, "have you, contrary to the king's authority within the realm, persuaded so many persons as you have done to disobey the king and parliament?"

"I have declared my opinion," he answered, "to no man living but to those who came to me in confession, which in discharge of my conscience I could not refuse. But if I did not declare it then, I will declare it now, because I am thereto obliged to God."[433] He neither looked for mercy nor Thursday, April 29. desired it. A writ was issued for the return of a petty jury the following day. The prisoners were taken back to the Tower, and the next morning were brought again to the bar. Feron and Hale, the two priests whose conversation had been overheard at Sion, were placed on their trial at the The prisoners are condemned. same time. The two latter threw themselves on the mercy of the court. A verdict of guilty was returned against the other four. The sentence was for the usual punishment of high treason. Feron was pardoned; I do not find on what account. Hale and the Carthusians were to suffer together. When Haughton heard the sentence, he merely said, "This is the judgment of the world."[434]

May 4. The execution.

An interval of five days was allowed after the trial. On the 4th of May, the execution took place at Tyburn, under circumstances which marked the occasion with peculiar meaning. The punishment in cases of high treason was very terrible. I need not dwell upon the form of it. The English were a hard, fierce people; and with these poor sufferers the law of the land took its course without alleviation or interference. But another feature They are brought to the scaffold in their habits. distinguished the present execution. For the first time in English history, ecclesiastics were brought out to suffer in their habits, without undergoing the previous ceremony of degradation. Thenceforward the world were to know, that as no sanctuary any more should protect traitors, so the sacred office should avail as little; and the hardest blow which it had yet received was thus dealt to superstition, shaking from its place in the minds of all men the key-stone of the whole system.

To the last moment escape was left open, if the prisoners would submit. Several members of the council attended them to the closing scene, for a last effort of kindness; but they had chosen their course, and were not to Haughton dies first. be moved from it. Haughton, as first in rank, had the privilege of first dying. When on the scaffold, in compliance with the usual custom, he spoke a few touching and simple words to the people. "I call to witness Almighty God," he said, "and all good people, and I beseech you all here present to bear witness for me in the day of judgment, that being here to die, I declare that it is from no obstinate rebellious spirit that I do not obey the king, but because I fear to offend the Majesty of God. Our holy mother the church has decreed otherwise than the king and the parliament have decreed, and therefore, rather than disobey the church, I am ready to suffer. Pray for me, and have mercy on my brethren, of whom I have been the unworthy prior." He then knelt down, repeating the first few verses of the 31st Psalm,[435] and after a few moments delivered himself to the The council urges the rest to submit, but in vain. executioner. The others followed, undaunted. As one by one they went to their death, the council, at each fresh horrible spectacle, urged the survivors to have pity on themselves; but they urged them in vain. The faces of these men did not grow pale; their voices did not shake; they declared themselves liege subjects of the king, and obedient children of holy church; "giving God thanks that they were held worthy to suffer for the truth."[436] All died without a murmur. The stern work was ended with quartering the bodies; and the arm of Haughton was hung up as a bloody sign over the archway of the Charterhouse, to awe the remaining brothers into submission.

June 10. Three more Carthusians tried and executed.

But the spirit of the old martyrs was in these friars. One of them, like the Theban sister, bore away the honoured relic and buried it; and all resolved to persist in their resigned opposition. Six weeks were allowed them to consider. At the end of that time three more were taken, tried, and hanged;[437] and this still proving ineffectual, Cromwell hesitated to proceed.

Cromwell hesitates. Close of the story of the Carthusians.

