The Reign of Henry the Eighth Part 8

It will not be uninteresting to follow this judgment a further step, to the delivery of it into the hands of the king, where it will introduce us to a Sunday at Windsor Castle three centuries ago. We shall find present there, as a significant symptom of the time, Hugh Latimer, appointed freshly select preacher in the royal chapel, but already obnoxious to English orthodoxy, on account of his Cambridge sermons. These sermons, it had been said, contained many things good and profitable, "on sin, and G.o.dliness, and virtue," but much also which was disrespectful to established beliefs, the preacher being clearly opposed to "candles and pilgrimages," and "calling men unto the works that G.o.d commanded in his Holy Scripture, all dreams and unprofitable glosses set aside and utterly despised." The preacher had, therefore, been cited before consistory courts and interdicted by bishops, "swarms of friars and doctors flocking against Master Latimer on every side."[281] This also was to be noted about him, that he was one of the most fearless men who ever lived. Like John Knox, whom he much resembled, in whatever presence he might be, whether of poor or rich, of laymen or priests, of bishops or kings, he ever spoke out boldly from his pulpit what he thought, directly if necessary to particular persons whom he saw before him respecting their own actions. Even Henry himself he did not spare where he saw occasion for blame; and Henry, of whom it was said that he never was mistaken in a _man_--loving a _man_[282]

where he could find him with all his heart--had, notwithstanding, chosen this Latimer as one of his own chaplains.

The unwilling bearer of the Cambridge judgment was Dr. Buckmaster, the vice-chancellor, who, in a letter to a friend, describes his reception at the royal castle.

"To the right wors.h.i.+pful Dr. Edmonds, vicar of Alborne, in Wilts.h.i.+re, my duty remembered,--

"I heartily commend me unto you, and I let you understand that yesterday week, being Sunday at afternoon, I came to Windsor, and also to part of Mr.

Latimer's sermon; and after the end of the same I spake with Mr. Secretary [Cromwell], and also with Mr. Provost; and so after evensong I delivered our letters in the Chamber of Presence, all the court beholding. The king, with Mr. Secretary, did there read them; and did then give me thanks and talked with me a good while. He much lauded our wisdom and good conveyance in the matter, with the great quietness in the same. He showed me also what he had in his hands for our university, according to that which Mr.

Secretary did express unto us, and so he departed from me. But by and bye he greatly praised Mr. Latimer's sermon; and in so praising said on this wise: 'This displeaseth greatly Mr. Vice-Chancellor yonder; yon same,' said he to the Duke of Norfolk, 'is Mr. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,' and so pointed unto me. Then he spake secretly unto the said duke, which, after the king's departure, came unto me and welcomed me, saying, among other things, the king would speak with me on the next day. And here is the first act. On the next day I waited until it was dinner time; and so at the last Dr. b.u.t.ts, [king's physician,] came unto me, and brought a reward, twenty n.o.bles for me, and five marks for the junior proctor which was with me, saying that I should take that for a resolute answer, and that I might depart from the court when I would. Then came Mr. Provost, and when I had shewed him of the answer, he said I should speak with the king after dinner for all that, and so he brought me into a privy place where after dinner he would have me wait. I came thither and he both; and by one of the clock the king entered in. It was in a gallery. There were Mr. Secretary, Mr.

Provost, Mr. Latimer, Mr. Proctor, and I, and no more. The king then talked with us until six of the clock. I a.s.sure you he was scarce contented with Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, that this was not also determined, _an Papa possit dispensare_. I made the best, and confirmed the same that they had shewed his Grace before; and how it would never have been so obtained. He opened his mind, saying he would have it determined after Easter, and of the same was counselled awhile.

"Much other communication we had, which were too long here to recite. Then his Highness departed, casting a little holy water of the court; and I shortly after took my leave of Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, with whom I did not drink, nor yet was bidden, and on the morrow departed from thence, thinking more than I did say, and being glad that I was out of the court, where many men, as I did both hear and perceive, did wonder at me. And here shall be an end for this time of this fable.

"All the world almost crieth out of Cambridge for this act, and specially on me; but I must bear it as well as I may. I have lost a benefice by it, which I should have had within these ten days; for there hath one fallen in Mr. Throgmorton's[283] gift which he hath faithfully promised unto me many a time, but now his mind is turned and alienate from me. If ye go to court after Easter I pray you have me in remembrance. Mr. Latimer preacheth still,--quod aemuli ejus graviter ferunt.

