History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume II Part 8

His Protestant tendencies were unknown as yet, perhaps, even to his own conscience; nor to the last could he arrive at any certain speculative convictions. He was drawn towards the Protestants as he rose into power by the integrity of his nature, which compelled him to trust only those who were honest like himself.

NOTES:

[1] The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question.

I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of Catholicism.

[2] 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of Carlisle, cap. 1-4.

[3] 35 Ed. I. cap. 1-4.

[4] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A clause in the preamble of this act bears a significantly Erastian complexion: _come seinte Eglise estoit founde en estat de prelacie deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses progenitours, et countes, barons, et n.o.bles de ce Royaulme et lours ancestres, pour eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu._ If the Church of England was held to have been founded not by the successors of the Apostles, but by the king and the n.o.bles, the claim of Henry VIII to the supremacy was precisely in the spirit of the const.i.tution.

[5] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric.

II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which s.h.i.+fts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee. I had regarded this pa.s.sage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.

[6] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on the Rolls. _Rot. Parl._ III. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.

[7] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2.

[8] See 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[9] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolis.h.i.+ng the payment of first-fruits.

[10] Lingard says, that "there were rumours that if the prelates executed the decree of the king's courts, they would be excommunicated."--Vol. III. p. 172. The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is explicit that the sentence was p.r.o.nounced.

[11] 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[12] Ibid.

[13] 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[14] Lewis, _Life of Wycliffe_.

[15] If such _scientia media_ might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in Durham.--Fuller's _Worthies_, Vol. I. p. 479.

[16] _The Last Age of the Church_ was written in 1356. See Lewis, p. 3.

[17] Leland.

[18] Lewis, p. 287.

[19] 1 Ric. II. cap. 13.

[20] Walsingham, 206-7, apud Lingard. It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy. See Milman's _History of Latin Christianity_, Vol. V. p.

508.

[21] Walsingham, p. 275, apud Lingard.

[22] 5 Ric. II. cap. 5

[23] Wilkins, _Concilia_, III. 160-167.

[24] _De Heretico comburendo._ 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.

[25] Stow, 330, 338.

[26] _Rot. Parl._ IV. 24, 108, apud Lingard; Rymer, IX. 89, 119, 129, 170, 193; Milman, Vol. V. p. 520-535.

[27] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1, cap. 7.

[28] There is no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character a.s.signed to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so a.s.signed to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though not intending Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was designing the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London public Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose that such an expression as "my old lad of the castle" should be accidental; and in the epilogue to the Second Part of _Henry the Fourth_, when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where for anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to _be the man_, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the character of the Lollard hero.

I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has examined the records which remain to throw light on the character of this remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically in his favour.

[29] Two curious letters of Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in 1431, are printed in the _Archaeologia_, Vol. XXIII. p. 339, &c. "As G.o.d knoweth," he says of them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor to man's, but would be loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay and destroy all men of thrift and wors.h.i.+p, as they proposed to have done in our father's days; and of lads and lurdains would make lords."

[30] Proceedings of an organized Society in London called the Christian Brethren, supported by voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of tracts against the doctrines of the Church: _Rolls House MS._

[31] Hale's _Precedents_. The London and Lincoln Registers, in Foxe, Vol. IV.; and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at Lambeth.

[32] Knox's _History of the Reformation in Scotland_.

[33] Also we object to you that divers times, and specially in Robert Durdant's house, of Iver Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and d.a.m.nably read in a great book of heresy, all [one] night, certain chapters of the Evangelists, in English, containing in them divers erroneous and d.a.m.nable opinions and conclusions of heresy, in the presence of divers suspected persons.--Articles objected against Richard Butler--London Register: Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 178.

[34] Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 176.

[35] Michelet, _Life of Luther_, p. 71.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid. p. 41.

[38] Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_.

[39] Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 618.

[40] The suspicious eyes of the Bishops discovered Tyndal's visit, and the result which was to be expected from it.

On Dec. 2d, 1525, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, then king's almoner, and on a mission into Spain, wrote from Bordeaux to warn Henry.

The letter is instructive:

"Please your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I pa.s.sed in this country, that an Englishman, your subject, at the solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the New Testament into English; and within few days intendeth to return with the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded.

This is the next way to fulfil your realm with Lutherians. For all Luther's perverse opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture, not well taken, ne understanded which your Grace hath opened in sundry places of your royal book. All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England, hath with all diligence forbid and eschewed publication of English Bibles, as appeareth in const.i.tutions provincial of the Church of England. Nowe, sire, as G.o.d hath endued your Grace with Christian courage to sett forth the standard against these Philistines and to vanquish them, so I doubt not but that he will a.s.sist your Grace to prosecute and perform the same--that is, to undertread them that they shall not now lift up their heads; which they endeavour by means of English Bibles. They know what hurt such books hath done in your realm in times past."--Edward Lee to Henry VIII.: Ellis, third series, Vol.

II. p. 71.

[41] Answer of the Bishops: _Rolls House MS._ See cap. 3.

[42] Answer of the Bishops, Vol. I. cap. 3.