History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 3

The messenger arrived early in June. Parliament had just met to receive the report of the queen's crimes and execution, and the king, occupied with other business, gladly complied with Pole's request, and left to others the examination of so bulky a volume. It was placed in the hands of Tunstall and Starkey. Whether Henry ever read it is not certain. If he saw it at all, it was at a later period.[55] At once, if any hope or thought had existed of a return to communion with the Papacy, that hope was at an end. Written from Italy, the book was accepted as representing the feeling if not dictated by the instructions of the Ultra-Catholics; and in such a mood they could only be treated as enemies. So much of its character as was necessary was laid before Henry, and, on the 14th of June, within a day or two therefore of its receipt, a courier was despatched with replies both from Henry himself, from the Bishop of Durham, Starkey, and Cromwell. If Pole expected to be regarded as a formidable person, his vanity was seriously mortified. The substance of what he had written was seen to be sufficiently venomous, but the writer himself was treated rather as foolish than as wicked, and by the king was regarded with some kind of pity. Henry wrote (it would seem briefly) commanding him on his allegiance, all excuses set apart, to return to England and explain himself.[56]

[Sidenote: Remonstrances of Pole's friends.]

[Sidenote: The king will forgive the book if his forgiveness is asked.]

The summons was more fully explained by Starkey and Tunstall. The former declared that at the first reading of the book he was so much amazed and astonished that he knew not what to think except that he was in a dream.[57] The Bishop of Durham, on whose support Pole seems to have calculated, condescended to his arguments, and replied in formal Anglican language, that to separate from the Pope was not to separate from the unity of the Church: the Head of the Church was Christ, and unity was unity of doctrine, to which England adhered as truly as Rome: Pole had made a preposterous mistake, and it had led him into conduct which at present, if properly atoned for, might be pa.s.sed over as folly, and covered and forgotten: if persevered in it would become a crime; but it was a secret so far, and if promptly repented of, should remain a secret from all eyes for ever.[58] He was commanded by the government, he was implored by his friends to return to England, to make his peace in person, and entreat the king's forgiveness.

[Sidenote: July. Pole protests that his book is a private letter, and that he meant no harm.]

[Sidenote: The king accepts his declaration, and will overlook his conduct.]

But neither his friends nor the king understood Pole's character or comprehended his purpose. He was less foolish, he was more malicious than they supposed. When the letters reached him, he professed to be utterly surprised at the reception which his book had met with. He regretted that the Supremacy Act made it impossible for him to comply with a command to present himself in England; but he protested so loudly that he had meant neither injury nor disrespect, he declared so emphatically that his book was a _bona fide_ letter addressed to the king only, and written for his own eyes and no other's, that at last Henry believed him, accepted his a.s.surance, and consented to pa.s.s over his impertinence. In July or August he was informed by Starkey "that the king took the intolerable sharpness of his writings even as they that most friendly could interpret them. He thought, as few would think, that the exaggerations, the oft-returning to the same faults, the vehement exclamations, the hot sentences, the uncomely bitings, the despiteful comparisons, and likenings, all came of error and not of evil intent.

His Grace supposed his benefits not forgotten, and Pole's love towards his Highness not utterly quenched. His Majesty was one that forgave and forgot displeasure, both at once." For his own part, however, Starkey implored his friend, as he valued his country, his honour, his good name, to repent himself, as he had desired the king to repent; the king would not press him or force his conscience; if he could be brought to reconsider his conduct, he might be a.s.sured that it would not be remembered against him.[59] Simultaneously with, or soon after this letter, the Bishop of Durham wrote also by the king's order, saying that, as he objected to return, it should not be insisted on; inasmuch, however, as he had affirmed so positively that his book was a private communication, there could be no further reason for preserving any other copies of it, and if he had such copies in his possession he was called upon to prove his sincerity by burning them. On his compliance, his property, which would be forfeited under the Supremacy Act, should remain in his hands, and he was free to reside in any country which he might choose.[60]

Pole did not burn his book, nor was it long before he gave the government reason to regret their forbearance towards him. For the time he continued in receipt of his income, and the stir which he had created died away.

