Progress of the Reformation—The two Divorces—Entreaties to Anne Boleyn—
The Letters in the Vatican—Henry to Anne—Henry’s Second Letter—Third—
Fourth—Wolsey’s Alarm—His fruitless Proceedings—He turns—The Sweating Sickness—Henry’s Fears—New Letters to Anne—Anne falls sick; her Peace—Henry writes to her—Wolsey’s Terror—Campeggio does not arrive—All dissemble at Court While England seemed binding herself to the court of Rome, the general course of the church and of the world gave stronger presage every day of the approaching emancipation of Christendom. The respect which for so many centuries had hedged in the Roman pontiff was everywhere shaken; the Reform, already firmly established in several states of Germany and Switzerland, was extending in France, the Low Countries, and Hungary, and beginning in Sweden, Denmark, and Scotland. The South of Europe appeared indeed submissive to the Romish church; but Spain, at heart, cared little for the pontifical infallibility; and even Italy began to inquire whether the papal dominion was not an obstacle to her prosperity. England, notwithstanding appearances, was also going to throw off the yoke of the bishops of the Tiber, and many faithful voices might already be heard demanding that the word of God should be acknowledged the supreme authority in the church.
The conquest of Christian Britain by the papacy occupied all the seventh century, as we have seen. The sixteenth was the counterpart of the seventh. The struggle which England then had to sustain, in order to free herself from the power that had enslaved her during nine hundred years, was full of sudden changes; like those of the times of Augustine and Oswy. This struggle indeed took place in each of the countries where the church was reformed; but nowhere can it be traced in all its diverse phases so distinctly as in Great Britain. The positive work of the Reformation—that which consisted in recovering the truth and life so long lost—was nearly the same everywhere; but as regards the negative work—the struggle with the popedom—we might almost say that other nations committed to England the task by which they were all to profit. An unenlightened piety may perhaps look upon the relations of the court of London with the court of Rome, at the period of the Reformation, as void of interest to the faith; but history will not think the same.
It has been too often forgotten that the main point in this contest was not the divorce (which was only the occasion), but the contest itself and its important 265
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century consequences. The divorce of Henry Tudor and Catherine of Aragon is a secondary event; but the divorce of England and the popedom is a primary event, one of the great evolutions of history, a creative act (so to speak) which still exercises a normal influence over the destinies of mankind. And accordingly everything connected with it is full of instruction for us. Already a great number of pious men had attached themselves to the authority of God; but the king, and with him that part of the nation, strangers to the evangelical faith, clung to Rome, which Henry had so valiantly defended. The word of God had spiritually separated England from the papacy; the great matter separated it materially. There is a close relationship between these two divorces, which gives extreme importance to the process between Henry and Catherine. When a great revolution is to be effected in the bosom of a people (we have the Reformation particularly in view), God instructs the minority by the Holy Scriptures, and the majority by the dispensations of the divine government. Facts undertake to push forward those whom the more spiritual voice of the word leaves behind. England, profiting by this great teaching of facts, has thought it her duty ever since to avoid all contact with a power that had deceived her; she has thought that popery could not have the dominion over a people without infringing on its vitality, and that it was only by emancipating themselves from this priestly dictatorship that modern nations could advance safely in the paths of liberty, order, and greatness.
For more than a year, as Henry’s complaints testify, Anne continued deaf to his homage. The despairing king saw that he must set other springs to work, and taking Lord Rochford aside, he unfolded his plans to him. The ambitious father promised to do all in his power to influence his daughter. “The divorce is a settled thing,” he said to her; “you have no control over it. The only question is, whether it shall be you or another who shall give an heir to the crown. Bear in mind that terrible revolutions threaten England if the king has no son.” Thus did everything combine to weaken Anne’s resolution. The voice of her father, the interests of her country, the king’s love, and doubtless some secret ambition, influenced her to grasp the proffered sceptre.
These thoughts haunted her in society, in solitude, and even in her dreams. At one time she imagined herself on the throne, distributing to the people her charities and the word of God; at another, in some obscure exile, leading a useless life, in tears and ignominy. When, in the sports of her imagination, the crown of England appeared all glittering before her, she at first rejected it; but afterwards that regal ornament seemed so beautiful, and the power it conferred so enviable, that she repelled it less energetically. Anne still refused, however, to give the so ardently solicited assent.
Henry, vexed by her hesitation, wrote to her frequently, and almost always in French. As the court of Rome makes use of these letters, which are kept in the Vatican, to abuse the Reformation, we think it our duty to quote them. The theft committed 266
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century by a cardinal has preserved them for us; and we shall see that, far from supporting the calumnies that have been spread abroad, they tend, on the contrary, to refute them. We are far from approving their contents as a whole; but we cannot deny to the young lady, to whom they are addressed the possession of noble and generous sentiments.
Henry, unable to support the anguish caused by Anne’s refusal, wrote to her, as it is generally supposed, in May 1528: “By revolving in my mind the contents of your last letters, I have put myself into great agony, not knowing how to interpret them, whether to my disadvantage, as I understand some passages, or not, as I conclude from others. I beseech you earnestly to let me know your real mind as to the love between us two. It is needful for me to obtain this answer of you, having been for a whole year wounded with the dart of love, and not yet assured whether I shall succeed in finding a place in your heart and affection. This uncertainty has hindered me of late from declaring you my mistress, lest it should prove that you only entertain for me an ordinary regard. But if you please to do the duty of a true and loyal mistress, I promise you that not only the name shall be given to you, but also that I will take you for my mistress, casting off all others that are in competition with you, out of my thoughts and affection, and serving you only. I beg you to give an entire answer to this my rude letter, that I may know on what and how far I may depend. But if it does not please you to answer me in writing, let me know some place where I may have it by word of mouth, and I will go thither with all my heart. No more for fear of tiring you. Written by the hand of him who would willingly remain yours, “H. Rex.”
Such were the affectionate, and we may add (if we think of the time and the man) the respectful terms employed by Henry in writing to Anne Boleyn. The latter, without making any promises, betrayed some little affection for the king, and added to her reply an emblematical jewel, representing “a solitary damsel in a boat tossed by the tempest,” wishing thus to make the prince understand the dangers to which his love exposed her. Henry was ravished, and immediately replied:—
“For a present so valuable, that nothing could be more (considering the whole of it), I return you my most hearty thanks, not only on account of the costly diamond, and the ship in which the solitary damsel is tossed about, but chiefly for the fine interpretation, and the too humble submission which your goodness hath made to me.
Your favour I will always seek to preserve, and this is my firm intention and hope, according to the matter, aut illic aut nullibi.
“The demonstrations of your affections are such, the fine thoughts of your letter so cordially expressed, that they oblige me for ever to honour, love, and serve you 267
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century sincerely. I beseech you to continue in the same firm and constant purpose, and assuring you that, on my part, I will not only make you a suitable return, but outdo you, so great is the loyalty of the heart that desires to please you. I desire, also, that if, at any time before this, I have in any way offended you, that you would give me the same absolution that you ask, assuring you, that hereafter my heart shall be dedicated to you alone. I wish my person were so too. God can do it, if he pleases, to whom I pray once a day for that end, hoping that at length my prayers will be heard.
I wish the time may be short, but I shall think it long till we see one another. Written by the hand of that secretary, who in heart, body, and will, is “Your loyal and most faithful Servant, “H.T. Rex.”
Henry was a passionate lover, and history is not called upon to vindicate that cruel prince; but in the preceding letter we cannot discover the language of a seducer.
It is impossible to imagine the king praying to God once a day for anything but a lawful union. These daily prayers seem to present the matter in a different light from that which Romanist writers have imagined.
Henry thought himself more advanced than he really was. Anne then shrank back; embarrassed by the position she held at court, she begged for one less elevated.
The king submitted, although very vexed at first: “Nevertheless that it belongeth not to a gentleman,” he wrote to her, “to put his mistress in the situation of a servant, yet, by following your wishes, I would willingly concede it, if by that means you are less uncomfortable in the place you shall choose than in that where you have been placed by me. I thank you most cordially that you are pleased still to bear me in your remembrance. “H.T.”
Anne, having retired in May to Hever castle, her father’s residence, the king wrote to her as follows:—“My Mistress and my Friend. My heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands, and we supplicate to be commended to your good graces, and that by absence your affections may not be diminished to us. For that would be to augment our pain, which would be a great pity, since absence gives enough, and more than I ever thought could be felt. This brings to my mind a fact in astronomy, which is, that the longer the days are, the farther off is the sun, and yet the more scorching is his heat. Thus is it with our love; absence has placed distance between us, nevertheless fervour increases, at least on my part. I hope the same from you, assuring you that in my case the anguish of absence is so great that it would be intolerable were it not for the firm hope I have of your indissoluble affection towards me. In order to remind you of it, and because I cannot in person be in your presence, I send you the thing which comes nearest that is possible, that is to say, my picture, and the whole device, which you already know of, set in bracelets; wishing myself in 268
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century their place when it pleases you. This is from the hand of “Your Servant and Friend,
“H.T. Rex.”
Pressed by her father, her uncles, and by Henry, Anne’s firmness was shaken.
That crown, rejected by Renee and by Margaret, dazzled the young Englishwoman; every day she found some new charm in it; and gradually familiarizing herself with her new future, she said at last: “If the king becomes free, I shall be willing to marry him.” This was a great fault; but Henry was at the height of joy.
The courtiers watched with observant eyes these developments of the king’s affection, and were already preparing the homage which they proposed to lay at Anne Boleyn’s feet. But there was one man at court whom Henry’s resolution filled with sorrow; this was Wolsey. He had been the first to suggest to the king the idea of separating from Catherine; but if Anne is to succeed her, there must be no divorce.
He had first alienated Catherine’s party; he was now going to irritate that of the Boleyns; accordingly he began to fear that whatever might be the issue of this affair, it would cause his ruin. He took frequent walks in his park at Hampton Court, accompanied by the French ambassador, the confidant of his sorrows: “I would willingly lose one of my fingers,” he said, “if I could only have two hours’ conversation with the king of France.” At another time, fancying all England was pursuing him, he said with alarm, “The king my master and all his subjects will cry murder against me; they will fall upon me more fiercely than on a Turk, and all Christendom will rise against me!” The next day Wolsey, to gain the French ambassador, gave him a long history of what he had done for France against the wishes of all England: “I need much dexterity in my affairs,” he added, “and must use a terrible alchemy.” But alchemy could not save him. Rarely has so much anguish been veiled beneath such grandeur. Du Bellay was moved with pity at the sight of the unhappy man’s sufferings. “When he gives way,” he wrote to Montmorency, “it lasts a day together;—
he is continually sighing.—You have never seen a man in such anguish of mind.”
In truth Wolsey’s reason was tottering. That fatal idea of the divorce was the cause of all his woes, and to be able to recall it, he would have given, not a finger only, but an arm, and perhaps more. It was too late; Henry had started his car down the steep, and whoever attempted to stop it would have been crushed beneath its wheels.
However, the cardinal tried to obtain something. Francis I had intercepted a letter from Charles V in which the emperor spoke of the divorce as likely to raise the English nation in revolt. Wolsey caused this letter to be read to the king, in the hope that it would excite his serious apprehensions; but Henry only frowned, and Du Bellay, to whom the monarch ascribed the report on these troubles foreboded by Charles, received “a gentle lash.” This was the sole result of the manoeuvre.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Wolsey now resolved to broach this important subject in a straightforward manner. The step might prove his ruin; but if he succeeded he was saved and the popedom with him. Accordingly, one day (shortly before the sweating sickness broke out, says Du Bellay, probably in June 1528) Wolsey openly prayed the king to renounce his design; his own reputation, he told him, the prosperity of England, the peace of Europe, the safety of the church,—all required it; besides the pope would never grant the divorce. While the cardinal was speaking, Henry’s face grew black; and before he had concluded the king’s anger broke out. “The king used terrible words,” said Du Bellay. He would have given a thousand Wolseys for one Anne Boleyn.
“No other than God shall take her from me” was his most decided resolution.
Wolsey, now no longer doubting of his disgrace, began to take his measures accordingly. He commenced building in several places, in order to win the affections of the common people; he took great care of his bishoprics, in order that they might ensure him an easy retreat; he was affable to the courtiers; and thus covered the earth with flowers to deaden his fall. Then he would sigh as if he were disgusted with honours, and would celebrate the charms of solitude. He did more than this. Seeing plainly that the best way of recovering the king’s favour would be to conciliate Anne Boleyn, he made her the most handsome presents, and assured her that all his efforts would now be directed to raise her to the throne of England. Anne, believing these declarations, replied, that she would help him in her turn, “As long as any breath was in her body.” Even Henry had no doubt that the cardinal had profited by his lesson.
Thus were all parties restless and uneasy—Henry desiring to marry Lady Anne, the courtiers to get rid of Wolsey, and the latter to remain in power—when a serious event appeared to put everyone in harmony with his neighbour. About the middle of June, the terrible sweating sickness (sudor anglicus) broke out in England. The citizens of London, “thick as flies,” said Du Bellay, suddenly feeling pains in the head and heart, rushed from the streets or shops to their chambers, began to sweat, and took to their beds. The disease made frightful and rapid progress, a burning heat preyed on their limbs; if they chanced to uncover themselves, the perspiration ceased, delirium came on, and in four hours the victim was dead and “stiff as a wall,” says the French ambassador. Every family was in mourning. Sir Thomas More, kneeling by his daughter’s bedside, burst into tears, and called upon God to save his beloved Margaret. Wolsey, who was at Hampton Court, suspecting nothing amiss, arrived in London as usual to preside in the Court of Chancery; but he ordered his horses to be saddled again immediately and rode back. In four days, 2000 persons died in London.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century The court was at first safe from the contagion; but on the fourth day one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies was attacked; it was as if a thunderbolt had fallen on the palace. The king removed with all haste, and stayed at a place twelve miles off, for he was not prepared to die. He ordered Anne to return to her father, invited the queen to join him, and took up his residence at Waltham. His real conscience awoke only in the presence of death. Four of his attendants and a friar, Anne’s confessor, as it would appear, falling ill, the king departed for Hunsdon. He had been there two days only when Powis, Carew, Carton, and others of his court, were carried off in two or three hours. Henry had met an enemy whom he could not vanquish. He quitted the place attacked by the disease; he removed to another quarter; and when the sickness laid hold of any of his attendants in his new retreat, he again left that for a new asylum.
Terror froze his blood; he wandered about pursued by that terrible scythe whose sweep might perhaps reach him; he cut off all communication, even with his servants; shut himself up in a room at the top of an isolated tower; ate all alone, and would see no one but his physician; he prayed, fasted, confessed, became reconciled with the queen; took the sacrament every Sunday and feast-day; received his Maker, to use the words of a gentleman of his chamber; and the queen and Wolsey did the same.
Nor was that all: his councillor, Sir Brian Tuke, was sick in Essex; but that mattered not; the king ordered him to come to him, even in his litter; and on the 20th of June, Henry after hearing three masses (he had never done so much before in one day) said to Tuke: “I want you to write my will.” He was not the only one who took that precaution. “There were a hundred thousand made,” says Du Bellay.
During this time, Anne in her retirement at Hever was calm and collected; she prayed much, particularly for the king and for Wolsey. But Henry, far less submissive, was very anxious. “The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me,” he wrote to her, “disturbed and frightened me exceedingly; but now, since you have as yet felt nothing, I hope it is with you as it is with us I beg you, my entirely beloved, not to frighten yourself, or be too uneasy at our absence, for wherever I am, I am yours. And yet we must sometimes submit to our misfortunes, for whoever will struggle against fate, is generally but so much the farther from gaining his end. Wherefore, comfort yourself and take courage, and make this misfortune as easy to you as you can.”
