Studies from Court and Cloister Part 23

The detestation in which most Englishmen hold the names of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, is entirely owing to Foxe's calumnies.

Although Gardiner had been deprived of his see for his belief in Transubstantiation in Edward's reign, and had been sent to the Tower by a court presided over by Cranmer, it is certain that he bore the archbishop no ill-will, but even did his best to save Cranmer's life and that of the other reformers who refused to conform to the old religion which Mary had brought back. It was his duty as chancellor to enforce the law of the land, in the matter of exterminating heresy, as in all else, but he only once sat on a commission, gave Cranmer ample opportunity to escape if he had so minded, furnished Peter Martyr with funds to take him abroad, s.h.i.+elded Thomas Smith, King Edward's secretary, from persecution on account of his heretical opinions, and even allowed him a yearly pension of 100 pounds for his support.* Of Gardiner's kindness to Roger Ascham, the latter said, "Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, High Chancellor of England, treated me with the utmost humanity and favour, so that I cannot easily decide whether Paget was more ready to commend me or Winchester to protect and benefit me; there were not wanting some, who, on the ground of religion, attempted to stop the flow of his benevolence towards me, but to no purpose. I owe very much to the humanity of Winchester, and not only I, but many others also have experienced his kindness."**

* Dictionary of National Biography, article, "Stephen Gardiner."

** Epis. p. 51; Oxford ed., 1703.

One of the "many others" was John Frith, whom Gardiner did his best to save from a painful death;* and even Northumberland would have escaped had Gardiner's voice prevailed in the council. Again, Gardiner's patriotism prompted him to oppose boldly the project of the queen's marriage with Philip of Spain, seeing that it was distasteful to the bulk of the nation; yet, when he recognised that it was inevitable, he did his best to make it more popular.

* Grenville, MS. 11,990; Letters and papers, 6,600.

For some reason known doubtless to himself, but quite unknown to history, the martyrologist represents Gardiner as keenly desirous to hear that the sentence pa.s.sed on Latimer and Ridley had been carried out. He says:--

"The same day, when Bishop Ridley and Master Latimer suffered at Oxford [being about the 19 day of October], there came into the house of Stephen Gardiner the old Duke of Norfolk, with the foresaid Master Munday, his secretary, above named reporter hereof. The old aged duke, there waiting and tarrying for his dinner, the bishop being not yet disposed to dine, deferred the time to three or four o'clock at afternoon. At length about four of the clock cometh his servant, posting in all possible speed from Oxford, bringing intelligence to the bishop what he had heard and seen; of whom the said bishop, inquiring the truth of the matter, and learning by his man that fire most certainly was set unto them, cometh out rejoicing to the duke. "Now,"

saith he, "let us go to dinner." Whereupon they being set down, meat immediately was brought, and the bishop began merrily to eat. But what followed? The b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant had not eaten a few bits, but the sudden stroke of G.o.d's terrible hand fell upon him in such sort, as immediately he was taken from the table, and so brought to his bed in such intolerable anguish and torments, that . . . whereby his body being miserably inflamed within (who had inflamed so many good martyrs before) was brought to a miserable end."

Foxe relates this story at third hand, as was his wont, but it fitted in so admirably with his favourite theory in regard to the temporal judgments of G.o.d on miscreants--and Gardiner to his way of thinking was certainly a miscreant of the first rank--that he could not afford to be fastidious as to its veracity. For he must surely have known that "the old Duke of Norfolk could not have dined with Gardiner on or about the 19th October 1555, having been in his grave since August 1553; and as for "the sudden stroke of G.o.d's terrible hand," by which the Bishop of Winchester was "brought to a miserable end," the following extract from a letter of the Venetian amba.s.sador, resident in England, to the Doge and Senate, written on the 16th September 1555, gives a totally different account of the illness from which Gardiner died on the 12th November:--

