>>
* » .'JfJ •<*
J» ->
t 8 is ;
> « t* 7, ? X >
> ?-? J
»
» 3 » >
^2 -->• » >
O >
• > >
i . :
>;•> ">
> >^
GOLDWIN SMITH.
> 5 > '> > >> :>
l
>' 7
• • > >
** JS?
^* 1>
II
>
>»
•>^> .
&i
LIVES
or THE
AUCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
VOL. VI.
LIVES
OF THE
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
BY
WALTER FARQUHAR HOOK, D.D. F.R.S.
DEAN OF CHICHESTER. Ynl.r.MK VI.
History which may be called jiMt and perfect history U of three kind*, according to the object which it propoundeth or pretendeth to represent : for it either reprewnteth a time, or a person, or an action. Tte fint we caU Chronicle*, the second Lire*, and the third Sarrati»e» or Relation*. Of these, although Chronicle* be the moat complete and absolute .kind of history, and hath most estimation and glory, yet Lire* excelleth iu profit and use. and Narratives or Relations in verily or sincerity. Lo»D BACOX
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
|)ublis|jtr in ©rbinarg to |ur glajtstn. 1868.
fit/lit oj traiislat -
LONDON :
K. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, I'Hl.N'TLKS. BREAD STREET HILL.
CONTENTS
i
OF
THE SIXTH V 0 L U M K.
BOOK IV.
T II K R E F f> R .I/ A T I » .V.
rH.vlTKl; I.
I X T H« i D U r T" \\ Y.
The one Duty of an Incorporated Society. — The Church a Society incorporated by Christ out Lord. — Its special Duty to propagate the Gospel. — Study of Theology necessary to an Ecclesiastical Historian. — Xo exertion of Intellect can discover that there is a future State of Existence. — This can only be known by a Reve- lation from God. — Revealed Religion is a transniissive Religion. — Compulsion allowable to induce Men to accept Revealed Truth. — Men compelled by Education, and by the Institutions of their Country. — Intolerance of Man. — Intolerance of Literary and Scientific Men. — Intolerance of Politicians. — Moral Persecu- tions in the Religious AVorld. — Evils of anonymous Journalism. — Persecution forbidden in Scripture. — All the Reformers in- tolerant.— Struggle of the Church of England from the Conquest against Popery. — Reformers. — Wiclif. — Reformers at Pisa, Con- stance, and Basle. — Luther. — Modern Romanism established as a Sect at the Council of Trent. — English Reformation. — All the Reformers repudiated Chillingworth's Dogma. — The Bible only the Religion of Protestants. — Confessions of Faith. — English Reformation the Re-establishment of Primitive Christianitv. —
VI CONTEXTS OF
Romish Reformation at Trent established Medievalism. — Con- tinuity and Perpetuity of the Church of England. — The old Catholic Church reformed. — No new Sect. — Malignant or party Use of the title Catholic. — Royal Supremacy. — The Sovereign not the Head of the Church. — Suppression of Monasteries. — Character of drum well. — Object of Introductory Chapters. — From the Reformation Primates gradually retired from Politics. — The Reformation Period, from time of King Henry VIII. and Archbishop Warham to that of Charles II. and Archbishop Juxon. — Our present Position dependent upon the Reformation of 1662. — Party Spirit displayed in Writers of the History of the Reformation. — Character of the Historians. — Foxe not trust- worthy.— This Work composed from Public Documents. — No great or master Mind among our Reformers. — Advantage of this. — English Reformation a providential Blessing. . Par/? I
CHAP. II.
WILLIAM WARHAM.
Educated a Wykehamist at Winchester and at New College. — His Career at Oxford. — A Student of Law. — Practises in the Court of Arches. — Diplomatic Employments. — An Account of Perkin Warbeck. — Warham attached to the Embassy to the Duke of Burgundy. — Principal of St. Edmund's College, Oxford. — Con- secrated Bishop of London. — Translation to Canterbury. — Appointed Lord Chancellor. — Splendour of the Enthronizatioii. — Enthronization Feast at Oxford. — Appointed Lord High Chan- cellor.— In favour with Henry VII. — Question relating to the Marriage of Prince Henry with the Princess Katherine. — Light thrown on the subject by the Simancas Papers. — Death of Henry VII. — Warham officiates at the Marriage of Henry VIII. and the Lady Katherine. — Sponsor to their first Child. — His parliamentary Career — Corruption of the Church. — Condition of the Clergy. — Iniquities of the Ecclesiastical Courts. — Warham' s Attempts at Reform. — Warham assists to aid Henry VIII. — Labours to effect Wolsey's Appointment as Cardinal and Legate
THE SIXTH VOLUME. Vli
d, latf.rf. — Amicable Relations between Warham and Wolsey. — Their occasional Misunderstandings. — Warham's Retirement from Public Life. — His Patronage of the Reformers before the Reformation. — His Conduct as Chancellor of Oxford. — The Reforms introduced at the University. — An Account of the leading Literary Men of the Day, Friends of Warham. — Warham the Patron and Protector of Colet. — The intimate Friend of Erasmus. — Erasmus in England. — Erasmus speaks of Warham L married Man. — Question of Warham's Marriage considered. —Royal Divorce. — Wolsey sounds Warham on the Subject — Warham inclined, though passive, to side with the King. — The Public first in favour of a Divorce. — Indignation and Discontent when. Announcement was made of the King's intended Marriage with Ann Boleyn. — Wolsey in Disgrace. — Cranmer and Crum- well secret Advisers of the King. — Royal Supremacy mooted. — Account of Dr. Standish. — Matronage of England insulted by the King's proposed Marriage with his Mistress. — Clergy vehe- ment in their Denunciation of the Marriage. — Pulpits silenced. —Henry determined to punish the Clergy. — Parliament of 1529. —Bills affecting the Clergy. — Clergy involved in the Penalties of Praemunire. — Convocation of Canterbury. — Latimer's Recanta- tion.— House of Commons attack the Ordinaries. — Ordinaries as distinguished from Bishops. — Gardyner's Reply. — Royal Su- premacy admitted by Convocation long before it was asserted by Parliament. — Discussions on this Subject — Warham's View of
it — Submission of the Clergy. — Opposition in Convocation.
Concessions on both sides.— Warham in favour with the King. —Prepares for Death.— La>t Illue.-s.— His Disregard of Money. —Dies poor. — Obsequies. — Benefaction- . . Page 155
CHAP. III.
THOMAS CKAXMER.
Preliminary Observations. — Craurner opposed to Protestantism in early Life. —Parentage and Birth. — His early Education. — Sent to Cambridge. — Is elected a Fellow of Jesus. — His first Mar-
Vlll CONTENTS OF THE SIXTH VOLUME.
riage. — His Life at the Dolphin. — Appointed Beader of Buck- ingham College. — Becomes a Widower, and is restored to his Fellowship. — Whether he was offered Promotion in Wolsey's College at Oxford, doubtful. — Proceeds to the Degree of D.D. — Does not distinguish himself at the University. — Discharges the routine Duties of a Master of Arts and a Doctor. — Becomes Tutor to Mr. Cressy's Children. — Introduction to Henry VIII. — The Divorce Case. — Cranmer sent with Embassy to Home, to plead the King's Cause. — He is favourably received by the Papal Aiithorities. — The Pope confers upon him the Office of Grand Penitentiary of England. — Opinions of the Universities on the Divorce Case. — Cranmer returns to England. — His Opinion of Pole's Letter on the Divorce. — He defends Persecution of Here- tics.— Ambassador to the Emperor. — Unsuccessful Negotiation. — He lingers in Germany. — Has little Intercourse with the Lu- therans.— Falls in love with Osiander's Niece, and contracts a second Marriage. — Appointed by the King Archbishop of Can- terbury.— Sincere in his Eeluctance to accept the Office. — Is consecrated. — His Enthronization. — Convocation. — The King secretly married to Ann Boleyn. — Cranmer pronounces the Nul- lity of the King's Marriage with Queen Katherine. — Cranmer's Description of Queen Ann's Coronation. — Indignation of the Public against the King and the Archbishop. — Harsh Measures of Cranmer. — He silences the Pulpits. — Recurrence to the His- tory of the Nun of Kent. — Cranmer protected by Military Force at his Visitation. — His provincial Visitation. — Opposed by the Bishops of Winchester and London. — Legislative Enactments. — Election of Bishops. — Archbishop invested with power to grant Dispensations hitherto granted by the Pope. — Suffragan Bishops. — Protestant Persecutors. — Legal Murder of More and Fisher. — Archbishop's Retirement. — Trial of Ann Boleyn. — Unjustifiable Conduct of Cranmer. ..... Page 422
LIVES
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
BOOK IV
THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The one Duty of an Incorporated Society. — The Church a Society incor- porated by Christ our Lord. — Its special Duty to propagate the Gospel. — Study of Theology necessary to an Ecclesiastical Historian. — No exertion of Intellect can discover that there is a future State of Existence. — This can only be known by a Revelation from God. — Revealed Religion is a transruissive Religion. — Compulsion allowable to induce Men to accept Revealed Truth. — Men compelled by Education, and by the Institutions of their Country. — Intolerance of Man. — Intolerance of Literary and Scientific Men. — Intolerance of Politicians. — Moral Persecutions in the Religious World. — Evils of anonymous Journalism. — Persecution for- bidden in Scripture. — All the Reformers intolerant. — Struggle of the Church of England from the Conquest against Popery. — Reformers. — TViclif. — Reformers at Pisa, Constance, and Basle. — Luther. — Modern Romanism established as a Sect at the Council of Trent. — English Refor- mation.— All the Reformers repudiated Chillingworth's Dogma. — The Bible only the Religion of Protestants. — Confessions of Faith. — English Refonnation the Re-establishment of Primitive Christianity. — Romish Reformation at Trent established Medievalism. — Continuity and Per- petuity of the Church of England.— The old Catholic Church reformed. — No new Sect. — Malignant or party Use of the title Catholic. — Royal
VOL. VI. B
2 LIVES OF THE
Supremacy. — The Sovereign not the Head of the Church. — Suppression of Monasteries. — Character of Crumwell. — Object of Introductory Chapters. — From the Reformation Primates gradually retired from Politics. — The Reformation Period, from time of King Henry VIII. and Archbishop Warham to that of Charles II. and Archbishop Juxon. — Our present Position dependent upon the Reformation of 1662. — Party Spirit displayed in Writers of the History of the Reformation. — Character of the Historians. — Poxe not trustworthy. — This Work composed from Public Documents. — No great or master Mind among our Reformers. — Advantage of this. — English Reformation a providential Blessing.
To the constitution and characteristic peculiarities of incorporated societies the attention of the reader has IntoryUC been directed in the introductory chapter of the pre- ceding book. A body corporate is a legal fiction, invested with a living power ; and possesses an immor- tality which does not pertain to any of its component parts. I revert to the subject now to remark, that when a society is incorporated, the design is not the personal aggrandizement of its members ; but the fur- therance of some definite and extrinsic object. In consequence of their association, honours may accrue to the members ; but this is an accident of the insti- tution, and not the purport of its organization. The officers of a regiment are honoured by the commission they hold, and through the regiment they may rise to distinction ; nevertheless, the regiment was raised not to stimulate or reward personal merit, but, through the valour of its members, to fight the battles of the country. In a municipal corporation, the magistrates are dignified ; but the royal charter embodied them, not for their own sakes ; but that, by their combined energy and wisdom, justice may be administered and the public peace maintained.
The reader will bear this in mind while we call to his recollection the fact, that in Holy Scripture the Church Universal is presented to our contemplation as an incorporated society : " We being many," says St. Paul, " are one bodv in Christ ; " " We are all
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
baptized into one body ; " " Now ye are the body of CHAP.
i.
Christ, and members in particular." ~"
v f\\ \7iTiAlT7 inr»nr-
tory.
The Universal Church is a society divinely incor- Introd
porated under its Divine Head ; it is governed by a succession of officers divinely appointed : we are admitted into it by the Sacrament of Baptism.
Having realized this idea, we pass on to the next. The Church has been incorporated for some special purpose. Over and above the duties devolving upon individuals there is one common object, to promote which is the object of its incorporation.
The Church was not incorporated to inculcate a code of morals. This it has done, but it has done it inci- dentally. It is not the will of God to do by miracle, what can be accomplished by the natural powers of the human mind, duly cultivated, taught by experi- ence, and properly exercised. The ethical writings of the heathen philosophers still exist to bear testimony to what can be accomplished by the unassisted human intellect ; and to show that a miracle was not required for the development of a system of ethics. The Lord did not descend from heaven to become a moralist and lawgiver. He is such ; but the inculcation of morality is an accident of Christianity, and not of its essence.
The Church was not incorporated as a school of philosophy. The members of an incorporated society cannot do their duty in or to the society, unless they adhere to its rules ; they are to labour for a special object, bat only through legitimate means. There must, therefore, be dogmatic teaching in the Church. The members of the Church are to impart to one another what the Head of the Church has enjoined, and to instruct them in all that the Lord has com- manded. But this again is only an incidental, though an important, duty.
* Rom. xii. 5 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13; Ephes. iw 4» B 2
4 LIVES OF THE
CHAP. The special duty of the Church, the object for the furtherance of which it was organized, the one end
O *
Intorduc~ ^or wnicn it was incorporated, its peculiar function as a body corporate, — is declared by its Divine Founder: " Go ye and disciple all nations ; " " Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature/'
Each individual is to seek his own salvation. In the battle-field, every soldier is instinctively impelled, to adopt measures for the protection of his person and the preservation of his life. Every individual is to acquire a knowledge of the Divine law, as he has the opportunity. In a municipal corporation, each magistrate must study the laws of the land. But, in addition to these, the personal duties of each individual member, there is the one duty of the incorporated society, the object for which it was organized, char- tered, commanded into existence. This duty, in the case of the Church, is to disciple nations ; to preach the Gospel, as God provides the opportunity, to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. It is to continue for ever, by the accretion of new members, that Divine corporation to which this duty has been assigned.