As he received no news, Henry’s uneasiness increased; he sent to Anne a messenger and a letter: “To acquit myself of the duty of a true servant, I send you this letter, beseeching you to apprise me of your welfare, which I pray may continue as long as I desire mine own.”
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Henry’s fears were well founded; the malady became more severe; in four hours eighteen persons died at the archbishop of Canterbury’s; Anne Boleyn herself and her brother also caught the infection. The king was exceedingly agitated; Anne alone appeared calm; the strength of her character raised her above exaggerated fears; but her enemies ascribed her calmness to other motives. “Her ambition is stronger than death,” they said. “The king, queen, and cardinal tremble for their lives, but she. she would die content if she died a queen.” Henry once more changed his residence. All the gentlemen of his privy-chamber were attacked, with one exception; “he remained alone, keeping himself apart,” says Du Bellay, and confessed every day. He wrote again to Anne, sending her his physician, Dr. Butts: “The most displeasing news that could occur came to me suddenly at night. On three accounts I must lament it. One, to hear of the illness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own. I would willingly bear half of what you suffer to cure you. The second, from the fear that I shall have to endure my wearisome absence much longer, which has hitherto given me all the vexation that was possible; and when gloomy thoughts fill my mind, then I pray God to remove far from me such troublesome and rebellious ideas. The third, because my physician, in whom I have most confidence, is absent. Yet, from the want of him, I send you my second, and hope that he will soon make you well. I shall then love him more than ever. I beseech you to be guided by his advice in your illness. By your doing this, I hope soon to see you again, which will be to me a greater comfort then all the precious jewels in the world.”
The pestilence soon broke out with more violence around Henry; he fled in alarm to Hatfield, taking with him only the gentlemen of his chamber; he next quitted this place for Tittenhanger, a house belonging to Wolsey, whence he commanded general processions throughout the kingdom in order to avert this scourge of God. At the same time he wrote to Wolsey: “As soon as any one falls ill in the place where you are, fly to another; and go thus from place to place.” The poor cardinal was still more alarmed than Henry. As soon as he felt the slightest perspiration, he fancied himself a dead man. “I entreat your highness,” he wrote trembling to the king on the 5th of July, “to show yourself full of pity for my soul; these are perhaps the last words I shall address to you The whole world will see by my last testament that you have not bestowed your favour upon an ungrateful man.” The king, perceiving that Wolsey’s mind was affected, bade him “put apart fear and fantasies,” and wear a cheerful humor in the midst of death.
At last the sickness began to diminish, and immediately the desire to see Anne revived in Henry’s bosom. On the 18th of August she re-appeared at court, and all the king’s thoughts were now bent on the divorce. But this business seemed to proceed in inverse ratio to his desires. There was no news of Campeggio; was he lost in the Alps 272
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century or at sea? Did his gout detain him in some village, or was the announcement of his departure only a feint? Anne Boleyn herself was uneasy, for she attached great importance to Campeggio’s coming. If the church annulled the king’s first marriage, Anne, seeing the principal obstacle removed, thought she might accept Henry’s hand.
She therefore wrote to Wolsey: “I long to hear from you news of the legate, for I do hope (an’ they come from you) they shall be very good.” The king added in a postscript:
“The not hearing of the legate’s arrival in France causeth us somewhat to muse.
Notwithstanding we trust by your diligence and vigilancy (with the assistance of Almighty God) shortly to be eased out of that trouble.”
But still there was no news. While waiting for the long-desired ambassador, everyone at the English court played his part as well as he could. Anne, whether from conscience, prudence, or modesty, refused the honours which the king would have showered upon her, and never approached Catherine but with marks of profound respect. Wolsey had the look of desiring the divorce, while in reality he dreaded it, as fated to cause his ruin and that of the popedom. Henry strove to conceal the motives which impelled him to separate from the queen; to the bishops, he spoke of his conscience, to the nobility of an heir, and to all of the sad obligation which compelled him to put away so justly beloved a princess. In the meanwhile, he seemed to live on the best terms with her, from what Du Bellay says. But Catherine was the one who best dissembled her sentiments; she lived with the king as during their happiest days, treated Anne with every kindness, adopted an elegant costume, encouraged music and dancing in her apartments, often appeared in public, and seemed desirous of captivating by her gracious smiles the good-will of England. This was a mournful comedy, destined to end in tragedy full of tears and agony.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 2
Coverdale and Inspiration—He undertakes to translate the Scriptures—His Joy and Spiritual Songs—Tyball and the Laymen—Coverdale preaches at Bumpstead—
Revival at Colchester—Incomplete Societies and the New Testament—Persecution—
Monmouth arrested and released
While these scenes were acting in the royal palaces, far different discussions were going on among the people. After having dwelt for Sometime on the agitations of the court, we gladly return to the lowly disciples of the divine word. The Reformation of England (and this is its characteristic) brings before us by turns the king upon his throne, and the laborious artisan in his humble cottage; and between these two extremes we meet with the doctor in his college, and the priest in his pulpit.
Among the young men trained at Cambridge under Barnes’s instruction, and who had aided him at the time of his trial, was Miles Coverdale, afterwards bishop of Exeter, a man distinguished by his zeal for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometime after the prior’s fall, on Easter Eve, 1527, Coverdale and Cromwell met at the house of Sir Thomas More, when the former exhorted the Cambridge student to apply himself to the study of sacred learning. The lapse of his unhappy master had alarmed Coverdale, and he felt the necessity of withdrawing from that outward activity which had proved so fatal to Barnes. He therefore turned to the Scriptures, read them again and again, and perceived, like Tyndale, that the reformation of the church must be effected by the word of God. The inspiration of that word, the only foundation of its sovereign authority, had struck Coverdale. “Wherever the Scripture is known it reformeth all things. And why? Because it is given by the inspiration of God.” This fundamental principle of the Reformation in England must, in every age, be that of the church.
Coverdale found happiness in his studies: “Now,” he said, “I begin to taste of Holy Scriptures! Now, honour be to God! I am set to the most sweet smell of holy letters.”
He did not stop there, but thought it his duty to attempt in England the work which Tyndale was prosecuting in Germany. The Bible was so important in the eyes of these Christians, that two translations were undertaken simultaneously. “Why should other nations,” said Coverdale, “be more plenteously provided for with the Scriptures in their mother-tongue than we?”—“Beware of translating the Bible!” exclaimed the partisans of the schoolmen; “your labour will only make divisions in the faith and in the people of God.”—“God has now given his church,” replied Coverdale, “the gifts of translating and of printing; we must improve them.” And if any friends spoke of Tyndale’s translation, he answered: “Do not you know that when many are starting together, everyone doth his best to be nighest the mark?”—“But Scripture ought to 274
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century exist in Latin only,” objected the priest.—“No,” replied Coverdale again, “the Holy Ghost is as much the author of it in the Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch, and English, as in Latin. The word of God is of like authority, in what language soever the Holy Ghost speaketh it.” This does not mean that translations of Holy Scripture are inspired, but that the word of God, faithfully translated, always possesses a divine authority.
Coverdale determined therefore to translate the Bible, and, to procure the necessary books, he wrote to Cromwell, who, during his travels, had made a collection of these precious writings. “Nothing in the world I desire but books,” he wrote; “like Jacob, you have drunk of the dew of heaven I ask to drink of your waters.” Cromwell did not refuse Coverdale his treasures. “Since the Holy Ghost moves you to bear the cost of this work,” exclaimed the latter, “God gives me boldness to labour in the same.”
He commenced without delay, saying: “Whosoever believeth not the Scripture, believeth not Christ; and whoso refuseth it, refuseth God also.” Such were the foundations of the reformed church in England.
Coverdale did not undertake to translate the Scriptures as a mere literary task: the Spirit which had inspired him spoke to his heart; and tasting their life-giving promises, he expressed his happiness in pious songs:—
Be glad now, all ye christen men,
And let us rejoyce unfaynedly.
The kindnesse cannot be written with penne,
That we have receaved of God’s mercy;
Whose love towards us hath never ende:
He hath done for us as a frende;
Now let us thanke him hartely.
These lovnge wordes he spake to me:
I will delyver thy soule from payne;
I am desposed to do for thee,
And to myne owne selfe thee to retayne.
Thou shalt be with me, for thou art myne;
And I with thee, for I am thyne;
Such is my love, I cannot layne.
They will shed out my precyous bloude,
And take away my lyfe also;
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Which I wyll suffre all for thy good:
Believe this sure, where ever thou go.
For I will yet ryse up agayne;
Thy synnes I beare, though it be payne,
To make thee safe and free from wo.
Coverdale did not remain long in the solitude he desired. The study of the Bible, which had attracted him to it, soon drew him out of it. A revival was going on in Essex; John Tyball, an inhabitant of Bumpstead, having learned to find in Jesus Christ the true bread from heaven, did not stop there. One day as he was reading the first epistle to the Corinthians, these words: “eat of this bread,” and “drink of this cup,” repeated four times within a few verses, convinced him that there was no transubstantiation.
“A priest has no power to create the body of the Lord,” said he: “Christ truly is present in the Eucharist, but he is there only for him that believeth, and by a spiritual presence and action only.” Tyball, disgusted with the Romish clergy and worship, and convinced that Christians are called to a universal priesthood, soon thought that men could do without a special ministry, and without denying the offices mentioned in Scripture, as some Christians have done since, he attached no importance to them.
“Priesthood is not necessary,” he said: “every layman may administer the sacraments as well as a priest.” The minister of Bumpstead, one Richard Foxe, and next a greyfriar of Colchester named Meadow, were successively converted by Tyball’s energetic preaching.
Coverdale, who was living not far from these parts, having heard speak of this religious revival, came to Bumpstead, and went into the pulpit in the spring of 1528, to proclaim the treasures contained in Scripture. Among his hearers was an Augustine monk, named Topley, who was supplying Foxe’s place during his absence.
This monk, while staying at the parsonage, had found a copy of Wickliffe’s Wicket, which he read eagerly. His conscience was wounded by it, and all seemed to totter about him. He had gone to church full of doubt, and after divine service he waited upon the preacher, exclaiming: “O my sins, my sins!” “Confess yourself to God,” said Coverdale, “and not to a priest. God accepteth the confession which cometh from the heart, and blotteth out all your sins.” The monk believed in the forgiveness of God, and became a zealous evangelist for the surrounding country.
The divine word had hardly lighted one torch, before that kindled another. At Colchester, in the same county, a worthy man named Pykas, had received a copy of the Epistles of Saint Paul from his mother, with this advice “My son, live according to these writings, and not according to the teaching of the clergy.” Sometime after, 276
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Pykas having bought a New Testament, and “read it thoroughly many times,” a total change took place in him. “We must be baptised by the Holy Ghost,” he said, and these words passed like a breath of life over his simple-minded hearers. One day, Pykas having learned that Bilney, the first of the Cambridge doctors who had known the power of God’s word, was preaching at Ipswich, he proceeded thither, for he never refused to listen to a priest, when that priest proclaimed the truth. “O, what a sermon!
how full of the Holy Ghost!” exclaimed Pykas.
From that period meetings of the brothers in Christ (for thus they were called) increased in number. They read the New Testament, and each imparted to the others what he had received for the instruction of all. One day when the twenty-fourth CHAPTER of Matthew had been read, Pykas, who was sometimes wrong in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, remarked: “When the Lord declares that not one stone of the temple shall be left upon another, he speaks of those haughty priests who persecute those whom they call heretics, and who pretend to be the temple of God.
God will destroy them all.” After protesting against the priest, he protested against the host:
“The real body of Jesus Christ is in the Word,” he said; “God is in the Word, the Word is in God. God and the Word cannot be separated. Christ is the living Word that nourishes the soul.” These humble preachers increased. Even women knew the Epistles and Gospels by heart; Marion Matthew, Dorothy Long, Catherine Swain, Alice Gardiner, and above all, Gyrling’s wife, who had been in service with a priest lately burnt for heresy, took part in these gospel meetings. And it was not in cottages only that the glad tidings were then proclaimed; Bower Hall, the residence of the squires of Bumpstead, was open to Foxe, Topley, and Tyball, who often read the Holy Scriptures in the great hall of the mansion, in the presence of the master and all their household: a humble Reformation more real than that effected by Henry VIII.
There was, however, some diversity of opinion among these brethren. “All who have begun to believe,” said Tyball, Pykas, and others, “ought to meet together to hear the word and increase in faith. We pray in common and that constitutes a church.” Coverdale, Bilney, and Latimer willingly recognised these incomplete societies, in which the members met simply as disciples; they believed them necessary at a period when the church was forming. These societies (in the reformers views) proved that organisation has not the priority in the Christian church, as Rome maintains, and that this priority belongs to the faith and the life. But this imperfect form they also regarded as provisional. To prevent numerous dangers, it was necessary that this society should be succeeded by another, the church of the New Testament, with its elders or bishops, and deacons. The word, they thought, rendered 277
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century a ministry of the word necessary; and for its proper exercise not only piety was required, but a knowledge of the sacred languages, the gift of eloquence, its exercise and perfection. However, there was no division among these Christians upon secondary matters.
For sometime the bishop of London watched this movement with uneasiness. He caused Hacker to be arrested, who, for six years past, had gone from house to house reading the Bible in London and Essex; examined and threatened him, inquired carefully after the names of those who had shown him hospitality; and the poor man in alarm had given up about forty of his brethren. Sebastian Harris, priest of Kensington, Forman, rector of All Hallows, John and William Pykas, and many others, were summoned before the bishop. They were taken to prison; they were led before the judges; they were put in the stocks; they were tormented in a thousand ways. Their minds became confused; their thoughts wandered; and many made the confessions required by their persecutors.
The adversaries of the gospel, proud of this success, now desired a more glorious victory. If they could not reach Tyndale, had they not in London the patron of his work, Monmouth, the most influential of the merchants, and a follower of the true faith? The clergy had made religion their business, and the Reformation restored it to the people. Nothing offended the priests so much, as that laymen should claim the right to believe without their intervention, and even to propagate the faith. Sir Thomas More, one of the most amiable men of the sixteenth century, participated in their hatred. He wrote to Cochlaeus: “Germany now daily bringeth forth monsters more deadly than what Africa was wont to do; but, alas! she is not alone. Numbers of Englishmen, who would not a few years ago even hear Luther’s name mentioned, are now publishing his praises! England is now like the sea, which swells and heaves before a great storm, without any wind stirring it.” More felt particularly irritated, because the boldness of the gospellers had succeeded to the timidity of the Lollards.
“The heretics,” he said, “have put off hypocrisy, and put on impudence.” He therefore resolved to set his hand to the work.
On the 14th of May 1529, Monmouth was in his shop, when an usher came and summoned him to appear before Sir J. Dauncies, one of the privy council. The pious merchant obeyed, striving to persuade himself that he was wanted on some matter of business; but in this he was deceived, as he soon found out. “What letters and books have you lately received from abroad?” asked, with some severity, Sir Thomas More, who, with Sir William Kingston, was Sir John’s colleague. “None,” replied Monmouth.
“What aid have you given to any persons living on the continent?”—“None, for these last three years. William Tyndale abode with me six months,” he continued, “and his 278
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century life was what a good priest’s ought to be. I gave him ten pounds at the period of his departure, but nothing since. Besides, he is not the only one I have helped; the bishop of London’s chaplain, for instance, has received of me more than L50.”—“What books have you in your possession?” The merchant named the New Testament and some other works. “All these books have lain more than two years on my table, and I never heard that either priests, friars, or laymen learned any great errors from them.” More tossed his head. “It is a hard matter,” he used to say, “to put a dry stick in the fire without its burning, or to nourish a snake in our bosom and not be stung by it.—That is enough,” he continued, “we shall go and search your house.” Not a paper escaped their curiosity; but they found nothing to compromise Monmouth; he was however sent to the Tower.