The end of the story is very touching and may be told briefly, that I may not have occasion to return to it. Maurice's account is probably exaggerated, and is written in a tone of strong emotion; but it has all the substantial features of truth. The remaining monks were left in the house; and two secular priests were sent to take charge of the establishment, who starved and ill-used them; and were themselves, according to Maurice, sensual and profligate. From time to time they were called before the privy council. Their friends and relatives were ordered to work upon them. No effort either of severity or kindness was spared to induce them to submit; as if their attitude, so long as it was maintained, was felt as a reproach by the government. At last, four were carried down to Westminster Abbey, to hear the Bishop of Durham deliver his famous sermon against the pope; and when this rhetorical inanity had also failed, and as they were thought to confirm one another in their obstinacy, they were dispersed among other houses the temper of which could be depended upon. Some were sent to the north; others to Sion, where a new prior had been appointed, of zealous loyalty; others were left at home to be disciplined by the questionable seculars. But nothing answered. Two found their way into active rebellion, and being concerned in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were hung in chains at They will not yield, and are crushed. York. Ten were sent to Newgate, where nine died miserably of prison fever and filth;[438] the tenth survivor was executed. The remainder, of whom Maurice was one, went through a form of submission, with a mental reservation, and escaped abroad.

So fell the monks of the London Charterhouse, splintered to pieces—for so only could their resistance be overcome—by the iron sceptre and the iron hand which held it. They were, however, alone of their kind. There were many perhaps who wished to resemble them, who would have imitated their The necessity was a cruel one, but the government are not to be blamed. example had they dared. But all bent except these. If it had been otherwise, the Reformation would have been impossible, and perhaps it would not have been needed. Their story claims from us that sympathy which is the due of their exalted courage. But we cannot blame the government. Those who know what the condition of the country really was, must feel their inability to suggest, with any tolerable reasonableness, what else could have been done. They may regret so hard a necessity, but they will regret in silence. The king, too, was not without feeling. It was no matter of indifference to him that he found himself driven to such stern courses with his subjects; and as the golden splendour of his manhood was thus sullenly The king orders the court into mourning. clouding, "he commanded all about his court to poll their heads," in public token of mourning; "and to give them example, he caused his own head to be polled; and from thenceforth his beard to be knotted, and to be no more shaven."[439]

May 8. Other martyrs who were not Catholics.

The friars of Charterhouse suffered for the Catholic faith, as Protestants had suffered, and were still to suffer, for a faith fairer than theirs. In this same month of May, in the same year, the English annals contain another entry of no less sad significance. The bishops, as each day they parted further from their old allegiance, and were called in consequence by the hateful name of heretics, were increasingly anxious to prove by evident tokens their zeal for the true faith; and although the late act of heresy had moderated their powers, yet power enough remained to enable them to work their will upon all extreme offenders. Henry, also, it is likely, was not sorry of an opportunity of showing that his justice was even-handed, and that a schism from the papacy was not a lapse into heterodoxy. His mind was moving. Latimer and Shaxton, who three years before had been on trial for their lives, were soon to be upon the bench; and in the late injunctions, the Bible, and not the decrees of the church, had been held up as the canon of truth. But heresy, though the definition of it was changing, remained a crime; and although the limits of permitted belief were imperceptibly enlarging, to transgress the recognised boundaries was an offence enormous as ever.

Popular estimate of the Anabaptists.

If we can conceive the temper with which the reasonable and practical English at present regard the Socialists of the continent, deepened by an intensity of conviction of which these later ages have had but little experience, we can then imagine the light in which the Anabaptists of the Netherlands appeared in the eyes or orthodox Europe. If some opinions, once thought heretical, were regarded with less agitated repugnance, the heresy of these enemies of mankind was patent to the world. On them the laws of the country might take their natural course, and no voice was raised to speak for them.

May 25.

We find, therefore, in Stow's Chronicle, the following: brief entry: "The five and twentieth day of May were, in St. Paul's church, London, examined nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, whose opinions were—first, that in Christ is not two natures, God and man; secondly, that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; thirdly, that children born of infidels may be saved; fourthly, that baptism of children is of none effect; fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ's body is but bread only; sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, and Fourteen of them are executed. cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned: a man and a woman were burnt at Smithfield. The remaining twelve were scattered among other towns, there to be burnt."[440] The details are gone,[441]—the names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were, and that is all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly it is told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be They too did not die in vain. tempted to say that they believed what they did not believe. History for them has no word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain. Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of most of us. In their deaths they assisted to pay the purchase-money for England's freedom.