Words, however, are so often used to which no meaning, or an inadequate meaning, or a wTrong meaning, is attached ; that, when we have ascertained what was the special object which our Lord had in view when Christians were incorporated, a further question arises, and we are obliged to ask, What is meant by the Gospel 1
In giving an answer to this question, we enter into the province of theology, and for so doing no apology is necessary. To divorce theology from ecclesiastical history is impossible, if by history we mean anything more than annals or a dry statement of facts, — a
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 5
corpse without a soul. It is only in favour of theology CHAP. that the Church acts, and to a person ignorant of the __J_ Christian religion the conduct of Christians must lnj™!juc appear frequently offensive, and always unaccountable.
To meet the question before us, we must repeat what has been advanced before : that God only reveals what man, without revelation, is unable to discover ; or what is necessary to preserve its tradition.
No exertion of intellectual power could discover the fact that there is a future state of existence — a world beyond the grave. Reason, by its intuitions, may regard the thing as probable ; the understanding, by its logic, may prove that it is not impossible ; upon the possibility and the probability the imagination may love to dwell. But the fact that there is a heaven and that there is a hell ; this, if it be a fact, must be revealed — made known to us by miracle.
Again, no ratiocinative skill, no logical process, can discover what we are to do if, when we have received a revelation upon the subject, we desire to make that future state an eternity of happiness.
It has been made known to us, that a future world exists, in which an order of things is constituted analogous to that with which we are familiar; — that which we denote when we speak of the laws of nature. Our life is not renewed, but continued. Death can make no alteration in our character ; as the child is said to be father to the man, so man in time is father to man in eternity. There is a change in our circum- stances, but, as these circumstances are subject to the same law of nature, there is a sequence of cause and effect ; hence what we are doing in this world may be the cause of what will be experienced in the next.
There are circumstances in this world which may admit of explanation by a reference to the laws of nature, but present themselves as mysteries to the
6 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, mind of the moralist. Suffering and misery are dis- connected from vice ; and virtue frequently becomes its introduc- own reward, arid nothing more. A man by accident
tory.
falls into a pit ; there is no blame to be attached to him, but the result in death is the same, whether it be an accident or a suicide. A pious son is struggling with poverty, not from any fault of his own, but because an improvident father hazarded his all at a gaming table. Another person is ruined because, in his charity, he has become surety for a friend, whom he trusted and by whom he has been deceived. We have had repeated instances of great families reduced to distress through the attainder of an ancestor, the innocent victim of party malice or of royal injustice.
For these things we cannot account ; we must take them as they are, and act accordingly. It is in accordance with this order of things, that the human race, through no fault of its members now existing, has, in its corporate capacity, become a disobedient race. A disobedient race cannot answer the end and object for the furtherance of which it was originally created, and is therefore in a state of condemnation. Each man who is born into this world is, under present circumstances, incapable of obeying God. Until it is revealed to him, he knows not what God requires of him ; he is even ignorant of his position as a sinful creature. It is revealed to us, that the inevitable consequence of any deviation from the Divine will, whether intentional or not, is misery ; misery is the effect of which a deviation from God's will is the cause. Although gleams of happiness are vouchsafed to him from time to time, yet man goes on adding sin to sin, and, in consequence, incurring a never-ceasing increase of misery. When he has reached a certain height, his descent is rapid ; through the weakness of old age he sinks into a second childhood, and, passing
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
a sinner into the next world, he is eternally miserable, CHAP. because he is eternally sinning. Eeason can never _J^_
discover anv change in the laws of nature, when the Iutroduc-
* tory.
boundaries of this world shall have been passed ; and certainly death is not a Saviour to atone, or a Paraclete
to regenerate.
Under this state of things, God has been pleased to make known to us that a miracle of mercy has been performed ; another force has been brought to bear upon the forces in existence, and a Saviour has been provided to restore the human race as such, and those among its individual members who will conform to the conditions imposed, to that high position in which man was seen, when, by the created intelligences who surround the throne of glory, the voice of God was heard declaring that whatever He had made was very good. Good news, glad tidings are these ; that for fallen man, in his corporate capacity, an Almighty Saviour has been provided, and, for the regeneration of each penitent individual, the Divine Comforter. This is the Gospel which the Church is to preach, and such is the Divine Saviour under whose dominion it is to endeavour to reduce every creature. The Church cannot secure the salvation of all who are enrolled among its members ; in an earthly kingdom a subject of the king may be condemned to death for robbery, murder, or treason ; but the Church can bring to all men the privileges of the Gospel, and it must labour incessantly, to make all the kingdoms of the earth the kingdoms of the Lord.
It is useless to conceal the fact, so unwelcome to a large portion of the governing classes, that while the Church exists, it must exist as a Church militant. The spirit of syncretism, at this time prevalent in England, made its appearance, only to fail, in the Roman Empire. And such must ever be the case. It is not an opinion
8 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, or a wish that is now stated ; it is simply an historical _^_, fact. At certain times and in some localities the Church Intordu°" Inay ^6 ^different an(i corrupt, or the world may seem to triumph over it ; but the mandate of its Founder is unalterable. According to His command, whether it shall bring peace upon earth or a sword, the Church will never rest until it has subdued to Christ " flesh and blood, principalities and powers, the rulers of the dark- ness of this world, spiritual wickedness in high places." It will, by recourse to all lawful means and measures, compel men to become, at least nominally, Christian.
To the word compulsion, as applied to religion, many will demur, who are nevertheless among the first to compel. We have recourse to compulsion, whenever we resort to any measure, except that of argument, to induce men to profess and call them- selves Christians. The Christian father, who believes that the whole world is under sentence of condem- nation, brings his unconscious infant to baptism, that he may place him in a state of salvation. He invests him with privileges ; but the child, without being con- sulted, is involved also in responsibilities. It is a sweet compulsion, nevertheless compulsion it is, when the young mother teaches her babe to lisp the Saviour's name ; and to call God his Father. When the child passes from the nursery to the school-room, he finds himself surrounded by preceptors and books, the avowed purpose of whom and of which is, to pre- judice his mind in favour of Christianity ; and to train him in the way that a Christian, though scorned by the world as narrow-minded, thinks that he ought to go. The Christian parent, whether he reasons on the subject or not, is aware that a prejudice by no means implies a wrong opinion : it is simply an opinion which, without examination, we have received from others. Persuaded that his own convictions on the subject of
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
religion are right, — prepared perhaps, il need should be, CHAP. to die for them, — the Christian parent is anxious to — _ transmit the truth he has received to his posterity. Intto™"
The present controversy on the subject of education is based on the right claimed by various parties to compel the young to adopt or to eschew certain opinions and principles, by prejudicing their minds in favour of them, or against them. The divisions of Christendom prove to be the strength of infidelity. The infidel, however, in seeking to eliminate Christianity from our schools, is acting on the same principle. He seeks to compel the rising generation to become in- fidel, by exciting a prejudice in its mind against all dogmatic teaching. He would cajole the unstable, without offending established prejudices ; he would retain the name of Christian, but speak of Christ, not as a Saviour, but as a fallible moralist ; he repudiates the epithet of godless, but the God in whose favour he would prejudice the minds of his children, whether spoken of as Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, is, in his esti- mation, not a Person.
We summon him, therefore, into the witness-box, to bear testimony to the fact, that man cannot arrive at those practical conclusions which are to shape his course of life through any processes of the under- standing, independent of external circumstances. It is to a few subjects only that the deepest thinker can apply the whole force of his intellect, and adjust the intuitions of reason to the deductions of the understanding. Independently of education, the logical power exists pretty nearly the same in all sound minds. It is in information rather than in logical capacity, that the learned differ from the unlearned. The counsel learned in the law, when addressing a jury of illiterate persons, makes them acquainted with certain points of law and fact of which they had
10 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, been previously ignorant,, in full confidence that, when — -v~ they have been rightly informed, there is in them Intt1o°iduc" " sufficient logical power to enable them to arrive at a unanimous conclusion. If> indeed, we depended upon the understanding only, we should not behold those wonderful differences, not only in the character of individuals, but in the whole tone of mind and cast of thought, by which entire nations and whole races are distinguished from each other. Diversities of character absolutely antagonistic are to be found between the English and the French, the German and the Italian ; and, more marked still, between ourselves and our brethren in the United States of America. "We may ask why is one whole nation, with a few exceptions, Protestant ; and, with similar exceptions, another race of human beings Papistical ; or, forming the most populous and ancient of all branches of the Christian family, members of the Greek Church ?
The truth is, we become what we are by the training which in early life our affections have received, and by the bias given to the grateful mind through the tradi- tions of our elders ; by the example of our associates ; by the customs to which we have been habituated; by the manners we have formed ; by the silent impression of national institutions ; by the prevalent tone of society ; by the laws to which we have been taught to submit : by all these and similar circumstances, which seem to endow us with new and peculiar instincts before our reasoning powers are developed, or the understanding has been taught to exert itself. When reason dawns, the mind has already accepted certain opinions trans- mitted to us as true, and these are so woven into our whole system of thought that they are regarded as intuitions. The business of the educated understanding may be to go in quest of new truths, but these truths when discovered have to be harmonized with truths
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
already received ; it may have to winnow out the errors CHAP. attendant more or less upon all transmitted informa- — — tion, to correct or to corroborate ; but though the ntoo-_ inherited doctrine be amended or enlarged, it has been the basis of our reasoning and discoveries. A heart has been given us as well as a head, to enable us to steer with safety through the shoals and quicksands of this troublous world ; and by self-control we are to temper excesses on either side.
We find the book of God's word in perfect harmony with the book of God's works. It has been through tradition that God has made known His will to the several generations of mankind ; His religion is to be transmitted from father to son. When it pleased God to make that revelation of a future state to which we have adverted, this is the only conceivable way through which the fact n-v« uled could be brought to bear upon the mass of mankind.
If God had thought fit to reveal this great fact to each man as he comes into the world — the fact of his immortality and the preparation required to make it a state of happiness — the whole course of nature would have been changed. A creature different from what he now is, man would have become, if the probationary circumstances under which he is placed were different. An entirely new creature would have been called into existence. Man remaining as he is, we can only con- ceive that plan to have been feasible, which by Divine - wisdom has been adopted.
When the revelation made to Adam had become virtually obliterated from the mind and memory of man, it was renewed by Divine mercy to Abraham ; and we are told why Abraham was selected. In the language of Scripture it is said, " I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." A
12 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, miracle was in one instance wrought, but God would
; not interfere further with the ordinary course of nature
introduc- ^nan the circumstances of the case actually required.
When Abraham's family expanded into a nation, there was again a miracle, or a series of miracles wrought, in order that, through the political system imposed upon a stiff-necked people, the grand fact of revelation, as received in the patriarchal Church, might be engraven on the public mind : "I know that my Kedeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth."
In the Christian Church the continuance of the same system of transmissive religion was implied, when Timothy was pronounced to be blessed by St. Paul because his religion was an inheritance. Having profited by the instructions of his mother and his grandmother, who taught him to expect the Messiah, he stood on vantage-ground when St. Paul offered proof to show, that the Lord Jesus is He. The good Bereans inherited the Scriptures ; and when to the knowledge which had been transmitted to them the Apostles would make an addition, they then, without ignoring the past, but resting upon it as their founda- tion, searched the Scriptures to see " whether those things were so."
We are taught the duty of compelling men, in these and similar ways, " to come in," by a greater than St. Paul. To remind us of this duty, and to enforce its observance, our Lord Himself delivered more than one of His parables.
Our Divine Master, having made all things ready for the salvation and sanctification of human souls, opens His house — the Church Universal — and sends out an invitation to all men to partake of the blessings He has prepared for them. Having effected our salva- tion by a miracle, He leaves the Church to expand itself
AKCHBISHOPS OF CASTEEBrEY. 13
in accordance with the ordinary laws of nature. He sends forth His messengers, and continues to send them forth, to invite men into the visible Church. > employ the arts of persuasion when addressing the educated, and to have recourse to argument. We are told in the parable the various :hat are made by the busy men of the world ; and if on them we depended exclusively for the propa- gation of the Gospel, we should be still in the darknean of heathenism. The messengers of the Lord are then
into the streets and lanes of the city, and they are commanded to bring in the poor and the maimed, and the halt and the blind. The express injunction of the Master is, " Compel them to come in, that My house may be folL"
When we make a spiritual application of these para- bles, we must admit, that by the poor and maimed, and the halt and the blind, can be meant, and meant only, the ignorant, the on instructed, the great mass of mankind ; the poor in circumstances, in intellect, in information.
The peculiarity of Christianity is, indeed, that the Gospel is preached to the poor. The heathen philo- sopher contemned the poor, because to the poor, the uneducated, he could not render his speculations
ligible ; but by an appeal to their gratitude and
ieir in* by educating, and training, and
prejudicing them, they. may be made members of the
le Church.
That \ve cannot, by these means alone, secure their future salvation, our Lord warns us, by mentioning the
re punishment to which the sinner was subjected, who, though admitted to the house, had not on, when
Lord appeared, the wedding-garment. He in-
:hat in the day of judgment, although a
man has entered into the Church, he will only suffer
14 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, the severer punishment, if, having had advantages _J^ placed within his reach, he in wilfulness or in careless- introduc- ness neglects to avail himself of the same. But be- cause we cannot array a man in a wedding-garment, which must be his own act and deed, it does not follow that we are not to bring him to the Lord's house, where he may obtain it if he will. The com- munion of saints is one thing, the visible Church is another. The visible Church man can extend ; the sanctification of souls pertains to another agency. We cannot make a man a loyal subject, but we may enlarge our Master's kingdom.
The Christian believes that the Messiah has come ; and he would prepare his own soul, and the souls of all over whom his influence may extend, to share, by faith in Him, the blessings which He came to procure for all. The Christian also believes, that the Messiah, having a special work to perform in the final subjugation of the rebels against the Divine government — fallen angels, as well as fallen man — is again to appear upon earth ; and the Church, in zeal for His glory, and in love to our fellow- creatures, is incorporated to prepare the way for His reception.
In bringing men to Christ, the question is not how were they brought ; but, What is their present position \ Have they accepted Christ as their Saviour ? Are they willing to learn what His commandments are, and, being enlightened, will they seek to obey ? One may be brought by conviction through argument ; another through affection ; the majority from the instruction of a Lois or Eunice. We do not despise even the inferior motives. A man may commence with the inferior motive, as did the Apostles, when they regarded our Lord as having come to establish a temporal kingdom; and, as in their case, from a worldly he may rise to that high principle which is consecrated by the blood
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 15
of martyrs. There are some who come to church to CHAP. enjoy the music there, but who remain to pray. ..!_
Into this theological statement we have been induced In^u to enter, that, before reverting to the corruptions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which rendered a Reformation necessary, we may see and acknowledge our obligations to the pre-Reformation Church.