"After the chancellor's return from the conference at Calais," writes the Venetian chronicler of current events, "he fell into such a state of appilation [sic] that besides having become [as the physicians say]

jaundiced, he by degrees got confirmed dropsy, and had it not been for his robust const.i.tution, a variety of remedies prescribed for him by the English physicians having been of no use, he would by this time be in a bad way, his physiognomy being so changed as to astound all who see him. The Emperor had sent him the remedy he used when first troubled with dropsical symptoms, on his return from the war of Metz, which remedy cured him, and should G.o.d grant that it take the same effect on the Bishop of Winchester, it will be very advantageous for England, he being considered one of the most consummate chancellors who have filled the post for many years, and should he die, he would leave few or none so well suited to the charge as himself."*

* Giovanni Michiel to the Doge and Senate, Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, vol. vi., part. i., 215; edited by Rawdon Brown.

On the 21st October, the queen opened Parliament in person, and Gardiner mortally ill, rose from the bed to which he had been for weeks confined, in order to introduce a Bill for the granting of much needed supplies to the Crown. Michiel, the Venetian envoy, continuing his letter says:--

"After the Ma.s.s of the Holy Ghost, sung by the Bishop of Ely, and the sermon preached by the Bishop of Lincoln, her Majesty proceeded into the great hall, where, in the presence of all those officially summoned, the Lord Chancellor, having rallied a little, choosing at anyrate to be there, in order not to fail performing his office on this occasion, made the usual proposal, stating the cause for a.s.sembling Parliament, which was in short solely for the purpose of obtaining pecuniary supply."

Mary had succeeded to a treasury rich only in debt, and her need of money to carry on the government was urgent. Gardiner made a long and effective speech, the result of which was, that Parliament at once voted a million of gold to be levied in two years from the laity, in four from the clergy. But exhausted by his effort, and so weak that he was unable to return to his own house, the dying chancellor was accommodated at Whitehall where he met his end peacefully three weeks later. He desired during his last days that the Pa.s.sion of our Lord Jesus Christ might be read to him, and when the reader came to the contrition of St. Peter, Gardiner exclaimed, "Negavi c.u.m Petro, exivi c.u.m Petro, sed nondum flevi amare c.u.m Petro!" alluding to his weakness and fall in Henry VIII's reign.*

* Wardword, 43; Lingard, History of Fn,-land, vol. v., p. 243, note, 6th ed.

The view which Foxe presents of Bonner, Bishop of London, in the administration of his office, is as distorted and malicious as his libellous picture of Gardiner. The pages of the Acts and Monuments, which describe Bonner's examination of those brought before him on charges of heresy, teem with such picturesque epithets as "this b.l.o.o.d.y wolf," the "Bishop was in a marvellous rage" or "in a great fury," but when we read what Bonner really said, we find nothing to justify these exaggerated expressions.

On one occasion, when Bonner was supposed by the martyrologist to be in such "a raging heat" that he appeared "as one clean void of humanity,"

we read on, expecting to find some brutal and heartless words whereby he crushed the meek spirit of the martyr before him. The scene was Cranmer's degradation at Oxford, with which solemn and painful act Bonner was charged; but the strongest words used by the bishop in answer to Cranmer's continued protests and recriminations were, according to Foxe himself, merely that " for his inordinate contumacy, he denied him to speak any more, saying that he had used himself very disobediently."*

* Acts and Monuments vol v., p 765; Cattley's ed.

By Foxe's own showing, when brought before the bishops, the "marytrs"

frequently twitted their judges, gave them homethrusts and "privy nips," and behaved themselves generally in a very provocative and irritating manner. It is surprising, nevertheless, to find how very seldom the examiners lost their tempers, bearing with a considerable amount of insolence in a singularly good-humoured spirit, doing their best to give the accused a chance of escape. Of the six who came under Bonner's examination on the 8th February 1555, Foxe affirms that the Bishop of London sentenced them the day after they were charged, and killed them out of hand without mercy, "such quick speed these men could make in dispatching their business at once"--a terrible indictment if there were a shadow of truth in it. But Bonner not only knew all about the six heretics long before the 8th February, three of them having been in prison for months, where he had again and again reasoned with them; but after sentence had been pa.s.sed, an interval of five weeks was the shortest respite granted to them for reflection before any one of them was executed. The others suffered consecutively on the 26th, 28th, and 29th March, the last of the six on the 10th June.