Fisher and More. Fisher's dangerous imprudence.

After the execution of the Carthusians, it became a question what should be done with the Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More. They had remained for a year in the Tower, undisturbed; and there is no reason to think that they would have been further troubled, except for the fault of one, if not of both. It appeared, however, on the trial of Father Reynolds, that Fisher's imprudence or zeal had tempted him again to meddle with dangerous matters. A correspondence had passed between the bishop and the king,[442] on the Act of Supremacy, or on some subject connected with it. The king had taken no public notice of Fisher's words, but he had required a promise that the letter should not be shown to any other person. The unwise old man gave his word, but he did not observe it; he sent copies both of what he had himself written and of the king's answer to the Sion monks,[443] furnishing them at the same time with a copy of the book which he had written against the divorce, and two other books, written by Abel, the queen's confessor, and the Spanish ambassador. Whether he was discovered to have held any other correspondence, or whether anything of an analogous Treatment and conduct of Fisher and of More in the Tower. kind was proved against More, I am unable to discover. Both he and Fisher had been treated with greater indulgence than was usual with prisoners.[444] Their own attendants had waited on them; they were allowed to receive visits from their relatives within the Tower walls, and to correspond with their families and friends.[445] As a matter of course, under such circumstances, they must have expressed their opinions on the great subject of the day; and those opinions were made known throughout England, and, indeed, throughout Europe. Whether they did more than this, or whether they had only indirectly allowed their influence to be used against the government, must be left to conjecture. But the language of a document under the king's hand speaks of their having given some cause of Cromwell's charges against them. provocation, of no common kind; and this is confirmed by Cromwell, who was once deeply attached to More. "When they were in strait keeping," say the instructions to the Bishop of Hereford, "having nevertheless the prison at their liberties, they ceased not both to practise an insurrection within the realm, and also to use all the devices to them possible in outward parts, as well to defame and slander his Majesty, and his most virtuous doings and proceedings, as also to procure the impeachment and other destruction of his most royal person."[446] Cromwell speaks also of their having been engaged in definite schemes, the object of which was rebellion;[447] and although we have here the ex parte statement of the government, and although such a charge would have been held to be justified by a proof that they had spoken generally against the Act of Supremacy, it may be allowed to prove that so far they were really guilty; and it is equally certain that for these two men to have spoken against the act was to have lent encouragement to the party of insurrection, the most powerful which that party could have received.

Thus, by another necessity, Fisher and More, at the beginning of May, were called upon for their submission. It was a hard case, for the bishop was sinking into the grave with age and sickness, and More had the highest reputation of any living man. But they had chosen to make themselves conspicuous as confessors for Catholic truth; though prisoners in the Tower, they were in fact the most effectual champions of the papal claims; and if their disobedience had been passed over, the statute could have been enforced against no one.

May 7. A deputation of the council waits upon them in the Tower. They refuse to admit the supremacy.

The same course was followed as with the Carthusian monks. On the 7th of May a deputation of the council waited on the prisoners in the Tower, for an acknowledgment of the supremacy. They refused: Fisher, after a brief hesitation, peremptorily; More declining to answer, but also giving an indirect denial. After repeated efforts had been made to move them, and made in vain, their own language, as in the preceding trials, furnished material for their indictment; and the law officers of the crown who were to conduct the prosecution were the witnesses under whose evidence they were to be tried. It was a strange proceeding, to be excused only, if excused at all, by the pressure of the times.[448]