It was the duty of those missionaries who, under God, were the founders of the Church of England, to preach the Gospel to the poor ; to tell them of a
viour almighty to save, and to induce them to receive the Lord Jesus as such. They continued to be the only friends of the poor, at a time when any one beneath the dignity of a knight was treated by the supercilious noble as less worthy of his regard than his war-horse, his hawk, or his hound. They compelled the poor to listen, by advocating their cause, and by an appeal to their gratitude. This, however, was not sufficient. They sought to indoctrinate the young, and to enlighten the ignorant, by surrounding them with a Christian atmosphere, and by making the Church a national institution.
The tendency of mankind is to look upwards, and we become, unconsciously, the imitators of those we admire and respect. In every kingdom, therefore, of the so- called Heptarchy, the founders of our Church addressed themselves, in the first instance, to the king and his council. If these were won, they knew that the people would follow. When the king, the council, and the people agreed, the name of the Church was inscribed on every institution of the land, and even on the banners of the battle-field. The nation became a Christian nation, because its laws were based on Christianity.
It may safely be affirmed, that at no period sub- sequent to the Reformation could the Church of
16 LIVES OF THE
CHAP. England have received its present organization. The whole tendency of the religious mind, since the close introduc- Of the sixteenth century, has been to individualize Christianity. Religion is treated as entirely subjective, and so has become more and more selfish. The simple question has been, — How does Christianity bear upon my salvation \ What is the state of my own soul ? Not, What is my duty as a sworn soldier and servant of the Great Captain of our salvation ? The object for which the Church was incorporated, though par- tially sustained by missionary exertions, is almost forgotten.
It was by the Church before the Reformation that our dioceses were formed, very nearly as they now are ; and, at the same time, the parochial system was established ; a minister of the Gospel is planted in each rural district, which otherwise the glad sounds of salvation would only occasionally and fitfully have reached. To the exertions of our ancestors, in ages far remote, we owe the endowments of our Church ; endowments for which we are indebted to private benevolence, and not to the State ; except so far as the State has extended to them the same protection, which it is required to extend to other owners of property. If St. Paul's was rebuilt, and other Cathedrals have been restored, still the foundations were laid before the Reformation, and it is to pre-Reformation piety that we are entirely indebted for what still remains of these establishments. Although in our universities some of our colleges have been founded subsequently to the reign of Henry VIII, yet the universities them- selves are mediaeval institutions. Our Book of Com- mon Prayer was not the composition of the illustrious men by whom the Reformation of our Church was conducted ; but it existed in the " Use of Sarum," which was itself an anticipation of the Prayer-book ;
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 17
being an attempt to reduce the various rituals of the CHAP. Church of England to one book.
So far we have spoken of compulsion effected by- recourse to legitimate measures : — measures which, injurious to no one, are the means of alluring the young, the weak, and the ignorant into the narrow path that leadeth to eternal life. Among true Christians, then, if a question arises on this subject it cannot have reference to compulsion, considered abstractedly ; it refers to the employment of legitimate or illegitimate means, to effect the end they have in view. There can be no doubt, that the abuse of this principle has led to persecution ; but a principle is not to be condemned because in its abuse it may terminate in criminal action. The truth is, that, when it does so, it becomes a new principle with an old name. Accus- tomed, in the nineteenth century, to test our opinions by a reference to Scripture, we at once condemn as irreligious, while we denounce as horrible, the acts of intolerance and persecution of which, not only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in almost every age before and since, we read the history. The ware of Charlemagne, the Crusades, the fires of Smithfield, the severities of Crumwell and of Bouner, the battles of the Puritans, the treatment of the Covenanters, to say nothing of the Inquisition, and the miserable war, in which that institution found its birth or at all events its first sphere of action, are denounced with one universal cry of reprobation ; and yet it will be observed there is no religious party, sect, school, or faction, from which the ac- cursed spot can be washed out. Xo mistake can be greater, than that which would represent the Ee- fonnation as a struggle for freedom ; this mistake, however, has rendered the name of Protestant dear to the politician who, regardless of religion, has inscribed
VOL. vi. c
18 LIVES OF THE
CHAP. " civil and religious liberty " on the banner of his
_!_ Part7-
introduc- The notion of religious liberty, or even of tolera- tion, never entered into the mind of any Eeformer of the sixteenth century. With Lutheran, Zuinglian, Romanist, Anglican, the simple question was, What is the truth 1 Each party claimed to be in possession of the truth ; each struggled for the mastery, in order that it might compel its opponents to accept the truth to which, it was imagined, God gave the Divine sanction when, through the operation of Divine Pro- vidence, He gave to the one party the success which He denied to the other. By degrees men learned, that visible and immediate success in this world was not a criterion of the truth ; and for the toleration we enjoy we are indebted rather to the mutual interests than to the generosity of mankind. In the uncertainty of human events, the party in the ascendant to-day may be in a miserable minority to-morrow ; and all parties have come to a tacit understanding, that the security from persecution, to be enjoyed by each, can only be secured by extending an exemption from physical persecution to all. This is the result of that which, abstractly considered, is a calamity — the dis- union of Christendom and the formation of those sects, which came into existence during, or after, the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Disunion is a great calamity ; for reunion the heart of man begins to yearn. But the Christian always sees the hand of Providence behind the darkness and the cloud, unceasingly employed in educing good out of evil. It would, humanly speaking, have been impossible for the corruptions of the Church to have been removed, and for a spirit of toleration to have been gradually created, if men had not been made to feel, that their own security depends upon the granting to others.,
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 1 !>
of that toleration of which they may themselves soon CHAP. stand in need. — ' —
Hence we hear no more of the rack or the stake. But the spirit of persecution is as rife and as general in the nineteenth century as it was in the sixteenth. "\Yhen. godless mobs are inebriated by concealed fanatics to attack unpopular churches; when parlia- mentary senility invokes authority to treat aesthetic ism as a crime ; we niv inclined to think, that an absence of persecution is to be attributed to want of power rather than to want of will. TTheii we observe the rancour with which, with a frw honourable exceptions. that portion of the public press which assumes to itself the character of religious, is accustomed to vilify the great and the good, whose doctrinal principles or ecclesiastical taste are impugned : we feel, that we are indebted for our safety, not to religious charity, but t«> a well-ordered police. The truculent letters by which all are assailed, almost daily, who occupy a prominent position in Church or State, are sufficient to prove that, if Bonner's hand be paralysed, Banner's heart still beats in many a br«-
It is sometimes assumed, that this bitterness of spirit is peculiar to religious controversy : but we must not forget, that the ».<//////< </• ologicum, though more unrea- sonable, is quite as bitter as tli-- <"//"/// thc<>ln<ji,- "We are painfully reminded of the controvert > int<» which men of science and literature, with less excuse, have been precipitated. Uiiregenerate man is by nature intolerant, and of those who imagine them- selves tolerant there are many who are merely in- different. "\Vhen the intellect alone is in activity, and the passions are unconcerned, to display a spirit of toleration towards those who differ from us in opinion may be comparatively easy. Very different is it found to be, when the affections are enlisted in
c 2
20 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, the cause ; still more so, when emotions of vanity and _Jx> self-love are excited. That the passions are easily introduc- rouse(J and with difficulty appeased, in theological discussions, it will be our duty, in the present book, to state and lament ; but we must remind the reader, that they have been, and still are, exhibited, with equal intensity, in every pursuit to which thoughtful men have given up their hearts. The hard language that passed between Newton and Flamstead reflects no honour on their noble science or on their personal self-control. After Newton's death, the fluxional con- troversy is a blot upon the page of science. Hot as fire were the controversies on phlogiston and hydrogen. Recently the question whether a gorilla's hippocampus minor did or did not diminish the similarity of his brain to that of man, provoked a fierce personal altercation between two eminent natu- ralists ; because each staked, to a certain extent, his own scientific reputation on the result.
If we proceed from science to literature, especially at the revival of learning, the reader is grieved or amused, when he finds a man like Scaliger heaping on the gentle and refined Erasmus, epithets of contumely, which he certainly did not find in his favourite classic ; and which suggests the idea that he must have occa- sionally visited the fishmarket. Erasmus is described as a drunkard, a hangman, a parricide, a monster, a Porphyry, a Luther, and an infidel, — and all because, in his " Ciceronianus," he accused the Ciceronians of admiring Cicero too much. It is equally painful, at a later period, to find Salmasius, a man of learning and a courtier, cruelly describing Milton, because he was a republican, as
" Monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum ; " and we are sorry to be informed, that our sublime
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 21
poet, instead of treating the rudeness with contempt, CHAP in his just indignation at the personalities of his _^ opponent, employed language equally pungent. introduc-
In the present age, literary men are aware, that, by their criminations and recriminations, they amuse, without exciting an unsympathising public by exposing themselves to ridicule ; and our most painful instances of intolerance are to be sought for in the political world.*
It is because the intensity of feeling, brought to bear upon religion in the sixteenth century, is directed,
* By the system of anonymous journalism controversialists have discovered the means of giving a keener edge to the dagger^they would aim at a rival's heart By assuming the first person plural instead of the first person singular, the modern Scaliger can make it appear, that his opponent is a hangman, a parricide, and a monster, not merely in his own opinion, but in the opinion of the whole world, represented by the mysteri< >us WE. Much may be said in favour of the anonymous in Political journalism. It may not always be expedient to produce the authority on which a statement is made. As in tournaments of old, some unknown knight would come unexpectedly to the rescue ; so in the political contest, in aid of his party, a great man may come, from the council- board or the senate, down to the printing office, whose influence in his proper sphere would be diminished if he assumed the position also of a political writer. But in favour of anonymous end scarcely a word can be said, "When the question relates to the merits or the demerits of a literary or scientific publication, the public ought to be informed, whether the critic, who represents the plurality of voices by whom judgment is pronounced, is a man competent to sit in judgment upon the author. "We know before- hand, that from political or religious partisanship an author will be undeservedly praised in one place, and as undeservedly censun •<] in another. The opportunity offered for the indulgence of private malignity and revenge is obvious. The system is nearly exploded in France, and we are following the example, though with our usual caution, in England. The reviews of distinguished authors are now republished as essays ; but still the vituperative and anony- mous system is carried so far, that some distinguished men may be named, who, while lending a large amount of literary assistance to others, have refused to come forward as authors themselves.
2-2 LIVES OF THE
CHAT, in the present age, to the subject of politics, that
'_ the course of conduct which, when apparent in the
i^ti-ndu theologian, is held up to reprobation, is, inconsis- tently, vindicated whenever it may chance to be applied to the assertion or maintenance of political principles. In favour of persecuting political offenders, or men regarded as such, modern historians have much to advance. In a political age, their defence of perse- cution for the furtherance of political ends, is received with very general applause. We might quote passages from more than one of the most popular historians of modern times, in which the execution of such men as the Earl%of Straff ord and of King Charles I. is treated with a levity sufficient to show, that their tolerance in what relates to religion is the tolerance, not of principle but of indifference. Crudelitatis odio in crudelitatem ruitis. The death of a king is treated as a jest, and that of a hostile statesman with exultation. Upon this subject I am not at present concerned to give an opinion ; we only contend, that we must deal justly to all men ; and what is said in justifi- cation of a political persecution must be, in all fairness, adduced in palliation of the evil deeds of religious enthusiasts.
By the writers to whom I refer it is asserted — and to the assertion the public in general assents — that as you execute a robber and condemn a murderer to death, so to death you may condemn the king or the statesman, who robs the citizen or subject of his property, his just rights, or his liberty. If we admit the lawfulness of capital punishment in any case, w^e cannot deny, that to a traitor's death a king, found guilty of treason against the country over which he is appointed to preside, may be justly doomed. But if we accept this principle at all, we cannot censure its application in the case of heresy. Innocent III.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. -3
adverted to the executions which abounded in his CHAI-. time, for offences against the laws enacted for the ^_J^, protection of life and property : and then he con- In^u tinues : — " He that taketh away the faith of a man stealeth his life, for the just shall live by faith.'5 If you condemn a man to death because he has robbed somebody of his life in this world : a fortiori, the pontiff argues, you may inflict capital punishment on the man who robs another of his spiritual and eternal life. The same line is taken by Thomas Aquinas. That great man argues, that, if false coiners be punished with death, much more is such a doom
ved by heretics, forasmuch as a corruption of faith whereby the soul has its life is far worse than a falsification of money. In like manner, another Dominican, Humbert de Romanis, inculcate.- tin- duty of punishing heretic-, and declares, that if even the pope were a heretic — a supposition which our Church historian observes was not in that a^v sup-
, To be impossible- -he should be subjected to punishment.*
It was not, indeed, for holding erroneous opini" as is sometimes supposed, that men wt-re punished, but for propagating tlio>.- opinions. Until the pas- sions were roused in the sixteenth century, and BO long as the discussions were confined to the school
* Sec Robertson, Hist, of Christian Church, iii. 561. Upon this subject we shall never probably be consistent until capital punish- ment for any offence is abolished. How far it may be considered possible, with a due regard to life and property, to abolish capital punishments. I am not concerned to say. But if you slay the man who attacks your property or life, you are undoubtedly open to the retort, that you only condemn those who would inflict a similar punishment on the propagators of heresy, because you value life and property, but do not value the human soul. Because we value the human soul, instead of condemning the criminal, under any cir- cumstances, to death, ought we not to give him time for repent ;<:
24 LIVES OP THE
CHAP, learning, considerable latitude was allowed on all that
^_J^ pertained to theological opinion. Just before the com-
introduc- mencement of the Eeformation, we have seen that
tory. '
complaint was made, that the bishops of the Church of England were lukewarm in the suppression of heresy. When the passions were once excited, and the aid of political revolutionists was invoked by religious reformers, then began the tale of horror which we shall have to recount.