After some interval the merchant was again brought before his judges. “You are accused,” said More, “of having bought Martin Luther’s tracts; of maintaining those who are translating the Scriptures into English; of subscribing to get the New Testament printed in English, with or without glosses; of having imported it into the kingdom; and, lastly, of having said that faith alone is sufficient to save a man.”
There was matter enough to burn several men. Monmouth, feeling convinced that Wolsey alone had power to deliver him, resolved to apply to him. “What will become of my poor workmen in London and in the country during my imprisonment?”
he wrote to the cardinal. “They must have their money every week; who will give it them?” Besides, I make considerable sales in foreign countries, which bring large returns to his majesty’s customs. If I remain in prison, this commerce is stopped, and of course all the proceeds for the exchequer.” Wolsey, who was as much a statesman as a churchman, began to melt; on the eve of a struggle with the pope and the emperor, he feared, besides, to make the people discontented. Monmouth was released from prison. As alderman, and then as sheriff of London, he was faithful until death, and ordered in his last will that thirty sermons should be preached by the most evangelical ministers in England, “to make known the holy word of Jesus Christ.”—
“That is better,” he thought, “than founding masses.” The Reformation showed, in the sixteenth century, that great activity in commerce might be allied to great piety.
279
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 3
Political Changes—Fresh Instructions from the Pope to Campeggio—His Delays—He unbosoms himself to Francis—A Prediction—Arrival of Campeggio—
Wolsey’s Uneasiness—Henry’s Satisfaction—The Cardinal’s Project—Campeggio’s Reception—First Interview with the Queen and with the King—Useless Efforts to make Campeggio part with the Decretal—The Nuncio’s Conscience—Public Opinion—Measures taken by the King—His Speech to the Lords and Aldermen—
Festivities—Wolsey seeks French Support—Contrariety While these persecutions were agitating the fields and the capital of England, all had changed in the ecclesiastical world, because all had changed in the political. The pope, pressed by Henry VIII and intimidated by the armies of Francis I, had granted the decretal and despatched Campeggio. But, on a sudden, there was a new evolution; a change of events brought a change of counsels. Doria had gone over to the emperor; his fleet had restored abundance to Naples; the army of Francis I, ravaged by famine and pestilence, had capitulated; and Charles V, triumphant in Italy, had said proudly to the pope: “We are determined to defend the queen of England against King Henry’s injustice.”
Charles having recovered his superiority, the affrighted pope opened his eyes to the justice of Catherine’s cause. “Send four messengers after Campeggio,” said he to his officers; “and let each take a different road; bid them travel with all speed and deliver our despatches to him.” They overtook the legate, who opened the pope’s letters. “In the first place,” said Clement VII to him, “protract your journey. In the second place, when you reach England, use every endeavour to reconcile the king and queen. In the third place, if you do not succeed, persuade the queen to take the veil.
And in the last place, if she refuses, do not pronounce any sentence favourable to the divorce without a new and express order from me. This is the essential: Summum et maximum mandatum.” The ambassador of the sovereign pontiff had a mission to do nothing. This instruction is sometimes as effective as any.
Campeggio, the youngest of the cardinals, was the most intelligent and the slowest; and this slowness caused his selection by the pope. He understood his master.
If Wolsey was Henry’s spur to urge on Campeggio, the latter was Clement’s bridle to check Wolsey. One of the judges of the divorce was about to pull forwards, the other backwards; thus the business stood a chance of not advancing at all, which was just what the pope required.
280
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century The legate, very eager to relax his speed, spent three months on his journey from Italy to England. He should have embarked for France on the 23rd of July; but the end of August was approaching, and no one knew in that country what had become of him. At length they learned that he had reached Lyons on the 22nd of August. The English ambassador in France sent him horses, carriages, plate, and money, in order to hasten his progress; the legate complained of the gout, and Gardiner found the greatest difficulty in getting him to move. Henry wrote every day to Anne Boleyn, complaining of the slow progress of the nuncio. “He arrived in Paris last Sunday or Monday,” he says at the beginning of September; “Monday next we shall hear of his arrival in Calais, and then I shall obtain what I have so longed for, to God’s pleasure and both our comforts.”
At the same time this impatient prince sent message after message to accelerate the legate’s rate of travelling. Anne began to desire a future which surpassed all that her youthful imagination had conceived, and her agitated heart expanded to the breath of hope. She wrote to Wolsey:
“This shall be to give unto your grace, as I am most bound, my humble thanks for the great pain and travail that your grace doth take in studying, by your wisdom and great diligence, how to bring to pass honourably the greatest wealth that is possible to come to any creature living; and in especial remembering how wretched and unworthy I am in comparison to his highness Now, good my lord, your discretion may consider as yet how little it is in my power to recompense you but alonely with my good will; the which I assure you, look what thing in this world I can imagine to do you pleasure in, you shall find me the gladdest woman in the world to do it.”
But the impatience of the king of England and of Anne seemed as if it would never be satisfied. Campeggio, on his way through Paris, told Francis I that the divorce would never take place, and that he should soon go to Spain to see Charles V.
This was significative. “The king of England ought to know,” said the indignant Francis to the duke of Suffolk, “that Campeggio is imperialist at heart, and that his mission in England will be a mere mockery.”
In truth, the Spanish and Roman factions tried every manoeuvre to prevent a union they detested. Anne Boleyn, queen of England, signified not only Catherine humbled, but Charles offended; the clerical party weakened, perhaps destroyed, and the evangelical party put in its place. The Romish faction found accomplices even in Anne’s own family. Her brother George’s wife, a proud and passionate woman, and a rigid Roman Catholic, had sworn an implacable hatred against her young sister. By 281
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century this means wounds might be inflicted, even in the domestic sanctuary, which would not be the less deep because they were the work of her own kindred.
One day we are told that Anne found in her chamber a book of pretended prophecies, in which was a picture representing a king, a queen shedding tears, and at their feet a young lady headless. Anne turned away her eyes with disgust. She desired, however, to know what this emblem signified, and officious friends brought to her one of those pretended wise men, so numerous at all times, who abuse the credulity of the ignorant by professing to interpret such mysteries. “This prophetic picture,” he said, “represents the history of the king and his wife.” Anne was not credulous, but she understood what her enemies meant to insinuate, and dismissed the mock interpreter without betraying any signs of fear; then turning to her favourite attendant, Anne Saville, “Come hither, Nan,” said she, “look at this book of prophecies; this is the king, this is the queen wringing her hands and mourning, and this (putting her finger on the bleeding body) is myself, with my head cut off.”—
The young lady answered with a shudder: “If I thought it were true, I would not myself have him were he an emperor.”—“Tut, Nan,” replied Anne Boleyn with a sweet smile, “I think the book a bauble, and am resolved to have him, that my issue may be royal, whatever may become of me.” This story is based on good authority, and there were so many predictions of this kind afloat that it is very possible one of them might come true; people afterwards recollected only the prophecies confirmed by the events.
But, be that as it may, this young lady, so severely chastised in after-days, found in her God an abundant consolation. At length Campeggio embarked at Calais on the 29th of September, and unfortunately for him he had an excellent passage across the Channel. A storm to drive him back to the French coast would have suited him admirably.
But on the 1st of October he was at Canterbury, whence he announced his arrival to the king. At this news, Henry forgot all the delays which had so irritated him. “His majesty can never be sufficiently grateful to your holiness for so great a favour,” wrote Wolsey to the pope; “but he will employ his riches, his kingdom, his life even, and deserve the name of Restorer of the Church as justly as he has gained that of Defender of the Faith.” This zeal alarmed Campeggio, for the pope wrote to him that any proceeding which might irritate Charles would inevitably cause the ruin of the church.
The nuncio became more dilatory than ever, and although he reached Canterbury on the 1st of October, he did not arrive at Dartford until the 5th, thus taking four days for a journey of about thirty miles.
282
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Meanwhile preparations were making to receive him in London. Wolsey, feeling contempt for the poverty of the Roman cardinals, and very uneasy about the equipage with which his colleague was likely to make his entrance into the capital, sent a number of showy chests, rich carpets, litters hung with drapery, and harnessed mules.
On the other hand Campeggio, whose secret mission was to keep in the back-ground, and above all to do nothing, feared these banners, and trappings, and all the parade of a triumphal entry. Alleging therefore an attack of gout in order to escape from the pomps his colleague had prepared for him, he quietly took a boat, and thus reached the palace of the bishop of Bath, where he was to lodge.
While the nuncio was thus proceeding unnoticed up the Thames, the equipages sent by Wolsey entered London through the midst of a gaping crowd, who looked on them with curiosity as if they had come from the banks of the Tiber. Some of the mules however took fright and ran away, the coffers fell off and burst open, when there was a general rush to see their contents; but to the surprise of all they were empty. This was an excellent jest for the citizens of London. “Fine outside, empty inside; a just emblem of the popedom, its embassy, and foolish pomps,” they said; “a sham legate, a procession of masks, and the whole a farce!”
Campeggio was come at last, and now what he dreaded most was an audience.
“I cannot move,” he said, “or endure the motion of a litter.” Never had an attack of gout been more seasonable. Wolsey, who paid him frequent visits, soon found him to be his equal in cunning. To no purpose did he treat him with every mark of respect, shaking his hand and making much of him; it was labour lost, the Roman nuncio would say nothing, and Wolsey began to despair. The king, on the contrary, was full of hope, and fancied he already had the act of divorce in his portfolio, because he had the nuncio in his kingdom.
The greatest effect of the nuncio’s arrival was the putting an end to Anne Boleyn’s indecision. She had several relapses: the trials which she foresaw, and the grief Catherine must necessarily feel, had agitated her imagination and disturbed her mind. But when she saw the church and her own enemies prepared to pronounce the king’s divorce, her doubts were removed, and she regarded as legitimate the position that was offered her. The king, who suffered from her scruples, was delighted at this change. “I desire to inform you,” he wrote to her in English, “what joy it is to me to understand of your conformableness with reason, and of the suppressing of your inutile and vain thoughts and fantasies with the bridle of reason. I assure you all the greatness of this world could not counterpoise for my satisfaction the knowledge and certainty thereof. The unfeigned sickness of this well-willing legate doth somewhat retard his access to your person.” It was therefore the determination of the pope that 283
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century made Anne Boleyn resolve to accept Henry’s hand; this is an important lesson for which we are indebted to the Vatican letters. We should be grateful to the papacy for having so carefully preserved them.
But the more Henry rejoiced, the more Wolsey despaired; he would have desired to penetrate into Clement’s thoughts, but could not succeed. Imagining that De Angelis, the general of the Spanish Observance, knew all the secrets of the pope and of the emperor, he conceived the plan of kidnapping him. “If he goes to Spain by sea,”
said he to Du Bellay, “a good brigantine or two would do the business; and if by land, it will be easier still.” Du Bellay failed not (as he informs us himself) “to tell him plainly that by such proceedings he would entirely forfeit the pope’s good will.”—
“What matter?” replied Wolsey, “I have nothing to lose.” As he said this, tears started to his eyes. At last he made up his mind to remain ignorant of the pontiff’s designs, and wiped his eyes, awaiting, not without fear, the interview between Henry and Campeggio.
On the 22nd of October, a month after his arrival, the nuncio, borne in a sedan chair of red velvet, was carried to court. He was placed on the right of the throne, and his secretary in his name delivered a high-sounding speech, saluting Henry with the name of Saviour of Rome, Liberator urbis. “His majesty,” replied Fox in the king’s name, “has only performed the duties incumbent on a Christian prince, and he hopes that the holy see will bear them in mind.”—“Well attacked, well defended,” said Du Bellay. For the moment, a few Latin declamations got the papal nuncio out of his difficulties.
Campeggio did not deceived himself: if the divorce were refused, he foresaw the reformation of England. Yet he hoped still, for he was assured that Catherine would submit to the judgment of the church; and being fully persuaded that the queen would refuse the holy father nothing, the nuncio began “his approaches,” as Du Bellay calls them. On the 27th of October, the two cardinals waited on Catherine, and in flattering terms insinuated that she might prevent the blow which threatened her by voluntary retirement into a convent. And then, to end all indecision in the queen’s mind, Campeggio put on a severe look and exclaimed: “How is it, madam, explain the mystery to us? From the moment the holy father appointed us to examine the question of your divorce, you have been seen not only at court, but in public, wearing the most magnificent ornaments, participating with an appearance of gaiety and satisfaction at amusements and festivities which you had never tolerated before. The church is in the most cruel embarrassment with regard to you; the king, your husband, is in the greatest perplexity; the princess, your daughter, is taken from you and 284
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century instead of shedding tears, you give yourself up to vanity. Renounce the world, madam; enter a nunnery. Our holy father himself requires this of you.”
The agitated queen was almost fainting; stifling her emotion, however, she said mildly but firmly: “Alas! my lords, is it now a question whether I am the king’s lawful wife or not, when I have been married to him almost twenty years and no objection raised before? Divers prelates and lords are yet alive who then adjudged our marriage good and lawful,—and now to say it is detestable! this is a great marvel to me, especially when I consider what a wise prince the king’s father was, and also the natural love and affection my father, King Ferdinand, bare unto me. I think that neither of these illustrious princes would have made me contract an illicit union.” At these words, Catherine’s emotion compelled her to stop.—“If I weep, my lords,” she continued almost immediately, “it is not for myself, it is for a person dearer to me than my life. What! I should consent to an act which deprives my daughter of a crown?
No, I will not sacrifice my child. I know what dangers threaten me. I am only a weak woman, a stranger, without learning, advisers or friends and my enemies are skillful, learned in the laws, and desirous to merit their master’s favour and more than that, even my judges are my enemies. Can I receive as such,” she said as she looked at Campeggio, “a man extorted from the pope by manifest lying? And as for you,” added she, turning haughtily to Wolsey, “having failed in attaining the tiara, you have sworn to revenge yourself on my nephew the emperor and you have kept him true promise; for of all his wars and vexations, he may only thank you. One victim was not enough for you. Forging abominable suppositions, you desire to plunge his aunt into a frightful abyss. But my cause is just, and I trust it in the Lord’s hand.”
After this bold language, the unhappy Catherine withdrew to her apartments. The imminence of the danger effected a salutary revolution in her; she laid aside her brilliant ornaments, assumed the sober garments in which she is usually represented, and passed days and nights in mourning and in tears.
Thus Campeggio saw his hopes deceived; he had thought to find a nun, and had met a queen and a mother He now proceeded to set every imaginable spring at work; as Catherine would not renounce Henry, he must try and prevail upon Henry to renounce his idea of separating from the queen. The Roman legate therefore changed his batteries, and turned them against the king.