There are many scenes in human life which, as a great poet teaches us, are either sad or beautiful, cheerless or refres.h.i.+ng, according to the direction from which we approach them.[61] If, on a morning in spring, we behold the ridges of a fresh-turned ploughed field from their northern side, our eyes, catching only the shadowed slopes of the successive furrows, see an expanse of white, the unmelted remains of the night's hailstorm, or the h.o.a.rfrost of the dawn. We make a circuit, or we cross over and look behind us, and on the very same ground there is nothing to be seen but the rich brown soil swelling in the suns.h.i.+ne, warm with promise, and chequered perhaps here and there with a green blade bursting through the surface. Both images are true to the facts of nature. Both pictures are created by real objects really existing. The pleasant certainty, however, remains with us, that the winter is pa.s.sing away and summer is coming; the promise of the future is not with the ice and the sleet, but with the suns.h.i.+ne, with gladness, and hope.

[Sidenote: Other aspects of the condition of England.]

Reginald Pole has shown us the form in which England appeared to him, and to the Catholic world beyond its sh.o.r.es, bound under an iron yoke, and sinking down in despair and desolation. To us who have seen the golden harvests waving over her fields, his loud raving has a sound of delirium: we perceive only the happy symptoms of lengthening daylight, bringing with it once more the season of life, and health, and fertility. But there is a third aspect--and it is this which we must now endeavour to present to ourselves--of England as it appeared to its own toiling children in the hour of their trial, with its lights and shadows, its frozen prejudices and sunny gleams of faith; when day followed day, and brought no certain change, and men knew not whether night would prevail or day, or which of the two was most divine--night, with its starry firmament of saints and ceremonies, or day, with the single l.u.s.tre of the Gospel sun. It is idle to try to reproduce such a time in any single shape or uniform colour. The reader must call his imagination to his aid, and endeavour, if he can, to see the same object in many shapes and many colours, to sympathize successively with those to whom the Reformation was a terror, with those to whom it was the dearest hope, and those others--the mult.i.tude--whose minds could give them no certain answer, who s.h.i.+fted from day to day, as the impulse of the moment swayed them.

[Sidenote: Sunday, June 9. Opening of convocation.]

[Sidenote: The gathering of the clergy in St. Paul's.]

When parliament met in June, 1536, convocation as usual a.s.sembled with it. On Sunday, the ninth of the month, the two houses of the clergy were gathered for the opening of their session in the aisles of St.

Paul's--high and low, hot and cold, brave and cowardly. The great question of the day, the Reformation of the Church, was one in which they, the spiritualty of England, might be expected to bear some useful part. They had as yet borne no part but a part of obstruction. They had been compelled to sit impatiently, with tied hands, while the lay legislature prescribed their duties and shaped their laws for them.

Whether they would a.s.sume a more becoming posture, was the problem which they were now met to solve. Gardiner was there, and Bonner, Tunstall, and Hilsey, Lee, Latimer, and Cranmer; mitred abbots, meditating the treason for which, before many months were pa.s.sed, their quartered trunks would be rotting by the highways; earnest sacramentaries, making ready for the stake: the spirits of the two ages--the past and the future--were meeting there in fierce collision; and above them all, in his vicar-general's chair, sate Cromwell, proud and powerful, lording over the scowling crowd. The present hour was his. His enemies' turn in due time would come also.

The ma.s.s had been sung, the roll of the organ had died away. It was the time for the sermon, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, rose into the pulpit. Nine-tenths of all those eyes which were then fixed on him would have glistened with delight, could they have looked instead upon his burning. The whole mult.i.tude of pa.s.sionate men were compelled, by a changed world, to listen quietly while he shot his bitter arrows among them.

[Sidenote: Latimer in the pulpit.]

We have heard Pole; we will now hear the heretic leader. His object on the present occasion was to tell the clergy what especially he thought of themselves; and Latimer was a plain speaker. They had no good opinion of him. His opinion of them was very bad indeed. His text was from the sixteenth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel: "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light."

[Sidenote: The convocation had sat for seven years.]

[Sidenote: What had the convocation done?]

The race and parentage of all living things, he said, were known by their fruits. He desired by this test to try the parentage of the present convocation. They had sat--the men that he saw before him--for seven years, more or less, session after session. What measures had come from them? They were the spiritualty--the teachers of the people, divinely commissioned; said to be and believed to be, children of light; what had they done?... Mighty evils in those years had been swept away in England ... but whose hands had been at the work?--was it theirs? For his part, he knew that they had burned a dead man's bones; he knew that they had done their best to burn the living man who was then speaking to them.... What else they had done he knew not.

[Sidenote: England is reformed, but have the clergy reformed England or has the King?]