Although we contend, that a spirit of intolerance is natural to man in his unrenewed nature, we must at the same time affirm, that a resort to acts of perse- cution, under any plea whatever, is more criminal in a Christian than it is in any other person or party. When the Christian was directed to have recourse to all legitimate means for propagating the Gospel, he was expressly warned, that his weapons were not to be carnal. This, the first warning against persecution, was given in Scripture, at the very time that zeal for the propagation of revealed truth was required. Men were warned not to rush from one extreme to another. An action which in its proper place is a virtue may, when urged to excess, become a vice. It is good to be " zealously affected in a good cause : " but zeal without love may be a mere human, and is sometimes a diabolical, passion.
The reader of these volumes is well aware, that what is called the Reformation was not, as is commonly supposed, an improvised revolution for which men had not been prepared. The history of our Church, from the time of the Conquest, is the history of a continued struggle, varying in its intensity in different ages, against the papacy. It was not a struggle confined to the laity ; the laity rather came to the aid of the clergy, who were the first to suffer from the papal aggression. The struggle would have come to a crisis
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 25
earlier, if it had not been, that it was too generally the CHAP. interest of the king to side with the pope, and so to _J_ evade the law. The statutes of Provisors and Prse- InJ^° munire, though, at a subsequent period, turned against the clergy, were originally enacted for their protection against the pope. No man in the kingdom was more devoted to the papal interests than King Henry VIII. until his passions separated his interests from those of the pontiff. When he determined upon that separa- tion, he found everything relating to the independence of the Church of England, prepared to his hand. The nation, ripe for no other reforms, was ready to assert its independence, and to renounce the jurisdiction of the foreign prince, prelate, state, and potentate who had been, all along, resisted in his usurpations by the laws of the land.
We have seen how the powerful intellect of John Wiclif, when led by his politics to examine the sub- ject of papal pretensions, went at once to the root of the evil. He proclaimed, that the whole Church system required revision and reform ; he pointed out that we could only discover what the errors were which the Western Church unconsciously held, by a reference to some authority admitted by all. That the Bible was written by inspired men all agreed in asserting ; the authority of the Bible therefore could not be denied, nor could it be denied that a doctrine condemned by the Bible could not be true ; therefore, that all might have insight into the corrupt state of the Church, the Bible was translated by Wiclif.
It did not, however, follow that the man, who in- vented the needle-gun, should himself know how to use it ; Wiclif might prepare a weapon to attack corruptions of the Church without employing it properly. He was himself led into many fallacies from not perceiving, that
26 LIVES OF THE
OHAP. though the Bible is the authority, yet it is an autho- __^_ rity only when it is rightly interpreted. He pointed introduc- j^g Weapon against his opponents, and, not being properly wielded, the weapon sometimes recoiled upon himself. When the time of his departure came, while there were many who, piously and in secret, studied the sacred volume he had placed in their hands, yet he left behind him, not a religious party, but only a violent political faction, which in his name propagated what would now be called the principles of Socialism. This so alarmed the conservatism of Europe as to delay an effectual reformation for more than a century.
Dismayed by the spread of Lollardism, the illus- trious reformers, who, at Pisa, Constance, and Basle, contended for the liberty of the Church, and as- serted its superiority over the pope, failed in their labours by deviating into an opposite extreme. Their denunciation of the malpractices of ecclesiastics, particularly of monks, was vehement and loud ; but they were careful to deny, that any correction of doctrine was required. They even accepted as an article of faith what till then had been only a prevalent opinion in the Church, the " Thomistic figment " of transubstantiation. They thought to reform the Church, by taking steps to rectify the administration of its discipline, to bring the canons to bear on all alike, and to make both pope and people amenable to general councils to be periodically convened.
Such was the state of things, when the voice of Luther was heard ; and his reformation, with differ- ences in detail but identical in principle with that of Zuingle and Calvin, soon extended from the northern provinces of Germany to the Rhine and the Seine ; from Wiirtemburg to the Lake of Geneva and the
ton-.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. -~
Alpine Valleys : it approached England, like the Gulf ("HAP. Stream, influencing our moral atmosphere, touching — ^
T tr ]
but not penetrating our theology.
The principle of Wiclif was accepted and modified. It was agreed, that what could not be read in the Bible, or proved thereby, ought not to be enforced as an article of faith. It was contended, that every doctrine •ived in the Church, if disputed, was to be brought to this test. But the fanatical notion propounded by Chillingworth in the following century, that the Bible, and the Bible only. — understood by the private judg- ment of each individual, however idiotic he maybe,— the religion of Protestants. nev.-r « ntered into the minds of those great men, Luther and Melanrthon, to wh» the title of Protestant was first applied ; or of that it theologian to whom tin- same title, in modern par- lance, applies. John Calvin. The confessions of faith, which no man within their sway could reject without peril of life, survive to bear witness to the principle. that when they referred to the Bible, they meant the Bible rightly interpreted. Whether they can be justified in the position they assumed, that their own interpretation of the Bible is the only interpretation admissible, may be doubted; )u»r<' than doubted, when we find that, on some material points, they dif- fered from one another. Then- can, however, be no doubt, that while they agreed with Wiclif in making the inspired volume tin- test of truth, they sought t<> ape from the serious errors into which his followers, if not Wiclif himself, had been hurried. This tlu.-y endeavoured to do by drawing up those confessions of faith which contain their view of fundamental truths.
The necessity of a Reformation having been long acknowledged and declared by the whole Western Church, the Church of Rome undertook to reform
28 LIVES OF THE
itself and all the Churches which continued to ad- here to the papal system. To reform the Church IntoryUC ^e C°uncil °f Trent was convened. The first session was held on the 13th of December, 1545 ; when there were present, besides the three papal legates, four archbishops and twenty-two bishops ; the last session took place on- the 3rd of December, 1563. It con- cluded in establishing modern Eomanism in the secta- rian sense of the word.
That the Council of Trent did not represent the Catholic Church is an historical fact, which can be denied by those and only those who make Catholicism and Romanism convertible terms.* The great Catholic Churches of the East, or the Greek Church, were not represented ; and, besides the Church of England, there were other European Churches which refused to send delegates to the synod.
Several wise measures were adopted, by which the foundation was laid for a reformation of ecclesiastical discipline ; but in regard to doctrine, instead of ac-
* The pope had decreed, that the title to be given to the Council should run in this form : "The Holy (Ecumenical and General Council of Trent." To this the Gallican bishops, together -with many of the Italians and Spaniards, objected ; asserting that the following \vords should be added, "representing the Universal Church." To this proposed addition the legates would not give their consent. It had been the form used at Constance and Basle, and they feared that the rest of the form of those councils would follow, " which derives its power immediately from Jesus Christ, and to which every person of whatever dignity, not excepting the pope, is bound to yield obedience." The reader will observe, that the council itself did not claim to be binding upon all Churches, and he will also perceive how this corroborates the statement fre- quently made that the Ultramontane notion had no date anterior to the time of Martin Y. The English Church, therefore, adhering to the principles of the great councils of the fifteenth century, was, in its reformation, pursuing a consistent course.
_'-. - -,:-•: ' • • Vi : :Lr ':.::-„ :lt r. .;
3
?".••::_ z:-~ •:_•.:;: :_ • _'.:~- - .-<•;.- : L.T :; n ::;•.:_; j.: :• " - ?~: liv-L -HL'I- ;:• ;•:? : •_•-.:! 1:1 '_- • :. : :• but as the gni-Ie of &e Cfandb • OH tart rftke it was fu«;h. neither In inffividKafa L:: b Ac Qhmeh —
were many -T. ;.•;.• I in-i pLoiLi riirn. ^h ) iviirec b pome
^. vet t^iev •s~-:r^ '."v-rrr*!. •-•••.! •in1".
i : u_ "-v/. : ~ •- :r. . :-. L iL^:u:,l"-^ v« Lnt< to compare the exisrii:^ tteokgy ^::h Ac Ikeologj :! the fathers, or with HoLvS.-riptTire : OH bttUBH ;yt:ir Synod was rather ta 'j^nimi on-i neAodiar Ac ioe- trines of Ae Meddle Ages ; and many doctnnes which kid previously been m-reiy pi--.:^ Ofniooi --ill open la •1:>< -.>.--. -_. ".' :• . /,: :_~ :::_.. :_.:.: .•-; '.-< :' :'.•::_.*
B
:~_~ •vu T * -r*
*d,¥ •tJMht vhki lid
byth*.
- :IT :':i--::ri:-s ::'
"V . ., .^ ._. — '. _.. _ . .
:: a:cli : ;: ::' 7 —i;.;?- ":; :li :_, ..;-:_ ;.: _:•-:.
07 C-LVTZZ377.T. --'
eeptbg Idle Bible, rightly interpreted, as the standard CHAP.
— - tbe CKurelk Lad devwted firam pmnitnne trafeb; liey
:,;. be j, eaHbaaaoaa levdHlioB feo
-- >. :n :L.ir f-vi:-.. :!-; F-.'zi.i.z. It was not thor duty to contend for the
:•::_. "-"_: 1. A- ": ^:.J:^ :?• ~ S-.T:.: TVJ:--:. '" - L/V. .mi tor ill. l-tl:vcrtfii In :Iic 5iiin:.s : bri tkeb tanm through, the niirticLi!.;^ in?pir.i:i-:'r. of :iir H:> to j/LI Hwft ntkln ol bid In tbe
-- '- i:>": :-iT" .is :lv ;i_;i..:.i' :: or the .leiiLiii'.l •:•:' :hr i.ii:Lril aught reqwae
:'
Before the Cbonal of "Rait had entered upon its fos*
-•: -: - :"_ : — ' :: :. -..""•:-.:".:' 'i: :.: ::.::- vtrr tkm cf the Church of £nglaD«L which was gradnalbr
?: — T ^5 '-.: :•-: ^n_ : : .rs :._- J._. -i-ir" i^.
iafad ;: fid On
-: -. •-: :
~:
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 31
Although the divines who commenced the Reforma- CHAK
o _
tion in England were many of them influenced, at first, ;
by a sympathy with Luther ; and afterwards, as regards some of them, with a greater sympathy with Zwingle ; yet their work differed materially from what was going on contemporaneously, or nearly so, among the Pr< tants on the Continent. Ours was, in the strict sense of the word, a Reformation, which theirs was not.
The Protestant reformers on the Continent were, by circumstances over which they had no control, excluded from the Church. Their proceedings, in eonsequei resulted in a new creation rather than in a reformation, the latter word implying a pre-existing entity. While we admire or criticise their splendid exertions to remedy an inevitable evil, we lament that they had no Church to reform, and had therefore to deviate into sects. In- stead of a succession of ministers from the Apostles, they had, in each sect, to create the ministers : and if a succession be observed, the succession dates from the founder of the sect.
To confound the Church of England with the various sects thus created at the Reformation, is the policy of the Romanists in this country ; they presume upon the acknowledged ignorance of even educated Englishmen as regards the history of their country, and especially of their Church. In hostility to the Church, the infidel makes common cause with the Romanist :
Spanish, sitting in the sixteenth century, not to any society or other unquestionable sanction, the Church of Eome is indebted for th>- formal authentication of her peculiar or post-Reformation creed. Englishmen must have had as great right to deliberate on theo- logical difficulties, which had hitherto been universally open to debate ; and they certainly took the safer side, in exacting no man's belief to such doctrines as were undoubtedly destitute of any cer- tain -warranty in Scripture, and, as many scholars thought, weir equally destitute of any safe authority from Catholic tradition."
32 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, and we have to regret that, under the same feeling, the
_J_ same course is pursued by some of the foreign Pro-
Into°ryUC" testants. They fail to perceive that, in upholding the
real position of the Church of England as possessing
peculiar advantages, they strengthen what was called,
in former times, the bulwark of the Reformation.
When we speak of the continuity and perpetuity of the English Church, we only affirm an historical fact. But, as historical facts are not unfrequently mis-stated, or perverted for party purposes, it is advantageous to the cause of truth to be able to state these facts in the eloquent words of a writer who has studied history impartially, and with the mind of a liberal philosopher. Mr. Gladstone, with Sir William Page Wood, Lord Lyttelton, Sir Roundell Palmer, and a few eminent statesmen and lawyers, has divorced religion from party politics ; and if, as a man, he contends for the civil rights of the people, he labours with equal zeal, as a Christian, for the promotion of God's glory.
" I can find," he says, " no trace of that opinion which is now common in the mouths of unthinking persons, that the Roman Catholic Church was abolished in England at the period of the Reformation, and that a Protestant Church was put in its place ; nor does there appear to have been so much as a doubt in the mind of any one of them, whether the Church legally established in England after the Reformation was the same institution with the Church legally established in England before the Reformation, When Whitgift died, with the memorable words, Pro Ecclesid Dei, on his lips, the image that hovered before the mind of the aged and faithful primate was no device of the human fancy, no creature of civil law ; but a determinate, transmitted gift of God, the Church of all times and of all places, to him represented, but not limited, by its
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 33
local organization in England. In short, the spirit of the English Reformation, with respect to the continuity of the Church, cannot be better exemplified than by the words of the conge delire, in which Elizabeth empowered the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury to elect Parker to the Metropolitan See. ' Cum Ecclesia •prcedicta ptrr mortem naturcUem reverenditsimi in Christ o Patris et Domini Reginaldi Pole. . . . jam •. <:t jx'tstoris sit solatia destituta ; therefore, it proceeds, we give you our licence as Founder to proceed to a new election, and recommend accordingly." *
He points out how different it was with respect to the Religious Revolution, — for so it was rather than a Reformation, — in Scotland. He names the year when in Scotland the Catholic Church was im -established : tlu- Act was passed in 1.360, in the Scottish Parliament, which forbade the ministrations of the ancient priest- hood.