With as little regard for truth did Foxe pen the remarkable distich, which well served his purpose of villifying Bonner in the minds of his confiding and credulous readers:--

This cannibal in three years' s.p.a.ce three hundred martyrs slew, They were his food, he loved so blood, he spared none he knew."

Lingard estimates that about two hundred persons suffered for their religious opinions during the reign of Mary. The fact is no doubt an appalling one, and horrifies us with a sense of the barbarism that prevailed so recently as three and a half centuries ago in England. But when we consider the outrages of which numbers of them were guilty, the danger which they const.i.tuted to the realm, we cannot help agreeing with Cobbett when he says that "the real truth about these martyrs is that they were generally a set of most wicked wretches who sought to destroy the queen and her government, and under the pretence of conscience and superior piety, to obtain the means of again preying upon the people."*

* History of the Reformation, edited by Abbot Gasquet, p. 207.

Moreover, portentous as the numbers appear to us, they are small compared with those which represented Henry's ruthless severity after the Northern Rising, when the whole country was covered with gibbets, and with those of Elizabeth's victims who were hanged, cut down alive, drawn and quartered, for practising the religion that had been taught in England since it was a Christian country. Nor did the persecution of Catholics cease at the death of Elizabeth, and the reigns of the Stuart kings, the Commonwealth, and even the Hanoverian regime testify to the cruel insistance with which Catholic priests were hunted to death, and the Catholic laity imprisoned and impoverished for their loyalty to the oldest faith of Christendom.

Bonner had had nothing whatever to do with the revival of the statute De Heresia, but good or bad, it was the law of the land, and he could no more help sitting on the bench in his own diocese to examine offences against it, than could any other judge refuse to sit in any court over which he had jurisdiction. Of the two hundred who were condemned on this statute during Mary's reign, about one hundred and twenty were sent to Bonner's court for judgment, the city of London being the centre and hot-bed of the new, revolutionary doctrines. Thus, Foxe's a.s.sertion that "this cannibal three hundred martyrs slew," must be reduced to nearly onethird of that number. His supposed thirst for blood was also as much a lie as that other figment of the martyrologist's brain which represented both Gardiner and Bonner as having a violent personal grudge against those who were brought before them for examination. Bonner, as well as Gardiner, laboured, and not unsuccessfully in many instances, in causing heretics to recant, upon which they were restored to liberty.

A striking yet dispa.s.sionate portrait of Edmund Bonner, from the pen of the late Dr. S. R. Maitland, one of the most scholarly and painstaking historians of the last century, forms a vivid contrast to Foxe's caricature of the Bishop of London.

"Setting aside DECLAMATION, and looking at the DETAILS OF FACTS left by those who may be called, if people please, Bonner's victims and their friends, we find very consistently maintained the character of a man, straightforward and hearty, familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coa.r.s.e, naturally hot-tempered, but obviously [by the testimony of his enemies] placable and easily entreated, capable of bearing most patiently intemperate and violent language, much reviling and low abuse directed against himself personally, against his order, and against those peculiar doctrines and practices of his church, for maintaining which he had himself suffered the loss of all things, and borne long imprisonment. At the same time, not incapable of being provoked into saying harsh and pa.s.sionate things, but much more frequently meaning nothing by the threatenings and slaughter which he breathed out, than to intimidate those on whose ignorance and simplicity, argument seemed to be thrown away; in short, we can scarcely read with attention any one of the cases detailed by those who were no friends of Bonner, without seeing in him a judge who [even if we grant that he was dispensing bad laws badly] was obviously desirous to save the prisoner's life."*

* Essays on Subjects connected with the Reformation, by S. R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., sometime librarian and keeper of the MSS. at Lambeth, p. 423.

