History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 47

[469] Printed in Strype's _Cranmer_, Vol. II. p. 743.

[470] Philip Melancthon to Henry VIII., Foxe, Vol. V.

[471] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 265.

[472] Hall's _Chronicle_, p. 828. Hall is a good evidence on this point.

He was then a middle-aged man, resident in London, with clear eyes and a shrewd, clear head, and was relating not what others told him, but what he actually saw.

[473] In Latimer's case, against Henry's will, or without his knowledge.

Cromwell, either himself deceived or desiring to smooth the storm, told Latimer that the king advised his resignation; "which his Majesty afterwards denied, and pitied his condition."--_State Papers_, Vol. I.

p. 849.

[474] Hall.

[475] Notes of Erroneous Doctrines preached at Paul's Cross by the Vicar of Stepney: _MS. Rolls House_.

[476] Henry Dowes to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 258.

[477] Richard Cromwell to Lord Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. VII. p. 188.

[478] More's _Utopia_, Burnet's translation, p. 13.

[479] Respectable authorities, as most of my readers are doubtless aware, inform us that seventy-two thousand criminals were executed in England in the reign of Henry VIII. Historians who are accustomed to examine their materials critically, have usually learnt that no statements must be received with so much caution as those which relate to numbers. Grotius gives, in a parallel instance, the number of heretics executed under Charles V. in the Netherlands as a hundred thousand. The Prince of Orange gives them as fifty thousand. The authorities are admirable, though sufficiently inconsistent, while the judicious Mr. Prescott declares both estimates alike immeasurably beyond the truth. The entire number of victims destroyed by Alva in the same provinces by the stake, by the gallows, and by wholesale ma.s.sacre, amount, when counted carefully in detail, to twenty thousand only. The persecutions under Charles, in a serious form, were confined to the closing years of his reign. Can we believe that wholesale butcheries were pa.s.sed by comparatively unnoticed by any one at the time of their perpetration, more than doubling the atrocities which startled subsequently the whole world? Laxity of a.s.sertion in matters of number is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood. Men not remarkably inaccurate will speak of thousands, and, when cross-questioned, will rapidly reduce them to hundreds, while a single cipher inserted by a printer's mistake becomes at once a tenfold exaggeration. Popular impressions on the character of the reign of Henry VIII. have, however, prevented inquiry into any statement which reflects discredit upon this; the enormity of an accusation has pa.s.sed for an evidence of its truth. Notwithstanding that until the few last years of the king's life no felon who could read was within the grasp of the law, notwithstanding that sanctuaries ceased finally to protect murderers six years only before his death, and that felons of a lighter cast might use their shelter to the last,--even those considerable facts have created no misgiving, and learned and ignorant historians alike have repeated the story of the 72,000 with equal confidence.

I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on which it rests.

The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the _Description of Britain_ prefixed to Hollinshed's _Chronicle_. Harrison, speaking of the manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and adds, "It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop of Lexovia, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father, executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them."

I am unable to discover "the Bishop of Lexovia;" but, referring to the _Commentaries_ of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of his birth, and after it this pa.s.sage:--

"Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father, wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction with Cauda, Lampas partook of the nature of Mars; Luna in occiduo cardine was among the dependencies of Mars; and Mars himself was in the ill-starred constellation Virgo and in the quadrant of Jupiter Infelix. Moreover, he quarrelled with the Pope, owing to the position of Venus and to influences emanating from her. He was affected also by a constellation with schismatic properties, and by certain eclipses, and hence and from other causes, arose a fact related to me by the Bishop of Lexovia, namely, that two years before his death as many as seventy thousand persons were found to have perished by the hand of the executioner in that one island during his reign."

The words of some unknown foreign ecclesiastic discovered imbedded in the midst of this abominable nonsense, and transmitted through a brain capable of conceiving and throwing it into form, have been considered authority sufficient to cast a stigma over one of the most remarkable periods in English history, while the contemporary English Records, the actual reports of the judges on a.s.size, which would have disposed effectually of Cardan and his bishop, have been left unstudied in their dust.

[480] As we saw recently in the complaints of the Marquis of Exeter. But in this general sketch I am giving the result of a body of correspondence too considerable to quote.

[481] In healthier times the Pope had interfered. A bull of Innocent VIII. permitted felons repeating their crimes, or fraudulent creditors, to be taken forcibly out of sanctuary.--Wilkins's _Concilia_, Vol. III.

p. 621.

[482] The Magistrates of Frome to Sir Henry Long: _MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1, 102. Mr. Justice Fitzjames to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XI. p. 43.

[483] The letter which I quote is addressed to Cromwell as "My Lord Privy Seal," and dated July 17. Cromwell was created privy seal on the 2d of July, 1536, and Earl of Ess.e.x on the 17th of April, 1540. There is no other guide to the date.

[484] The Magistrates of Chichester to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. X.