In England lie states, that the course of events was widely different. " Her Reformation, through the pro- vidence of God, succeeded in maintaining the unity and continuity of the Church in her apostolical minis- try. We have, therefore, still among us the ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles. This is but the ordinary voice of authority ; of authority equally reasonable and equally true, whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear ; of authority which does not supersede either the exer- cise of private judgment, or the sense of the Church at large, or the supremacy of Scripture ; but assists the first, locally applies the second, and publicly witnesses the last/'t
* Gladstone, The State in its Relations with the Church, ii. 127. t Ibid. ii. 95. VOL. VI. D
34 LIVES OF THE
In another work Mr. Gladstone asserts tlie fact more clearly still. " We follow the institution, which, exist- introduc- jng }n this country for sixteen hundred years or more, was founded among us by missionaries undoubtedly apostolical : which has kept unmutilated among us the Divine Word : which has handed down the performance of its offices by uninterrupted succession, from man to man, through a line of bishops : which has given us the primitive creeds of the Church as limits of its interpre- tation of Scripture : which has, with whatever doctrinal abuse, never forsaken those great Scriptural positions which are brought out in her ancient symbols : and which, therefore, coming to us in the first instance with clear and sufficient marks of the Christian Church upon her, has never at any time so far degenerated as to lose those marks ; as to abandon those truths and those sacraments which are appointed for the salvation of the soul. And we still bear strong, even if unconscious testimony to her claims in her familiar appellation, the Church of England." '"
" But some of Protestant opinions," he observes, " say that this institution, though remaining outwardly the same, lost its identity as a Church before the Reforma- tion, in consequence of the corruption of doctrine and prevalence of idolatry. This, however, is an opinion that will hardly be maintained in serious discussion. The primd facie grounds for it are exceedingly weak- ened when we consider that the Scriptures remained uncorrupt, that their essential doctrines held their place undisputed in the Creeds, and that the prevalent errors, however grievous, firstly, were such as did not directly overthrow or deny, as Hooker says, the foundation ; secondly, that they had not then been generally recog- nised and established as of faith by any Council of the * Gladstone, Church Principles, 290.
AKCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 35
Church, much less by any decree in which the Church CHAP. of England had taken part. We may therefore assume, ^J^ on the part of all those who believe in the perpetual In7<^1° visibility of the Church of Christ, that it was actually existing by unbroken succession in this country at the period of the Eeformation." '•
To this we may add the fact, that by both Church and State measures had been adopted to annihilate the Papal authority in England, long before any notion was entertained of dealing with any points of doctrine. In the twenty-eighth year of Henry's reign, when king and parliament and Church were vehement in their op-
-ition to Protestantism, some of the chief acts against the pope and his pretensions were passed in parliament. The Commons followed the example of the House of Lords ; and in the House of Lords the lords spiritual formed a decided majority. Such were the acts pro- hibiting appeals to Rome ; for the payment of first- fruits to the crown ; for repudiating all the exactions of the court of Rome ; for enforcing the act of convoca- tion in the assertion of the royal supremacy ; the r nunciation of papal bulls, faculties, and dispensations, together with the act for utterly extinguishing the usurped authority of the See of Rome. The Church of England was a ntipapal before it was reformed.!
At the commencement of the dispute between the Church of England and the court of Rome, in the
* Gladstone, Church Principles, 307. There are three -works of Mr. Gladstone to which reference is made, and which, as exposi- tory of the doctrine and history of the Church of England, will always he regarded as standard works : 1, Church Principles. 2, The State in its Eolations to the Church. 3, Eemarks on the Eoyal Supremacy. The last was published in 1850.
f 24 Henry VIII. c. 12 ; 25 Henry VIII. c. 19 ; 25 Henry VIII. c. 20; 20 Henry VIII. c. 3; 25 Henry VIII. c. 16; 28 Henry VIII. c. 10.
D 2
36
LIVES OF THE
Introduc- tory.
sixteenth century, the State accepted as a fact, what the Church affirmed ; that the work to be done, by the co-operation of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in England, was not the displacing of the old Church, and the supplanting of it by some new sect ; but the gradual reformation of that old Catholic Church;* which
* The word Catholic was originally employed to distinguish the Church after our Lord's coming, when it Avas open to all mankind who might seek admission by baptism, from the Church before our Lord's coming, when it was confined to one nation — the Clmrch under the commission to preach the Gospel to every creature, from the Church enjoined to keep itself separate from all the rest of man- kind— the Church preparing for the second coming of our Lord, from the Church preparing for His first coming. When Chris- tians' divided themselves into sects, it was used, as a word of the second intention, to distinguish from the sects that Church in which the apostolical succession was preserved ; and when Christians be- came separated by doctrine, it was used to distinguish those who deferred to the creeds and formularies of the Church from heretics, those who, as their name denotes, relied upon their private judg- ment, without extraneous help. It came to mean, by degrees, the real Church in any locality, implying that those who seceded from it were schismatical, even when not absolutely heretical. Hence Mr. Coleridge, Avith his usual clearness of expression, remarks, " The present adherents of the Church of Rome are not, in my judg- ment, Catholics. We are Catholics. We can prove that we held the doctrine of the primitive Church for the first three hundred years. The Council of Trent made the Papists what they are." — Table Talk, p. 31. "The adherents of the Church of Rome, I repeat, are not Catholics. If they are, it follows that we are here- tics and schismatics." — Table Talk, p. 32. Although for party purposes the Romanists are permitted very frequently to assume a title which conveys an argument, what is here stated by Coleridge is well known to every student of English history. A late decision in the Court of Queen's Bench may be cited as showing what out- law is on the subject treated above. A clergyman desired to esta- blish his claim to certain marriage fees. He would have gained his suit if he could have proved that his predecessors in the time of Richard I. had received the payment ; and failing in that proof, he was nonsuited. The whole process depended upon the sameness of the Church before and after the Reformation.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 37
had been established here in the first instance, by the CHAP.
joint labour and devotion of Augustine, the first Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and Ethelbert, King of Kent, Int^uc the Bretwalda.
In the preamble of the statute of 1532, it is expressly stated, that the act had reference to the body spiritual, usually called the English Church ; that this Church had power when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question or of spiritual learning ; and is meet of itself, without the intermeddling of any ex- terior person or persons, to declare all such doubts and to administer all such offices and duties as to their rooms spiritual appertain ; that to keep them from cor- ruption and sinister ari'eetion the king's most noble progenitors, and the anteeessors of the nobl.-s of the realm, had sufficiently endowed the said Church with honour and possessions.*
In an act passed in the following year, for abolish- ing the payment of Peter-pence to Rome, there is a proviso, that nothing, in that act contained, shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded, " that your grace, your nobles, and subjects intend by the same to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's Church, in anything concerning the Catholic faith of Christendom."
Henry VIII. in a letter, which he caused to be ad- dressed in his name to Cardinal Pole, speaks thus : — " In all your book, your purpose is to bring the king's grace by penance home into the Church again, as a man clearly separate from the same already. And his recess from the Church ye prove not otherwise, than by the fame and common opinion of those parties who be far from the knowledge of the truth of our affairs here/' &c. ..." Ye presuppose for a ground the king's grace to be severed from the unity of Christ's Church, * 24 Henry VJII. c. 12 ; Statutes of the Eeahn, II. 427.
38 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, and that, in taking upon him the title of supreme head _Jx. of the Church of England, he intendeth to separate his Intt1o°rdruc' Church of England from the unity of the whole body of Christendom, taking upon him the office, belonging unto spiritual men grounded in the Scripture, of im- mediate cure of souls ; and attribute to himself that which belongeth to priesthood, as to preach and teach the word of God, and to minister the sacraments ; and that he doth not know what belongeth to a Christian king's office, and what unto priesthood ; wherein surely both you and all others, so thinking of him, do err too far," &c. . . . " His full purpose and intent is, to see the laws of Almighty God purely and sincerely preached and taught, and Christ's faith without blot- kept and observed in his realm ; and not to separate him- self or his realm anywise from the unity of Christ's Catholic Church, but inviolably at all times to kee}) and observe the same, and to redeem his Church of England out of all captivity of foreign powers hereto- fore usurped therein, into the Christian state that all Churches of all realms were in at the beginning ; and to abolish and clearly put away such usurpations as hereto- fore in this realm the Bishops of Rome have, by many un- due means, increased to their great advantage," &c. . . . " Wherefore, since the king's grace goeth about to reform his realm, and reduce the Church of England into that state, that both this realm and all others were, in at the beginning of the faith, and many hundred years after ; if any prince or realm will not follow him, let them do as they list: he doth nothing but stablisheth such laws as were in the beginning, and such as the Bishop of Rome professeth to observe. Wherefore neither the Bishop of Rome himself nor other prince ought of reason tobe miscontent herewith"* * Burnet, III., Records 52.
AECHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 39
How carefully this principle was observed, through- CHAP.
out the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the student ui history 1_
is well aware. If, during the reigns of James I. and In£^uc his successor, an Erastian tone insinuated itself into the writings, even of some of our great divii. 3,
still asserted, in the words of one of the most distinguished among those eminent men : " I make not the least doubt in the world, but that the Church of England before the Reformation and the Church of England after the Reformation are as much the same Church as a garden before it is weeded and after it is weeded is the same garden ; or a vine before it l)e pruned and after it is pruned and freed from the luxuriant branches is one and the same vine."*
The representatives in England of the Church of
Rome are, at the present time, as much a dissenting
as any Protestant nonconform: We can
indeed give the date when the Romanists formed
themselves into a separate community. AW all know,
that it was only within the last few years, that they
iblished a hierarchy in England — tracing that
rarehy not to Augustine, but to Pope Pius IX. the reigning pontiff. Then- position in England is .-vmbolized in their establishment at York. In that city we, the reformed English Catholics, have inherited the cathedral erected by our forefathers. It is our in- heritance, just as an estate pertains to some ancient family in right of its being the representative of the family to which the property was originally granted. by the side of the ancient cathedral, the Romish nonconformists have erected, with questionable taste, what they call a pro-cathedral. It is as like a foreign cathedral as a building can be, which, in the absence *Bramhall, i. 113.
40 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, of that which constitutes a cathedral, the Cathedra of _^_ the diocesan, can only be a cathedral nominally, lutrodue- They may retort the charge on foreign Protestants ; for the Lutherans, driven out of the Church, were under the necessity of forming a sect. Their sect was made to resemble the ancient Church as nearly as was con- sistent with their protest against those corruptions which, if they took the Bible for their guide, rendered their conformity to the ancient Church in their country, a thing impossible.
The Church of England, on the contrary, stood like an old cathedral. We were Catholic and Anglican ; and when, with the Bible in our hands, we looked around us, we found "our holy and beautiful house, the place where our fathers worshipped," filled with graven images, which we displaced. We found only a few, comparatively speaking, kneeling at the altar of our Lord our Saviour and our God ; while multitudes were prostrate before the image of the Virgin Mary. That image became to us Nehushtan ; and, explaining to men the nature of idolatry, we bade them do service, by worshipping, to God, and to God only. The walls were daubed with untempered mortar, and on them were painted the history of saints, either wholly imaginary, or whose legends, we are told by an hagio- grapher, were intended to relate not what they really did, but what they might have done, because to do so was part of the saintly character. The bats and birds were occupying portions of the building, and other portions were beslimed with filth. We did away at once with that which was absolutely wrong ; and we prepared to set in order that which, though right, was out of place. The papal arms were demolished ; but the bishop's throne remained, the marble chair in which Augustine sat. The tawdry vestments in which the
ARCHBISHOPS ' OF CANTERBURY. •A
clergy were arrayed or the sanctuary decorated, were CHAP. rendered conformable to a better taste, than that by v_J_ which they were overlaid in the. middle ages. The ^t™^0 pulpit remained ; but the preacher was required to ground his discourses on the Bible, and the Bible only, which he was to interpret by the light afforded from the primitive Church. The Holy Table still continued an altar, at which communicants might offer them- selves with the Church militant and triumphant, their souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and lively .sacrifice to our heavenly Father ; but the sacrifice of thi- Mass — the re-offering of Christ as a sacrifice for the living and the dead — was repudiated and condemned. The Church of England being one and the same Church before and after the Reformation, our Reformers accepted the doctrine and followed the usages handed down to them, from our forefathers. But, by the in- tellectual hurricane which \vas convulsing European society, they were made sensible that, although the foundation was secure, there was much in the super- structure which it could not sustain. Like the Lutherans and Zuinglians, they were ready to bring the doctrines transmitted to them, whenever their meaning was disputed, to the test of Scripture ; and, when the dispute extended further as to the meaning of Scripture, they were prepared to yield to the de- cisions of the first four general councils. These councils were distinguished from all others; they were convened not to record the opinions of the fathers, but to bear testimony to the tradition of apostolic doctrine, preserved in the primitive Churches, over which those fathers respectively presided. Our Re- formers iv<-eivcd the doctrines of the Church as they found them, assuming, that their existence was a primd facie evidence in their favour. They did not
42 LIVES OF THE
reject anything because it was mediaeval ; but when anything mediaeval was of a questionable character, introduc- fa^y ^hen SOUght for guidance from Scripture ; and if the Scripture was not clear, — if, when two parties were at variance, both of them claimed Scripture as being on their side, — they then yielded to the decisions of the primitive councils or to the evidence of the primitive writers. They did not do as the Romanists, who pro- fessed to yield to the authority of the fathers, but in- terpreted the fathers by the tenets and practices of the existing Church ; but if at any time they found an exist- ing dogma contrary to the patristic theology, then they made an alteration ; the modern yielded to the ancient. They fully understood, that " antiquity ought to attend as the handmaid of Scripture, to wait upon her as her mistress, and to observe her ; to keep off intruders from making too bold with her, and to discourage strangers from misrepresenting her." For as Dr. Water- land observes : " Those who lived in or near to the apostolic times, might retain in memory what the Apostles themselves, or their immediate successors, thought or said upon such and such points; and though there is no trusting in such case to oral tradition as distinct from Scripture, nor to written disagreeing with Scripture, yet written accounts, consonant to Scrip- ture, are of use to confirm and strengthen Scripture, and to ascertain its true meaning." They held that if " what appears but probably to be taught in Scripture itself, appears certainly to have been taught by the Primitive and Catholic Church, such probability so con- firmed and strengthened carries with it the force of demonstration." *
But although this principle was strictly observed throughout our Reformation, — from the primacy of * Waterland's Works, v. 261, ii. 8.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 43
"Warham and the reign of Henry- VIII. to the primacy of Juxon and the reign of Charles II.— it was applied gradually and according to circumstances. Our Reform- ation was a practical movement throughout. We had no fine-spun theories, no speculations among our divines, no original thinkers, such as Luther, Melancthon, or Calvin ; as we are not now, so we never have been a theorizing people. A grievance was complained of, admitted, and redressed. Abuses were pointed out, examined, and removed. There was no desire to inno- vate from the mere love of innovation ; there was an instinctive feeling that the present was connected with the past, and a reverence for antiquity was the result. For every step taken a precedent was sought. The first decided measure towards the Reformation of our Church was the resumption of the royal supremacy ; and no point can be produced more fully calculated to establish the statement now made. On this subject Professor Brewer justly observes : " The notions that the royal supremacy leapt full armed from the brain of Henry VIII. ; that the clergy were irresponsible even in spiri- tual matters, or that the Pope could dictate from Rome to the sovereigns of this country, at least to Henry VII. or Henry VIII. beyond what those princes were willing to allow — still more, that on the papal fiat depended the abstract right or wrong of any question in the minds of the people — are idle phantoms. The canon law had grown up side by side with the laws of the realm. In the weakness and imperfection of other laws, it seemed no more than fitting, that the clergy, as a spiritual body, should be governed by spiritual laws: the encroachments of those laws, and the difficulty of adjusting them with the temporal laws, provoked fre- quent disputes ; but then it remained with the king to decide how far those spiritual laws should be operative.
