History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 19

[Sidenote: The "great sibyll of Worcester."]

Kings are said to find the step a short one from deposition to the scaffold. The undeified images pa.s.sed by a swift transition to the flames. The Lady of Worcester had been lately despoiled of her apparel.

"I trust," wrote Latimer to the vicegerent, that "your lords.h.i.+p will bestow our great sibyll to some good purpose--_ut pereat memoria c.u.m sonitu_--she hath been the devil's instrument to bring many, I fear, to eternal fire. She herself, with her old sister of Walsingham, her younger sister of Ipswich, with their two other sisters of Doncaster and Penrice, would make a jolly muster in Smithfield. They would not be all day in burning."[354] The hard advice was taken. The objects of the pa.s.sionate devotion of centuries were rolled in carts to London as huge dishonoured lumber; and the eyes of the citizens were gratified with a more innocent immolation than those with which the church authorities had been in the habit of indulging them.

[Sidenote: The rood of Boxley.]

[Sidenote: February. The rood is exhibited in Maidstone.]

The fate of the rood of Boxley, again, was a famous incident of the time. At Boxley, in Kent, there stood an image, the eyes of which on fit occasions "did stir like a lively thing." The body bowed, the forehead frowned. It dropped its lower lip, as if to speak.[355] The people in this particular rood, beyond all others, saw the living presence of Christ, and offerings in superabundant measure had poured in upon the monks. It happened that a rationalistic commissioner, looking closely, discovered symptoms of motion at the back of the figure.

Suspicion caused inquiry, and inquiry exposure. The mystery had a natural explanation in machinery. The abbot and the elder brethren took refuge in surprise, and knew nothing. But the fact was patent; and the unveiled fraud was of a kind which might be useful. "When I had seen this strange object," said the discoverer, "and considering that the inhabitants of the county of Kent had in times past a great devotion to the same image, and did keep continual pilgrimage thither, by the advice of others that were here with me, I did convey the said image unto Maidstone on the market day; and in the chief of the market time did shew it openly unto all the people then being present, to see the false, crafty, and subtle handling thereof, to the dishonour of G.o.d and illusion of the said people; who, I dare say, if the late monastery were to be defaced again (the King's Grace not offended), they would either pluck it down to the ground, or else burn it; for they have the said matter in wondrous detestation and hatred."[356]

[Sidenote: It performs before the court,]

[Sidenote: April. And is destroyed at Paul's Cross]

But the rood was not allowed to be forgotten after a single exhibition; the imposture was gross, and would furnish a wholesome comment on the suppression, if it was shown off in London. From Maidstone, therefore, it was taken to the palace at Whitehall, and performed before the court.[357] From the palace it was carried on to its last judgment and execution at Paul's Cross. It was placed upon a stage opposite the pulpit, and pa.s.sed through its postures, while the Bishop of Rochester lectured upon it in a sermon. When the crowd was worked into adequate indignation, the scaffold was made to give way, the image fell, and in a few moments was torn in pieces.

[Sidenote: The spirit of retribution inevitably awakened,]

Thus in all parts of England superst.i.tion was attacked in its strongholds, and destroyed there. But the indignation which was the natural recoil from credulity would not be satisfied with the destruction of images. The idol was nothing. The guilt was not with the wood and stone, but in the fraud and folly which had practised with these brute instruments against the souls of men. In Scotland and the Netherlands the work of retribution was accomplished by a rising of the people themselves in armed revolution. In England the readiness of the government spared the need of a popular explosion; the monasteries were not sacked by mobs, or the priests murdered; but the same fierceness, the same hot spirit of anger was abroad, though confined within the restraints of the law. The law itself gave effect, in harsh and sanguinary penalties, to the rage which had been kindled.

[Sidenote: And pushed into barbarous extremes.]

The punishments under the Act of Supremacy were not wholly frightful.

No governments can permit their subjects to avow an allegiance to an alien and hostile power; and the executions were occasioned, I have observed already, by the same necessity, and must be regarded with the same feelings, as the deaths of brave men in battle, who, in questions of life and death, take their side to kill others or be killed. A blind animosity now betrays itself in an act of needless cruelty, for the details of which no excuse can be pleaded by custom or precedent, which clouds the memory of the greatest of the Reformers, and can be endured only, when regarded at a distance, as an instance of the wide justice of Providence, which punishes wrong by wrong, and visits on single men the offences of thousands.