[485] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 1.

[486] Humfrey Wingfield to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. LI.

[487] Richard Layton to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XX.

[488] _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.

[489] Correspondence of the Warden and Council of the Welsh Marches with the Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series.

[490] _MS. Rolls House_, first series, 494.

[491] At the execution, Latimer's chaplain, Doctor Tailor, preached a sermon. Among the notes of the proceedings I find a certain Miles Denison called up for disrespectful language.

"The said Miles did say: The bishop sent one yesterday for to preach at the gallows, and there stood upon the vicar's colt and made a foolish sermon of the new learning, looking over the gallows. I would the colt had winced and cast him down."--"Also during the sermon he did say, I would he were gone, and I were at my dinner."--_MS. State Paper Office._

[492] Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1, 386.

[493] The Sheriff of Hamps.h.i.+re to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, first series, Vol. IX.

[494] The traditions of severity connected with this reign are explained by these exceptional efforts of rigour. The years of licence were forgotten; the seasons recurring at long intervals, when the executions might be counted by hundreds, lived in recollection, and when three or four generations had pa.s.sed, became the measure of the whole period.

[495] "These three abbots had joined in a conspiracy to restore the Pope."--Traherne to Bullinger: _Original Letters on the Reformation_, second series, p. 316.

[496] "Yesterday I was with the Abbot of Colchester, who asked me how the Abbot of St. Osith did as touching his house; for the bruit was the king would have it. To the which I answered, that he did like an honest man, for he saith, I am the king's subject, and I and my house and all is the king's; wherefore, if it be the king's pleasure, I, as a true subject, shall obey without grudge. To the which the abbot answered, the king shall never have my house but against my will and against my heart; for I know, by my learning, he cannot take it by right and law.

Wherefore, in my conscience, I cannot be content; nor he shall never have it with my heart and will. To the which I said beware of such learning; for if ye hold such learning as ye learned in Oxenford when ye were young ye will be hanged; and ye are worthy. But I will advise you to confirm yourself as a good subject, or else you shall hinder your brethren and also yourself."--Sir John St. Clair to the Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. x.x.xVIII. The abbot did not take the advice, but ventured more dangerous language.

"The Abbot of Colchester did say that the northern men were good men and _mokell_ in the mouth, and 'great crackers' and nothing worth in their deeds." "Further, the said abbot said, at the time of the insurrection, 'I would to Christ that the rebels in the north had the Bishop of Canterbury, the lord chancellor, and the lord privy seal amongst them, and then I trust we should have a merry world again.'"--Deposition of Edmund ----: _Rolls House MS._ second series, No. 27.

But the abbot must have committed himself more deeply, or have refused to retract and make a submission; for I find words of similar purport sworn against other abbots, who suffered no punishment.

[497] _Lords Journals_, 28 Henry VIII.

[498] "The Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry appeareth neither then nor now to have known G.o.d nor his prince, nor any part of a good Christian man's religion. They be all false, feigned, flattering hypocrite knaves, as undoubtedly there is none other of that sort."--Layton to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 247.

[499] Confession of the Abbot of Barlings: _MS. Cotton. Cleopatra_, E 4.

[500] "And for as much as experience teacheth that many of the heads of such houses, notwithstanding their oaths, taken upon the holy evangelists, to present to such the King's Majesty's commissioners as have been addressed unto them, true and perfect inventories of all things belonging to their monasteries, many things have been left out, embezzled, stolen, and purloined--many rich jewels, much rich plate, great store of precious ornaments, and sundry other things of great value and estimation, to the damage of the King's Majesty, and the great peril and danger of their own souls, by reason of their wilful and detestable perjury; the said commissioners shall not only at every such house examine the head and convent substantially, of all such things so concealed or unlawfully alienated, but also shall give charge to all the ministers and servants of the same houses, and such of the neighbours dwelling near about them as they shall think meet, to detect and open all such things as they have known or heard to have been that way misused, to the intent the truth of all things may the better appear accordingly."--Instructions to the Monastic Commissioners: _MS. Tanner_, 105, _Bodleian Library_.

[501] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p.

499.

[502] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p.

619.

[503] Ibid. 621.

[504] Butler, Elliot, and Traherne to Conrad Pellican: _Original Letters_, second series, p. 624.

[505] Thomas Perry to Ralph Vane: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 140.

[506] I should have distrusted the evidence, on such a point, of excited Protestants (see _Original Letters on the Reformation_, p. 626), who could invent and exaggerate as well as their opponents; but the promise of these indulgences was certainly made, and Charles V. prohibited the publication of the brief containing it in Spain or Flanders. "The Emperor," wrote Cromwell to Henry, "hath not consented that the Pope's mandament should be published neither in Spain, neither in any other his dominions, that Englishmen should be destroyed in body, in goods, wheresoever they could be found, as the Pope would they should be."--_State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 608.

[507] _MS. Cotton._