History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 49

"Thanks immortal from the Father of Heaven unto your most prudent and honourable lords.h.i.+p, for your mercy, and pity, and great charity that your honourable lords.h.i.+p has had on your poor and true orator Henry King, that almost was in prison a whole year, rather of pure malice and false suspicion than of any just offence committed by your said orator, to be so long in prison without any mercy, pity, or succour of meat and drink, and all your said orator's goods taken from him. Moreover, whereas your said orator did of late receive a letter from your most honourable lords.h.i.+p by the hands of the Bishop of Worcester, that your said orator should receive again such goods as was wrongfully taken from your said orator of Mr. George Blunt (the committing magistrate apparently); thereon your said orator went unto the said George Blunt with your most gentle letter, to ask such poor goods as the said George Blunt did detain from your poor orator; and so with great pain and much entreating your said orator, within the s.p.a.ce of three weeks, got some part of his goods, but the other part he cannot get. Therefore, except now your most honourable lords.h.i.+p, for Jesus sake, do tender and consider with the eye of pity and mercy the long imprisonment, the extreme poverty of your said orator, your said orator is clean undone in this world. For where your said orator had money, and was full determined to send for his capacity, all is spent in prison, and more.

Therefore, in fond humility your said orator meekly, with all obedience, puts himself wholly into the hands of your honourable lords.h.i.+p, desiring you to help your orator to some succour and living now in his extreme necessity and need; the which is not only put out of his house, but also all his goods almost spent in prison, so that now the weary life of your said orator stands only in your discretion. Therefore, _exaudi preces servi tui_, and Almighty G.o.d increase your most honourable lords.h.i.+p in virtue and favour as he did merciful Joseph to his high honour Amen.

Your unfeigned and true orator _ut supra_. Beatus qui intelligit super egenum et pauperem. In die mala liberabit eum Dominus."--_MS. State Paper Office_, Vol. IX. first series.

[550] Traheron to Bullinger: _Original Letters_, p. 316; Hall, p. 837.

[551] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 431.

[552] Hall, p. 837.

[553] "The bishop was ably answered by Dr. Barnes on the following Lord's-day, with the most gratifying and all but universal applause."--Traheron to Bullinger: _Original Letters_, p. 317.

[554] Wyatt to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 240, &c.

[555] Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p.

245, &c. Henry held out a further inducement. "If the duke shall see the French king persevere in his good mind and affection towards the King's Highness, he shall yet further of himself say that his opinion is, and in his mind he thinketh undoubtedly that in such a case as that a new strait amity might now be made between the French king and the king his master, his Majesty would be content to remit unto him the one half of his debt to his Highness, the sum whereof is very great; and also the one half of the pensions for term of the said French king's life, so as it may please him to declare what honourable reciproque he could be content to offer again to his Majesty."--_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p.

251.

[556] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 318. The Queen of Navarre, who was constant to the English interests, communicated to the secretary of Sir John Wallop (the resident minister at Paris), an account of a conversation between herself and the Papal nuntio.

Ferrara had prayed her "to help and put her good hand and word that the French king might join the Emperor and his master for the wars against the Almayns and the King of England, which king was but a man lost and cast away."

"Why, M. l'Amba.s.sadeur," the queen answered, "what mean you by that? how and after what sort do you take the King of England?"--"Marry," quoth he, "for a heretic and a Lutheryan. Moreover, he doth make himself head of the Church."--"Do you say so?" quoth she. "Now I would to G.o.d that your master, the Emperor, and we here, did live after so good and G.o.dly a sort as he and his doth." The nuntio answered, "the king had pulled down the abbeys," "trusting by the help of G.o.d it should be reformed or it were long." She told him that were easier to say than to do. England had had time to prepare, and to transport an army across the Channel was a difficult affair. Ferrara said, "It could be landed in Scotland."--"The King of Scotland," she replied, "would not stir without permission from France;" and then (if her account was true) she poured out a panegyric upon the Reformation in England, and spoke out plainly on the necessity of the same thing in the Church of Rome. _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 289, &c.

[557] Hall, p. 839. The case broke down, and Sampson was afterwards restored to favour; but his escape was narrow. Sir Ralph Sadler, writing to Cromwell, said, "I declared to the King's Majesty how the Bishop of Chichester was committed to ward to the Tower, and what answer he made to such things as were laid to his charge, which in effect was a plain denial of the chief points that touched him. His Majesty said little thereto, but that he liked him and the matter much the worse because he denied it, seeing his Majesty perceived by the examinations there were witnesses enough to condemn him in that point."--_State Papers_, Vol. I.

p. 627.