Henry, always impatient, went one day unannounced to Campeggio’s lodging, accompanied by Wolsey only: “As we are without witnesses,” he said, taking his seat familiarly between the two cardinals, “let us speak freely of our affairs.—How shall you proceed?” But to his great astonishment and grief, the nuncio prayed him, with 285
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century all imaginable delicacy, to renounce the divorce. At these words the fiery Tudor burst out: “Is this how the pope keeps his word? He sends me an ambassador to annul my marriage, but in reality to confirm it.” He made a pause. Campeggio knew not what to say. Henry and Catherine being equally persuaded of the justice of their cause, the nuncio was in a dilemma. Wolsey himself suffered a martyrdom. The king’s anger grew fiercer; he had thought the legate would hasten to withdraw an imprudent expression, but Campeggio was dumb. “I see that you have chosen your part,” said Henry to the nuncio; “mine, you may be sure, will soon be taken also. Let the pope only persevere in this way of acting, and the apostolical see, covered with perpetual infamy, will be visited with a frightful destruction.” The lion had thrown off the lamb’s skin which he had momentarily assumed. Campeggio felt that he must appease the monarch. “Craft and delay” were his orders from Rome; and with that view the pope had provided him with the necessary arms. He hastened to produce the famous decretal which pronounced the divorce. “The holy father,” he told the king, “ardently desires that this matter should be terminated by a happy reconciliation between you and the queen; but if that is impossible, you shall judge yourself whether or not his holiness can keep his promises.”
He then read the bull, and even showed it to Henry, without permitting it, however, to leave his hands. This exhibition produced the desired effect: Henry grew calm. “Now I am at ease again,” he said; “this miraculous talisman revives all my courage. This decretal is the efficacious remedy that will restore peace to my oppressed conscience, and joy to my bruised heart. Write to his holiness, that this immense benefit binds me to him so closely, that he may expect from me more than his imagination can conceive.”
And yet a few clouds gathered shortly after in the king’s mind. Campeggio having shown the bull had hastened to lock it up again. Would he presume to keep it in his own hands? Henry and Wolsey will leave no means untried to get possession of it; that point gained, and victory is theirs. Wolsey having returned to the nuncio, he asked him for the decretal with an air of candour as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He desired, he said, to show it to the king’s privy councillors. “The pope,”
replied Campeggio, “has granted this bull, not to be used, but to be kept secret; he simply desired to show the king the good feeling by which he was animated.” Wolsey having failed, Henry tried his skill. “Have the goodness to hand me the bull which you showed me,” said he. The nuncio respectfully refused. “For a single moment,” he said.
Campeggio still refused. The haughty Tudor retired, stifling his anger. Then Wolsey made another attempt, and founded his demand on justice. “Like you, I am 286
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century delegated by his holiness to decide this affair,” he said, “and I wish to study the important document which is to regulate our proceedings.”—This was met by a new refusal. “What!” exclaimed the minister of Henry VIII, “am I not, like you, a cardinal?
like you, a judge? your colleague?” It mattered not, the nuncio would not, by any means, let the decretal go. Clement was not deceived in the choice he had made of Campeggio; the ambassador was worthy of his master.
It was evident that the pope in granting the bull had been acting a part: this trick revolted the king. It was no longer anger that he felt, but disgust. Wolsey knew that Henry’s contempt was more to be feared than his wrath. He grew alarmed, and paid the nuncio another visit. “The general commission,” he said, “is insufficient, the decretal commission alone can be of service, and you do not permit us to read a word of it. The king and I place the greatest confidence in the good intentions of his holiness, and yet we find our expectations frustrated. Where is that paternal affection with which we had flattered ourselves? What prince has ever been trifled with as the king of England is now? If this is the way in which the Defender of the Faith is rewarded, Christendom will know what those who serve Rome will have to expect from her, and every power will withdraw its support. Do not deceive yourselves: the foundation on which the holy see is placed is so very insecure that the least movement will suffice to precipitate it into everlasting ruin. What a sad futurity! what inexpressible torture!
whether I wake or sleep, gloomy thoughts continually pursue me like a frightful nightmare.” This time Wolsey spoke the truth.
But all his eloquence was useless; Campeggio refused to give up the so much desired bull. When sending him, Rome had told him: “Above all, do not succeed!” This means having failed, there remained for Wolsey one other way of effecting the divorce.
“Well, then,” he said to Campeggio, “let us pronounce it ourselves.”—“Far be it from us,” replied the nuncio; “the anger of the emperor will be so great, that the peace of Europe will be broken for ever.”—“I know how to arrange all that,” replied the English cardinal, “in political matters you may trust to me.” The nuncio then took another tone, and proudly wrapping himself up in his morality, he said: “I shall follow the voice of my conscience; if I see that the divorce is possible, I shall leap the ditch; if otherwise, I shall not.”—“Your conscience! that may be easily satisfied,” rejoined Wolsey. “Holy Scripture forbids a man to marry his brother’s widow; now no pope can grant what is forbidden by the law of God.”—“The Lord preserve us from such a principle,” exclaimed the Roman prelate; “the power of the pope is unlimited.”—
The nuncio had hardly put his conscience forward before it stumbled; it bound him to Rome and not to heaven. But for that matter, neither public opinion nor Campeggio’s own friends had any great idea of his morality; they thought that to 287
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century make him leap the ditch, it was only requisite to know the price at which he might be bought. The bishop of Bayonne wrote to Montmorency: “Put at the close of a letter which I can show Campeggio something promissory, that he shall have benefices That will cost you nothing, and may serve in this matter of the marriage; for I know that he is longing for something of the sort.”—“What is to be done then,” said Wolsey at last, astonished at meeting with a resistance to which he was unaccustomed. “I shall inform the pope of what I have seen and heard,” replied Campeggio, “and I shall wait for his instructions.” Henry was forced to consent to this new course, for the nuncio hinted, that if it were opposed he would go in person to Rome to ask the pontiff’s orders, and he never would have returned. By this means several months were gained.
During this time men’s minds were troubled. The prospect of a divorce between the king and queen had stirred the nation; and the majority, particularly among the women, declared against the king.
“Whatever may be done,” the people said boldly, “whoever marries the Princess Mary will be king of England.” Wolsey’s spies informed him that Catherine and Charles V had many devoted partisans even at the court. He wished to make sure of this. “It is pretended,” he said one day in an indifferent tone, “that the emperor has boasted that he will get the king driven from his realm, and that by his majesty’s own subjects What do you think of it, my lords?”—“Tough against the spur,” says Du Bellay, the lords remained silent. At length, however, one of them more imprudent than the rest, exclaimed: “Such a boast will make the emperor lose more than a hundred thousand Englishmen.” This was enough for Wolsey. To lose them, he thought, Charles must have them. If Catherine thought of levying war against her husband, following the example of former queens of England, she would have, then, a party ready to support her; this became dangerous.
The king and the cardinal immediately took their measures. More than 15,000
of Charles’s subjects were ordered to leave London; the arms of the citizens were seized, “in order that they might have no worse weapon than the tongue;” the Flemish councillors accorded to Catherine were dismissed, after they had been heard by the king and Campeggio, “for they had no commission to speak to the other ”—and finally, they kept “a great and constant watch” upon the country. Men feared an invasion of England, and Henry was not of a humour to subject his kingdom to the pope.
This was not enough; the alarmed king thought it his duty to come to an explanation with his people; and having summoned the lords spiritual and temporal, the judges, the members of the privy council, the mayor and aldermen of the city, and many of the gentry, to meet him at his palace of Bridewell on the 13th of November, 288
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century he said to them with a very condescending air: “You know, my lords and gentlemen, that for these twenty years past divine Providence has granted our country such prosperity as it had never known before. But in the midst of all the glory that surrounds me, the thought of my last hour often occurs to me, and I fear that if I should die without an heir, my death would cause more damage to my people than my life has done them good. God forbid, that for want of a legitimate king England should be again plunged into the horrors of civil war!” Then calling to mind the illegalities invalidating his marriage with Catherine, the king continued: “These thoughts have filled my mind with anxiety, and are continually pricking my conscience. This is the only motive, and God is my witness, which has made me lay this matter before the pontiff. As touching the queen, she is a woman incomparable in gentleness, humility, and buxomness, as I these twenty years have had experiment of; so that if I were to marry again, if the marriage might be good, I would surely choose her above all other women. But if it be determined by judgment that our marriage was against God’s law, and surely void, then I shall not only sorrow in departing from so good a lady and loving companion, but much more lament and bewail my unfortunate chance, that I have so long lived in adultery, to God’s great displeasure, and have no true heir of my body to inherit this realm.
Therefore I require of you all to pray with us that the very truth may be known, for the discharging of our conscience and the saving of our soul.” These words, though wanting in sincerity, were well calculated to soothe men’s minds. Unfortunately, it appears that after this speech from the crown, the official copy of which has been preserved, Henry added a few words of his own. “If however,” he said, according to Du Bellay, casting a threatening glance around him, “there should be any man whatsoever who speaks of his prince in other than becoming terms, I will show him that I am the master, and there is no head so high that I will not roll it from his shoulders.” This was a speech in Henry’s style; but we cannot give unlimited credit to Du Bellay’s assertions, this diplomatist being very fond, like others of his class, of
“seasoning” his despatches. But whatever may be the fact as regards the postscript, the speech on the divorce produced an effect. From that time there were no more jests, not even on the part of the Boleyns’ enemies. Some supported the king, others were content to pity the queen in secret; the majority prepared to take advantage of a court-revolution which everyone foresaw. “The king so plainly gave them to understand his pleasure,” says the French ambassador, “that they speak more soberly than they have done hitherto.”
Henry wishing to silence the clamours of the people, and to allay the fears felt by the higher classes, gave several magnificent entertainments at one time in London, at another at Greenwich, now at Hampton Court, and then at Richmond. The queen 289
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century accompanied him, but Anne generally remained “in a very handsome lodging which Henry had furnished for her,” says Du Bellay. The cardinal, following his master’s example, gave representations of French plays with great magnificence. All his hope was in France. “I desire nothing in England, neither in word nor in deed, which is not French,” he said to the bishop of Bayonne. At length Anne Boleyn had accepted the brilliant position she had at first refused, and every day her stately mansion (Suffolk House) was filled with a numerous court,—“more than ever had crowded to the queen.”—“Yes, yes,” said Du Bellay, as he saw the crowd turning towards the rising sun, “they wish by these little things to accustom the people to endure her, that when great ones are attempted, they may not be found so strange.”
In the midst of these festivities the grand business did not slumber. When the French ambassador solicited the subsidy intended for the ransom of the sons of Francis I, the cardinal required of him in exchange a paper proving that the marriage had never been valid. Du Bellay excused himself on the ground of his age and want of learning; but being given to understand that he could not have the subsidy without it, he wrote the memoir in a single day. The enraptured cardinal and king entreated him to speak with Campeggio. The ambassador consented, and succeeded beyond all expectation. The nuncio, fully aware that a bow too much bent will break, made Henry by turns become the sport of hope and fear. “Take care how you assert that the pope had not the right to grant a dispensation to the king,” said he to the French bishop; “this would be denying his power, which is infinite. But,” added he in a mysterious tone, “I will point out a road that will infallibly lead you to the mark. Show that the holy father has been deceived by false information. Push me hard on that,”
he continued, “so as to force me to declare that the dispensation was granted on erroneous grounds.” Thus did the legate himself reveal the breach by which the fortress might be surprised. “Victory!” exclaimed Henry, as he entered Anne’s apartments all beaming with joy.
But this confidence on the part of Campeggio was only a new trick. “There is a great rumour at court,” wrote Du Bellay soon after, “that the emperor and the king of France are coming together, and leaving Henry alone, so that all will fall on his shoulders.” Wolsey, finding that the intrigues of diplomacy had failed, thought it his duty to put fresh springs in motion, “and by all good and honest means to gain the pope’s favour. He saw, besides, to his great sorrow, the new catholicity then forming in the world, and uniting, by the closest bonds, the Christians of England to those of the continent. To strike down one of the leaders of this evangelical movement might incline the court of Rome in Henry’s favour. The cardinal undertook, therefore, to persecute Tyndale; and this resolution will now transport us to Germany.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 4
True Catholicity—Wolsey—Harman’s Matter—West sent to Cologne—Labours of Tyndale and Fryth—Rincke at Frankfort—He makes a Discovery—Tyndale at Marburg—West returns to England—His Tortures in the Monastery The residence of Tyndale and his friends in foreign countries, and the connections there formed with pious Christians, testify to the fraternal spirit which the Reformation then restored to the church. It is in Protestantism that true catholicity is to be found. The Romish church is not a catholic church. Separated from the churches of the east, which are the oldest in Christendom, and from the reformed churches, which are the purest, it is nothing but a sect, and that a degenerated one.
A church which should profess to believe in an episcopal unity, but which kept itself separate from the episcopacy of Rome and of the East, and from the evangelical churches, would be no longer a catholic church; it would be a sect more sectarian still than that of the Vatican, a fragment of a fragment. The church of the Saviour requires a truer, a diviner unity than that of priests, who condemn one another. It was the reformers, and particularly Tyndale, who proclaimed throughout Christendom the existence of a body of Christ, of which all the children of God are members. The disciples of the Reformation are the true catholics.
It was a catholicity of another sort that Wolsey desired to uphold. He did not reject certain reforms in the church, particularly such as brought him any profit; but, before all, he wished to preserve for the hierarchy their privileges and uniformity.
The Romish church in England was then personified in him, and if he fell, its ruin would be near. His political talents and multiplied relations with the continent, caused him to discern more clearly than others the dangers which threatened the popedom. The publication of the Scriptures of God in English appeared to some a cloud without importance, which would soon disappear from the horizon; but to the foreseeing glance of Wolsey, it betokened a mighty tempest. Besides, he loved not the fraternal relations then forming between the evangelical Christians of Great Britain and of other nations. Annoyed by this spiritual catholicity, he resolved to procure the arrest of Tyndale, who was its principal organ.
Already had Hackett, Henry’s envoy to the Low Countries, caused the imprisonment of Harman, an Antwerp merchant, one of the principal supporters of the English reformer. But Hackett had in vain asked Wolsey for such documents as would convict him of treason (for the crime of loving the Bible was not sufficient to procure Harman’s condemnation in Brabant); the envoy had remained without letters 291
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century from England, and the last term fixed by the law having expired, Harman and his wife were liberated after seven months’ imprisonment.
And yet Wolsey had not been inactive. The cardinal hoped to find elsewhere the cooperation which Margaret of Austria refused. It was Tyndale that he wanted, and everything seemed to indicate that he was then hidden at Cologne or in its neighbourhood. Wolsey, recollecting senator Rincke and the services he had already performed, determined to send to him one John West, a friar of the Franciscan convent at Greenwich. West, a somewhat narrow-minded but energetic man, was very desirous of distinguishing himself, and he had already gained some notoriety in England among the adversaries of the Reformation. Flattered by his mission, this vain monk immediately set off for Antwerp, accompanied by another friar, in order to seize Tyndale, and even Roy, once his colleague at Greenwich, and against whom he had there ineffectually contended in argument.
While these men were conspiring his ruin, Tyndale composed several works, got them printed, and sent to England, and prayed God night and day to enlighten his fellow countrymen. “Why do you give yourself so much trouble?” said some of his friends. “They will burn your books as they have burnt the Gospel.” They will only do what I expect,” replied he, “if they burn me also,” Already he beheld his own burning pile in the distance; but it was a sight which only served to increase his zeal. Hidden, like Luther at the Wartburg, not however in a castle, but in a humble lodging, Tyndale, like the Saxon reformer, spent his days and nights translating the Bible.
But not having an elector of Saxony to protect him, he was forced to change his residence from time to time.