"Thus fare you well. Your own to his power, WILLIAM BUCKMASTER.[284]

Cambridge, Monday after Easter, 1530."

It does not appear that Cambridge was pressed further, and we may, therefore, allow it to have acquitted itself creditably, If we sum up the results of Cranmer's measure as a whole, it may be said that opinions had been given by about half Europe directly or indirectly unfavourable to the papal claims; and that, therefore, the king had furnished himself with a legal pretext for declining the jurisdiction of the court of Rome, and appealing to a general council. Objections to the manner in which the opinions had been gained could be answered by recriminations equally just; and in the technical aspect of the question a step had certainly been gained. It will be thought, nevertheless, on wider grounds, that the measure was a mistake; that it would have been far better if the legal labyrinth had never been entered, and if the divorce had been claimed only upon those considerations of policy for which it had been first demanded, and which formed the true justification of it. Not only might a shameful chapter of scandal have been spared out of the world's history, but the point on which the battle was being fought lay beside the real issue.

Europe was shaken with intrigue, hundreds of books were written, and tens of thousands of tongues were busy for twelve months weaving logical subtleties, and all for nothing. The truth was left unspoken because it was not convenient to speak it, and all parties agreed to persuade themselves and accept one another's persuasions, that they meant something which they did not mean. Beyond doubt the theological difficulty really affected the king. We cannot read his own book[285] upon it without a conviction that his arguments were honestly urged, that his misgivings were real, and that he meant every word which he said. Yet it is clear at the same time that these misgivings would not have been satisfied, if all the wisdom of the world--pope, cardinals, councils, and all the learned faculties together--had declared against him, the true secret of the matter lying deeper, understood and appreciated by all the chief parties concerned, and by the English laity, whose interests were at stake; but in all these barren disputings ignored as if it had no existence.

It was perhaps less easy than it seems to have followed the main road. The bye ways often promise best at first entrance into them, and Henry's peculiar temper never allowed him to believe beforehand that a track which he had chosen could lead to any conclusion except that to which he had arranged that it should lead. With an intellect endlessly fertile in finding reasons to justify what he desired, he could see no justice on any side but his own, or understand that it was possible to disagree with him except from folly of ill-feeling. Starting always with a foregone conclusion, he arrived of course where he wished to arrive. His "Gla.s.se of Truth" is a very picture of his mind. "If the marshall of the host bids us do anything," he said, "shall we do it if it be against the great captain?

Again, if the great captain bid us do anything, and the king or the emperor commandeth us to do another, dost thou doubt that we must obey the commandment of the king or emperor, and contemn the commandment of the great captain? Therefore if the king or the emperor bid one thing, and G.o.d another, we must obey G.o.d, and contemn and not regard neither king nor emperor." And, therefore, he argued, "we are not to obey the pope, when the pope commands what is unlawful."[286] These were but many words to prove what the pope would not have questioned; and either they concluded nothing or the conclusion was a.s.sumed.

We cannot but think that among the many misfortunes of Henry's life his theological training was the greatest; and that directly or indirectly it was the parent of all the rest. If in this unhappy business he had trusted only to his instincts as an English statesman; if he had been contented himself with the truth, and had pressed no arguments except those which in the secrets of his heart had weight with him, he would have spared his own memory a mountain of undeserved reproach, and have spared historians their weary labour through these barren deserts of unreality.

CHAPTER IV

CHURCH AND STATE

The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had received from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a respite of two years, during which they might reconsider the complaints of the people, and consult among themselves upon the conduct which they would pursue with respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of their interval of repose in a manner little calculated to recover the esteem which they had forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's administration, the Protestants, though threatened and imprisoned, had escaped the most cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a warm-hearted and genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as his brother bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive alike to the inst.i.tutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his memory can be reproached with nothing worse than a.s.siduous but humane efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his dismissal, a far more b.l.o.o.d.y page was written in the history of the reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism, and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter, and proceed for the present with the progress of the secular changes.

Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget the alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall; and as they had shown in the unfortunate doc.u.ment which they had submitted to the king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature of that alteration, it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it upon them. Until that moment they had virtually held the supreme power in the state. The n.o.bility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into the second place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a definite policy; and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a matter of course to the only persons who for the moment were competent to hold them. The jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey had but symbolised the position of his order. But Wolsey was now gone, and the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness while they envied it, were compelled to partic.i.p.ate also in his change of fortune.