[558] The Bishop of Chichester to Cromwell: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol.

II. p. 381.

[559] Another instance of Tunstall's underhand dealing had come to light. When he accepted the oath of supremacy, and agreed to the divorce of Queen Catherine, he entered a private protest in the Register Book of Durham, which was afterwards cut out by his chancellor. Christopher Chator, whose curious depositions I have more than once quoted, mentions this piece of evasion, and adds a further feature of some interest.

Relating a conversation which he had held with a man called Craye, Chator says, "We had in communication the Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More attainted of treason. Craye said to me he marvelled that they were put to death for such small trespa.s.ses; to whom I answered that their foolish conscience was so to die. Then I shewed him of one Burton, my Lord of Durham's servant, that told me he came to London when the Bishop of Rochester and Thomas More were endangered, and the said More asked Burton, 'Will not thy master come to us and be as we are?'

and he said he could not tell. Then said More, 'If he do, no force, for if he live he may do more good than to die with us.'"--_Rolls House MS._ first series.

[560] _Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII.

[561] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 1.

[562] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 2.

[563] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 3. "Many goes oft begging," "and it causeth much robbing."--Deposition of Christopher Chator. Here is a special picture of one of these vagabonds. Gregory Cromwell, writing to his father from Lewes, says, "The day of making hereof came before us a fellow called John Dancy, being apparelled in a frieze coat, a pair of black hose, with fustian slops, having also a sword, a buckler, and a dagger; being a man of such port, fas.h.i.+on, and behaviour that we at first took him only for a vagabond, until such time as he, being examined, confessed himself to have been heretofore a priest, and sometime a monk of this monastery."--_MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. VII.

[564] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 12.

[565] _Lords Journals_, 31 Henry VIII.

[566] It was so difficult to calculate at the time the amount likely to be raised by this method of taxation, or the degree in which it would press, that it is impossible at present even to guess reasonably on either of these points. In 1545, two fifteenths and tenths which were granted by parliament are described as extending to "a right small sum of money," and a five per cent. income tax was in consequence added.--37 Henry VIII. cap. 25. Aliens and clergy generally paid double, and on the present occasion the latter granted four s.h.i.+llings in the pound on their incomes, to be paid in two years, or a direct annual tax of ten per cent.--32 Henry VIII. cap. 13. But all estimates based on conjecture ought to be avoided.

[567] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 50.

[568] Ibid. cap. 57. Unprinted _Rolls House MS._

[569] "Hodie lecta est Billa attincturae Ricardi Fetherstone, etc.; et communi omnium Procerum a.s.sensu nemine discrepante expedita."--_Lords Journals_, 32 Henry VIII.

[570] Stow.

[571] The Ladies Rutland, Rochford, and Edgecombe, all being together with the queen, "they wished her Grace with child, and she answered and said she knew well she was not with child. My Lady Edgecombe said, 'How is it possible for your Grace to know that?' 'I know it well I am not,'

said she. Then said my Lady Edgecombe, 'I think your Grace is a maid still.' With that she laughed; 'How can I be a maid,' said she, 'and sleep every night with the king? When he comes to bed he kisses me, and takes me by the hand, and bids me "Good night, sweetheart;" and in the morning kisses me, and bids me "Farewell, darling." Is not this enough?'

Then said my Lady Rutland, 'Madame, there must be more than this, or it will be long or we have a Duke of York, which all this realm most desireth.' 'Nay,' said the queen, 'I am contented I know no more.'"--Deposition on the Marriage of the Lady Anne of Cleves: Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. II. p. 462.

[572] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 556.

[573] Cromwell to the King: Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 109.

[574] The Letter sent to Cromwell is printed in _State Papers_, Vol. I.

p. 628.

[575] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. II. p. 459.

[576] _MSS. State Paper Office_, second series, 52 volumes.