At this epoch, Fryth, who had escaped from the prisons of Oxford, rejoined Tyndale, and the sweets of friendship softened the bitterness of their exile. Tyndale having finished the New Testament, and begun the translation of the Old, the learned Fryth was of great use to him. The more they studied the word of God, the more they admired it. In the beginning of 1529, they published the books of Genesis and Deuteronomy, and addressing their fellow-countrymen, they said: “As thou readest, think that every syllable pertaineth to thine own self, and suck out the pith of the Scripture.” Then denying that visible signs naturally impart grace, as the schoolmen had pretended, Tyndale maintained that the sacraments are effectual only when the Holy Ghost sheds his influence upon them. “The ceremonies of the law,” he wrote,
“stood the Israelites in the same stead as the sacraments do us. We are saved not by the power of the sacrifice or the deed itself, but by virtue of faith in the promise, whereof the sacrifice or ceremony was a token or sign. The Holy Ghost is no dumb God, no God that goeth a-mumming. Wherever the word is proclaimed, this inward 292
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century witness worketh. If baptism preach me the washing in Christ’s blood, so doth the Holy Ghost accompany it; and that deed of preaching through faith doth put away my sins.
The ark of Noah saved them in the water through faith.”
The man who dared address England in language so contrary to the teaching of the middle ages must be imprisoned. John West, who had been sent with this object, arrived at Antwerp; Hackett procured for him as interpreter a friar of English descent, made him assume a secular dress, and gave him “three pounds” on the cardinal’s account; the less attention the embassy attracted, the more likely it would be to succeed. But great was West’s vexation, on reaching Cologne, to learn that Rincke was at Frankfort. But that mattered not; the Greenwich monk could search for Tyndale at Cologne, and desire Rincke to do the same at Frankfort; thus there would be two searches instead of one. West procured a “swift” messenger, (he too was a monk,) and gave him the letter Wolsey had addressed to Rincke.
It was fair-time at Frankfort, and the city was filled with merchants and their wares. As soon as Rincke had finished reading Wolsey’s letter, he hastened to the burgomasters, and required them to confiscate the English translations of the Scriptures, and, above all, to seize “the heretic who was troubling England as Luther troubled Germany.” “Tyndale and his friends have not appeared in our fairs since the month of March 1528,” replied the magistrates, “and we know not whether they are dead or alive.”
Rincke was not discouraged. John Schoot of Strasburg, who was said to have printed Tyndale’s books, and who cared less about the works he published than the money he drew from them, happened to be at Frankfort. “Where is Tyndale?” Rincke asked him. “I do not know,” replied the printer; but he confessed that he had printed a thousand volumes at the request of Tyndale and Roy. “Bring them to me,” continued the senator of Cologne. “If a fair price is paid me, I will give them up to you.” Rincke paid all that was demanded.
Wolsey would now be gratified, for the New Testament annoyed him almost as much as the divorce; this book, so dangerous in his eyes, seemed on the point of raising a conflagration which would infallibly consume the edifice of Roman traditionalism. Rincke, who participated in his patron’s fears, impatiently opened the volumes made over to him; but there was a sad mistake, they were not the New Testament, not even a work of Tyndale’s, but one written by William Roy, a changeable and violent man, whom the reformer had employed for Sometime at Hamburg, and who had followed him to Cologne, but with whom he had soon become disgusted. “I bade him farewell for our two lives,” said Tyndale, “and a day longer.”
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Roy, on quitting the reformer, had gone to Strasburg, where he boasted of his relations with him, and had got printed in that city a satire against Wolsey and the monastic orders, entitled the Burial of the Mass: this was the book delivered to Rincke.
The monk’s sarcastic spirit had exceeded the legitimate bounds of controversy, and the senator accordingly dared not send the volumes to England. He did not however discontinue his inquiries, but searched every place where he thought he could discover the New Testament, and having seized all the suspected volumes, set off for Cologne.
Yet he was not satisfied. He wanted Tyndale, and went about asking everyone if they knew where to find him. But the reformer, whom he was seeking in so many places, and especially at Frankfort and Cologne, chanced to be residing at about equal distances from these two towns; so that Rincke, while travelling from one to the other, might have met him face to face, as Ahab’s messenger met Elijah. Tyndale was at Marburg, whither he had been drawn by several motives. Prince Philip of Hesse was the great protector of the evangelical doctrines. The university had attracted attention in the Reform by the paradoxes of Lambert of Avignon. Here a young Scotsman named Hamilton, afterwards illustrious as a martyr, had studied shortly before, and here too the celebrated printer, John Luft, had his presses. In this city Tyndale and Fryth had taken up their abode, in September 1528, and, hidden on the quiet banks of the Lahn, were translating the Old Testament. If Rincke had searched this place he could not have failed to discover them.
But either he thought not of it, or was afraid of the terrible landgrave. The direct road by the Rhine was that which he followed, and Tyndale escaped. When he arrived at Cologne, Rincke had an immediate interview with West. Their investigations having failed, they must have recourse to more vigorous measures. The senator, therefore, sent the monk back to England, accompanied by his son Hermann, charging them to tell Wolsey: “To seize Tyndale we require fuller powers, ratified by the emperor. The traitors who conspire against the life of the king of England are not tolerated in the empire, much less Tyndale and all those who conspire against Christendom. He must be put to death; nothing but some striking example can check the Lutheran heresy.—And as to ourselves,” they were told to add, “by the favour of God there may possibly be an opportunity for his royal highness and your grace to recompense us.” Rincke had not forgotten the subsidy of ten thousand pounds which he had received from Henry VII for the Turkish war, when he had gone to London as Maximillian’s envoy.
West returned to England sorely vexed that he had failed in his mission. What would they say at court and in his monastery? A fresh humiliation was in reserve for 294
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century him. Roy, whom West had gone to look for on the banks of the Rhine, had paid a visit to his mother on the banks of the Thames; and to crown all, the new doctrines had penetrated into his own convent. The warden, Father Robinson, had embraced them, and night and day the Greenwich monks read that New Testament which West had gone to Cologne to burn. The Antwerp friar, who had accompanied him on his journey, was the only person to whom he could confide his sorrows; but he Franciscans sent him back again to the continent, and then amused themselves at poor West’s expense.
If he desired to tell of his adventures on the banks of the Rhine, he was laughed at; if he boasted of the names of Wolsey and Henry VIII, they jeered him still more.
He desired to speak to Roy’s mother, hoping to gain some useful information from her; this the monks prevented. “It is in my commission,” he said. They ridiculed him more and more. Robinson, perceiving that the commission made West assume unbecoming airs of independence, requested Wolsey to withdraw it; and West, fancying he was about to be thrown into prison, exclaimed in alarm: “I am weary of my life!” and conjured a friend whom he had at court to procure him before Christmas an obedience under his lordship’s hand and seal, enabling him to leave the monastery:
“What you pay him for it,” he added, “I shall see you be reimbursed.” Thus did West expiate the fanatical zeal which had urged him to pursue the translator of the oracles of God. What became of him, we know not: he is never heard of more.
At that time Wolsey had other matters to engage him than this “obedience.”
While West’s complaints were going to London, those of the king were travelling to Rome. The great business in the cardinal’s eyes was to maintain harmony between Henry and the church. There was no more thought about investigations in Germany, and for a time Tyndale was saved.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 5
Necessity of the Reformation—Wolsey’s Earnestness with Da Casale—An Audience with Clement VII—Cruel Position of the Pope—A Judas Kiss—A new Brief—Bryan and Vannes sent to Rome—Henry and Du Bellay—Wolsey’s Reasons against the Brief—Excitement in London—Metamorphosis—Wolsey’s Decline—His Anguish
The king and a part of his people still adhered to the popedom, and so long as these bonds were not broken the word of God could not have free course. But to induce England to renounce Rome, there must indeed be powerful motives: and these were not wanting. Wolsey had never given such pressing orders to any of Henry’s ambassadors: “The king,” he wrote to Da Casale on the 1st of November 1528,
“commits this business to your prudence, dexterity, and fidelity; and I conjure you to employ all the powers of your genius, and even to surpass them. Be very sure that you have done nothing and can do nothing that will be more agreeable to the king, more desirable by me, and more useful and glorious for you and your family.”
Da Casale possessed a tenacity which justified the cardinal’s confidence, and an active excitable mind: trembling at the thought of seeing Rome lose England, he immediately requested an audience of Clement VII. “What!” said he to the pope, “just as it was proposed to go on with the divorce, your nuncio endeavours to dissuade the king!” There is no hope that Catherine of Aragon will ever give an heir to the crown.
Holy father, there must be an end of this. Order Campeggio to place the decretal in his majesty’s hands.”—“What say you?” exclaimed the pope. “I would gladly lose one of my fingers to recover it again, and you ask me to make it public it would be my ruin.” Da Casale insisted: “We have a duty to perform,” he said; “we remind you at this last hour of the perils threatening the relations which unite Rome and England.
The crisis is at hand. We knock at your door, we cry, we urge, we entreat, we lay before you the present and future dangers which threaten the papacy The world shall know that the king at least has fulfilled the duty of a devoted son of the church. If your holiness desires to keep England in St. Peter’s fold, I repeat now is the time now is the time.” At these words, Da Casale, unable to restrain his emotion, fell down at the pope’s feet, and begged him to save the church in Great Britain. The pope was moved. “Rise,” said he, with marks of unwanted grief, “I grant you all that is in my power; I am willing to confirm the judgment which the legates may think it their duty to pass; but I acquit myself of all responsibility as to the untold evils which this matter may bring with it If the king, after having defended the faith and the church, desires to ruin both, on him alone will rest the responsibility of so great a disaster.” Clement 296
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century granted nothing. Da Casale withdrew disheartened, and feeling convinced that the pontiff was about to treat with Charles V.
Wolsey desired to save the popedom; but the popedom resisted. Clement VII was about to lose that island which Gregory the Great had won with such difficulty. The pope was in the most cruel position. The English envoy had hardly left the palace before the emperor’s ambassador entered breathing threats. The unhappy pontiff escaped the assaults of Henry only to be exposed to those of Charles; he was thrown backwards and forwards like a ball. “I shall assemble a general council,” said the emperor through his ambassador, “and if you are found to have infringed the canons of the church in any point, you shall be proceeded against with every rigor. Do not forget,” added his agent in a low tone, “that your birth is illegitimate, and consequently excludes you from the pontificate.” The timid Clement, imagining that he saw the tiara falling from his head, swore to refuse Henry everything.
“Alas!” he said to one of his dearest confidants, “I repent in dust and ashes that I ever granted this decretal bull. If the king of England so earnestly desires it to be given him, certainly it cannot be merely to know its contents. He is but too familiar with them. It is only to tie my hands in this matter of the divorce; I would rather die a thousand deaths.” Clement, to calm his agitation, sent one of his ablest gentlemen of the bed-chamber, Francis Campana, apparently to feed the king with fresh promises, but in reality to cut the only thread on which Henry’s hopes still hung. “We embrace your majesty,” wrote the pope in the letter given to Campana, “with the paternal love your numerous merits deserve.” Now Campana was sent to England to burn clandestinely the famous decretal; Clement concealed his blows by an embrace.
Rome had granted many divorces not so well founded as that of Henry VIII; but a very different matter from a divorce was in question here; the pope, desirous of upraising in Italy his shattered power, was about to sacrifice the Tudor, and to prepare the triumph of the Reformation. Rome was separating herself from England.
All Clement’s fear was, that Campana would arrive too late to burn the bull; he was soon reassured; a dead calm prevented the great matter from advancing.
Campeggio, who took care to be in no hurry about his mission, gave himself up, like a skillful diplomatist, to his worldly tastes; and when he could not, due respect being had to the state of his legs, indulge in the chase, of which he was very fond, he passed his time in gambling, to which he was much addicted. Respectable historians assert that he indulged in still more illicit pleasures. But this could not last forever, and the nuncio sought some new means of delay, which offered itself in the most unexpected manner. One day an officer of the queen’s presented to the Roman legate a brief of Julius II, bearing the same date as the bull of dispensation, signed too, like that, by 297
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century the secretary Sigismond, and in which the pope expressed himself in such a manner, that Henry’s objections fell of themselves. “The emperor,” said Catherine’s messenger,
“has discovered this brief among the papers of Puebla, the Spanish ambassador in England, at the time of the marriage.”—“It is impossible to go on,” said Campeggio to Wolsey; “all your reasoning is now cut from under you. We must wait for fresh instructions.” This was the cardinal’s conclusion at every new incident, and the journey from London to the Vatican being very long (without reckoning the Roman dilatoriness), the expedient was infallible.
Thus there existed two acts of the same pope, signed on the same day—the one secret, the other public, in contradiction to each other. Henry determined to send a new mission to Rome. Anne proposed for this embassy one of the most accomplished gentlemen of the court, her cousin, Sir Francis Bryan. With him was joined an Italian, Peter Vannes, Henry’s Latin secretary. “You will search all the registers of the time of Julius II,” said Wolsey to them; “you will study the handwriting of Secretary Sigismond, and you will attentively examine the ring of the fisherman used by that pontiff.— Moreover, you will inform the pope that it is proposed to set a certain greyfriar, named De Angelis, in his place, to whom Charles would give the spiritual authority, reserving the temporal for himself. You will manage so that Clement takes alarm at the project, and you will then offer him a guard of 2000 men to protect him.
You will ask whether, in case the queen should desire to embrace a religious life, on condition of the king’s doing the same, and Henry should yield to this wish, he could have the assurance that the pope would afterwards release him from his vows.
And, finally, you will inquire whether, in case the queen should refuse to enter a convent, the pope would permit the king to have two wives, as we see in the Old Testament.” The idea which has brought so much reproach on the landgrave of Hesse was not a new one; the honour of it belongs to a cardinal and legate of Rome, whatever Bossuet may say. “Lastly,” continued Wolsey, “as the pope is of a timid disposition, you will not fail to season your remonstrances with threats. You, Peter, will take him aside and tell him that, as an Italian, having more at heart than any one the glory of the holy see, it is your duty to warn him, that if he persists, the king, his realm, and many other princes, will for ever separate from the papacy.”
It was not on the mind of the pope alone that it was necessary to act; the rumour that the emperor and the king of France were treating together disturbed Henry.
Wolsey had vainly tried to sound Du Bellay; these two priests tried craft against craft.
Besides, the Frenchman was not always seasonably informed by his court, letters taking ten days to come from Paris to London. Henry resolved to have a conference with the ambassador. He began by speaking to him of his matter, says Du Bellay, 298
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“and I promise you,” he added, “that he needs no advocate, he understands the whole business so well.” Henry next touched upon the wrongs of Francis I, “recalling so many things that the envoy knew not what to say.”—“I pray you, Master Ambassador,”
said Henry in conclusion, “to beg the king, my brother, to give up a little of his amusements during a year only for the prompt despatch of his affairs. Warn those whom it concerns.” Having given this spur to the king of France, Henry turned his thoughts towards Rome.
In truth, the fatal brief from Spain tormented him day and night, and the cardinal tortured his mind to find proofs of its non-authenticity; if he could do so, he would acquit the papacy of the charge of duplicity, and accuse the emperor of forgery.
At last he thought he had succeeded. “In the first place,” he said to the king, “the brief has the same date as the bull. Now, if the errors in the latter had been found out on the day it was drawn up, it would have been more natural to make another than to append a brief pointing out the errors. What! the same pope, the same day, at the petition of the same persons, give out two rescripts for one effect, one of which contradicts the other! Either the bull was good, and then, why the brief? or the bull was bad, and then, why deceive princes by a worthless bull? Many names are found in the brief incorrectly spelt, and these are faults which the pontifical secretary, whose accuracy is so well known, could not have committed. Lastly, no one in England ever heard mention of this brief; and yet it is here that it ought to be found.” Henry charged Knight, his principal secretary, to join the other envoys with all speed, in order to prove to the pope the supposititious character of the document.