The end of your convocation shall show what ye are, he said, turning direct upon them; the fruit of your consultations shall show what generation ye be of. What now have ye engendered? what have ye brought forth? What fruit has come of your long and great a.s.sembly? What one thing that the people have been the better of a hair? That the people be better learned and taught now than they were in time past, should we attribute it to your industry, or to the providence of G.o.d and the foreseeing of the King's Grace? Ought we to thank you or the King's Highness? Whether stirred the other first?--you the king, that ye might preach, or he you, by his letters, that ye should preach more often? Is it unknown, think you, how both ye and your curates were in manner by violence enforced to let books be made, not by you, but by profane and lay persons? I am bold with you; but I speak to the clergy, not to the laity. I speak to your faces, not behind your backs.

[Sidenote: Certain things they had produced, but were they good or evil?]

If, then, they had produced no good thing, what had they produced? There was false money instead of true. There were dead images instead of a living Saviour. There was redemption purchased by money, not redemption purchased by Christ. Abundance of these things were to be found among them ... and all those pleasant fictions which had been bred at Rome, the canonizations and expectations, the tot-quots and dispensations, the pardons of marvellous variety, stationaries and jubilaries, manuaries and oscularies, pedaries, and such other vanities--these had gracious reception; these were welcomed gladly in all their multiplicity. There was the ancient purgatory pick-purse--that which was suaged and cooled with a Franciscan's cowl laid upon a dead man's back, to the fourth part of his sins; that which was utterly to be spoiled, but of none other but the most prudent father the Pope, and of him as oft as he listed--a pleasant invention, and one so profitable to the feigners, that no emperor had taken more by taxes of his living subjects than those truly begotten children of the world obtained by dead men's tributes.

[Sidenote: The parentage of the English spiritualty,]

[Sidenote: And the future which they are to expect.]

This was the modern Gospel--the present Catholic faith,--which the English clergy loved and taught as faithfully as their brothers in Italy. "Ye know the proverb," the preacher continued, "'An evil crow an evil egg.' The children of this world that are known to have so evil a father the world, so evil a grandfather the devil, cannot choose but be evil--the devil being such an one as never can be unlike himself. So of Envy, his well-beloved leman, he begot the World, and left it with Discord at nurse; which World, after it came to man's estate, had of many concubines many sons. These are our holy, holy men, that say they are dead to the world; and none are more lively to the world. G.o.d is taking account of his stewards, as though he should say, 'All good men in all places accuse your avarice, your exactions, your tyranny. I commanded you that ye should feed my sheep, and ye earnestly feed yourselves from day to day, wallowing in delights and idleness. I commanded you to teach my law; you teach your own traditions, and seek your own glory. I taught openly, that he that should hear you should hear Me; he that should despise you should despise Me. I gave you also keys--not earthly keys, but heavenly. I left my goods, that I have evermore esteemed, my Word and sacraments, to be dispensed by you. Ye have not deceived Me, but yourselves: my gifts and my benefits shall be to your greater d.a.m.nation. Because ye have despised the clemency of the Master of the house, ye have deserved the severity of the Judge. Come forth; let us see an account of your stewards.h.i.+p.'

"And He will visit you; in his good time G.o.d will visit you. He will come; He will not tarry long. In the day in which we look not for Him, and in the hour which we do not know, He will come and will cut us in pieces, and will give us our portion with the hypocrites. He will set us, my brethren, where shall be wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth; and here, if ye will, shall be the end of our tragedy."[62]

Our glimpses into these scenes fall but fitfully. The sermon has reached us; but the audience--the five hundred fierce vindictive men who suffered under the preacher's irony--what they thought of it; with what feelings on that summer day the heated crowd scattered out of the cathedral, dispersing to their dinners among the taverns in Fleet-street and Cheapside--all this is gone, gone without a sound. Here no friendly informer comes to help us; no penitent malcontent breaks confidence or lifts the curtain. All is silent.

[Sidenote: Sullen temper of the clergy.]

[Sidenote: Their hopes and prospects.]