This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to fasten upon him a charge of high treason,--a charge which, vindictively pressed through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by the Commons,--had been prosecuted with greater justice for a breach of the law, in having exercised the authority of papal legate within the realm of England. His policy had broken down: he had united against him in a common exasperation all orders in the state, secular and spiritual; and the possible consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen upon him. The parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a series of statutes p.r.o.nounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the Anglican church, under penalty of a premunire; the provisions of these acts extending not only to the persons themselves who accepted office under such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever acknowledged their authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors, maintainers, and receivers."[287] The importance attached to these laws was to be seen readily in the frequent re-enactment of them, with language of increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralise the supposed right of the pope to present to English benefices, and although the office of papal legate is not especially named in any one of the prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the crown, he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to urge it.[288] The contingency of a possible violation of the law by the king himself had been expressly foreseen and provided against in the act under which he was prosecuted,[289] and being himself the king's legal adviser, it was his duty to have kept his sovereign[290] informed of the true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his immediate obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when Henry's eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to interfere to s.h.i.+eld his minister from the penalties which he had incurred, nor is it likely that in the face of the irritation of the country he could have done so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed, that the long services of Wolsey, and his generally admirable administration, might fairly save him (especially under the circ.u.mstances of the case) from extremity of punishment; and if he had been allowed to remain unmolested in the affluent retirement which was at first conceded to him, his treatment would not have caused the stain which we have now to lament on the conduct of the administration which succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that the final attack upon him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but to the hatred of Anne Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This, however, is a matter which does not concern us here, and I need not pursue it. It is enough that he had violated the law of England, openly and knowingly, and on the revival of the national policy by which that law had been enacted, he reaped the consequences in his own person.

It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of Wolsey did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised him in his capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two Houses of Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons, and indirectly to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of things was not contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and where in point of law all persons were equally guilty, in equity they were equally innocent; the circ.u.mstances of the case, therefore, rendered necessary a general pardon, which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the helplessness of their flocks.

In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity: and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons, Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.[291] The session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of disrespectfully.[292] His consent had been obtained with great difficulty, on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard with an auto da fe, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside; when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover, were solemnly burned.

From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect, it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a hundred thousand pounds--a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments spread over a period of five years.[293] The demand was serious, but the clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law; and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them, they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.

The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill, under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the council to designate the king by the famous t.i.tle which gave occasion for such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England."[294] It is not very easy to see what Henry proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to the papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces, which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;[295] or perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this t.i.tle was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it was conferred by act Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed by it from the Roman communion.

But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in requiring that the t.i.tle should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging Henry as Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham, just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.

There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges appeared in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to inform them finally that the king had determined to allow no qualifications. The clergy begged for one more day, and the following morning the bishops held a private meeting among themselves, to discuss some plan to turn aside the blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn, perhaps, if there was a chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and after an interview with the minister which could not have been encouraging, they sent two of their number, the Bishops of Exeter and Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task.

It was in vain; the miserable old men were obliged to return with the answer that the king would not see them--they had seen only the judges, who had a.s.sured them, in simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled until the supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House, and again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They attempted another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should hold a conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might, some possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would have a clear answer, "_yes_, or _no_." They might say "yes," and their pardon was ready. They might say "no"--and accept the premunire and its penalties. And now, what should the clergy have done? No very great courage was required to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is against G.o.d's will, and therefore it must not be, whether premunire come or do not come." They might have said it, and if they could have dared this little act of courage, victory was in their hands. With the cause against them so doubtful, their very att.i.tude would have commanded back the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's threats would have exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons with whom he had to deal--forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of dignity--who only by some such rough method could be brought to a knowledge of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"--I find in a state paper of the time--"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay their faults roundly and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and will lightly be reformed, for their consciences will not suffer them to resist."[296]

They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop submitted the clause containing the t.i.tle to the Upper House, with a saving paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of things did require to be supposed.[297] "Ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani," so it ran, "singularem protectorem, et unic.u.m et supremum Dominum, et quantum per legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem agnoscimus--We recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign lord, the singular protector of the church and clergy of England, and as far as is allowed by the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The words were read aloud by the archbishop, and were received in silence. "Do you a.s.sent?" he asked.

The House remained speechless. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," the archbishop said. A voice answered out of the crowd, "Then are we all silent." They separated for a few hours to collect themselves. In the afternoon sitting they discussed the sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at length agreeing that it saved their consciences, the clause was finally pa.s.sed, the Bishop of Rochester, among the rest, giving his unwilling acquiescence.

