The Reign of Henry the Eighth Part 41

[667] Queen Anne Boleyn to Gardiner: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 355. Office for the Consecration of Cramp Rings: Ibid.

[668] So at least the Oxford Wizard said that Sir William Neville had told him.--Confession of the Wizard: _Rolls House MS._ But the authority is not good.

[669] Henry alone never listened seriously to the Nun of Kent.

[670] John of Transylvania, the rival of Ferdinand. His designation by the t.i.tle of king in an English state paper was a menace that, if driven to extremities, Henry would support him against the empire.

[671] Acts of Council: _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 414-15.

[672] Henry VIII. to Sir John Wallop: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 524.

[673] Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 517.

Vaughan describes Peto with Shakespearian raciness. "Peto is an ipocrite knave, as the most part of his brethren be; a wolf; a tiger clad in a sheep's skin. It is a perilous knave--a raiser of sedition--an evil reporter of the King's Highness--a prophecyer of mischief--a fellow I would wish to be in the king's hands, and to be shamefully punished. Would G.o.d I could get him by any policy--I will work what I can. Be sure he shall do nothing, nor pretend to do nothing, in these parts, that I will not find means to cause the King's Highness to know. I have laid a bait for him. He is not able to wear the clokys and cucullys that be sent him out of England, they be so many."

[674] Hacket to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 528.

[675] Ibid. p. 530.

[676] Hacket to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 531.

[677] So at least Henry supposed, if we may judge by the resolutions of the Council "for the fortification of all the frontiers of the realm, as well upon the coasts of the sea as the frontiers foreanenst Scotland." The fortresses and havens were to be "fortefyed and munited;" and money to be sent to York to be in readiness "if any business should happen."--Ibid.

vol. i. p. 411.

[678] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 19.

[679] A design which unfortunately was not put in effect. In the hurry of the time it was allowed to drop.

[680] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 14.

[681] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.

[682] At this very time Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci, who had been acting for Henry at Rome, was Bishop of Worcester. The Act by which they were deprived speaks of these two appointments as _nominations_ by the king.--25 Henry VIII. cap. 27.

[683] Wolsey held three bishoprics and one archbishopric, besides the abbey of St. Albans.

[684] Thus when Wolsey was presented, in 1514, to the See of Lincoln, Leo X. writes to his beloved son Thomas Wolsey how that in his great care for the interests of the Church, "Nos hodie Ecclesiae Lincolniensi, te in episcopum et pastorem praeficere intendimus." He then informs the Chapter of Lincoln of the appointment; and the king, in granting the temporalities, continues the fiction without seeming to recognise it:--"c.u.m dominus summus Pontifex nuper vacante Ecclesia cathedrali personam fidelis clerici nostri Thomae Wolsey, in ipsius Ecclesiae episcopum praefecerit, nos," etc.--See the Acts in RYMER, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 55-7.

[685] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The pre-existing, unrealities with respect to the election of bishops explain the unreality of the new arrangement, and divest it of the character of wanton tyranny with which it appeared _prima facie_ to press upon the Chapters. The history of this statute is curious, and perhaps explains the intentions with which it was originally pa.s.sed. It was repealed by the 2nd of the 1st of Edward VI. on the ground that the liberty of election was merely nominal, and that the Chapters ought to be relieved of responsibility when they had no power of choice. Direct nomination by the crown was subst.i.tuted for the _conge d'elire_, and remained the practice till the reaction under Mary, when the indefinite system was resumed which had existed before the Reformation. On the accession of Elizabeth, the statute of 25 Henry VIII. was again enacted.

The more complicated process of Henry was preferred to the more simple one of Edward, and we are naturally led to ask the reason of so singular a preference. I cannot but think that it was this. The Council of Regency under Edward VI. treated the Church as an inst.i.tution of the State, while Henry and Elizabeth endeavoured (under difficulties) to regard it under its more Catholic aspect of an organic body. So long as the Reformation was in progress, it was necessary to prevent the intrusion upon the bench of bishops of Romanising tendencies, and the deans and chapters were therefore protected by a strong hand from their own possible mistakes. But the form of liberty was conceded to them, not, I hope, to place deliberately a body of clergymen in a degrading position, but in the belief that at no distant time the Church might be allowed without danger to resume some degree of self-government.