[Sidenote: Offenses of Friar Forest.]

Forest, the late Prior of the Observants Convent at Greenwich, since the dissolution of his order in consequence of the affair of the Nun of Kent, had halted between a state of concealed disaffection and pretended conformity. In his office of confessor he was found to have instructed his penitents that, for himself, "he had denied the Bishop of Rome in his outward, but not in his inward man;" and he had encouraged them, notwithstanding their oath, to persevere in their old allegiance. He had thus laid himself open to prosecution for treason; and whatever penalty was due to an avowal of being the Pope's liege-man had been doubly earned by treachery. If he had been tried and had suffered like Sir Thomas More and the monks of the Charterhouse, his sentence would have ranked with theirs. The same causes which explained the executions of honourable men would have applied with greater force to that of one who had deepened his offences by duplicity. But the crown prosecutors, for some unknown reason, bestowed upon him a distinction in suffering.

When first arrested he was terrified: he acknowledged his offences, submitted, and was pardoned. But his conscience recovered its strength: he returned to his loyalty to the Papacy; he declared his belief that, in matters spiritual, the Pope was his proper sovereign, that the Bishop of Rochester was a martyr, as Thomas a Becket had been a martyr. Becket he held up as the pattern of all churchmen's imitation, courting for himself Becket's fortunes.[358] Like others, he attempted a distinction in the nature of allegiance. "In matters secular his duty was to his prince." But, on the threshold of the exception lay the difficulty which no Catholic could evade,--what was the duty of a subject when a king was excommunicated, and declared to have forfeited his crown?

Forest, therefore, fell justly under the treason law. But, inasmuch as Catholic churchmen declared the denial of the Pope's supremacy to be heresy, so, for a few unfortunate months, English churchmen determined the denial of the king's supremacy to be heresy; Forest was to be proceeded against for an offence against spiritual truth as well as a crime against the law of the land; and Cranmer is found corresponding with Cromwell on the articles on which he was to be examined.[359] I do not know that the doc.u.ment which I am about to quote was composed for this special occasion. For the first, and happily the last time, the meaning of it was acted upon.

[Sidenote: Anglican definition of heresy, which is extended to a denial of the royal supremacy.]

[Sidenote: Forest is sentenced to death.]

In an official paper of about this date, I find "heresy" defined to be "that which is against Scripture." "To say, therefore, that Peter and his successors be heads of the universal Church, and stand stubbornly in it, is heresy, because it is against Scripture (Ecclesiastes v.); where it is written, 'Insuper universae terrae rex imperat servienti'--that is to say, the king commandeth the whole country as his subjects; and therefore it followeth that the Bishop of Rome, which is in Italy where the Emperor is king, is subject to the Emperor, and that the Emperor may command him; and if he should be head of the universal Church, then he should be head over the Emperor, and command the Emperor, and that is directly against the said text, Ecclesiastes v. Wherefore, to stand in it opiniatively is heresy."[360] In the spirit, if not in the letter of this monstrous reasoning, Forest was indicted for heresy in a court where we would gladly believe that Cranmer did not sit as president. He was found guilty, and was delivered over, in the usual form, to the secular arm.

[Sidenote: The image of Dderfel Gadern.]

An accidental coincidence contributed to the dramatic effect of his execution. In a chapel at Llan Dderfel, in North Wales, there had stood a figure of an ancient Welsh, saint, called Dderfel Gadern. The figure was a general favourite. The Welsh people "came daily in pilgrimage to him, some with kyne, some with oxen and horses, and the rest with money, insomuch" (I quote a letter of Ellis Price, the Merioneths.h.i.+re visitor) "that there were five or six hundred, to a man's estimation, that offered to the said image the fifth day of this month of April. The innocent people hath been sore allured and enticed to wors.h.i.+p, insomuch that there is a common saying amongst them that, whosoever will offer anything to the image of Dderfel Gadern, he hath power to fetch him or them that so offer, out of h.e.l.l."[361] The visitor desired to know what he should do with Dderfel Gadern, and received orders to despatch the thing at once to London. The paris.h.i.+oners offered to subscribe forty pounds to preserve their profitable possession,[362] but in vain--Cromwell was ruthless. The image was sent to the same destination with the rest of his kind; and, arriving opportunely, it was hewn into fuel to form the pile where the victim of the new heresy court was to suffer.