This important paper revived the irritation felt in England against Charles V, and it was resolved to come to extremities. Everyone discontented with Austria took refuge in London, particularly the Hungarians. The ambassador from Hungary proposed to Wolsey to adjudge the imperial crown of Germany to the elector of Saxony or the landgrave of Hesse, the two chiefs of Protestantism. Wolsey exclaimed in alarm:
“It will be an inconvenience to Christendom, they are so Lutheran.” But the Hungarian ambassador so satisfied him, that in the end he did not find the matter quite so inconvenient. These schemes were prospering in London, when suddenly a new metamorphosis took place under the eyes of Du Bellay. The king, the cardinal, and the ministers appeared in strange consternation. Vincent da Casale had just arrived from Rome with a letter from his cousin the prothonotary, informing Henry that the pope, seeing the triumph of Charles V, the indecision of Francis I, the isolation of the king of England, and the distress of his cardinal, had flung himself into the arms of the emperor. At Rome they went so far as to jest about Wolsey, and to say that since he could not be St. Peter they would make him St. Paul.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century While they were ridiculing Wolsey at Rome, at St. Germain’s they were joking about Henry. “I will make him get rid of the notions he has in his head,” said Francis; and the Flemings, who were again sent out of the country, said as they left London,
“that this year they would carry on the war so vigorously, that it would be really a sight worth seeing.”
Besides these public griefs, Wolsey had his private ones. Anne Boleyn, who had already begun to use her influence on behalf of the despotic cardinal’s victims, gave herself no rest until Cheyney, a courtier disgraced by Wolsey, had been restored to the king’s favour. Anne even gave utterance to several biting sarcasms against the cardinal, and the duke of Norfolk and his party began “to speak big,” says Du Bellay.
At the moment when the pope, scared by Charles V, was separating from England, Wolsey himself was tottering. Who shall uphold the papacy? After Wolsey, nobody!
Rome was on the point of losing the power which for nine centuries she had exercised in the bosom of this illustrious nation. The cardinal’s anguish cannot be described; unceasingly pursued by gloomy images, he saw Anne on the throne causing the triumph of the Reformation: this nightmare was stifling him. “His grace, the legate, is in great trouble,” wrote the bishop of Bayonne. “However he is more cunning than they are.”
To still the tempest Wolsey had only one resource left: this was to render Clement favourable to his master’s designs. The crafty Campana, who had burnt the decretal, conjured him not to believe all the reports transmitted to him concerning Rome. “To satisfy the king,” said he to the cardinal, “the holy father will, if necessary, descend from the pontifical throne.” Wolsey therefore resolved to send to Rome a more energetic agent than Vannes, Bryan, or Knight, and cast his eyes on Gardiner. His courage began to revive, when an unexpected event fanned once more his loftiest hopes.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 6
The Pope’s Illness—Wolsey’s Desire—Conference about the Members of the Conclave—Wolsey’s Instructions—The Pope recovers—Speech of the English Envoys to the Pope—Clement willing to abandon England—The English demand the Pope’s Denial of the Brief—Wolsey’s Alarm—Intrigues—Bryan’s Clear sightedness—
Henry’s Threats—Wolsey’s new Efforts—He calls for an Appeal to Rome, and retracts—Wolsey and Du Bellay at Richmond—The Ship of the State On the 6th of January 1529, the feast of Epiphany, just as the pope was performing mass, he was attacked by a sudden illness; he was taken to his room, apparently in a dying state. When this news reached London, the cardinal resolved to hasten to abandon England, where the soil trembled under his feet, and to climb boldly to the throne of the pontiffs. Bryan and Vannes, then at Florence, hurried on to Rome through roads infested with robbers. At Orvieto they were informed the pope was better; at Viterbo, no one knew whether he was alive or dead; at Ronciglione, they were assured that he had expired; and, finally, when they reached the metropolis of the popedom, they learnt that Clement could not survive, and that the imperialists, supported by the Colonnas, were striving to have a pope devoted to Charles V.
But great as might be the agitation at Rome, it was greater still at Whitehall. If God caused De’Medici to descend from the pontifical throne, it could only be, thought Wolsey, to make him mount it. “It is expedient to have such a pope as may save the realm,” said he to Gardiner. “And although it cannot but be incommodious to me in this mine old age to be the common father, yet, when all things be well pondered, the qualities of all the cardinals well considered, I am the only one, without boasting, that can and will remedy the king’s secret matter. And were it not for the redintegration of the state of the church, and especially to relieve the king and his realm from their calamities, all the riches and honour of the world should not cause me to accept the said dignity. Nevertheless, I conform myself to the necessities of the times. Wherefore, Master Stephen, that this matter may succeed, I pray you to apply all your ingenuity, spare neither money nor labour. I give you the amplest powers, without restriction or limitation.” Gardiner departed to win for his master the coveted tiara.
Henry VIII and Wolsey, who could hardly restrain their impatience, soon heard of the pontiff’s death from different quarters. “The emperor has taken away Clement’s life,” said Wolsey, blinded by hatred. “Charles,” rejoined the king, “will endeavour to obtain by force or fraud a pope according to his desires.” “Yes, to make him his chaplain,” replied Wolsey, “and with that view, my lord, make up your mind to be pope.”—“That alone,” answered the cardinal, “can bring your Majesty’s weighty 301
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century matter to a happy termination, and by saving you, save the church and myself also,”
he thought in his heart. “Let us see, let us count the voters.”
Henry and his minister then wrote down on a strip of parchment the names of all the cardinals, marking with the letter A those who were on the side of the kings of England and France, and with the letter Ball who favoured the emperor. “There was no C,” says a chronicler sarcastically, “to signify any on Christ’s side.” The letter N designated the neutrals. “The cardinals present,” said Wolsey, “will not exceed thirty-nine, and we must have two-thirds, that is, twenty-six. Now, there are twenty upon whom we can reckon; we must therefore, at any price, gain six of the neutrals.”
Wolsey, deeply sensible of the importance of an election that would decide whether England was to be reformed or not, carefully drew up the instructions, which Henry signed, and which history must register. “We desire and ordain,” the ambassadors were informed in them, “that you secure the election of the cardinal of York; not forgetting that next to the salvation of his own soul, there is nothing the king desires more earnestly.
“To gain over the neutral cardinals you will employ two methods in particular.
The first is, the cardinals being present, and having God and the Holy Ghost before them, you shall remind them that the cardinal of York alone can save Christendom.
“The second is, because human fragility suffereth not all things to be pondered and weighed in a just balance, it appertaineth in matter of so high importance, to the comfort and relief of all Christendom, to succour the infirmity that may chance not for corruption, you will understand but rather to help the lacks and defaults of human nature. And, therefore, it shall be expedient that you promise spiritual offices, dignities, rewards of money, or other things which shall seem meet to the purpose.
“Then shall you, with good dexterity, combine and knit those favourable to us in a perfect fastness and indissoluble knot. And that they may be the better animated to finish the election to the king’s desire, you shall offer them a guard of 2000 or 3000
men from the kings of England and France, from the viscount of Turin, and the republic of Venice. “If, notwithstanding all your exertions, the election should fail, then the cardinals of the king’s shall repair to some sure place, and there proceed to such an election as may be to God’s pleasure.
“And to win more friends for the king, you shall promise, on the one hand, to the Cardinal de’Medici and his party our special favour; and the Florentines, on the other hand, you shall put in comfort of the exclusion of the said family De’Medici. Likewise you shall put the cardinals in perfect hope of recovering the patrimony of the church; 302
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and you shall contain the Venetians in good trust of a reasonable way to be taken for Cervia and Ravenna (which formed part of the patrimony) to their contentment.”
Such were the means by which the cardinal hoped to win the papal throne. To the right he said yes, to the left he said no. What would it matter that these perfidies were one day discovered, provided it were after the election. Christendom might be very certain that the choice of the future pontiff would be the work of the Holy Ghost.
Alexander VI had been a poisoner; Julius II had given way to ambition, anger, and vice; the liberal Leo X had passed his life in worldly pursuits; the unhappy Clement VII had lived on stratagems and lies; Wolsey would be their worthy successor: Wolsey found his excuse in the thought, that if he succeeded, the divorce was secured, and England enslaved for ever to the court of Rome. Success at first appeared probable. Many cardinals spoke openly in favour of the English prelate; one of them asked for a detailed account of his life, in order to present it as a model to the church; another worshipped him (so he said) as a divinity Among the gods and popes adored at Rome there were some no better than he. But erelong alarming news reached England. What grief! the pope was getting better. “Conceal your instructions,” wrote the cardinal, “and reserve them in omnem eventum.”
Wolsey not having obtained the tiara, it was necessary at least to gain the divorce.
“God declares,” said the English ambassadors to the pope, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Therefore, the king, taking God alone for his guide, requests of you, in the first place, an engagement to pronounce the divorce in the space of three months, and in the second the avocation to Rome.”—“The promise first, and only after that the avocation,” Wolsey had said; “for I fear that if the pope begins with the avocation, he will never pronounce the divorce.”—“Besides,” added the envoys, “the king’s second marriage admits of no refusal, whatever bulls or briefs there may be. The only issue of this matter is the divorce; the divorce in one way or another must be procured.”
Wolsey had instructed his envoys to pronounce these words with a certain air of familiarity, and at the same time with a gravity calculated to produce an effect. His expectations were deceived: Clement was colder than ever. He had determined to abandon England in order that he might secure the States of the Church, of which Charles was then master, thus sacrificing the spiritual to the temporal. “The pope will not do the least thing for your majesty,” wrote Bryan to the king; “your matter may well be in his Pater noster, but it certainly is not in his Credo.” “Increase in importunity,” answered the king; “the cardinal of Verona should remain about the 303
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century pope’s person and counterbalance the influence of De Angelis and the archbishop of Capua. I would rather lose my two crowns than be beaten by these two friars.”
Thus was the struggle about to become keener than ever, when Clement’s relapse once more threw doubt on everything. He was always between life and death; and this perpetual alternation agitated the king and the impatient cardinal in every way.
The latter considered that the pope had need of merits to enter the kingdom of heaven.
“Procure an interview with the pope,” he wrote to the envoys, “even though he be in the very agony of death; and represent to him that nothing will be more likely to save his soul than the bill of divorce.” Henry’s commissioners were not admitted; but towards the end of March, the deputies appearing in a body, the pope promised to examine the letter from Spain. Vannes began to fear this document; he represented that those who had fabricated it would have been able to give it an appearance of authenticity. “Rather declare immediately that this brief is not a brief,” said he to the pope. “The king of England, who is your holiness’s son, is not so like the rest of the world. We cannot put the same shoe on every foot.” This rather vulgar argument did not touch Clement. “If to content your master in this business,” said he, “I cannot employ my head, at least I will my finger.”—“Be pleased to explain yourself,” replied Vannes, who found the finger a very little matter.—“I mean,” resumed the pontiff,
“that I shall employ every means, provided they are honourable.” Vannes withdrew disheartened.
He immediately conferred with his colleagues, and all together, alarmed at the idea of Henry’s anger, returned to the pontiff; they thrust aside the lackeys, who endeavoured to stop them, and made their way into his bedchamber. Clement opposed them with that resistance of inertia by which the popedom has gained its greatest victories: siluit, he remained silent. Of what consequence to the pontiff were Tudor, his island, and his church, when Charles of Austria was threatening him with his armies? Clement, less proud than Hildebrand, submitted willingly to the emperor’s power, provided the emperor would protect him. “I had rather,” he said, “be Caesar’s servant, not only in a temple, but in a stable if necessary, than be exposed to the insults of rebels and vagabonds.” At the same time he wrote to Campeggio: “Do not irritate the king, but spin out this matter as much as possible; the Spanish brief gives us the means.”
In fact, Charles V had twice shown Lee the original document, and Wolsey, after this ambassador’s report, began to believe that it was not Charles who had forged the brief, but that Pope Julius II had really given two contradictory documents on the same day. Accordingly the cardinal now feared to see this letter in the pontiff’s hands.
“Do all you can to dissuade the pope from seeking the original in Spain,” wrote he to 304
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century one of his ambassadors; “it may exasperate the emperor.” We know how cautious the cardinal was towards Charles.
Intrigue attained its highest point at this epoch, and Englishmen and Romans encountered craft with craft. “In such ticklish negotiations,” says Burnet, (who had had some little experience in diplomacy,) “ministers must say and unsay as they are instructed, which goes of course as a part of their business.” Henry’s envoys to the pope intercepted the letters sent from Rome, and had Campeggio’s seized. On his part the pope indulged in flattering smiles and perfidious equivocations. Bryan wrote to Henry VIII: “Always your grace hath done for him in deeds, and he hath recompensed you with fair words and fair writings, of which both I think your grace shall lack none; but as for the deeds, I never believe to see them, and especially at this time.” Bryan had comprehended the court of Rome better perhaps than many politicians. Finally, Clement himself, wishing to prepare the king for the blow he was about to inflict, wrote to him: “We have been able to find nothing that would satisfy your ambassadors.”
Henry thought he knew what this message meant: that he had found nothing, and would find nothing; and accordingly this prince, who, if we may believe Wolsey, had hitherto shown incredible patience and gentleness, gave way to all his violence.
“Very well then,” said he; “my lords and I well know how to withdraw ourselves from the authority of the Roman see.” Wolsey turned pale, and conjured his master not to rush into that fearful abyss; Campeggio, too, endeavoured to revive the king’s hopes.
But it was all of no use. Henry recalled his ambassadors.
Henry, it is true, had not yet reached the age when violent characters become inflexible from the habit they have encouraged of yielding to their passions. But the cardinal, who knew his master, knew also that his inflexibility did not depend upon the number of his years; he thought Rome’s power in England was lost, and, placed between Henry and Clement, he exclaimed: “How shall I avoid Scylla, and not fall into Charybdis?” He begged the king to make one last effort by sending Dr. Bennet to the pope with orders to support the avocation to Rome, and he gave him a letter in which he displayed all the resources of his eloquence. “How can it be imagined,” he wrote, “that the persuasions of sense urge the king to break a union in which the ardent years of his youth were passed with such purity? The matter is very different.
I am on the spot, I know the state of men’s minds Pray, believe me. The divorce is the secondary question; the primary one is the fidelity of this realm to the papal see. The nobility, gentry, and citizens all exclaim with indignation: Must our fortunes, and even our lives, depend upon the nod of a foreigner? We must abolish, or at the very 305
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century least diminish, the authority of the Roman pontiff. Most holy father, we cannot mention such things without a shudder.”
This new attempt was also unavailing. The pope demanded of Henry how he could doubt his good will, seeing that the king of England had done so much for the apostolic see. This appeared a cruel irony to Tudor; the king requested a favour of the pope, and the pope replied by calling to mind those which the papacy had received from his hands. “Is this the way,” men asked in England, “in which Rome pays her debts?” Wolsey had not reached the term of his misfortunes. Gardiner and Bryan had just returned to London: they declared that to demand an avocation to Rome was to lose their cause. Accordingly Wolsey, who turned to every wind, ordered Da Casale, in case Clement should pronounce the avocation, to appeal from the pope, the false head of the church, to the true vicar of Jesus Christ. This was almost in Luther’s style.
Who was this true vicar? Probably a pope nominated by the influence of England.
But this proceeding did not assure the cardinal: he was losing his judgment. A short time before this Du Bellay, who had just returned from Paris, whither he had gone to retain France on the side of England, had been invited to Richmond by Wolsey.