We have disposed at some length elsewhere of Foxe's shameless calumny of Sir Henry Bedingfeld, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and custodian of the Princess Elizabeth at Woodstock when she was suspected of connivance in Wyatt's rebellion. In espousing Elizabeth's cause, and in casting aspersions on one who was responsible for her safe custody, Foxe was but following his general plan of campaign, the not very subtle plan of representing all those of his own party to be saints and martyrs, the enemy deserving every abusive term that came to his facile pen. This simple method attained its object probably beyond the wildest dreams of its author. All along the ages the Protestant world has believed implicitly in the fables invented by Foxe, and even in these days of critical a.n.a.lysis, although innumerable experts have given him the lie, the effect of his calumnies remain in the deeply rooted prejudice of the nation.* Moreover, like every other succes de scandale, the book brought a rich harvest to its author. He was almost penniless when he returned to England in 1559, but the English version of his work, first published in 1563, made his fortune. The Catholics called it derisively Foxe's Golden Legend. In 1570 a second edition was printed in two volumes folio, and Convocation decreed that the book, designated by the canon as Monumenta Martyrum, should be placed in cathedral churches, and in the houses of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries. This decree, although never confirmed by parliament, was so much in accordance with the Puritan tone of the whole Church of England at that time, that even parish churches far and wide were furnished with copies of the work, chained side by side with the Bible.

In the vestry minutes of St. Michael's Church, Cornhill, of 11th January 1571-72, it is ordered "that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe, and the paraphrases [of the gospel] of Erasmus [pace Erasmus] shalbe bowght for the church and tyed with a chain to the Egle bras." A few years ago, mutilated copies of the Acts and Monuments might still be seen chained in the parish churches of Apethorpe (Northamptons.h.i.+re), Arreton (Isle of Wight), Chelsea, Eustone (Oxfords.h.i.+re), Kniver (Staffords.h.i.+re), Lussingham (Norfolk), Stratford-on-Avon, (Warwicks.h.i.+re) Waltham, St. Cuthbert (Wells);** also in that of Lutterworth and many other places. At Cheddar not very long ago was a great black-letter copy of the Acts and Monuments chained to the reading desk, and it is stated in the Life of Lord Macaulay that as a child, the sight of it used to fascinate him as he sat on Sunday afternoons in the family pew, longing to get at the bewitching pages.

* The late Dr. Littledale lecturing at Liverpool on Innovations in 1868 said: "Two mendacious partizans, the infamous Foxe and the not much more respectable Burnet have so overlaid all the history of the Reformation with falsehood, that it has been well-nigh impossible for readers to get at the facts," p. 16. And later on he refers to the Book of Martyrs as "that magazine of lying bigotry," p. 21.

** Dictionary of National Biography, article "John Foxe,"

No more potent means could have been devised for saturating the national mind with the principles of the Reformation than the diffusion of the Book of Martyrs on this gigantic scale. In a few years there was scarcely a parish church in England that did not possess a chained copy of the work. The illiterate might frequently be seen standing in a group round the lectern, while one among them better instructed than the rest read to them aloud its graphic and lying legends. Added to this, in many churches a chapter was read to the a.s.sembled congregations every Sunday evening along with the Bible, and the clergy constantly made its dubious martyrdoms the subject of their sermons. No wonder that it a.s.sumed an importance equal to that of the Scriptures themselves. One of the indictments against Archbishop Laud at his trial was the fact that he had ordered it to be removed from some churches in his diocese.*

* Dictionary of National Biography, article "John Foxe."

The secret of its charm for Puritan England did not altogether lie in its Anti-Marian character, or in the partisans.h.i.+p of its garbled facts and fict.i.tious heroisms. The simplicity of its vigorous English, the picturesque though minute circ.u.mstances which it detailed, the very boldness with which it lied, in league with the primary pa.s.sions to which it appealed, made it one of the most powerful engines in the revolution that gradually changed the face of the whole country. Its deadly work of destruction has been effectually accomplished, and it is almost useless to attempt to convince a people into whose frame and tissue its stories have been woven, that the Protestant Reformation in which they so implicitly believe is but a fairytale for the invention of which John Foxe is mainly responsible. Gairdner, in his History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century, a book of the very first importance for any serious study of the period, has again and again expressed his opinion of the worthlessness of the Acts and Monuments as history; and the Rev. John Gerard* has been at the pains of collecting the learned historian's remarks on Foxes compilation. He says:

* In his pamphlet, John Fare and his Book of Martyrs, Catholic Truth Society.