[Sidenote: May. Latimer is appointed to preach at Forest's execution,]

[Sidenote: Who is slung in chains over the fire,]

[Sidenote: Refuses to recant,]

[Sidenote: And is burnt.]

A day at the end of May was fixed for Forest's death. Latimer was selected to preach on the occasion; and a singular letter remains from him from which I try to gather that he accepted reluctantly the ungrateful service. "Sir," he addressed Cromwell, "if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool after my customable manner when Forest shall suffer, I would wish that my stage stood near unto Forest, for I would endeavour myself so to content the people, that therewith I might also convert Forest, G.o.d so helping, or, rather, altogether working. Wherefore, I would that he shall hear what I shall say--_si forte_. If he would yet, with his heart, return to his abjuration, I would wish his pardon. Such is my foolishness."[363] The gleam of pity, though so faint and feeble that it seemed a thing to be ashamed of, is welcome from that hard time. The preparations were made with a horrible completeness. It was the single supremacy case which fell to the conduct of ecclesiastics; and ecclesiastics of all professions, in all ages, have been fertile in ingenious cruelty. A gallows was erected over the stake, from which the wretched victim was to be suspended in a cradle of chains. When the machinery was complete, and the chips of the idol lay ready, he was brought out and placed upon a platform. The Lord Mayor, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, Lord Southampton, and Cromwell were present with a pardon, if at the last moment his courage should fail, and he would ask for it. The sermon began. It was of the usual kind--the pa.s.sionate language of pa.s.sionate conviction. When it was over, Latimer turned to Forest, and asked him whether he would live or die. "I will die" was the gallant answer. "Do your worst upon me. Seven years ago you durst not, for your life, have preached such words as these; and now, if an angel from heaven should come down and teach me any other doctrine than that which I learnt as a child, I would not believe him. Take me; cut me to pieces, joint from joint. Burn--hang--do what you will--I will be true henceforth to my faith."[364] It was enough. He was laid upon his iron bed, and slung off into the air, and the flame was kindled. In his mortal agony he clutched at the steps of the ladder, to sway himself out of the blaze; and the pitiless chronicler, who records the scene, could see only in this last weakness an evidence of guilt. "So impatiently," says Hall, "he took his death as never any man that put his trust in G.o.d."[365]

[Sidenote: The bodies of the saints.]

Still the torrent rolled onward. Monasteries and images were gone, and fancied relics, in endless numbers. There remained the peculiar treasures of the great abbeys and cathedrals--the mortal remains of the holy men in whose memories they had been founded, who by martyrs'

deaths, or lives of superhuman loftiness, had earned the veneration of later ages. The bodies of the saints had been gathered into costly shrines, which a beautiful piety had decorated with choicest offerings.

In an age which believed, without doubt or pretence, that the body of a holy man was incorporated into the body of Christ, that the seeming dust was pure as Christ's body was pure, and would form again the living home of the spirit which had gone away but for awhile, such dust was looked upon with awe and pious fear. Sacred influences were imagined to exhale from it. It was a divine thing, blessed and giving blessing. Alas! that the n.o.blest feelings can pa.s.s so swiftly into their opposites, that reverend simplicity should become the parent of a miserable superst.i.tion! The natural instinct of veneration had ossified into idolatry, and saints' bones became charms and talismans. The saints themselves became invisible under the swathings of lies. The serpent of healing had become a Nehushtan--an accursed thing, and, with the system to which it belonged, was to pa.s.s away and come no more.

[Sidenote: Circulars for the demolition of shrines.]

The sheriffs and magistrates of the various counties received circulars from the vicegerent, directing that "whereas prayers were offered at the shrines which were due to G.o.d only, that the honour which belonged to the Creator was by a notable superst.i.tion given to the creature, and ignorant people, enticed by the clergy, had fallen thereby into great error and idolatry," they were to repair severally to the cathedrals, churches, or chapels in which any such shrine might be. The relics, reliquaries, gold, silver, or jewels, which they contained, were to be taken out and sent to the king; and they were to see with their own eyes the shrine itself levelled to the ground, and the pavement cleared of it.[366] The order was fulfilled with or without reluctance. Throughout England, by the opening of the year 1539, there was nothing left to tell of the presence of the saints but the names which clung to the churches which they had built, or the shadowy memories which hung about their desecrated tombs.