As the two prelates were walking in the park, on that hill whence the eye ranges over the fertile and undulating fields through which the winding Thames pours its tranquil waters, the unhappy cardinal observed to the bishop: “My trouble is the greatest that ever was! I have excited and carried on this matter of the divorce, to dissolve the union between the two houses of Spain and England, by sowing misunderstanding between them, as if I had no part in it. You know it was in the interest of France; I therefore entreat the king your master and her majesty to do everything that may forward the divorce. I shall esteem such a favour more than if they made me pope; but if they refuse me, my ruin is inevitable.” And then giving way to despair, he exclaimed: “Alas! would that I were going to be buried tomorrow!”
The wretched man was drinking the bitter cup his perfidies had prepared for him. All seemed to conspire against Henry, and Bennet was recalled shortly after. It was said at court and in the city: “Since the pope sacrifices us to the emperor, let us sacrifice the pope.” Clement VII, intimidated by the threats of Charles V, and tottering upon his throne, madly repelled with his foot the bark of England. Europe was all attention, and began to think that the proud vessel of Albion, cutting the cable that bound her to the pontiffs, would boldly spread her canvass to the winds, and ever after sail the sea alone, wafted onwards by the breeze that comes from heaven.
The influence of Rome over Europe is in great measure political. It loses a kingdom by a royal quarrel, and might in this same way lose ten.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 7
Discussion between the Evangelicals and the Catholics—Union of Learning and Life—The Laity: Tewkesbury—His Appearance before the Bishop’s Court—He is tortured—Two Classes of Opponents—A Theological Duel—Scripture and the Church—Emancipation of the Mind—Mission to the Low Countries—Tyndale’s Embarrassment—Tonstall wishes to buy the Books—Packington’s Strategem—
Tyndale departs for Antwerp—His Shipwreck—Arrival at Hamburg—Meets Coverdale
Other circumstances from day to day rendered the emancipation of the church more necessary. If behind these political debates there had not been found a Christian people, resolved never to temporise with error, it is probable that England, after a few years of independence, would have fallen back into the bosom of Rome. The affair of the divorce was not the only one agitating men’s minds; the religious controversies, which for some years filled the continent, were always more animated at Oxford and Cambridge. The Evangelicals and the Catholics (not very catholic indeed) warmly discussed the great questions which the progress of events brought before the world.
The former maintained that the primitive church of the apostles and the actual church of the papacy were not identical; the latter affirmed, on the contrary, the identity of popery and apostolic Christianity.
Other Romish doctors in later times, finding this position somewhat embarrassing, have asserted that Catholicism existed only in the germ in the apostolic church, and had subsequently developed itself. But a thousand abuses, a thousand errors may creep into a church under cover of this theory. A plant springs from the seed and grows up in accordance with immutable laws; while a doctrine cannot be transformed in the mind of man without falling under the influence of sin.
It is true that the disciples of popery have supposed a constant action of the Divine Spirit in the Catholic Church, which excludes every influence of error. To stamp on the development of the church the character of truth, they have stamped on the church itself the character of infallibility; quod erat demonstrandum. Their reasoning is a mere begging of the question. To know whether the Romish development is identical with the gospel, we must examine it by Scripture.
It was not university men alone who occupied themselves with Christian truth.
The separation which has been remarked in other times between the opinions of the people and of the learned, did not now exist. What the doctors taught, the citizens practiced; Oxford and London embraced each other. The theologians knew that learning has need of life, and the citizens believed that life has need of that learning 307
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century which derives the doctrine from the wells of the Scriptures of God. It was the harmony between these two elements, the one theological, the other practical, which constituted the strength of the English reformation.
The evangelical life in the capital alarmed the clergy more than the evangelical doctrine in the colleges. Since Monmouth had escaped, they must strike another.
Among the London merchants was John Tewkesbury, one of the oldest friends of the Scriptures in England.
As early as 1512 he had become possessor of a manuscript copy of the Bible, and had attentively studied it; when Tyndale’s New Testament appeared, he read it with avidity; and, finally, The Wicked Mammon had completed the work of his conversion.
Being a man of heart and understanding, clever in all he undertook, a ready and fluent speaker, and liking to get to the bottom of everything, Tewkesbury like Monmouth became very influential in the city, and one of the most learned in Scripture of any of the evangelicals. These generous Christians, being determined to consecrate to God the good things they had received from him, were the first among that long series of laymen who were destined to be more useful to the truth than many ministers and bishops. They found time to interest themselves about the most trifling details of the kingdom of God; and in the history of the Reformation in Britain their names should be inscribed beside those of Latimer and Tyndale.
The activity of these laymen could not escape the cardinal’s notice. Clement VII was abandoning England: it was necessary for the English bishops, by crushing the heretics, to show that they would not abandon the popedom. We can understand the zeal of these prelates, and without excusing their persecutions, we are disposed to extenuate their crime. The bishops determined to ruin Tewkesbury. One day in April 1529, as he was busy among his peltries, the officers entered his warehouse, arrested him, and led him away to the bishop of London’s chapel, where, besides the ordinary (Tonstall), the bishops of Ely, St. Asaph, Bath, and Lincoln, with the abbot of Westminster, were on the bench. The composition of this tribunal indicated the importance of his case. The emancipation of the laity, thought these judges, is perhaps a more dangerous heresy than justification by faith.
“John Tewkesbury,” said the bishop of London, “I exhort you to trust less to your own wit and learning, and more unto the doctrine of the holy mother the church.”
Tewkesbury made answer, that in his judgment he held no other doctrine than that of the church of Christ. Tonstall then broached the principle charge, that of having read the Wicked Mammon, and after quoting several passages, he exclaimed:
“Renounce these errors.”—“I find no fault in the book,” replied Tewkesbury. “It has 308
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century enlightened my conscience and consoled my heart. But it is not my gospel. I have studied the Holy Scriptures these seventeen years, and as a man sees the spots of his face in a glass, so by reading them I have learnt the faults of my soul. If there is a disagreement between you and the New Testament, put yourselves in harmony with it, rather than desire to put that in accord with you.” The bishops were surprised that a leather-seller should speak so well, and quote Scripture so happily that they were unable to resist him. Annoyed at being catechized by a layman, the bishops of Bath, St. Asaph, and Lincoln thought they could conquer him more easily by the rack than by their arguments. He was taken to the Tower, where they ordered him to be put to the torture. His limbs were crushed, which was contrary to the laws of England, and the violence of the rack tore from him a cry of agony to which the priests replied by a shout of exultation. The inflexible merchant had promised at last to renounce Tyndale’s Wicked Mammon. Tewkesbury left the Tower “almost a cripple,” and returned to his house to lament the fatal word which the question had extorted from him, and to prepare in the silence of faith to confess in the burning pile the precious name of Christ Jesus.
We must, however, acknowledge that the “question” was not Rome’s only argument. The gospel had two classes of opponents in the sixteenth century, as in the first ages of the church. Some attacked it with the torture, others with their writings.
Sir Thomas More, a few years later, was to have recourse to the first of these arguments; but for the moment he took up his pen. He had first studied the writings of the Fathers of the church, and of the Reformers, but rather as an advocate than as a theologian; and then, armed at all points, he rushed into the arena of polemics, and in his attacks dealt those “technical convictions and that malevolent subtlety,” says one of his greatest admirers, “from which the honestest men of his profession are not free.” Jests and sarcasms had fallen from his pen in his discussion with Tyndale, as in his controversy with Luther. Shortly after Tewkesbury’ affair (in June 1529) there appeared A Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, Knt., touching the pestilent Sect of Luther and Tyndale, by the one begun in Saxony, and by the other laboured to be brought into England.
Tyndale soon became informed of More’s publication, and a remarkable combat ensued between these two representatives of the two doctrines that were destined to divide Christendom—Tyndale the champion of Scripture, and More the champion of the church. More having called his book a dialogue, Tyndale adopted this form in his reply, and the two combatants valiantly crossed their swords, though wide seas lay between them. This theological duel is not without importance in the history of the Reformation. The struggles of diplomacy, of sacerdotalism, and of royalty were not 309
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century enough; there must be struggles of doctrine. Rome had set the hierarchy above the faith; the Reformation was to restore faith to its place above the hierarchy.
More. Christ said not, the Holy Ghost shall write, but shall teach. Whatsoever the church says, it is the word of God, though it be not in Scripture.
Tyndale. What! Christ and the apostles not spoken of Scriptures! These are written, says St. John, that ye believe, and through belief have life. (1 John 2:1; Romans 15:4;Matthew 22:29.) More. The apostles have taught by mouth many things they did not write, because they should not come into the hands of the heathen for mocking.
Tyndale. I pray you what thing more to be mocked by the heathen could they teach than the resurrection; and that Christ was God and man, and died between two thieves? And yet all these things the apostles wrote. And again, purgatory, penance, and satisfaction for sin, and praying to saints, are marvellous agreeable unto the superstition of the heathen people, so that they need not to abstain from writing of them for fear lest the heathen should have mocked them.
More. We must not examine the teaching of the church by Scripture, but understand Scripture by means of what the church says. Tyndale. What! Does the air give light to the sun, or the sun to the air? Is the church before the gospel, or the gospel before the church? Is not the father older than the son? God begat us with his own will, with the word of truth, says St. James (i. 18). If he who begetteth is before him who is begotten, the word is before the church, or, to speak more correctly, before the congregation.
More. Why do you say congregation and not church?
Tyndale. Because by that word church, you understand nothing but a multitude of shorn and oiled, which we now call the spirituality or clergy; while the word of right is common unto all the congregation of them that believe in Christ.
More. The church is the pope and his sect or followers. Tyndale. The pope teacheth us to trust in holy works for salvation, as penance, saints’ merits, and friars’
coats. Now, he that hath no faith to be saved through Christ, is not of Christ’s church.
More. The Romish church from which the Lutherans came out, was before them, and therefore is the right one.
310
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Tyndale. In like manner you may say, the church of the Pharisees, whence Christ and his apostles came out, was before them, and was therefore the right church, and consequently Christ and his disciples are heretics.
More. No: the apostles came out from the church of the Pharisees because they found not Christ there; but your priests in Germany and elsewhere have come out of our church because they wanted wives.
Tyndale. Wrong these priests were at first attached to what you call heresies, and then they took wives; but yours were first attached to the holy doctrine of the pope, and then they took harlots.
More. Luther’s books be open, if ye will not believe us. Tyndale. Nay, ye have shut them up, and have even burnt them More. I marvel that you deny purgatory, Sir William, except it be a plain point with you to go straight to hell.
Tyndale. I know no other purging but faith in the cross of Christ; while you, for a groat or a sixpence, buy some secret pills which you take to purge yourselves of your sins.
More. Faith, then, is your purgatory, you say; there is no need, therefore, of works—a most immoral doctrine!
Tyndale. It is faith alone that saves us, but not a bare faith. When a horse beareth a saddle and a man thereon, we may well say that the horse only and alone beareth the saddle, but we do not mean the saddle empty, and no man thereon.
In this manner did the catholic and the evangelical carry on the discussion.
According to Tyndale, what constitutes the true church is the work of the Holy Ghost within; according to More, the constitution of the papacy without. The spiritual character of the gospel is thus put in opposition to the formalist character of the Roman church. The Reformation restored to our belief the solid foundation of the word of God; for the sand it substituted the rock. In the discussion to which we have just been listening, the advantage remained not with the catholic. Erasmus, a friend of More’s, embarrassed by the course the latter was taking, wrote to Tonstall: “I cannot heartily congratulate More.”
Henry interrupted the celebrated knight in these contests to send him to Cambray, where a peace was negotiating between France and the empire. Wolsey would have been pleased to go himself; but his enemies suggested to the king, “that 311
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century it was only that he might not expedite the matter of the divorce.” Henry, therefore, despatched More, Knight, and Tonstall; but Wolsey had created so many delays that they did not arrive until after the conclusion of the Ladies’ Peace (August 1529). The king’s vexation was extreme. Du Bellay had in vain helped him to spend a good preparatory July to make him swallow the dose. Henry was angry with Wolsey, Wolsey threw the blame on the ambassador, and the ambassador defended himself, he tells us, “with tooth and nail.”
By way of compensation, the English envoys concluded with the emperor a treaty prohibiting on both sides the printing and sale of “any Lutheran books.” Some of them could have wished for a good persecution, for a few burning piles, it may be. A singular opportunity occurred. In the spring of 1529, Tyndale and Fryth had left Marburg for Antwerp, and were thus in the vicinity of the English envoys. What West had been unable to effect, it was thought the two most intelligent men in Britain could not fail to accomplish. “Tyndale must be captured,” said More and Tonstall.—“You do not know what sort of a country you are in,” replied Hackett. “Will you believe that on the 7th of April, Harman arrested me at Antwerp for damages, caused by his imprisonment? If you can lay anything to my charge as a private individual, I said to the officer, I am ready to answer for myself; but if you arrest me as ambassador, I know no judge but the emperor. Upon which the procurator had the audacity to reply, that I was arrested as ambassador; and the lords of Antwerp only set me at liberty on condition that I should appear again at the first summons. These merchants are so proud of their franchises, that they would resist even Charles himself.” This anecdote was not at all calculated to encourage More; and not caring about a pursuit, which promised to be of little use, he returned to England. But the bishop of London, who was left behind, persisted in the project, and repaired to Antwerp to put it in execution.
Tyndale was at that time greatly embarrassed; considerable debts, incurred with his printers, compelled him to suspend his labours. Nor was this all: the prelate who had spurned him so harshly in London, had just arrived in the very city where he lay concealed. What would become of him? A merchant, named Augustin Packington, a clever man, but somewhat inclined to dissimulation, happening to be at Antwerp on business, hastened to pay his respects to the bishop. The latter observed, in the course of conversation: “I should like to get hold of the books with which England is poisoned.”—“I can perhaps serve you in that matter,” replied the merchant. “I know the Flemings, who have bought Tyndale’s books; so that if your lordship will be pleased to pay for them, I will make sure of them all.”—“Oh, oh!” thought the bishop,
“Now, as the proverb says, I shall have God by the toe. Gentle Master Packington,”
he added in a flattering tone, “I will pay for them whatsoever they cost you. I intend 312
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century to burn them at St. Paul’s cross.” The bishop, having his hand already on Tyndale’s Testaments, fancied himself on the point of seizing Tyndale himself.
Packington, being one of those men who love to conciliate all parties, ran off to Tyndale, with whom he was intimate, and said:— “William, I know you are a poor man, and have a heap of New Testaments and books by you, for which you have beggared yourself; and I have now found a merchant who will buy them all, and with ready money too.”—“Who is the merchant?” said Tyndale.—“The bishop of London.”—
“Tonstall? If he buys my books, it can only be to burn them—“No doubt,” answered Packington; “but what will he gain by it? The whole world will cry out against the priest who burns God’s word, and the eyes of many will be opened. Come, make up your mind, William; the bishop shall have the books, you the money, and I the thanks.”
Tyndale resisted the proposal; Packington became more pressing. “The question comes to this,” he said; “shall the bishop pay for the books or shall he not? for, make up your mind he will have them,”—“I consent,” said the reformer at last; “I shall pay my debts, and bring out a new and more correct edition of the Testament.” The bargain was made.
Erelong the danger thickened around Tyndale. Placards, posted at Antwerp and throughout the province, announced that the emperor, in conformity with the treaty of Cambray, was about to proceed against the reformers and their writings. Not an officer of justice appeared in the street but Tyndale’s friends trembled for his liberty.
Under such circumstances, how could he print his translation of Genesis and Deuteronomy? He made up his mind about the end of August to go to Hamburg, and took his passage in a vessel loading for that port. Embarking with his books, his manuscripts, and the rest of his money, he glided down the Scheldt, and soon found himself afloat on the German Ocean.