[686] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21.

[687] I sent you no heavy words, but words of great comfort; willing your brother to shew you how benign and merciful the prince was; and that I thought it expedient for you to write unto his Highness, and to recognise your offence and to desire his pardon, which his Grace would not deny you how in your age and sickness.--Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27.

[688] Sir Thomas More to Cromwell: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 350.

[689] Ibid.

[690] Ibid.

[691] More to Cromwell: STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i. Appendix, p. 195.

[692] More to the King: ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 47.

[693] Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.

[694] _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.

[695] John Fisher to the Lords in Parliament: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii.

p. 289.

[696] _Lords' Journals_, p. 72.

[697] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.

[698] In a tract written by a Dr. Moryson in defence of the government, three years later, I find evidence that a distinction was made among the prisoners, and that Dr. Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. "Solus in crucem actus est Bockingus," are Moryson's words, though I feel uncertain of the nature of the punishment which he meant to designate.

"Crucifixion" was unknown to the English law; and an event so peculiar as the "crucifixion" of a monk would hardly have escaped the notice of the contemporary chroniclers. In a careful diary kept by a London merchant during these years, which is in MS. in the Library of Balliol College, Oxford, the whole party are said to have been hanged.--See, however, _Morysini Apomaxis_, printed by Berthelet, 1537.

[699] HALL, p. 814.] The inferior confederates were committed to their prisons with the exception only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh provocation the miserable old man forced himself upon his fate.[700

[700] LORD HERBERT says he was pardoned; I do not find, however, on what authority: but he was certainly not imprisoned, nor was the sentence of forfeiture enforced against him.

[701] This is the substance of the provisions, which are, of course, much abridged.

[702] _Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 82. An act was also pa.s.sed in this session "against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome." We trace it in its progress through the House of Lords. (_Lords' Journals_, Parliament of 1533-4.) It received the royal a.s.sent (ibid.), and is subsequently alluded to in the both of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the act against payment of Peter's Pence, for in the _Lords' Journals_ the two acts are separately mentioned. It received the royal a.s.sent on the 30th of March, while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the 7th of April. It contained, also, an indirect a.s.sertion that the king was Head of the English Church, according to the t.i.tle which had been given him by Convocation. (King's Proclamation: FOXE, vol. v. p. 69.) For some cause or other, the act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.

[703] See BURNET, vol. i. pp. 220-1: vol. iii p. 135; and LORD HERBERT. Du Bellay's brother, the author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the bishop's entreaty, promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send "judges to hear the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed to do"--that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome. If this is true, the sending "judges" must allude to the "sending them to Cambray," which had been proposed at Ma.r.s.eilles.

[704] See the letter of the Bishop of Bayonne, dated March 23, in LEGRAND.

A paraphrase is given by BURNET, vol. iii. p. 132.

[705] Promisistis predecessori meo quod si sententiam contra regem Angliae tulisset, Caesar illum infra quatuor menses erat invasurus, et regno expulsurus.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 579.

[706] Letter of Du Bellay in LEGRAND.

[707] Ibid.

[708] Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol.

vii. pp. 553-4.

[709] State Papers, vol. vii. p. 560, et seq.

[710] His Highness, considering the time and the malice of the emperour, cannot conveniently pa.s.s out of the realm--since he leaveth behind him another daughter and a mother, with their friends, maligning his enterprises in this behalf--who bearing no small grudge against his most entirely beloved Queen Anne, and his young daughter the princess, might perchance in his absence take occasion to excogitate and practise with their said friends matters of no small peril to his royal person, realm, and subjects.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 559.

[711] LORD HERBERT.

[712] I mentioned their execution in connection with their sentence; but it did not take place till the 20th of April, a month after their attainder: and delay of this kind was very unusual in cases of high treason. I have little doubt that their final sentence was in fact p.r.o.nounced by the pope.