"But more damaging than any other is the criticism which Foxe receives at the hands of Mr. James Gairdner, the fullness of whose knowledge is matched only by the calm judicial manner in which he deals with the martyrologist's stories as he encounters them in his own history.

Discussing each case on its merits, and giving full weight to the evidence on either side, Mr. Gairdner finds charges of untruthfulness and dishonesty established at every turn. Foxe, he declares, ignores or misrepresents evidence that tells against him [p. 38]; he manipulates it to suit his purpose [56]; he counts as martyrs offenders of all kinds [129n]; he 'was above all things credulous' [131]; he tells stories, the falsehood of which may be gathered from his own relation [ibid]; he suppresses facts furnished by the authorities upon whom he draws [133]; he insinuates what is utterly false [135]; he evidently wishes his readers to understand what he does not venture openly to say [220-21]; he prejudices readers by irrelevant gibes [271]; he has made people believe what is untrue [333]; he was quite as prejudiced and unfair as the notorious Bishop Bale [342]; his narrative has been exposed as untrustworthy by reason of its bias, but has not even yet been subjected to complete and thorough criticism [352]. In consequence of all this, says Mr. Gairdner, Foxe has given a false colour to the history of the times, and especially to the sentiments and motives of the persecutors. ' It is quite untrue, as Foxe and his school have made the world believe, that the authorities were savage or ferocious . . .

The burning of heretics was a barbarous old-fas.h.i.+oned remedy, but it is not true that either the bishops or the government adopted it without reluctance' [349, 355]. And again, a royal commission, issued on 8th February 1557, is printed by Foxe with the t.i.tle, 'A b.l.o.o.d.y commission given forth by K. Philip and Q. Mary to persecute the poor members of Christ.' If we read the preamble, however, we find that it was provoked by the a.s.siduous propagation of a number of slanderous and seditious rumours, along with which the sowing of heresies and heretical opinions was merely a concurrent' [387]."

Nevertheless, that the influence of Foxe is not by any means extinct in our own day, is proved by the successive republications of his book during the nineteenth century. In 1836 the plea for a new edition was put forward in a letter to the editor of the Record in these astounding terms:--

"When we consider the high character of the work for accuracy of detail; its full exhibition of the Gospel in all its holy and triumphant efficacy; the bulwark it has proved to our Protestant faith; its peculiar seasonableness to meet all the fresh dangers from Popery in the present times; and its intrinsic value, as forming a sound standard of Reformation divinity, we find it an exercise of Christian charity to call the public attention to it. We might further adduce the imprimatur of our own Church, by her act of Convocation appending it to all the ecclesiastical establishments in the land, as giving to Foxe's work, an additional claim of regard."

Between the years 1836-41, therefore, a new edition was published by the Rev. S. R. Cattley, with a Life and Vindication of John Foxe, by Prebendary Townsend of Durham.

The Rev. Josiah Pratt reprinted it in 1846-49; another edition, purporting to be corrected by the Rev. Josiah Pratt, the younger, appearing in 1853. But the Life and Vindication had been so greatly discredited in the attack made upon it by Dr. S. R. Maitland, that when the Religious Tract Society published an edition of the Acts and Monuments in 1877, mainly from the stereotype plates of that of 1853, they thought it prudent to omit that part altogether, Dr. Stoughton, one of the honorary secretaries of the Society, subst.i.tuting an Introduction, a work which is, however, as much open to criticism as Townsend's.

A cheap edition had already appeared in 1868 with a preface by the Bishop of Carlisle in which his lords.h.i.+p said that:--