44 LIVES OF THE
Antecedently to the Reformation, Convocation could pass no canons without the king's consent ; no bull or introduc- ecclesiastical constitution could be published in this country without his sanction ; no bishop, no abbot, no prior could assume their several offices without the royal permission. As a right, though not always as a fact, the supremacy of the king had continued from time immemorial : — the usurpations upon that right were resisted and modified by the energy and will of the sovereign." *
With the truth of this statement the reader of the present work is already familiar ; but, if he desires to see the fact more fully established, he may be referred to Sir Edward Coke's reports, " On the case of Caudrey, Parson of South Lufnam." He shows, by historical references, that the Act of Supremacy was not a statute introducing a new law, but that it was merely declara- tory of the old. He proves, that the royal supremacy was in theory always held. Although it was frequently the interest of the crown to make common cause with the pope against the English bishops and other clergy, yet, when the prerogatives of the crown, at any time, came into collision with the assumed power of the papacy, the supremacy of the king over all causes and all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil, was regarded as an indisputable fact of the constitution.
The reader will remember that from the Conquest to the Reformation, the kings of England were, at their coronation, required to make oath, that they would ob- serve and do the laws of good King Edward. Edward the Confessor was acknowleged by all to be a nursing father of the Church ; but touching the royal supremacy he thus declared the law : " The king, who is the vicar of the Highest King, is ordained to this end, that he * Preface to Letters and Papers, Henry VIII. vol. ii.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 4.)
sliall govern and rule the earthly kingdom and people CHAP. of the Lord, and above all things the Holy Church, and ___, that he defend the same from, wrongdoers, and pluck Introduc-
. . tory.
up destroy and root out workers of mischief."
When we remember, that William, the Xonnan in- vaded England under the papal benediction ; the en-
:nent of this law, as soon as the conquered English
Hed their ascendency, is peculiarly significant. To Coke's statement.-, additions might be easily made ; although he is sufficiently copious for the complete establishment of his case. He shows, that the bishop-
in England having been founded by the king's progenitors, the advowsons belonged of right to the crown ; that they were at first donativ. the case
at the present time in Ireland and the colonies ; and that the privilege of election was a concession made to chapters by the king, whose conge d'clirc was therefore
— ary. Long before the Reformation, the king could exempt from the dominion of the ordinary ; and grant, not episcopal orders of course, but episcopal jurisdiction. All religious houses of royal foundation were by the king exempted from episcopal jurisdiction, and he con- stituted himself the visitor, discharging the office by a ri »yal commission appointed for the service. He could convert seculars into regulars,! and exonerate — which the pope could not— Cistercians and other orders from
* Rex autem qni V irnmi Regis -est, ad hoc est constitutive
lit regnum to-renum ft populum Domini et super omnia sanctam i<eneretur ecchsiam ejus, ft regat et ab injuriosis drftndat, tt male- jicos ab ea evellat, et destruat tt penitm desptrdat. See K. Edw. Laws, c. 19, Spehu. Cone. torn. i. p. 63. The reader may also lie referred to the preface to Collier's second volume, folio, the fourth of the octavo edition. See also Leges Eccles. Edw. Eeg. et Con- fessor, cc. 15 et 5 ap. Spelman, Concil. i. torn i 620, where the la\vs of the other Saxon kings referred to by Coke may he found. Cf. Bramhall, i. Ul. 2 Hen. IV. c. 3.
46 LIVES OF THE
the payment of tithes.* He could appropriate churches.f Ten churches, for example, were appropriated to the introduc- akkey of Croyland by the Saxon kings ; three churches by the Conqueror to the abbey of Battle, and twenty by Henry I. to the church of Salisbury. The disposi- tion of preferments upon lapse, accrued to the king; and the king being lord paramount, he only could incur no lapse, — " nullum tempus occurrit Regi." It was death, or the forfeiture of all his goods, for any one to publish the pope's bull without the king's permission ; and, except with the royal licence, no papal legate dared to place his foot on English ground.
Having introduced this subject by a quotation from Professor Brewer, I shall sum it up in the powerful language of Mr. Gladstone. " That the pope," he says, " was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the English Church before the Reformation, is an assertion of the gravest import, which ought not to have been, thus taken for granted. It is one which I firmly believe to be false in history, false in law — which in my view, as an Englishman, is degrading to the nation, and
as a Christian, to the Church The fact really is
this : a modern opinion, which by force of modern cir- cumstances, has of late gained great favour in the Church of Rome, is here dated back and fastened upon ages to whose fixed principles it was unknown and alien ; and the case of the Church of England is truly hard, when the papal authority of the middle ages is exaggerated far beyond its real and historical scope, with the effect only of fastening that visionary exaggeration, through the medium of another fictitious notion of wholesale transfer of the papal privileges to the crown, upon us, as the true and legal measure of royal supremacy." $
* 2 Hen. IV. c. 4. f 17th Edw. II. c. 8.
J Gladstone, Kemarks on the Royal Supremacy, 17. Bishop
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 47
In the parliament liolden at Carlisle in the year CHAP. 1306, being the 35th of Edward I. the Church was _i_ spoken of in the same terms in which it would be Int^U( spoken of at the present time. " The Holy Church, of England was founded in the estate" — not of papacy but — " of prelacy ; within the realm of England — not out of it — by the king and his progenitors with the earls, barons, and other nobles of the said realm and their ancestors ; to inform the people in the law of God, and to keep hospitality, give alms, and do other works of charity, &c. And the said kings in times past, were wont to have their advice and counsel for the safeguard of the realm, when they had need of such prelates and <-lerks so advanced ; the Bishop of Rome usurping the seignories of such benefices, did give and grant the .same benefices to aliens which did never dwell in England, and to cardinals which might not dwell here, &c., in adimllatioii of the state of the Holy Church of England, disherison of the king, earls, barons, and other nobles of the realm, and in offence and destruction of the laws and rights of this realm, and against the good disposition and will of the first founders ; it was enacted by the king, —
Gardyner wrote as follows : — " The question is now in everybody's mouth, whether the consent of the universal people of England rests on divine right, by which they declare and regard their illus- trious king, Henry YIII. to be the supreme head on earth of the English Church ; and by the free vote of this parliament, have in- vited him to use his right and call himself head of the English Church in name, as he is in fact. In which act," he continues, " no new thing was introduced ; only they determined that a power which, of divine right, belongs to their prince, should be more clearly asserted, by adopting a more significant expression ; and so much the rather in order to remove the cloud from the eyes of the vulgar, with wliich the falsely pretended power of the Bishop of Rome has now for some ages overshadowed them." — Steph.Gardineri, De Yera Obedientia, Ease. App. p. 108,
48 LIVES OF THE
CHAP. Edward I. — with assent of all the lords and com-
monalty in full parliament, that the said oppressions,
Into°duC" grieyances an<l damage in this realm from thenceforth should not be suffered." *
Of the Statutes of Provisors and Prsemunire, having had occasion repeatedly to refer to them, we need only here remark, that they were passed to protect the clergy as well as the laity — or the clergy more than the laity —of the Church of England, from papal aggression ; and that they are based on the royal supremacy. In the Statute of Provisors it is declared, " Our sovereign lord the king and his heirs shall have and enjoy for the time the collations to the archbishops and other dignities elective which be of his advowry ; such as his progenitors had before free election was granted : sith the first elections were granted by the king's progeni- tors upon a certain form and condition, as, namely, to demand license of the king to choose, and, after choice made, to have his royal assent . . . which condition not being kept, the thing ought by reason to return to its first nature." Further, by the same Statute of Provisors, it is declaratively enacted, that it is the right of the crown of England, and the law of the realm, that upon such mischiefs and damages happening to the realm (by the encroachments and oppressions of the court of Eome, mentioned in the body of that law), the king- ought and is bound by his oath, with the accord of his people in parliament, to make remedy and law for the removing of such mischiefs. We find," says Bramhall, " at least seven or eight such statutes made in the reigns of several kings against papal provisions, reser- vations, and collations, and the mischiefs that flowed from thence." f
* Coke's Eeports, i. 14. Gibson's Codex, tit. iii. cc. 1, 2. t Bramhall, ed. Haddan, i. 147.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 49
In the Statute of Prsemunire it is asserted, that " the CHAP.
j
crown of England hath been so free at all times, that — J^ it hath been in no earthly subjection, but immediately InJ™j!"c subjected to God in all things touching its regality, and to no other ; and ought not to be .submitted to the pope." *
That such a Church had power to reform itself is at once apparent, and we may be inclined to applaud the wisdom of the sixteenth century ; when our ancestors,, no longer content with damming up the stream, as their predecessors had done, stopped up the very foun- tain of papal tyranny.
Aa the subject of royal supremacy will come fre- quently before us in the present book, it has been judged expedient to enter upon it thus fully ; but the whole question relating to the royal prerogative ha> been complicated and oK-euivd by a neglect, which not unfrequently occurs, of distinguishing between the royal and the sacerdotal powers. Both Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth clearly perceived, and, in theory, admitted, the distinction. They could discern the boundaries between the two ; although, by their despotic tempers, they were continually involved in inconsistencies and contradictions, f The distinction itself was totally disregarded by Crurnwell and the unprincipled men who formed the government of Edward VI. ; and the royal supremacy was too often permitted to encroach on the sacerdotal powers through the weakness, the servility, and want of fixed prin-
* 16th Eic. II. c. 5, s. 1, Statute of Prsemunire. •f Mr. Gladstone having entered into a full explanation of this subject, refers to the authentic explanation of the Eoyal Preroga- tive, issued by Queen Elizabeth in the year 1559. In these she claims " no other authority, than, under God, to have the sovereignty over all manner of persons, ecclesiastical or temporal, so as no foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them."
VOL. VI. E
50 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, ciples on the part of Archbishop Cranmer. Much injury was done to the cause of the Church through the mis- lutroduc- taken policy of our leading ecclesiastics, under the un- fortunate dynasty of the Stuarts. To strengthen their position against the Eomish nonconformists on the one hand, and the Puritan nonconformists on the other, they first exaggerated the royal prerogative, and then applied it for the annihilation or depression of their opponents. A deviation from right principle exposes those who are guilty of it to a recoil ; and, at the present time, Romanist, Puritan, and Infidel unite with party poli- ticians, and, in parliament or through the press, call for a tyrannical and despotic exertion of the royal supre- macy, for the purpose of damaging the Church itself.
On the 31st of March, 1534, the Convocation of Canterbury, and on the 5th of May the Convocation of York, declared, that " the pope of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred on him by God in Holy Scripture, in this kingdom of England, than any other foreign bishop."* Thus spoke the clergy first, and their decree was, though not till after the lapse of some time, ratified by the laity in parliament.
It was at the same time admitted, that the sacerdotal power, controlled as we have seen by the royal supre- macy, devolved upon the primate of all England. When the title of " supreme head," subsequently dropped by his successors, was for a season assumed by Henry, Tunstal, bishop of Durham, a good and learned man, objected that, although the title had an inoffensive appearance at first view, he nevertheless thought, that this recognition of the ancient royal prerogative ought to be couched in more discriminating terms. The posi- tion in which Convocation was left at the Reformation, and the royal authority as admitted by the act of sub- * Wilkins, iii. 767.
AKCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 51
scription, are so generally misunderstood, and the whole CHAP. subject is so forcibly expressed by Mr. Gladstone, that, — J — long as the passage is in which he treats the subject, I Il£!jJIM shall present it to the reader. " The Kefonnation sta- tutes," he says, " did not leaye the Convocation in the same condition relatively to the crown as the parliament. It was under more control : but its inherent and independent power was thereby more directly recog- nised. The king was not the head of Convocation ; it was not merely his council. The archbishop was its head, and summoned and prorogued it. It was not power, but leave, that this body had to seek from the crown, in order to make canons. A canon without the royal assent was already a canon, though without the force of law ; but a bill which lias passed the two houses is without a force of any kind, until that assent is given. Again, the royal assent is given to canons in the gross, to bills one by one ; which well illustrat the difference between the control in the one case and the actuating and moving power in the other. But the language of these instruments respectively affords the clearest and the highest proof. In the canons (Canon l) we find the words, 'We decree and ordain ;' that is, we the members of the two Houses of Convoca- tion. But in our laws, ' Be it enacted by the king's most excellent majesty, with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons.' Whereas in the canons the king does everything except enacting : with a remarkable accumulation of operative words he assents, ratifies, confirms and establishes, propounds, publishes, and enjoins and commands to be kept. Every one of these words recognises that the canon has a certain force of its own, while it purports to convey, and does convey, another force. In the one case the crown is the fountain of the whole authority
E 2
52 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, of the law ; the lords and commons are its advisers. In the other, the Convocation decrees and ordains ; the king gives legal sanction and currency to that which, without such sanction, would have remained a simple appeal to conscience. In statutes, the king enacts with the advice and assent of parliament ; in canons, the Convocation enacts, with the licence and assent of the crown. I now speak not of what is desirable or other- wise, but simply of the matter of fact : from which it appears that the idea of a separate spiritual power for legislative purposes was much more carefully preserved (and with good reason) by the statutes of Henry VIII. than it had been when Church law went forth in the Capitularies of Charlemagne, or the Code and Novels of Justinian, undistinguished as to the form of its autho- rity from laws purely civil.
