Note 371 — Chapter XV

Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 494. A story was current on the Continent, and so far believed as to be alluded to in the great bull of Paul the Third, that an apparitor was sent to Canterbury to serve a citation at Becket’s tomb, summoning “the late archbishop” to appear and answer to a charge of high treason. Thirty days were allowed him. When these were expired a proctor was charged with his defence. He was tried and condemned—his property, consisting of the offerings at the shrine, was declared forfeited—and he himself was sentenced to be exhumed and burnt. In the fact itself there is nothing absolutely improbable, for the form said to have been observed was one which was usual in the Church, when dead men, as sometimes happened, were prosecuted for heresy; and if I express my belief that the story is without foundation, I do so with diffidence, because negative evidence is generally of no value in the face of respectable positive assertion. All contemporary English authorities, however, are totally silent on a subject which it is hard to believe that they would not at least have mentioned. We hear generally of the destruction of the shrine, but no word of the citation and trial. A long and close correspondence between Cromwell and the Prior of Canterbury covers the period at which the process took place, if it took place at all, and not a letter contains anything which could be construed into an allusion to it.—Letters of the Prior of Canterbury to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series.

So suspicious a silence justifies a close scrutiny of the authorities on the other side. There exist two documents printed in Wilkins’s Concilia, Vol. III. p. 835, and taken from Pollini’s History of the English Reformation, which profess to be the actual citation and actual sentence issued on the occasion. If these are genuine, they decide the question; but, unfortunately for their authenticity, the dates of the documents are, respectively, April and May, 1538, and in both of them Henry is styled, among his official titles, Rex Hiberniæ. Now Henry did not assume the title of Rex Hiberniæ till two years later. Dominus Hiberniæ, or Lord of Ireland, is his invariable designation in every authentic document of the year to which these are said to belong. This itself is conclusively discrediting. If further evidence is required, it may be found in the word “Londini,” or London, as the date of both citation and sentence. Official papers were never dated from London, but from Westminster, St. James’s, Whitehall; or if in London, then from the particular place in London, as the Tower. Both mistakes would have been avoided by an Englishman, but are exceedingly natural in a foreign inventor.