But one danger followed close upon another. He had scarcely passed the mouth of the Meuse when a tempest burst upon him, and his ship, like that of old which bore St. Paul, was almost swallowed up by the waves.—“Satan, envying the happy course and success of the gospel,” says a chronicler, “set to his might how to hinder the blessed labours of this man.” The seamen toiled, Tyndale prayed, all hope was lost.
The reformer alone was full of courage, not doubting that God would preserve him for the accomplishment of his work. All the exertions of the crew proved useless; the vessel was dashed on the coast, and the passengers escaped with their lives. Tyndale gazed with sorrow upon that ocean which had swallowed up his beloved books and precious manuscripts, and deprived him of his resources. What labours, what perils!
banishment, poverty, thirst, insults, watchings, persecution, imprisonment, the stake!
Like Paul, he was in perils by his own countrymen, in perils among strange people, 313
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in perils in the city, in perils in the sea. Recovering his spirits, however, he went on board another ship, entered the Elbe, and at last reached Hamburg.
Great joy was in store for him in that city. Coverdale, Foxe informs us, was waiting there to confer with him and to help him in his labours. It has been supposed that Coverdale went to Hamburg to invite Tyndale, in Cromwell’s name, to return to England; but it is merely a conjecture, and requires confirmation. As early as 1527, Coverdale had made known to Cromwell his desire to translate the Scriptures. It was natural that, meeting with difficulties in this undertaking, he should desire to converse with Tyndale. The two friends lodged with a pious woman named Margaret van Emmersen, and spent Sometime together in the autumn of 1529, undisturbed by the sweating sickness which was making such cruel havoc all around them. Coverdale returned to England shortly after; the two reformers had, no doubt, discovered that it was better for each of them to translate the Scriptures separately.
Before Coverdale’s return, Tonstall had gone back to London, exulting at carrying with him the books he had bought so dearly. But when he reached the capital, he thought he had better defer the meditated auto da fe until some striking event should give it increased importance. And besides, just at that moment, very different matters were engaging public attention on the banks of the Thames, and the liveliest emotions agitated every mind.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CHAPTER 8
The Royal Session—Sitting of the 18th June; the Queen’s Protest—Sitting of the 21st June—Summons to the King and Queen—Catherine’s Speech—She retires—
Impression on the Audience—The King’s Declaration—Wolsey’s Protest—Quarrel between the Bishops—New Sitting—Apparition to the Maid of Kent—Wolsey chafed by Henry—The Earl of Wiltshire at Wolsey’s—Private Conference between Catherine and the two Legates
Affairs had changed in England during the absence of Tonstall and More; and even before their departure, events of a certain importance had occurred. Henry, finding there was nothing more to hope from Rome, had turned to Wosley and Campeggio. The Roman nuncio had succeeded in deceiving the king. “Campeggio is very different from what he is reported,” said Henry to his friends; “he is not for the emperor as I was told; I have said somewhat to him which has changed his mind.” No doubt he had made some brilliant promise.
Henry therefore, imagining himself sure of his two legates, desired them to proceed with the matter of the divorce without delay. There was no time to lose, for the king was informed that the pope was on the point of recalling the commission given to the two cardinals; and as early as the 19th of March, Salviati, the pope’s uncle and secretary of state, wrote to Campeggio about it. Henry’s process, once in the court of the pontifical chancery, it would have been long before it got out again.
Accordingly, on the 31st of May, the king, by a warrant under the great seal, gave the legates leave to execute their commission, “without any regard to his own person, and having the fear of God only before their eyes.” The legates themselves had suggested this formula to the king.
On the same day the commission was opened; but to begin the process was not to end it. Every letter which the nuncio received forbade him to do so in the most positive manner. “Advance slowly and never finish,” were Clement’s instructions. The trial was to be a farce, played by a pope and two cardinals.
The ecclesiastical court met in the great hall of the Blackfriars, commonly called the “parliament chamber.” The two legates having successively taken the commission in their hands, devoutly declared that they were resolved to execute it (they should have said, to elude it), made the required oaths, and ordered a peremptory citation of the king and queen to appear on the 18th of June at nine in the morning. Campeggio was eager to proceed slowly; the session was adjourned for three weeks. The citation caused a great stir among the people. “What!” said they, “a king and a queen 315
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century constrained to appear, in their own realm, before their own subjects.” The papacy set an example which was to be strictly followed in after-years both in England and in France.
On the 18th of June, Catherine appeared before the commission in the parliament chamber, and stepping forward with dignity, said with a firm voice: “I protest against the legates as incompetent judges, and appeal to the pope.” This proceeding of the queen’s, her pride and firmness, troubled her enemies, and in their vexation they grew exasperated against her. “Instead of praying God to bring this matter to a good conclusion,” they said, “she endeavours to turn away the people’s affections from the king. Instead of showing Henry the love of a youthful wife, she keeps away from him night and day. There is even cause to fear,” they added, “that she is in concert with certain individuals who have formed the horrible design of killing the king and the cardinal.” But persons of generous heart, seeing only a queen, a wife, and a mother, attacked in her dearest affections, showed themselves full of sympathy for her.
On the 21st of June, the day to which the court adjourned, the two legates entered the parliament chamber with all the pomp belonging to their station, and took their seats on a raised platform. Near them sat the bishops of Bath and Lincoln, the abbot of Westminster, and Doctor Taylor, master of the Rolls, whom they had added to their commission. Below them were the secretaries, among whom the skillful Stephen Gardiner held the chief rank. On the right hung a cloth of estate where the king sat surrounded by his officers; and on the left, a little lower, was the queen, attended by her ladies.
The archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops were seated between the legates and Henry VIII, and on both sides of the throne were stationed the counsellors of the king and queen. The latter were Fisher, bishop of Rochester, Standish of St. Asaph, West of Ely, and Doctor Ridley. The people, when they saw this procession defile before them, were far from being dazzled by the pomp. “Less show and more virtue,”
they said, “would better become such judges.”
The pontifical commission having been read, the legates declared that they would judge without fear or favour, and would admit of neither recusation nor appeal.
Then the usher cried: “Henry, king of England, come into court.” The king, cited in his own capital to accept as judges two priests, his subjects, repressed the throbbing of his proud heart, and replied, in the hope that this strange trial would have a favourable issue: “Here I am.” The usher continued: “Catherine, queen of England, come into court.” The queen handed the cardinals a paper in which she protested 316
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century against the legality of the court, as the judges were the subjects of her opponent, and appealed to Rome. The cardinals declared they could not admit this paper, and consequently Catherine was again called into court. At this second summons she rose, devoutly crossed herself, made the circuit of the court to where the king sat, bending with dignity as she passed in front of the legates, and fell on her knees before her husband. Every eye was turned upon her. Then speaking in English, but with a Spanish accent, which by recalling the distance she was from her native home, pleaded eloquently for her, Catherine said with tears in her eyes, and in a tone at once dignified and impassioned:
“Sir,—I beseech you, for all the love that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right; take some pity on me, for I am a poor woman and a stranger, born out of your dominions. I have here no assured friends, much less impartial counsel, and I flee to you as to the head of justice within this realm. Alas!
Sir, wherein have I offended you, or what occasion given you of displeasure, that you should wish to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness, that I have been to you a true, humble, and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. Never have I said or done aught contrary thereto, being always well pleased and content with all things wherein you had delight; neither did I ever grudge in word or countenance, or show a visage or spark of discontent. I loved all those whom you loved, only for your sake. This twenty years I have been your true wife, and by me ye have had divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which yet hath been no default in me.” The judges, and even the most servile of the courtiers, were touched when they heard these simple and eloquent words, and the queen’s sorrow moved them almost to tears.
Catherine continued:— “Sir,—When ye married me at the first, I take God to be my judge I was a true maid; and whether it be true or not, I put it to your conscience If there be any just cause that ye can allege against me, I am contented to depart from your kingdom, albeit to my great shame and dishonour; and if there be none, then let me remain in my former estate until death. Who united us? The king, your father, who was called the second Solomon; and my father, Ferdinand, who was esteemed one of the wisest princes that, for many years before, had reigned in Spain.
It is not, therefore, to be doubted that the marriage between you and me is good and lawful. Who are my judges? Is not one the man that has put sorrow between you and me? a judge whom I refuse and abhor!—Who are the councillors assigned me? Are they not officers of the crown, who have made oath to you in your own council? Sir, I conjure you not to call me before a court so formed. Yet, if you refuse me this favour your will be done I shall be silent, I shall repress the emotions of my soul, and remit my just cause to the hands of God.”
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Thus spoke Catherine through her tears; humbly bending, she seemed to embrace Henry’s knees. She rose and made a low obeisance to the king. It was expected that she would return to her seat; but leaning on the arm of Griffiths, her receiver-general, she moved towards the door. The king, observing this, ordered her to be recalled; and the usher following her, thrice cried aloud: “Catherine, queen of England, come into court.”—“Madam,” said Griffiths, “you are called back.”—“I hear it well enough,” replied the queen, “but go you on, for this is no court wherein I can have justice: let us proceed.” Catherine returned to the palace, and never again appeared before the court either by proxy or in person.
She had gained her cause in the minds of many. The dignity of her person, the quaint simplicity of her speech, the propriety with which, relying upon her innocence, she had spoken of the most delicate subjects, and the tears which betrayed her emotion, had created a deep impression. But “the sting in her speech,” as an historian says, was her appeal to the king’s conscience, and to the judgment of Almighty God, on the capital point in the cause. “How could a person so modest, so sober in her language,” said many, “dare utter such a falsehood? Besides, the king did not contradict her.”
Henry was greatly embarrassed: Catherine’s words had moved him. Catherine’s defence, one of the most touching in history, had gained over the accuser himself. He therefore felt constrained to render this testimony to the accused: “Since the queen has withdrawn, I will, in her absence, declare to you all present, that she has been to me as true and obedient a wife as I could desire. She has all the virtues and good qualities that belong to a woman. She is as noble in character as in birth.”
But Wolsey was the most embarrassed of all. When the queen had said, without naming him, that one of her judges was the cause of all her misfortunes, looks of indignation were turned upon him. He was unwilling to remain under the weight of this accusation. As soon as the king had finished speaking, he said: “Sir, I humbly beg your majesty to declare before this audience, whether I was the first or chief mover in this business.” Wolsey had formerly boasted to Du Bellay, “that the first project of the divorce was set on foot by himself, to create a perpetual separation between the houses of England and Spain; but now it suited him to affirm the contrary. The king, who needed his services, took care not to contradict him. “My lord cardinal,” he said, “I can well excuse you herein. Marry, so far from being a mover, ye have been rather against me in attempting thereof. It was the bishop of Tarbes, the French ambassador, who begot the first scruples in my conscience by his doubts on the legitimacy of the Princess Mary.”
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century This was not correct. The bishop of Tarbes was not in England before the year 1527, and we have proofs that the king was meditating a divorce in 1526. “From that hour,” he continued, “I was much troubled, and thought myself in danger of God’s heavy displeasure, who, wishing to punish my incestuous marriage, had taken away all the sons my wife had borne me. I laid my grief before you, my lord of Lincoln, then being my ghostly father; and by your advice I asked counsel of the rest of the bishops, and you all informed me under your seals, that you shared in my scruples.”— “That is the truth,” said the archbishop of Canterbury.—“No, Sir, not so, under correction,”
quoth the bishop of Rochester, “you have not my hand and seal.”—“No?” exclaimed the king, showing him a paper which he held in his hand; “is not this your hand and seal?”— “No, forsooth,” he answered. Henry’s surprise increased, and turning with a frown to the archbishop of Canterbury, he asked him: “What say you to that?”
“Sir, it is his hand and seal,” replied Warham.—“It is not,” rejoined Rochester; “I told you I would never consent to any such act.”—“You say the truth,” responded the archbishop, “but you were fully resolved at the last, that I should subscribe your name and put your seal.”—“All which is untrue,” added Rochester, in a passion. The bishop was not very respectful to his primate. “Well, well,” said the king, wishing to end the dispute, “we will not stand in argument with you; for you are but one man.” The court adjourned. The day had been better for Catherine than for the prelates.
In proportion as the first sitting had been pathetic, so the discussions in the second between the lawyers and bishops were calculated to revolt a delicate mind.
The advocates of the two parties vigorously debated pro and con respecting the consummation of Arthur’s marriage with Catherine. “It is a very difficult question,”
said one of the counsel; “none can know the truth.”—“But I know it,” replied the bishop of Rochester.—“What do you mean?” asked Wolsey.—“My lord,” he answered,
“he was the very Truth who said: What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder: that is enough for me.”—“So everybody thinks,” rejoined Wolsey; “but whether it was God who united Henry of England and Catherine of Aragon, hoc restat probandum, that remains to be proved. The king’s council decides that the marriage is unlawful, and consequently it was not God who joined them together.” The two bishops then exchanged a few words less edifying than those of the preceding day.
Several of the hearers expressed a sentiment of disgust. “It is a disgrace to the court,”
said Doctor Ridley with no little indignation, “that you dare discuss questions which fill every right-minded man with horror.” This sharp reprimand put an end to the debate.
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History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century The agitations of the court spread to the convents; priests, monks, and nuns were everywhere in commotion. It was not long before astonishing revelations began to circulate through the cloisters. There was no talk then of an old portrait of the Virgin that winked its eyes; but other miracles were invented. “An angel,” it was rumoured,
“has appeared to Elizabeth Barton, the maid of Kent, as he did formerly to Adam, to the patriarchs, and to Jesus Christ.” At the epochs of the creation and of the redemption, and in the times which lead from one to the other, miracles are natural; God then appeared, and his coming without any signs of power, would be as surprising as the rising of the sun unattended by its rays of light. But the Romish Church does not stop there; it claims in every age, for its saints, the privilege of miraculous powers, and the miracles are multiplied in proportion to the ignorance of the people. And accordingly the angel said to the epileptic maid of Kent: “Go to the unfaithful king of England, and tell him there are three things he desires, which I forbid now and for ever. The first is the power of the pope; the second the new doctrine; the third Anne Boleyn. If he takes her for his wife, God will visit him.” The vision-seeing maid delivered the message to the king, whom nothing could now stop.
On the contrary, he began to find out that Wolsey proceeded too slowly, and the idea sometimes crossed his mind that he was betrayed by this minister. One fine summer’s morning, Henry as soon as he rose summoned the cardinal to him at Bridewell. Wolsey hastened thither, and remained closeted with the king from eleven till twelve. The latter gave way to all the fury of his passion and the violence of his despotism. “We must finish this matter promptly,” he said, “we must positively.”
Wolsey retired very uneasy, and returned by the Thames to Westminster. The sun darted his bright rays on the water. The bishop of Carlisle, who sat by the cardinal’s side, remarked, as he wiped his forehead: “A very warm day, my lord.”— “Yes,” replied the unhappy Wolsey, “if you had been chafed for an hour as I have been, you would say it was a hot day.” When he reached his palace, the cardinal lay down on his bed to seek repose; he was not quiet long.
Catherine had grown in Henry’s eyes, as well as in those of the nation. The king shrank from a judgment; he even began to doubt of his success. He wished that the queen would consent to a separation. This idea occurred to his mind after Wolsey’s departure, and the cardinal had hardly closed his eyes before the earl of Wiltshire (Anne Boleyn’s father) was announced to him with a message from the king. “It is his majesty’s pleasure,” said Wiltshire, “that you represent to the queen the shame that will accrue to her from a judicial condemnation, and persuade her to confide in his wisdom.” Wolsey, commissioned to execute a task he knew to be impossible, exclaimed:
“Why do you put such fancies in the king’s head?” and then he spoke so reproachfully that Wiltshire, with tears in his eyes, fell on his knees beside the cardinal’s bed.
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