" Let it be seriously considered whether, so far as the essence of the principles of the Church is concerned, there was any violation of them in this submission and promise of the clergy, more than in the placitum regium, which the see of Rome itself, with however bad a grace, has been obliged to endure, and which the whole Grallicaii Church, the most learned and illustrious of all the daughters of the Roman see, and with it the entire Cisalpine school, cordially received. This Placitum, says Van Espen, comes to exist in consider- ation of the necessary impact of ecclesiastical laws upon the civil rights and secular interests of men. It cannot be restricted to any class of subjects. It reaches even to those bulls of the pope which are dogmatical. 'Ex hactenus dictis concluditur, placitum regium ceque requiri ante publicationem bullarum dogmaticarum, quam cceterorum rescriptorum! And he quotes an author much more favourable than him- self to the. papal power, who nevertheless holds it
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 53
allowable — ( Potestatem , scecvfo. rein mandare aitt con- CHAP iff sine suo heneplacito et examine nemo — -J-^ liuj litteris, vel exec >det Int«*i™
J tory.
easdem."
Against the resumption of the royal supremacy, which for the last hundred years had been scarcely recognised, objections were urged by other persons besides Tunstal. Whenever Henry could lend his mind calmly to the consideration of the subject, his skill in argument was such as to command attention ; he contends, that it pertains to the prerogative of the crown to legislate even in things spiritual when they bear upon life, liberty, or property. He admits, what nobody at that time, as the king asserts, would deny : that preaching and administering the sacraments per- tain to the sacerdotal function : and that our Lord and Saviour gave to the bishops a commission for that pur- pose. But he adds, our Lord Himself, though possess- ing a sacerdotal character, nevertheless submitted to Pilate's jurisdiction ; and St. Paul, he observes, though a priest of apostolical distinction, made no scruple to " I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged.7' The king refers to the laws of Justinian, and asks, with what conscience could that emperor have made laws touching the regulation of the Church, if he did not believe that spiritual society to have been part of his charge ? " It is true," he said, " princes are sons of the Church, but this does not hinder them from be- ing supreme heads of Christian men." " We grant," he continues, "that the sacraments, — these conveyances of grace — are to be ministered only by the cleronr invested with spiritual power ; but then, if in their function they misbehave themselves to a degree of scandal, the civil magistrate may try the cause and punish the * Gladstone, Remarks on the Royal Supremacy. 31.
54 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, crime. And then as to the spiritual character : since _J_ the prince's permission is required, before they can dis- Intonduc" charge the functions of their office, why should they scruple to call him head, with respect to that power which they derive from him 1 At the same time, he remarks that to avoid calumny a restriction is added by the Convocation — quantum per CJiristi legem licet" ' The arguments of the king had their full weight on the mind of Bishop Tunstal. The bishop consented in 1535, to swear to the royal supremacy; and in 1536, when Henry was attacked by Eeginald Pole in his De Unitate Ecclesiasticd, Tunstal came forward in the king's defence. He indignantly, as we have shown in a preceding quotation, repudiated the calumny brought against the king of a defection from the Catholic Church, and justified him against the absurd charge of confounding the royal and the priestly offices. "It is true the king hath rescued the English Church from the encroachments of the court of Eome, and if this be a singularity, he deserves praise. For the king has only reduced matters to their original state, and helped the Church of England to her ancient freedom." He boldly asserts, that the conduct of the king was in accordance with the wish of the nation ; and that, if he should change his mind and be willing to concede to the Bishop of Eome a right to exercise the powers, which he had latterly usurped and had long since claimed, he would find it difficult to obtain the consent of his people through an act of parliament. So united were all parties upon this sub- ject at this time, that both Gardyner and Bonner re- iterated the same assertion ; the first in his book De
* Herbert, 320 ; Collier, iv. 180. The letter is printed in the second part of the Cabala, i. 127. This passage shows that to the proviso introduced in convocation the king was not opposed.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 55
Verd Obedient id, and the second in the introduction he prefixed to that celebrated work Bishop Gardyner declares that, on the resumption of the royal supre- macy, the king acted with the consent of " the most excellent and learned bishops, and of the nobles and whole people of England." He states, " that no new thing was introduced when the king was declared to be the supreme head ; only the bishops, nobles, and clergy of England determined that a power which of divine right belongs to their prince, should be more clearly asserted by adopting a more significant ex- pression.*"
It has been acutely observed, that a further and very important mitigation of the supremacy existed in tin- fact, that it was claimed even by Henry VIII. not as an accession to his prerogative, but as an inheritance of which the crown had been of lai defrauded.
Queen Elizabeth, with a temper as d«-ip»>tSr as that of her father, and with less command over her tongue when her angry passions were aroused, was equally clear- sighted when she approached the subject of the supremacy as a legislator rather than as an adminis- trator. Her admonitions \\viv issued in 1559. She complains of " simple men deceived by the malicioii.-:" and solemnly declares, that she had no intention or desire to claim' in things spiritual any other authority than that " which it, mid was »f i.mc'u'nt time, due to the imperial crown of this realm."
In 15G9, on the suppression of the northern re- bellion, she published a proclamation, in which she that " she claimed no other ecclesiastical autho- rity than had been due to her predecessor ; thai pretended no right to define articles of faith, to change ancient ceremonies formerly adopted by the Catholic
* Steph. Gard. De VerA Obedientia, Fasc. A pp. 103.
56 LIVES OF THE
.CHAP, and Apostolic Church, or to minister the word or the ^ — sacraments of God ; but that she conceived it her duty "tor UC~ to take care that all estates, under her rule, should live in the faith and obedience of the Christian religion ; to see all laws, ordained for that end, duly observed ; and to provide, that the Church be governed and taught by archbishops, bishops, and ministers, i.e. deacons." She assured her people, that she meant not to molest them for their religious opinions, provided they did not gainsay the Scriptures, or the Creeds Apostolic and Catholic; nor for matters of religious ceremony, as long as they should outwardly conform to the laws of the realm, which en- forced the frequentation of divine service in the ordi- nary churches.
Her sentiments may, in fact, be found in the well- known letter from Bishop Jewel to Bullinger, in which he says : — " The queen will not endure the style of Head of the Church of England. She is altogether of opinion, that the title is too big for any mortal, and ought to be given to none but our blessed Saviour."* The whole subject is summed up in our Thirty-seventh Article. " The queen's maj esty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain ; and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction. Where we attribute to the queen's majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended ; we give not to -our princes the ministering either of God's word or of the sacraments, the which thing the injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative which we see to * Collier, vi. 244.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 57
have been given always to all godly princes in Holy CHAP. Scripture by God Himself ; that is, that they should _1_ rule all states and degrees committed to their charge In£^u by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal ; and restrain with the civil sword, the stubborn and evil doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England!'*
When Henry had determined, for reasons which will presently appear, to appropriate the title of Su- preme Head to himself, he acted, under the influence of Crumwell, *;ritn adroitness and a sound judgment. He was not disposed to seek a favour from the clergy, or to require at their hands any accession to his dignity or prerogative. It was not his intention — nothing could be further from it — to establish a new He was a Catholic king, resuming in the national Church, lights and authority which his Catholic- ances- tors had claimed, if they had not always enjoyed, from
* The title adopted by Henry VIII. in 1534, was " In ten-is" or " terra, Ecclesire Anglican^ et Hibernica? Supreruum Caput." — Stat. 26 Henry VIII. c. 1 ; see also 35 Henry VIII. c. 3, and 37 Henry VIII. c. 17. It was continued by Edward VI, 1 Edward VI. c. 12, sec. 6. In the beginning of her reign it was assumed by Queen Mary, but was dropped on her marriage with Philip of Spain. 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, c. 8, sec. 23. It was rejected by Queen Elizabeth, or rather exchanged for that of " supreme governor as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical causes," &c. (Oath of Supremacy, Stat. 1, Eliz. c. 1), and has never since been resumed (Coke upon Little- ton, 7 b). It is sometimes given to the sovereign in ignorance or in malignity. Mr. Gladstone, alluding to its being supposed by ignorant people to be in force, says : "This allegation, however, appears to be quite erroneous. The note on the act in the statutes at large, directs our attention to the circumstances, that the act was repealed by the 1 and 2 Phil, and Mary, c. 8, and that, when the repealing act was itself repealed, the repealing parts of it were saved, in the 1 Eliz. c. 1, except as to certain of the rescinded acts therein parti- cularized, among which this is not contained. (See 1 Eliz. c. 1, sects. 2, 13.)" — Remarks on the Royal Supremacy, 11.
58 LIVES OF THE
time immemorial — rights which had only been of late years violated or denied. As for the clergy, from their [Htory.UC proceedings in this very convocation, - - when two months afterwards they declared that " the pope of Eome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him by God in Holy Scriptures, in this kingdom of England, than any other foreign bishop," * — we know that they were prepared to reject the papal jurisdiction. They were aware of the royal prerogative, for it was a question which had been under discussion for several years ; but, after what had lately occurred, they were certainly justi- fied in regarding with suspicion every step taken by the king. There was no disinclination to acknowledge his regal powers to their full extent, or to increase them if the exigencies of the time required it. But this precise title, why was it adopted, and adopted at this crisis ? This, at all events, was a novelty. Did the king, who had compelled them to tax themselves to such an enormous extent, intend to claim a right to all their property ? Was there not some unconstitutional power clandestinely claimed under a title new to the consti- tution ? These were questions which might fairly be asked ; and if the title was offensive to Queen Elizabeth, if it is still only used by persons who desire to see the prerogatives of the crown exercised tyranni- cally against the Church ; it cannot surprise us to hear that, after a long debate, 011 the 7th of February the Convocation adjourned without coming to a decision upon the subject ; that the debate was by adjourn- ments continued on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of the month ; that a conference was at last had with the king,f and that the title was finally conceded in only
* Wilkins, iii. 725.
| It was carefully explained to the king, that there was no wish, to interfere with his rights ; but that the title was objected to
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
59
a modified form. On the llth of February, Arch- bishop Warham introduced into Convocation a form which appeared to him to be inoffensive, and which the king was willing to accept. The terms of it ran thus : " Of the English Church and clergy, of w^hich we recognise his majesty as the singular protector, the only supreme governor, and, so far as the law of Christ permits, the supreme head.''*
ne forte jx>st long&t^i teniporis tract um termini in eodem articu!:> generality positi in sensum improbum traherentur. Att. Eights, 82. Ex actis MSS.
* Wilkins, 723. Plain as the historical statement really is, it has been so often "wilfully mis-stated, or is so ignorantly misunder- stood, that I am induced to add another note from Mr. Gladstone. His statement is accordant with that which is given above. He says : "It is utterly vain to argue that the threat of civil consequences which was held over the Convocation of 1531, as the alternative to follow upon their resistance to the claim of the crown, could destroy the validity of their formal act. For in the first place, it does not appear that the bishops, with whom the final authority must, on Catholic principles, be held to. lie, were under the influence of tb^e menaces. Fisher himself was one of those who were present in the Convocation of 1531, and agreed to the petition of that year. The spiritual lords constituted an actual majority of the Upper House of Parliament when the act of 1534 was passed, and do not appear in any way to have resisted it The whole of the bishops swore to the royal supremacy in 1535, Fisher having then been already de- prived for refusing to take the oath of the succession. Collier says : ' Many of the bishops who had consulted the records and examined the practice of the earliest ages, were not disinclined to this change.' Of the most prominent persons among them, Gardiner, Bonner, and Tunstal had actually written in favour of it. There is, therefore, no reason to believe, that the act was one at variance with the con- scientious persuasion of the then governors of the Church, — and Lord Clarendon states in reference to this crisis, with strict historic truth, that Henry • applied his own laws to the government of his own people, and this by consent of his Catholic clergy and Catholic people.' Further, it does not appear that the reluctance which was manifested by the clergy to the title of headship had any reference to their regard for the papal claims ; but, on the contrary, that it
CHAP. I.
Introduc- tory.
60
LIVES OF THE
tory.
In 1531, the royal headship was admitted by the clergy of the Church of England as representecL in the introduc- two Convocations of Canterbury and York. It was not till the year 1534, that this title was conceded to the king by parliament. The parliament had before this legislated in Church matters, — having followed the precedents set in former times and especially in the Statutes of Pro visors and Prsemunire, — to pass in 1532 an act against the payment of annates, and, in 1533, an act againt appeals to Rome. In the year 1534, when the parliament confirmed the act of Convocation and acknowledged the supremacy of the king, it declared at the same time the adherence of the nation to the
was founded upon an apprehension they reasonably entertained, that it might seem to detract from the prerogatives of the Redeemer. Of the qualification itself, quantum per Christi legem licet, it has been alleged that it nullified the grant ; but on the other hand it might be urged, with at least equal fairness, that the admission of the headship is unquestionable, from the very fact that it was thus limited and. defined. It is, however, more material to remark that these qualifying words only apply to the term 'head ;' and that if the clause in which they are found be removed altogether, the docu- ment remains as obviously fatal to the papal pretensions as if the headship had been asserted in the 'most absolute form. For the Convocation, without any scruple or resistance, as we have seen, acknowledged the king to be 'of the Church and clergy not only 'the chief protector,' but likewise 'the only supreme lord.' And, indeed, there is the most direct evidence upon this subject. The Convocation of the Province of York stated in writing to the king the objections which they entertained ; and, according to Burnet it appeared by the king's answer to them, that they chiefly contended that the term 'head' was an improper one, and such as could not agree -to any but Christ alone. And we shall ob- serve that the phrase 'supreme and only lord,' which appears to have passed wholly without opposition, is in itself a much higher title than that now ascribed by our law to the sovereign of these realms. So much for the regularity and sufficiency of the judgment of our national synod against the papal supremacy. "- Gladstone, ii. 109.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 61
articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom. "Thus," CHAP.