Only in one instance was the demolition of a shrine marked by anything peculiar.

[Sidenote: Historical aspect of the English Reformation.]

[Sidenote: Thomas a Becket.]

[Sidenote: August 18.]

[Sidenote: The historical champion of the Church. Sept. 30.]

[Sidenote: October. His shrine at Canterbury is destroyed, and his bones are burnt;]

[Sidenote: And an official narrative is published of his conduct.]

The aim from the beginning of the movement, both of the king and the parliament, had been to represent their measures not as new things, but as a rea.s.sertion of English independence, a revival of the historical policy of the English kings. From the defeat of Henry II., on the death of Becket, to the accession of the house of Lancaster, the Plantagenet princes had fought inch by inch for the recovery of the ground which had been lost. After sleeping a century and a half, the battle had recommenced; and the crown was determined to inaugurate its victories by the disgrace and destruction of the famous champion whose spirit still seemed to linger in the field. On the 18th of August Cranmer informed the vicegerent that he suspected that the blood of St. Thomas of Canterbury shown in the cathedral was an imposture, like the blood of Hales, "a feigned thing, made of some red ochre, or such like matter."[367] He desired that there might be an investigation, and mentioned Dr. Legh and his own chaplain as persons fitted for the conduct of it. The request appears to have been granted, and the suspicion about the blood to have been confirmed.[368] The opportunity was taken to settle accounts in full with the hero of the English Church. On the 30th of September the shrine and the relics were shown, perhaps for the last time, to Madame de Montreuil and a party of French ladies.[369] In the following month the bones of the martyr who for centuries had been venerated throughout Europe, which peers and princes had crossed the seas to look upon, which tens of thousands of pilgrims year after year for all those ages had crowded to reverence, were torn from their hallowed resting-place, and burnt to powder, and scattered to the winds. The golden plating of the shrine, the emeralds and rubies, the votive offerings of the whole Christian world, were packed in chests, and despatched to the treasury. The chiselled stone was splintered with hammers. The impressions worn upon the pavement by the millions of knees[370] which had bent in adoration there, alone remained to tell of the glory which had been. Simultaneously with the destruction of his remains, Becket's name was erased out of the service-books, the innumerable church-windows in which his history was painted were broken, the day which commemorated his martyrdom was forbidden to be observed; and in explanation of so exceptional a vehemence an official narrative was published by the government of the circ.u.mstances of his end, in which he was described as a traitor to the state, who had perished in a scuffle provoked by his own violence.[371]

[Sidenote: Agitation of Catholic Christendom.]

The executions of More and Fisher had convulsed Europe; but the second shock was felt as much more deeply than the first as the glory of the saint is above the fame of the highest of living men. The impious tyrant, it now seemed, would transfer his warfare even into heaven, and dethrone the G.o.ds. The tomb of Becket was the property of Christendom rather than of England. There was scarcely a princely or a n.o.ble family on the Continent some member of which had not at one time or other gone thither on pilgrimage, whose wealth had not contributed something to the treasure which was now seized for the royal coffers. A second act had opened in the drama--a crisis fruitful in great events at home and abroad.

[Sidenote: Anxiety in England for the king's marriage.]

[Sidenote: Charles keeps up appearances till the autumn.]

The first immediate effect was on the treaty for the king's marriage.

Notwithstanding the trifling of the commissioners in April,--notwithstanding the pacification of Nice, and the omission of the king's name among the contracting parties,--Charles succeeded in persuading Wyatt that he was as anxious as ever for the completion of the entire group of the proposed connexions; and Henry, on his part, was complacently credulous. The country was impatient to see him provided with a wife who might be the mother of a Duke of York. Day after day the council remonstrated with him on the loss of precious time;[372] and however desirable in itself the imperial alliance appeared, his subjects were more anxious that he should be rapidly married somewhere, than that even for such an object there should be longer delay. But Charles continued to give fair words; and the king, although warned, as he avowed, on all sides, to put no faith in them, refused to believe that Charles would cloud his reputation with so sustained duplicity; and in August he sent Sir Thomas Wriothesley to Flanders, to obtain, if possible, some concluding answer.

[Sidenote: October.]

[Sidenote: He grows cold.]

[Sidenote: November 20.]

[Sidenote: Wriothesley reports a hostile feeling at Brussels.]