So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;[298] and this act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.

The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy, they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age, must not be pa.s.sed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he was in no need of any addition to his burdens.

Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel respect. He was weak, superst.i.tious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to compa.s.sionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.

He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by some one of her party, to remove out of the way the most influential of the English opponents of the divorce.[299] The story was possibly without foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it.

The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was easily hara.s.sed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or lance--incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered times--an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not till recent years been heard of.[300] Even revenge and pa.s.sion recognised their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of wickedness, not to be received or pa.s.sed by as a common incident, and not to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording.

The English were a stern people--a people knowing little of compa.s.sion where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful and solemn horror of evil things,--a feeling which, in proportion as it exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still contending with it; but we purchase compa.s.sion for utter wickedness only by doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.

"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., "calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred; and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed or practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to say, on the eighteenth day of February, in the twenty-second year of his most victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester, in the county of Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most wicked and d.a.m.nable disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into a vessel replenished with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the reverend father in G.o.d, John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth Marsh; with which yeast or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or gruel was forthwith made for his family there being; whereby not only the number of seventeen persons of his said family, which did eat of that porridge, were mortally infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan, gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor people which resorted to the said bishop's place, and were there charitably fed with the remains of the said porridge and other victuals; were in like wise infected; and one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand and be attainted of high treason.

"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed, requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed, deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."

The sentence was carried into effect[301] in Smithfield, "on the tenebra Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the stake,[302] for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,--the two most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which the heretic suffered was an inherited inst.i.tution descending through the usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed; a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which, rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably hurried out the penalties of it.

Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people called Egyptians;"[303] and attached to it another of a.n.a.logous import, "for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially, ill.u.s.trates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was impregnated with superst.i.tion; in a half consciousness of the impending changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies and fantastic fore-shadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving and half itself deceived, was grasping the lever of the popular excitement to work out its own ends.[304] The power which had ruled the hearts of mankind for ten centuries was shaking suddenly to its foundation. The Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or p.r.o.nounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction, the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing, foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems, indeed, to be in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however limited their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the true bearings of outward things,--an insight which puts to shame the sagacity of statesmen, and claims for the sons of G.o.d, and only for them, the wisdom even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.

Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with any form of superst.i.tion or fanaticism. Thus in England, at the time of which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by their understandings at the moment when their understandings were the most deeply needed: and they saw the realities which were round them transfigured into phantoms through the mists of their hopes and fears. The present was significant only as it seemed in labour with some gigantic issue, and the events of the outer world flew from lip to lip, taking as they pa.s.sed every shape most wild and fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided, there was no censors.h.i.+p upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the great subjects of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or with the perils of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk was of St. Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of the points in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women mourned across the village s...o...b..ards of the evil days which were come or coming; while every kind of strangest superst.i.tion, fairy stories and witch stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the general imagination.[305]

These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement, the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant, who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, pa.s.sed up and down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and the wrath of G.o.d; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing G.o.d and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor or the pope might pa.s.s unsuspected from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.[307] The tendencies to treason were still incipient--they were tendencies only, which had as yet shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the means by which it was fed.

Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed, fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland, without further punishment.[309]

Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her reputation--the celebrated Nun of Kent--whose cell at Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired.

Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world, when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we cannot observe it too accurately.

In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a country girl called Elizabeth Barton--a decent person, so far as we can learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance.

The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction for superst.i.tious persons, whether they have believed in G.o.d, or in the devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so, we continue the story.

This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.

The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very G.o.dly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312]

This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there was no other alternative, it was plain that G.o.d had visited her. Her powers were a.s.suredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.

An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage, instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he a.s.sured Father Richard that "the speeches which she had spoken came of G.o.d; and bidding him keep him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of G.o.d."

Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his mistress and the parson.[314] The story spread rapidly through the country; inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions; and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and essay what she could do, being in good advis.e.m.e.nt and remembrance."[315]

Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.

In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor.

The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.[316] At first, not knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle with the matter.[317] They submitted, however, "from the obedience which they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the belief of others, and he therefore set himself to a.s.sist her inspiration towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St.

Catherine of Sienna.[318] In these women she found an enlarged reflection of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.

As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were forwarded[319] regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries.

It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood.