History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Volume V Part 50

[894] Hall, p. 754.

[895] Du Bellay to Montmorency, 17th November 1528. Le Grand, Preuves, p. 218.

[Sidenote: DU BELLAY SOLICITS CAMPEGGIO.]

Henry wis.h.i.+ng to silence the clamours of the people, and to allay the fears felt by the higher cla.s.ses, gave several magnificent entertainments at one time in London, at another at Greenwich, now at Hampton Court, and then at Richmond. The queen accompanied him, but Anne generally remained "in a very handsome lodging which Henry had furnished for her," says Du Bellay. The cardinal, following his master's example, gave representations of French plays with great magnificence. All his hope was in France. "I desire nothing in England, neither in word nor in deed, which is not French,"[896] he said to the bishop of Bayonne. At length Anne Boleyn had accepted the brilliant position she had at first refused, and every day her stately mansion (Suffolk House) was filled with a numerous court,--"more than ever had crowded to the queen."--"Yes, yes," said Du Bellay, as he saw the crowd turning towards the _rising sun_, "they wish by these _little_ things to accustom the people to endure her, that when _great_ ones are attempted, they may not be found so strange."

[896] Du Bellay to Montmorency, 1st January. Le Grand, p. 268.

[Sidenote: TRUE CATHOLICITY.]

In the midst of these festivities the grand business did not slumber.

When the French amba.s.sador solicited the subsidy intended for the ransom of the sons of Francis I, the cardinal required of him in exchange a paper proving that the marriage had never been valid. Du Bellay excused himself on the ground of his age and want of learning; but being given to understand that he could not have the subsidy without it, he wrote the memoir in a single day. The enraptured cardinal and king entreated him to speak with Campeggio.[897] The amba.s.sador consented, and succeeded beyond all expectation. The nuncio, fully aware that a bow too much bent will break, made Henry by turns become the sport of hope and fear. "Take care how you a.s.sert that the pope had not the right to grant a dispensation to the king,"

said he to the French bishop, "this would be denying _his power, which is infinite_. But," added he in a mysterious tone, "I will point out a road that will infallibly lead you to the mark. Show that the holy father has been deceived by false information. _Push me hard on that_," he continued "so as to force me to declare that the dispensation was granted on erroneous grounds."[898] Thus did the legate himself reveal the breach by which the fortress might be surprised. "Victory!" exclaimed Henry, as he entered Anne's apartments all beaming with joy.

[897] Ibid. p. 200.

[898] Poussez-moi cela raide. Du Bellay to Montmorency. Le Grand, Preuves, p. 217.

But this confidence on the part of Campeggio was only a new trick.

"There is a great rumour at court," wrote Du Bellay soon after, "that the emperor and the king of France are coming together, and leaving Henry alone, so that all will fall on his shoulders."[899] Wolsey, finding that the intrigues of diplomacy had failed, thought it his duty to put fresh springs in motion, "and by all good and honest means to gain the pope's favour."[900] He saw, besides, to his great sorrow, the new catholicity then forming in the world, and uniting, by the closest bonds, the Christians of England to those of the continent. To strike down one of the leaders of this evangelical movement might incline the court of Rome in Henry's favour. The cardinal undertook, therefore, to persecute Tyndale; and this resolution will now transport us to Germany.

[899] Du Bellay to Montmorency. Le Grand, Preuves, p. 219.

[900] Ibid. p. 225.

CHAPTER IV.

True Catholicity--Wolsey--Harman's Matter--West sent to Cologne--Labours of Tyndale and Fryth--Rincke at Frankfort--He makes a Discovery--Tyndale at Marburg--West returns to England--His Tortures in the Monastery.

The residence of Tyndale and his friends in foreign countries, and the connections there formed with pious Christians, testify to the fraternal spirit which the Reformation then restored to the church. It is in protestantism that true catholicity is to be found. The Romish church is not a catholic church. Separated from the churches of the east, which are the oldest in Christendom, and from the reformed churches, which are the purest, it is nothing but a sect, and that a degenerated one. A church which should profess to believe in an episcopal unity, but which kept itself separate from the episcopacy of Rome and of the East, and from the evangelical churches, would be no longer a catholic church; it would be a sect more sectarian still than that of the Vatican, a fragment of a fragment. The church of the Saviour requires a truer, a diviner unity than that of priests, who condemn one another. It was the reformers, and particularly Tyndale,[901] who proclaimed throughout Christendom the existence of a _body of Christ_, of which all the children of G.o.d are members. The disciples of the Reformation are the true catholics.

[901] The Church of Christ is the mult.i.tude of all them that believe in Christ, etc. Exposition of Matthew, Prologue.

[Sidenote: WOLSEY'S CATHOLICITY.]

It was a catholicity of another sort that Wolsey desired to uphold. He did not reject certain reforms in the church, particularly such as brought him any profit; but, before all, he wished to preserve for the hierarchy their privileges and uniformity. The Romish Church in England was then personified in him, and if he fell, its ruin would be near. His political talents and multiplied relations with the continent, caused him to discern more clearly than others the dangers which threatened the popedom. The publication of the Scriptures of G.o.d in English appeared to some a cloud without importance, which would soon disappear from the horizon; but to the foreseeing glance of Wolsey, it betokened a mighty tempest. Besides, he loved not the fraternal relations then forming between the evangelical Christians of Great Britain and of other nations. Annoyed by this spiritual catholicity, he resolved to procure the arrest of Tyndale, who was its princ.i.p.al organ.

Already had Hackett, Henry's envoy to the Low Countries, caused the imprisonment of Harman, an Antwerp merchant, one of the princ.i.p.al supporters of the English reformer. But Hackett had in vain asked Wolsey for such doc.u.ments as would convict him of _treason_ (for the crime of loving the Bible was not sufficient to procure Harman's condemnation in Brabant); the envoy had remained without letters from England, and the last term fixed by the law having expired, Harman and his wife were liberated after seven months' imprisonment.

And yet Wolsey had not been inactive. The cardinal hoped to find elsewhere the co-operation which Margaret of Austria refused. It was Tyndale that he wanted, and everything seemed to indicate that he was then hidden at Cologne or in its neighbourhood. Wolsey, recollecting senator Rincke and the services he had already performed, determined to send to him one John West, a friar of the Franciscan convent at Greenwich. West, a somewhat narrow-minded but energetic man, was very desirous of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself, and he had already gained some notoriety in England among the adversaries of the Reformation.

Flattered by his mission, this vain monk immediately set off for Antwerp, accompanied by another friar, in order to seize Tyndale, and even Roy, once his colleague at Greenwich, and against whom he had there ineffectually contended in argument.

While these men were conspiring his ruin, Tyndale composed several works, got them printed, and sent to England, and prayed G.o.d night and day to enlighten his fellow-countrymen. "Why do give you give yourself so much trouble," said some of his friends. "They will burn your books as they have burnt the Gospel." "They will only do what I expect,"

replied he, "if they burn me also." Already he beheld his own burning pile in the distance; but it was a sight which only served to increase his zeal. Hidden, like Luther at the Wartburg, not however in a castle, but in a humble lodging, Tyndale, like the Saxon reformer, spent his days and nights translating the Bible. But not having an elector of Saxony to protect him, he was forced to change his residence from time to time.

[Sidenote: GENESIS AND DEUTERONOMY TRANSLATED.]

At this epoch, Fryth, who had escaped from the prisons of Oxford, rejoined Tyndale, and the sweets of friends.h.i.+p softened the bitterness of their exile. Tyndale having finished the New Testament, and begun the translation of the Old, the learned Fryth was of great use to him.

The more they studied the word of G.o.d, the more they admired it. In the beginning of 1529, they published the books of Genesis and Deuteronomy, and addressing their fellow-countrymen, they said: "As thou readest, think that every syllable pertaineth to thine own self, and suck out the pith of the Scripture."[902] Then denying that visible signs naturally impart grace, as the schoolmen had pretended, Tyndale maintained that the sacraments are effectual only when the Holy Ghost sheds his influence upon them. "The ceremonies of the Law,"

he wrote, "stood the Israelites in the same stead as the sacraments do us. We are saved not by the power of the sacrifice or the deed itself, but by virtue of _faith in the promise_, whereof the sacrifice or ceremony was a token or sign. The Holy Ghost is no dumb G.o.d, no G.o.d that goeth a mumming. Wherever the word is proclaimed, this inward witness worketh. If baptism preach me the was.h.i.+ng in Christ's blood, so doth the Holy Ghost accompany it; and that deed of preaching through faith doth put away my sins. The ark of Noah saved them in the water through faith."[903]

[902] Prologue to the Book of Genesis (Doctr. Tr.) p. 400.

[903] Prologue to the Book of Leviticus (Doctr. Tr.) p. 423, 424, 426.

[Sidenote: TYNDALE SOUGHT AT FRANKFORT.]

The man who dared address England in language so contrary to the teaching of the middle ages must be imprisoned. John West, who had been sent with this object, arrived at Antwerp; Hackett procured for him as interpreter a friar of English descent, made him a.s.sume a secular dress, and gave him "three pounds" on the cardinal's account; the less attention the emba.s.sy attracted, the more likely it would be to succeed. But great was West's vexation, on reaching Cologne, to learn that Rincke was at Frankfort. But that mattered not; the Greenwich monk could search for Tyndale at Cologne, and desire Rincke to do the same at Frankfort; thus there would be two searches instead of one. West procured a "swift" messenger, (he too was a monk,) and gave him the letter Wolsey had addressed to Rincke.

It was fair-time at Frankfort, and the city was filled with merchants and their wares. As soon as Rincke had finished reading Wolsey's letter, he hastened to the burgomasters, and required them to confiscate the English translations of the Scriptures, and, above all, to seize "the heretic who was troubling England as Luther troubled Germany." "Tyndale and his friends have not appeared in our fairs since the month of March 1528," replied the magistrates, "and we know not whether they are dead or alive."

Rincke was not discouraged. John Schoot of Strasburg, who was said to have printed Tyndale's books, and who cared less about the works he published than the money he drew from them, happened to be at Frankfort. "Where is Tyndale?" Rincke asked him. "I do not know,"

replied the printer; but he confessed that he had printed a thousand volumes at the request of Tyndale and Roy. "Bring them to me,"

continued the senator of Cologne--"If a fair price is paid me, I will give them up to you." Rincke paid all that was demanded.

Wolsey would now be gratified, for the New Testament annoyed him almost as much as the divorce; this book, so dangerous in his eyes, seemed on the point of raising a conflagration which would infallibly consume the edifice of Roman traditionalism. Rincke, who partic.i.p.ated in his patron's fears, impatiently opened the volumes made over to him; but there was a sad mistake, they were not the New Testament, not even a work of Tyndale's, but one written by William Roy, a changeable and violent man, whom the reformer had employed for some time at Hamburg, and who had followed him to Cologne, but with whom he had soon become disgusted. "I bade him farewell for our two lives," said Tyndale, "and a day longer." Roy, on quitting the reformer, had gone to Strasburg, where he boasted of his relations with him, and had got a satire in that city printed against Wolsey and the monastic orders, ent.i.tled _The Burial of the Ma.s.s_: this was the book delivered to Rincke. The monk's sarcastic spirit had exceeded the legitimate bounds of controversy, and the senator accordingly dared not send the volumes to England. He did not however discontinue his inquiries, but searched every place where he thought he could discover the New Testament, and having seized all the suspected volumes, set off for Cologne.[904]

[904] Anderson, Annals of the Bible, i. p. 203: "I gathered together and packed up all the books from every quarter."

[Sidenote: TYNDALE AT MARBURG.]

Yet he was not satisfied. He wanted Tyndale, and went about asking every one if they knew where to find him. But the reformer, whom he was seeking in so many places, and especially at Frankfort and Cologne, chanced to be residing at about equal distances from these two towns, so that Rincke, while travelling from one to the other, might have met him face to face, as Ahab's messenger met Elijah.[905]

Tyndale was at Marburg, whither he had been drawn by several motives.

Prince Philip of Hesse was the great protector of the evangelical doctrines. The university had attracted attention in the Reform by the paradoxes of Lambert of Avignon. Here a young Scotchman named Hamilton, afterwards ill.u.s.trious as a martyr, had studied shortly before, and here too the celebrated printer, John Luft, had his presses. In this city Tyndale and Fryth had taken up their abode, in September 1528, and, hidden on the quiet banks of the Lahn, were translating the Old Testament. If Rincke had searched this place he could not have failed to discover them. But either he thought not of it, or was afraid of the terrible landgrave. The direct road by the Rhine was that which he followed, and Tyndale escaped.

[905] I Kings xviii, 7.

When he arrived at Cologne, Rincke had an immediate interview with West. Their investigations having failed, they must have recourse to more vigorous measures. The senator, therefore, sent the monk back to England, accompanied by his son Hermann, charging them to tell Wolsey: "To seize Tyndale we require fuller powers, ratified by the emperor.

The traitors who conspire against the life of the king of England are not tolerated in the empire, much less Tyndale and all those who conspire against Christendom. He must be put to death; nothing but some striking example can check the Lutheran heresy.--And as to ourselves," they were told to add, "by the favour of G.o.d there may possibly be an opportunity for his royal highness and your grace to recompense us."[906] Rincke had not forgotten the subsidy of ten thousand pounds which he had received from Henry VII for the Turkish war, when he had gone to London as Maximilian's envoy.

[906] Cotton MSS. Vitellius, B, xxi. fol. 43. Bible Annals, i, p. 204.

[Sidenote: WEST'S ANNOYANCES.]

West returned to England sorely vexed that he had failed in his mission. What would they say at court and in his monastery? A fresh humiliation was in reserve for him. Roy, whom West had gone to look for on the banks of the Rhine, had paid a visit to his mother on the banks of the Thames; and to crown all, the new doctrines had penetrated into his own convent. The warden, father Robinson, had embraced them, and night and day the Greenwich monks read that New Testament which West had gone to Cologne to burn. The Antwerp friar, who had accompanied him on his journey, was the only person to whom he could confide his sorrows; but the Franciscans sent him back again to the continent, and then amused themselves at poor West's expense. If he desired to tell of his adventures on the banks of the Rhine, he was laughed at; if he boasted of the names of Wolsey and Henry VIII, they jeered him still more. He desired to speak to Roy's mother, hoping to gain some useful information from her; this the monks prevented. "It is in my commission," he said. They ridiculed him more and more.

Robinson, perceiving that the commission made West a.s.sume unbecoming airs of independence, requested Wolsey to withdraw it; and West, fancying he was about to be thrown into prison, exclaimed in alarm: "I am weary of my life!" and conjured a friend whom he had at court to procure him before Christmas an _obedience_ under his lords.h.i.+p's hand and seal, enabling him to leave the monastery; "What you pay him for it," he added, "I shall see you be reimbursed." Thus did West expiate the fanatical zeal which had urged him to pursue the translator of the oracles of G.o.d. What became of him, we know not: he is never heard of more.

At that time Wolsey had other matters to engage him than this "obedience." While West's complaints were going to London, those of the king were travelling to Rome. The great business in the cardinal's eyes was to maintain harmony between Henry and the church. There was no more thought about investigations in Germany, and for a time Tyndale was saved.

CHAPTER V.