[577] Lady Elizabeth Burgh's letter to him will show the character of interference which he was called upon to exercise: "My very good lord, most humbly I beseech your goodness to me your poor bounden bedewoman, considering the great trouble I am put unto by my Lord Burgh, who always hath lien in wait to put me to shame and trouble, which he shall never do, G.o.d willing, you being my good and gracious lord, as I have found you merciful to me ever hitherto; and so I most humbly beseech you of your good continuance, desiring now your good lords.h.i.+p to remember me, for I am comfortless, and as yet not out of the danger of death through the great travail that I had. For I am as yet as a prisoner comfortless, only trusting to your lords.h.i.+p's goodness and to the King's Grace's most honourable council. For I hear say my Lord Burgh hath complained on me to your lords.h.i.+p and to all the n.o.ble council; and has enformed your lords.h.i.+p and them all that the child that I have borne and so dearly bought is none of his son's my husband. As for me, my very good lord, I do protest afore G.o.d, and also shall receive him to my eternal d.a.m.nation, if ever I designed for him with any creature living, but only with my husband; therefore now I most lamentably and humbly desire your lords.h.i.+p of your goodness to stay my Lord Burgh that he do not fulfil his diabolical mind to disinherit my husband's child.

"And thus am I ordered by my Lord Burgh and my husband (who dare do nothing but as his father will have him do), so that I have nothing left to help me now in my great sickness, but am fain to lay all that I have to gage, so that I have nothing left to help myself withal, and might have perished ere this time for lack of succour, but through the goodness of the gentleman and his wife which I am in house withal.

Therefore I most humbly desire your lords.h.i.+p to have pity on me, and that through your only goodness ye will cause my husband to use me like his wife, and no otherwise than I have deserved; and to send me money, and to pay such debts as I do owe by reason of my long being sick, and I shall pray for your lords.h.i.+p daily to increase in honour to your n.o.ble heart's desire. Scribbled with the hand of your bounden bedewoman, Elizabeth Burgh." _MS. State Paper Office_, first series, Vol. XIII.

I should have been glad to have added a more remarkable letter from Lady Hungerford, who was locked up by her husband in a country house for four years, and "would have died for lack of sustenance," "had not," she wrote, "the poor women of the country brought me, to my great window in the night, such poor meat and drink as they had, and gave me for the love of G.o.d." But the letter contains other details not desirable to publish.--_MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1, 397.

[578] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 349.

[579] "His Majesty remembering how men wanting the knowledge of the truth would else speak diversely of it, considering the credit he hath had about his Highness, which might also cause the wisest sort to judge amiss thereof if that his ingrat.i.tude and treason should not be fully opened unto them."--Ibid. The opening sentences of the letter (it was evidently a circular) also deserve notice: "These shall be to advertize you that when the King's Majesty hath of long season travelled, and yet most G.o.dly travaileth to establish such an order in matters of religion as neither declining on the right hand or on the left hand, G.o.d's glory might be advanced, the temerity of such as would either obscure or refuse the truth of his Word refrained, stayed, and in cases of obstinacy duly corrected and punished; so it is that the Lord Privy Seal, to whom the King's Majesty hath been so special good and gracious a lord, hath, only out of his sensual appet.i.te, wrought clean contrary to his Grace's intent, secretly and indirectly advancing the one of the extremes, and leaving the mean, indifferent, true, and virtuous way which his Majesty so entirely desired, but also hath shewed himself so fervently bent to the maintenance of that his outrage, that he hath not spared most privily, most traitorously to devise how to continue the same, and in plain terms to say," &c. Then follow the words in the text.--Ibid.

[580] Hall, p. 838.

[581] "He is committed to the Tower of London, there to remain till it shall please his Majesty to have him tried according to the order of his laws." _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 350.

[582] Act of Attainder of Thomas Lord Cromwell, 32 Henry VIII. The act is not printed in the Statute Book, but it is in very good condition on the parliament roll. Burnet has placed it among his _Collectanea_.

[583] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 500.

[584] "Most Gracious Lord, I never spoke with the chancellor of the augmentation and Throgmorton together at one time. But if I did, I am sure I never spake of any such matter, and your Grace knows what manner of man Throgmorton has ever been towards your Grace's proceedings."--Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 500.

[585] Cranmer to the King: a fragment printed by Lord Herbert.

[586] "The said Privy Seal's intent was to have married my Lady Mary, and the French king and the Cardinal du Bellay had much debated the same matter, reckoning at length by the great favour your Majesty did bear to him he should be made some earl or duke, and therefore presumed your Majesty would give to him in marriage the said Lady Mary your daughter, as beforetime you had done the French queen unto my Lord of Suffolk.

These things they gathered of such hints as they had heard of the Privy Seal, before knowing him to be fine witted, in so much as at all times when any marriage was treated of for my said Lady Mary, he did always his best to break the same."--_State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 379, and see p. 362.

[587] _State Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 362.