History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 22

The date of the expressions which were sworn against them is curious.

They belong, without exception, to the time when Reginald Pole was in Flanders. That there was nothing later was accounted for by the distrust which Geoffrey said that soon after they had begun to entertain towards him. Evidently they had seen his worthlessness; and as their enterprise had become more critical, they had grown more circ.u.mspect.

But he remembered enough to destroy them, and to save by his baseness his own miserable life.

[Sidenote: Convictions of Sir Edward Neville,]

He was himself tried, though to receive a pardon after conviction. With Sir Edward Neville and four other persons he was placed at the bar on charges of the same kind as those against Exeter and his brother.

Neville had said that he "would have a day upon the knaves that were about the king;" "that the king was a beast, and worse than a beast;"

"machinating and conspiring to extinguish the love and affection of the king's subjects." Sir Geoffrey Pole, beyond comparison the most guilty, had been in command of a company under the Duke of Norfolk at Doncaster; and was proved to have avowed an intention of deserting in the action, if an action was fought,--real, bad, black treason. Of the others, two had spoken against the supremacy; one had carried letters to the cardinal; another had said to Lord Montague, that "the king would hang in h.e.l.l for the plucking down of abbeys."

[Sidenote: And of Sir Nicholas Carew.]

[Sidenote: The scaffold on Tower Hill.]

The last case was the hardest. Sir Nicholas Carew, Master of the Horse, had been on the commission which had taken the indictments against Exeter, and had said "that he marvelled it was so secretly handled; that the like was never seen." The expression brought him under suspicion. He was found to have been intimate with Exeter; to have received letters from him of traitorous import, which he had concealed and burnt. With the rest he was brought in guilty, and received sentence as a traitor.

On the 9th of December the Marquis of Exeter, Montague, and Sir Edward Neville were beheaded on Tower Hill.[410] On the 16th the following proclamation was issued:--

[Sidenote: Lord Exeter is degraded from the order of the Garter.]

"Be it known unto all men, that whereas Henry Courtenay, late Marquis of Exeter, knight companion of the most n.o.ble order of the Garter, hath lately committed and done high treason against the king our dread sovereign lord, sovereign of the said most n.o.ble order of the Garter, compa.s.sing and imagining the destruction of his most royal person in the most traitorous and rebellious wise, contrary to his oath, duty, and allegiance, intending thereby, if he might have obtained his purpose, to have subverted the whole good order of the commonwealth of England, for the which high and most detestable treason the said Henry hath deserved to be degraded of the said most n.o.ble order, and expelled out of the same company, and is not worthy that his arms, ensigns, and hatchments should remain amongst the virtuous and approved knights of the said most n.o.ble order, nor to have any benefit thereof,--the right wise king and supreme head of the most n.o.ble order, with the whole consent and counsel of the same, wills and commands that his arms, which he nothing deserveth, be taken away and thrown down, and he be clean put from this order, and never from henceforth to be taken of any of the number thereof; so that all others by his example, from henceforth for evermore, may beware how they commit or do the like crime or fault, unto like shame or rebuke.

"G.o.d save the King.[411]

"December 16, 1538."

[Sidenote: Testimony of the event to the wisdom of the executions.]

[Sidenote: Treason has bled to death.]

Executions for high treason bear necessarily a character of cruelty, when the peril which the conspiracies create has pa.s.sed away. In the sense of our own security we lose the power of understanding the magnitude or even the meaning of the danger. But that there had been no unnecessary alarm, that these n.o.blemen were in no sense victims of tyranny, but had been cut off by a compelled severity, may be seen in the consequence of their deaths. Unjust sentences provoke indignation.

Indignation in stormy times finds the means, sooner or later, of shaping itself into punishment. But the undercurrent of disaffection, which for ten years had penetrated through English life, was now exhausted, and gradually ceased to flow. The enemy had been held down; it acknowledged its master; and, with the exception of one unimportant commotion in Yorks.h.i.+re, no symptom of this particular form of peril was again visible, until the king had received notice of departure, in his last illness, and the prospect of his death warmed the hopes of confusion into life again. The prompt extinction of domestic treason, in all likelihood, was the cause which really saved the country from a visit from the Emperor. "Laud be to G.o.d," said an Englishman, "we are all now united and knit with a firm love in our hearts towards our prince. Ye never read nor heard that ever England was overcome by outward realms, nor dare any outward prince enterprize to come hither, except they should trust of help within the realm, which I trust in G.o.d none such shall ever be found."[412] The speaker expressed the exact truth; and no one was more keenly aware of it than Charles V.

[Sidenote: Henry, on the pacification of Nice, makes advances to the Lutherans.]

[Sidenote: Lutheran divines are sent to England for a conference with the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The Landgrave of Hesse warns Henry to repress the Anabaptists.]

We must once more go back over our steps. The Emperor being on good terms with France, England, obedient to the necessity of its position, again held out its hand to Germany. No sooner had the pacification of Nice been completed, and Henry had found that he was not, after all, to be admitted as a party contrahent, than, without quarrelling with Charles, he turned his position by immediate advances to the Smalcaldic League. In the summer of 1538 Lutheran divines were invited to England to discuss the terms of their confession with the bishops; and though unsuccessful in the immediate object of finding terms of communion, they did not return without having established, as it seemed, a generally cordial relations.h.i.+p with the English Reformers. Purgatory, episcopal ordination, the marriage of the clergy, were the comparatively unimportant points of difference. On the vital doctrine of the real presence the Lutherans were as jealously sensitive as the vast majority of the English; and on the points on which they continued orthodox the Reformers, German and English, united in a bigotry almost equal to that of Rome. On the departure of the theological emba.s.sy, the Landgrave of Hesse took the opportunity of addressing a letter of warning to Henry on the progress of heresy in England, and expressing his anxiety that the king should not forget his duty in repressing and extirpating so dangerous a disorder.[413]

[Sidenote: England accused of a leaning towards heresy.]