Yet, although the special acts of this body were of no mighty moment, although rarely have so many men been gathered together whose actual importance has borne so small a proportion to their estimate of themselves, yet not often, perhaps, has an a.s.sembly collected where there was such heat of pa.s.sion, such malignity of hatred. For the last three years the clergy had remained torpid and half stunned, doggedly obeying the proclamations for the alterations of the service, and keeping beyond the grasp of the law. But, although too demoralized by their defeat to attempt resistance, the great body of them still detested the changes which had been forced upon their acceptance, and longed for a change which as yet they had not dared to attempt actively to compa.s.s.[63] The keener among the leaders had, however, by this time, in some degree collected themselves. They had been already watching their enemies, to strike, if they could see a vulnerable point, and had masked batteries prepared to unveil. Latimer taunted them with their inefficiency: he should find, perhaps to his cost, that their arms had not wholly lost their ancient sinew. To keep clear of suspicion of favouring heresy, in their duel with the Pope and Papal idolatries, they knew to be essential to the position of the government. When taunted with breaking the unity of the Church, the Privy Council were proud of being able to point to the purity of their doctrines; and although fighting against a stream too strong for them--contending, in fact, against Providence itself--the king, Cromwell, and Cranmer struggled resolutely to maintain this phantom stronghold, which they imagined to be the key of their defences. The moving party, on the other hand, inevitably transgressed an unreal and arbitrary boundary; and through the known sensitiveness of the king on the real presence, with the defence of which he regarded himself as especially entrusted by the supremacy, the clergy hoped to recover their advantage, and in striking heresy to reach the hated vicar-general.

[Sidenote: June 23.]

The sermon was preached on the 9th of June; on the 23d the lower house of convocation indirectly replied to it, by presenting a list of complaints on the doctrines which were spreading among the people, the open blasphemy of holy things, and the tacit or avowed sanction extended by certain members of the council to the circulation of heretical books.

As an evidence of the progress in the change of opinion, this doc.u.ment is one of the most remarkable which has come down to us.[64]

[Sidenote: The lower house present a list of heresies commonly taught among the people.]

After a preface, in which the clergy professed their sincere allegiance to the crown, the renunciation, utter and complete, of the Bishop of Rome and all his usurpations and injustices, the abuses which they were going to describe had, nevertheless, they said, created great disquiet in the realm, and required immediate attention.

To the slander of this n.o.ble realm, the disquietness of the people, and damage of Christian souls, it was commonly preached, thought, and spoke, that the sacrament of the altar was lightly to be esteemed.

Lewd persons were not afraid to say, "Why should I see the sacring of the high ma.s.s? Is it anything but a piece of bread or a little pretty piece Round Robin?"

Of baptism it was said that "It was as lawful to baptize in a tub of water at home or in a ditch by the wayside as in a font of stone in the church. The water in the font was but a thing conjured."

[Sidenote: Heresy on the sacraments.]

[Sidenote: Heresy on purgatory.]

Priests, again, were thought to have no more authority to minister sacraments than laymen. Extreme unction was not a sacrament at all, and the hallowed oil "no better than the Bishop of Rome's grease and b.u.t.ter." Confession, absolution, penance, were considered neither necessary nor useful. Confession "had been invented" (here a stroke was aimed at Latimer) "to have the secret knowledge of men's hearts and to pull money out of their purses." "It were enough for men each to confess his own sins to G.o.d in public." The sinner should allow himself to be a sinner and sin no more. The priest had no concern with him. Purgatory was a delusion. The soul went straight from the body to heaven or to h.e.l.l. Dirige, commendations, ma.s.ses, suffrages, prayers, almsdeeds, oblations done for the souls departed out of the world, were vain and profitless. All sins were put away through Christ. If there were a place of purgatory, Christ was not yet born.

[Sidenote: On the intersession of saints.]

[Sidenote: On the priesthood.]

The Church was the congregation of good men, and prayer was of the same efficacy in the air as in a church or chapel. The building called the church was made to keep the people from the rain and wind, a place where they might a.s.semble to hear the Word of G.o.d. Ma.s.s and matins were but a fraud. The saints had no power to help departed souls. To pray to them, or to burn candles before their images, was mere idolatry. The saints could not be mediators. There was one Mediator, Christ. Our Lady was but a woman, "like a bag of saffron or pepper when the spice was out."[65]

It was as much available to pray to saints "as to whirl a stone against the wind." "Hallowed water, hallowed bread, hallowed candles, hallowed ashes, were but vanities. Priests were like other men, and might marry and have wives like other men."[66]

"The saying and singing of ma.s.s, matins, and evensong, was but roaring, howling, whistling, mumming, conjuring, and juggling," and "the playing of the organs a foolish vanity." It was enough for a man to believe what was written in the Gospel--Christ's blood was shed for man's redemption, let every man believe in Christ and repent of his sins. Finally, as a special charge against Cromwell, the convocation declared that these heresies were not only taught by word of mouth, but were set out in books which were printed and published _c.u.m privilegio_, under the apparent sanction of the crown.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of toleration.]

[Sidenote: Toleration a principle unknown to rulers or subjects.]