Volume 1 — Notes. (continued 3)

678 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 19.

679 A design which unfortunately was not put in effect. In the hurry of the time it was allowed to drop.

680 25 Henry VIII. cap. 14.

681 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.

682 At this very time Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci, who had been acting for Henry at Rome, was Bishop of Worcester. The Act by which they were deprived speaks of these two appointments as nominations by the king.—25 Henry VIII. cap. 27.

683 Wolsey held three bishoprics and one archbishopric, besides the abbey of St. Albans.

684 Thus when Wolsey was presented, in 1514, to the See of Lincoln, Leo X. writes to his beloved son Thomas Wolsey how that in his great care for the interests of the Church, "Nos hodie Ecclesiæ Lincolniensi, te in episcopum et pastorem præficere intendimus." He then informs the Chapter of Lincoln of the appointment; and the king, in granting the temporalities, continues the fiction without seeming to recognise it:—"Cum dominus summus Pontifex nuper vacante Ecclesiâ cathedrali personam fidelis clerici nostri Thomæ Wolsey, in ipsius Ecclesiæ episcopum præfecerit, nos," etc.—See the Acts in RYMER, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 55-7.

685 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The pre-existing, unrealities with respect to the election of bishops explain the unreality of the new arrangement, and divest it of the character of wanton tyranny with which it appeared primâ facie to press upon the Chapters. The history of this statute is curious, and perhaps explains the intentions with which it was originally passed. It was repealed by the 2nd of the 1st of Edward VI. on the ground that the liberty of election was merely nominal, and that the Chapters ought to be relieved of responsibility when they had no power of choice. Direct nomination by the crown was substituted for the congé d'élire, and remained the practice till the reaction under Mary, when the indefinite system was resumed which had existed before the Reformation. On the accession of Elizabeth, the statute of 25 Henry VIII. was again enacted. The more complicated process of Henry was preferred to the more simple one of Edward, and we are naturally led to ask the reason of so singular a preference. I cannot but think that it was this. The Council of Regency under Edward VI. treated the Church as an institution of the State, while Henry and Elizabeth endeavoured (under difficulties) to regard it under its more Catholic aspect of an organic body. So long as the Reformation was in progress, it was necessary to prevent the intrusion upon the bench of bishops of Romanising tendencies, and the deans and chapters were therefore protected by a strong hand from their own possible mistakes. But the form of liberty was conceded to them, not, I hope, to place deliberately a body of clergymen in a degrading position, but in the belief that at no distant time the Church might be allowed without danger to resume some degree of self-government.

686 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21.

687 I sent you no heavy words, but words of great comfort; willing your brother to shew you how benign and merciful the prince was; and that I thought it expedient for you to write unto his Highness, and to recognise your offence and to desire his pardon, which his Grace would not deny you how in your age and sickness.—Cromwell to Fisher: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 27.

688 Sir Thomas More to Cromwell: BURNET'S Collectanea, p. 350.

689 Ibid.

690 Ibid.

691 More to Cromwell: STRYPE'S Memorials, vol. i. Appendix, p. 195.

692 More to the King: ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 47.

693 Cromwell to Fisher: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 27, et seq.

694 Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 27, et seq.

695 John Fisher to the Lords in Parliament: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 289.

696 Lords' Journals, p. 72.

697 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.

698 In a tract written by a Dr. Moryson in defence of the government, three years later, I find evidence that a distinction was made among the prisoners, and that Dr. Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. "Solus in crucem actus est Bockingus," are Moryson's words, though I feel uncertain of the nature of the punishment which he meant to designate. "Crucifixion" was unknown to the English law; and an event so peculiar as the "crucifixion" of a monk would hardly have escaped the notice of the contemporary chroniclers. In a careful diary kept by a London merchant during these years, which is in MS. in the Library of Balliol College, Oxford, the whole party are said to have been hanged.—See, however, Morysini Apomaxis, printed by Berthelet, 1537.

699 HALL, p. 814.] The inferior confederates were committed to their prisons with the exception only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh provocation the miserable old man forced himself upon his fate.⁷⁰⁰

700 LORD HERBERT says he was pardoned; I do not find, however, on what authority: but he was certainly not imprisoned, nor was the sentence of forfeiture enforced against him.

701 This is the substance of the provisions, which are, of course, much abridged.

702 Lords' Journals, vol. i. p. 82. An act was also passed in this session "against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome." We trace it in its progress through the House of Lords. (Lords' Journals, Parliament of 1533-4.) It received the royal assent (ibid.), and is subsequently alluded to in the both of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the act against payment of Peter's Pence, for in the Lords' Journals the two acts are separately mentioned. It received the royal assent on the 30th of March, while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the 7th of April. It contained, also, an indirect assertion that the king was Head of the English Church, according to the title which had been given him by Convocation. (King's Proclamation: FOXE, vol. v. p. 69.) For some cause or other, the act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.

703 See BURNET, vol. i. pp. 220-1: vol. iii p. 135; and LORD HERBERT. Du Bellay's brother, the author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the bishop's entreaty, promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send "judges to hear the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed to do"—that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome. If this is true, the sending "judges" must allude to the "sending them to Cambray," which had been proposed at Marseilles.

704 See the letter of the Bishop of Bayonne, dated March 23, in LEGRAND. A paraphrase is given by BURNET, vol. iii. p. 132.

705 Promisistis predecessori meo quod si sententiam contra regem Angliæ tulisset, Cæsar illum infra quatuor menses erat invasurus, et regno expulsurus.—State Papers, vol. vii. p. 579.

706 Letter of Du Bellay in LEGRAND.

707 Ibid.

708 Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 553-4.

709 State Papers, vol. vii. p. 560, et seq.

710 His Highness, considering the time and the malice of the emperour, cannot conveniently pass out of the realm—since he leaveth behind him another daughter and a mother, with their friends, maligning his enterprises in this behalf—who bearing no small grudge against his most entirely beloved Queen Anne, and his young daughter the princess, might perchance in his absence take occasion to excogitate and practise with their said friends matters of no small peril to his royal person, realm, and subjects.—State Papers, vol. vii. p. 559.

711 LORD HERBERT.

712 I mentioned their execution in connection with their sentence; but it did not take place till the 20th of April, a month after their attainder: and delay of this kind was very unusual in cases of high treason. I have little doubt that their final sentence was in fact pronounced by the pope.

713 The oaths of a great many are in RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 195, et seq.

714 His great-grandson's history of him (Life of Sir Thomas More,, by CRESACRE MORE, written about 1620, published 1627, with a dedication to Henrietta Maria) is incorrect in so many instances that I follow it with hesitation; but the account of the present matter is derived from Mr. Roper, More's son-in-law, who accompanied him to Lambeth, and it is incidentally confirmed in various details by More himself.

715 MORE'S Life of More, p. 232.

716 More held extreme republican opinions on the tenure of kings, holding that they might be deposed by act of parliament.

717 MORE'S Life of More, p. 237.

718 BURNET, vol. i. p. 255.

719 MORE'S Life of More, p. 237.

720 Cromwell to the Archbishop of Canterbury: Rolls House MS.

721 State Papers, vol. i. p. 411, et seq.

722 Royal Proclamation, June, 1534.

723 Ibid.

724 FOXE, vol. v. p. 70.