[Sidenote: November. The Anglican Reformers think it necessary to make a demonstration of orthodoxy.]

[Sidenote: John Lambert is accused of denying the real presence.]

[Sidenote: He is condemned by the bishops, and appeals to the king.]

His advice found Cranmer and Cromwell as anxious as himself. The Catholics at home and abroad persisted more and more loudly in identifying a separation from Rome with heresy. The presence of these very Germans had given opportunity, however absurdly, for scandal; and, taken in connexion with the destruction of the shrines, was made a pretext for charging the king with a leaning towards doctrines with which he was most anxious to disavow a connexion.[414] The political clouds which were gathering abroad, added equally to the anxiety, both of the king and his ministers, to stand clear in this matter; and as Cromwell had recommended, after the Pilgrimage of Grace, that the Articles of Unity should be enforced against some offender or offenders in a signal manner--so, to give force to his principles, which had been faintly acted upon, either he, or the party to which he belonged, now chose out for prosecution a conspicuous member of the Christian brotherhood, John Lambert, who was marked with the dreadful reputation of a sacramentary. Dr. Barnes volunteered as the accuser. Barnes, it will be remembered, had been himself imprisoned for heresy, and had done penance in St. Paul's. He was a noisy, vain man, Lutheran in his views, and notorious for his hatred of more advanced Protestants. Tyndal had warned the brethren against him several years previously; but his German sympathies had recommended him to the vicegerent; he had been employed on foreign missions, and was for the time undergoing the temptation of a brief prosperity. Lambert, the intended victim, had been a friend at Cambridge of Bilney the martyr; a companion at Antwerp of Tyndal and Frith; and had perhaps taken a share in the translation of the Bible.

Subsequently, he had been in trouble for suspicion of heresy; he had been under examination before Warham, and afterwards Sir Thomas More; and having been left in prison by the latter, he had been set at liberty by Cranmer. He was now arrested on the charge preferred by Dr. Barnes, of having denied the real presence, contrary to the Articles of Faith.

He was tried in the archbishop's court; and, being condemned, he appealed to the king.

Henry decided that he would hear the cause in person. A few years before, a sacramentary was despatched with the same swift indifference as an ordinary felon: a few years later, a sacramentary had ceased to be a criminal. In the interval, the proportions of the crime had so dilated in apparent magnitude, that a trial for it was a national event--an affair of vast public moment.

[Sidenote: November 16.]

On the 16th of November, while London was ringing with the arrest of the Marquis of Exeter, the court was opened in Westminster Hall. In the grey twilight of the late dawn, the whole peerage of England, lay and spiritual, took their seats, to the right and left of the throne. The twelve judges placed themselves on raised benches at the back. The prisoner was brought in; and soon after the king entered, "clothed all in white," with the yeomen of the guard.

[Sidenote: The appeal is heard by Henry in Westminster Hall.]

The Bishop of Carlisle rose first to open the case. The king, he said, had put down the usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, but it was not to be thought, therefore, that he intended to give license to heresy. They were not met, at present, to discuss doctrines, but to try a person accused of a crime, by the laws of the Church and of the country.

Lambert was then ordered to stand forward.

"What is your name?" the king asked. "My name is Nicholson," he said, "though I be called Lambert." "What!" the king said, "have you two names? I would not trust you, having two names, though you were my brother."

The persecutions of the bishops, Lambert answered, had obliged him to disguise himself; but now G.o.d had inspired the king's mind, enduing him with wisdom and understanding to stay their cruelty.

"I come not here," said Henry, "to hear mine own praises painted out in my presence. Go to the matter without more circ.u.mstance. Answer as touching the sacrament of the altar, is it the body of Christ or no?"

"I answer with St. Augustine," the prisoner said; "it is the body of Christ after a certain manner."

"Answer me not out of St. Augustine," said the king; "tell me plainly whether it be He."

"Then I say it is not," was the answer.

"Mark well," the king replied, "you are condemned by Christ's own words--'_Hoc est corpus meum._'" He turned to Cranmer, and told him to convince the prisoner of his error.

[Sidenote: The bishops' arguments fail.]

The argument began in the morning. First Cranmer, and after him nine other bishops laboured out their learned reasons--reasons which, for fifteen hundred years, had satisfied the whole Christian world, yet had suddenly ceased to be of cogency. The torches were lighted before the last prelate had ceased to speak. Then once more the king asked Lambert for his opinion. "After all these labours taken with you, are you yet satisfied?" he said. "Choose, will you live or will you die!"

"I submit myself to the will of your Majesty," Lambert said.

"Commit your soul to G.o.d," replied Henry, "not to me."

"I commit my soul to G.o.d," he said, "and my body to your clemency."

[Sidenote: The appeal is rejected,]

"Then you must die," the king said. "I will be no patron of heretics."

It was over. The appeal was rejected. Cromwell read the sentence. Four days' interval was allowed before the execution. In a country which was governed by law, not by the special will of a despot, the supreme magistrate was neither able, nor desired, so long as a law remained unrepealed by parliament, to suspend the action of it.

[Sidenote: And Lambert dies at the stake.]

The morning on which Lambert suffered he was taken to Cromwell's house, where he breakfasted simply in the hall; and afterwards he died at Smithfield, crying with his last breath, "None but Christ--none but Christ."[415] Foxe relates, as a rumour, that Cromwell, before Lambert suffered, begged his forgiveness. A more accurate account of Cromwell's feelings is furnished by himself in a letter written a few days later to Sir Thomas Wyatt:--

[Sidenote: Nov. 28. Cromwell's opinion of the sentence.]