Either the king or his ministers, however, were slow in making up their minds. With the Carthusians, nine days only were allowed to elapse between the first examination and the final close at Tyburn. The case against More The government delay their trial. and Fisher was no less clear than against the monks; yet five weeks elapsed and the government still hesitated. Perhaps they were influenced by the high position of the greater offenders,—perhaps there was some fear of the world's opinion, which, though it might be indifferent to the sacrifice of a few obscure ecclesiastics, yet would surely not pass over lightly the execution of men who stood out with so marked preëminence. The council board was unevenly composed. Cromwell, who divides with the king the responsibility of these prosecutions, had succeeded, not to the authority only of Wolsey, but to the hatred with which the ignoble plebeian was regarded by the patricians who were compelled to stoop before him. Lord Exeter was already looking with a cold eye on the revolution; and Norfolk and Suffolk, though zealous as the king himself for the independence of England, yet had all the instincts of aristocratic conservatism. Even Cromwell may have desired the triumph of winning over converts so distinguished, or may have shrunk from the odium which their deaths would bring upon him. Whatever was the cause of the delay, the privy council, who had been contented with a single examination of Haughton and his companions, struggled with their present difficulty week after week; and it is possible that, except from an extraneous impulse, some mode of escape might have been discovered. But as the sentence of Clement sealed the fate of the Nun of Kent, so the unwisdom of his successor bore similarly fatal fruits.

Paul III. had throughout the spring flattered Henry with expressions of sympathy, and had held out hopes of an approaching change of policy. He chose the present unfortunate juncture to expose the vanity of these professions; and as an intimation of the course which he intended to follow, he named the Bishop of Rochester, the one bishop who remained attached to Catherine's cause, a cardinal. Henry had appealed to a council, The pope names Fisher a cardinal. which the pope had promised to call; and Fisher, of all Englishmen, was chosen as the person whom the pope desired to represent the nation on its assembly. Even the very conclave at Rome were taken by surprise, and expressed themselves in no measured terms at the impolicy of this most foolish action. Cassalis, aware of the effect which the news would produce in England, hurried to such friends as he possessed in the conclave to protest against the appointment. The king, he said, would inevitably regard it as injurious to the realm and insulting to himself;[449] and it was madness at such a moment to trifle with Henry's displeasure.

Cassalis protests, and the pope condescends to falsehood.

The Pope, alarmed at the expressions which he was told that Cassalis had used, sent in haste to urge him, if possible, to allay the storm. He was not ashamed to stoop to falsehood—but falsehood too awkward to deceive even the most willing credulity. He had thought, he said, of nothing but to please Henry. He had been urged by the King of France to seek a reconciliation with England, and in sending a hat to an English bishop he had meant nothing but a compliment. The general council would be held immediately; and it was desirable, according to the constitution of the church, that a cardinal of every nation should be present. He had no especial reason for choosing the Bishop of Rochester, except that he had a high reputation for learning, and he imagined, therefore, that the king would be gratified.[450] "He implored me," Cassalis wrote, "to make his excuses to his Majesty, and to assure him how deeply he regretted his mistake, especially when I assured him that the step was of a kind which admitted of no excuse."[451]

Cassalis himself was afterwards disposed to believe that the appointment was made in thoughtlessness, and that the pope at the moment had really forgotten Fisher's position.[452] But this could gain no credit in England. The news reached the government in the middle of June, and determined the fate of the unfortunate bishop; and with it the fate, also, of his nobler The appointment seals Fisher's fate. companion. To the king, the pope's conduct appeared a defiance; and as a defiance he accepted it. In vain Fisher declared that he had not sought his ill-timed honours, and would not accept them. Neither his ignorance nor his refusal could avail him. Once more he was called upon to submit, with the intimation, that if he refused he must bear the consequences. His reply June 17. He is tried at Westminster, remained what it had been; and on the 17th of June he was taken[453] down in a boat to Westminster Hall, where the special commission was sitting. The proceedings at his trial are thus briefly summed up in the official record:—"Thursday after the feast of St. Barnabas, John Fisher was brought to the bar by Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower. Pleads not And is condemned. guilty. Venire awarded. Verdict—guilty. Judgment as usual in cases of treason."[454]