Mr. Gladstone, " we have before us the judgments — .' — by which the papal supremacy was ecclesiastically In^.u abolished, and likewise upon which external and legal effect was given by the law to that sentence of the native Church."*
To the proceedings which led immediately to the resumption of the royal authority we shall have
-ion hereafter to revert. The subject has been mentioned in this place from its connexion with the
lution of the monasteries and the history of Crumwell.
The same historical investigations which had enabled Henry to claim the royal supremacy, as an inheritance of his crown, were equally of avail, to prove, to the satisfaction of Convocation and of Parliament, that, in this prerogative, was involved a right of visitation extending to all collegiate and monastic institutions. Independently of precedent, it was reasonable, that the supreme authority in the state, should have intrinsically a right to ascertain, whether in any institution lay or clerical, the members were acting in accordance with the will of their founder, and in obedience to statutes which they had pledged themselves to observe ; whether the estates had been judiciously managed or illegally squandered ; and whether by being taken out of mortmain they could not be rendered more
* The State in its Relations to the Church. 108. I have quoted Mr. Gladstone, because the principles of the Church are expressed by him with his usual force and happy command of words ; and because I am happy to show that the holding of what are called liberal political opinions is not inconsistent with the highest view of Church doctrine and discipline. My American friends will remember, that their Bishop Hobart, to whom the whole Church is so deeply indebted, was the most zealous republican.
62 LIVES Or THE
€HAr. conducive to ends for the promotion of which they
_^^ were originally granted.
Into]°yUC The precedents produced from the history of the country and the conduct of preceding monarchs established a further right, frequently though not con- sistently, called into action. When an institution had outlived its usefulness, or ceased to meet the require- ments of the age, it might be legally suppressed ; and its property, on the principle of cy pres, applied to the promotion of other though cognate works of public utility.
It has been shown in the preceding book — and the fact cannot be too often impressed upon the reader's mind — that popery, as approaching to the modern notion of ultramontanism, obtained its footing in England during the Wars of the Eoses ; and yet, even in the unfortunate reign of Henry VI., a commission was granted by the crown for the visitation of the Cistercian monasteries.* In this king's reign also, certain manors and estates of the alien priories, which had been forfeited to the crown, were assigned to a commission, partly lay, partly clerical, in trust for his school and college. In the fourth year of Henry V. an act of parliament was obtained by which the alien priories were suppressed ; and — which was much to CrumwelTs purpose — the estates were vested in the crown. The whole history of the alien priories strength- ened the position of Henry VIII. and his minister; and the case of these priories had certainly been hard. Originally filiations of foreign abbeys, their dependance on the continental monasteries was, in the time of Henry V, little more than nominal. The monks of those establishments had become, in process of time, absolute proprietors of their own estates, and lived * Fcedera, x. 802.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 63
under priors elected by themselves. No special charges CHAP. of immorality were brought against them ; but it had always been assumed, that they must be in the interest of the enemies of their country ; and their estates were generally confiscated when there was a war between England and France. Eighty-one of these priories had been sequestered by King John ; and, if their property was restored by Henry III. this only shows, the more strongly, the right claimed by the civil authority to deal with those endowments whenever an emergency arose. Such a confiscation of their property took place under Edward III. when the property of at thirty of those establishments was alienated. In the first year of Henry IV. they were restored; but only to be again suspended in the eighth year of that kind's rei^n. Acting under the advice of his privv
A »
council, he seized the property of a certain number of - for the support of his own household.* How they were finally extinguished by his son has been already related ; and we may add, that Henry V. in the last year of his reign issued injunctions for the reformation of mouasi The ne< f such a
reformation had b.-eii admitted by a general chapter of the Benedictines, at which certain reforms were intro- duced.! But to the practical mind of Henry V. it was apparent, that the imsympathizing sternness of the royal prerogative was required to remedy evils, which monastic tenderness might overlook.
Perhaps a much stronger precedent was to be found in the suppression of the order of the Knights Templars at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The opponents of the Templars set an example which Cmmwell and Henry were too ready to follow. Eesort
* Fcedera, viii. 101, 510.
t Chron. Croydon Contin. 567.
64 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, was had in the fourteenth, as afterwards in the six- — ' — teenth century, not only to legal murders ; but also In*™duc" to that moral persecution to which we still are subject, and which consists of evil speaking, lying, and slan- dering. But, however much we may discredit the exaggerated charges brought against a whole society, facts will not permit us to doubt, that the knights in the one instance and the monks in the other afforded, unfortunately, strong grounds for some portion of the accusations to which they were exposed.
But, after all, the strongest and most damaging attack made upon the monasteries was made by the Church, or rather by Churchmen, in the middle ages ; by men whose names are, to the present hour, grate- fully remembered by beneficiaries still profiting by their munificent wisdom.
In the prevailing ignorance of history in the nine- teenth century, particularly of what relates to ecclesi- astical history, the sarcastic ignoramus is permitted, unrebuked, to speak of our colleges and public schools as monastic institutions. But from the days of Walter de Merton colleges and schools were founded in direct opposition to monasteries ; or certainly for the purposes of depriving the regulars of the monopoly in educa- tion which they had hitherto possessed. It is remark- able, that the few schools and colleges which form an exception to this rule were themselves, at the dissolu- tion of the monasteries, suppressed. It was with the forfeited estates of alien priories and of other mon- asteries granted by, or purchased from, the crown, that William of Wykeham endowed his two St. Mary Winton colleges, the one at Winchester and the other at Oxford. He is the father of the public school sys- tem. We have seen in these pages, that his example was followed by Archbishop Chicheley and William
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 65
of \Vayuflete. All Souls' College and Magdalene are CHAP.
enriched by the spoils of monaster: The royal 1_
founder of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton — In£>™u
" Where grateful science still adores Her Henry's holy shade,"
only carried out an intention of his illustrious father. Henry V. had expressed his intention thus to dedicate to the purposes of education, the wealth that flowed into the royal treasury from, the dissolution of the alien priories.
These illustrious personages maintained, that the pro- perty had been devised for educational purposes and pious uses ; and, they contended, in the fourteenth century, as ever since, that the end which the founders had in view, could be better accomplished by schools and colleges than by monasteries ; ill-conducted as too many monasteries had, before that time, become.
Their example had been followed by Cardinal Wolsey when he planned
" Those twin sisters of learning raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford."
This great statesman surpassed his predecessors in the splendour of his conceptions ; and no college in either University, or in any University in Europe, would have been able to compete with his, had he been permitted to accomplish his design. He used his influence with the crown, to attach to his college at Oxford the property of twenty-four monasteries, together with sixty-nine benefices. The same system of utilizing the property of decayed monasteries was adopted by a contemporary of "\Yolsey, not his equal in genius, but far superior to him in that piety which enabled him to serve his God with more than half the zeal he served his king ; and to win an incor- ruptible crown there, " where the wicked cease from
VOL. VI. F
66 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, troubling and the weary are at rest," — Bishop Fisher.
— L_ He was the spiritual adviser of Margaret, countess of ln{:™luc- Richmond, the grandmother of Henry VIII, and she, acting under his advice, obtained the dissolution of certain monasteries, on the ground of the immorality of their inmates. She devoted the property to the support of colleges and professorships, in the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
It must not be forgotten, that the dissolution of the Hospital of St. John was advised by Bishop Fisher, because the brethren had entirely neglected the Divine Service and their other duties ; while of the Nunnery of St. Rhadegund at Cambridge it was said, that the inmates had become notoriously profligate. Similar charges were brought against the nunneries of Higham and Bromhall to justify the confiscation of their houses and lands.*
The notion of the sacredness of monastic property did not spring up, till a later period of our history. There was no sentiment upon the subject in the fifteenth or the immediately preceding centuries ; nor did any superstitious fears arise, such as were afterwards en- couraged, that a curse would attach to the family of any one who, when the monastic property was in the market, became a purchaser. At the time of the Eeformation, the greatest care was taken to distinguish between Church property and monastic property. The former as a rule remained untouched, unless we regard chantry lands as property belonging to the Church ; and, if we regard it in that light, we shall presently see, that this formed a legitimate exception to what was in general regarded as a rule. The Church property has come down to us as the original donors, before the Reformation bequeathed it * Hymer's Account of Lady Margaret, p. 13.
AKCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 67
to us, except where it had been first absorbed and ap- CHAP. propriated by the monasteries ; for the titles were lost — ~ by the appropriation ; but whatever belonged to a In*^llu monastery was confiscated, because the monasteries, although connected with the Church, were, never- theless, as distinct from the Church itself, as are now the colleges of our two Universities. They stood to the Church in the same relation. So distinct were the two properties regarded, that, until the reign of Queen Victoria, the cathedrals of the old foundation — as they are called, — retained the property of which they had been in possession from the earliest times. The cathedrals in which the chapters consisted of secular clergy were unmolested. Those cathedrals from which, through the influence, first of Dunstan and then of Lanfranc, the secular clergy were driven, to make way for the regulars, were, on the restoration of the seculars under Henry VIII. subjected to the same treatment as other monastic establishments, and became new foundations. Moreover, by a short-sighted and selfish policy, the monks of the larger convents had been unintentionally preparing the way for the dissolution of the monastic institute. There are certain animals who fatten them- selves by making inferior animals of their own species their prey. In like manner the lesser monasteries had been very frequently absorbed by the larger abbeys. The distinction between the two classes, the greater and the lesser monasteries, was not made for the first time by Crurnwell ; nor was it he who, in the first instance, disparaged the conduct of the lesser monasteries, con- trasting their immoralities with the decorum observed in the larger establishments. The abbots had them- selves brought the charge against brethren living in distant cells. That the inmates of the latter might
'J8 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, be rendered amenable to discipline they were sum-
__J^ moned to the parent institution; their own buildings
introduc- were desecrated or demolished. In a detachment of
tory.
a regiment of soldiers, discipline is more relaxed than at head-quarters ; and this may have been the case, when monks were quartered at some remote place, beyond the reach of the abbot's eye, or the public opinion of their brethren. But for the dealings of the wealthier communities with smaller monasteries of an independent foundation we cannot advance the same apology. We must attribute to other motives, their purchase of the small monasteries, when the necessities of the inmates compelled them to sell their property cheap to purchasers, who held over them a threat of prosecution or of exposure for offences, which might, if proved, lead to their confiscation. What- ever the motives, the result was the same. Monastic property was brought into the market ; among the buyers and sellers were the monks themselves.
There was not, at this period, that extreme reverence for consecrated buildings which is at present peculiar to England. A house dedicated to God was open to any purpose by which God's glory might be promoted,— for schools, for public councils, for convocations, for parliaments, even for the religious drama. Never- theless, common sense would suggest the prescription of certain limits, which good taste, — the instinct of correct feeling, — would prevent us from transgressing. At all events, an ex post facto judgment would pronounce upon the bad policy, if we call it by no other name, of habituating the public eye to gaze without winking, on dilapidated churches converted by monks themselves into Benedictine barns or Cistercian sheep-folds.
There was a general impression, that the monastic institute had done its work. The ascetic preferred his
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 69
solitary hermitage, to va cell "where he might be dis- CHAP. turbed by indevout reyelry, in the vicinity. The en- _— J-^
J » - J
thusiast denounced the somnolent decorum of the best In^uc regulated monasteries. With closed doors he was studying AVielif's Bible : he whispered, that "stolen waters were sweet, and that bread eaten in secret is pleasant;'5 and as his ancestor drew his sword in the crusades, so was he ready to do battle against the papist. The student was at the university. The art of printing had placed in his hands the books which, at one time, could only be found in the monastic library. The traveller passed by the abbey, that he might take his ease at his inn. The lord abbot and the superior monks were in the position of a provincial aristocracy, and were disliked by the less refined nobles ; the inferior monks were not to be distinguished from the farmers in the market-place ; the land in mortmain, carelessly farmed, was less productive, than the mer- chant adventurer, now become a country gentleman, opined that, if in his hands, he could make it. The profligate man of the world suspected evil in the con- vent, and exaggerated it, if detected ; because, in the evil doings of the monks, he thought to palliate his own misdeeds. The monasteries sutfered in repute by the very charity they displayed in the civil wars. They received, pitied, and entertained the wean- and the wounded among the combatants on either side ; when a soldier wanted a meal he knew where to find it. But this led to much rioting and wantonness : soldiers, without discipline, associated with monks, at a time when monastic discipline could not be enforced. The monks were corrupted and the soldiers not reformed ; the question arose whether monasteries were now answering the purpose for which they had been designed.
The monasteries had done nothing to retrieve their
70 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, character. At one period, we find our kings and pre- _1_ lates having recourse to the monasteries, for the supply
ln w°iyUC" °f men> whenever the services of a statesman, a lawyer, or a divine were required for a special or a delicate duty. The monasteries had been the nurseries of all that was great and good for Church and State ; but it is a remark- able fact that, for a long period before the final dissolu- tion of monasteries in England, these institutions had scarcely produced any personage eminent, either as an ecclesiastic, a scholar, or a statesman. The secular clergy maintained their position throughout the reign of Henry VII. ; and with Wolsey at their head, during the early part of his son's reign. The regulars had forfeited the respect and esteem of the public.
The public opinion was expressed by Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter. When Eichard Fox, bishop of Winchester, had determined upon the erection of Cor- pus Christi College at Oxford, his intention at first was to make it a monastery — a school to be conducted by the religious. He was dissuaded by Oldham., who said, " What, my Lord, shall we, the secular clergy, build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of buzzing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see \ No, no ; it is more meet a great deal, that we should have care to provide for the exercise of learn- ing, and for such as by their learning shall do good to the Church and commonwealth." One of the reasons given by Wolsey for the diversion of monastic property from the support of convents was, that the prejudice was so great against placing more land in mortmain, that to obtain new endowments would be impossible. This brings us on to the remark, that the monasteries
* Holinshed, iii, 117. Bishop Oldham was a native of Man- chester. This was said as early -as the year 1518.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. / I
had no one to defend their cause ; every man's hand was CHAP. against them. They had hitherto, under all their diffi- culties and dangers, relied for protection and support upon the pope ; but in Cromwell's time, to utter the pope's name, except to anathematize it ; or indeed to style the pope anything but Bishop of Eome, would subjected the offender to a prosecution which might end in proving him guilty of high treason. The king now claimed to be their visitor ; and from his decision there could be no appeal.
The bishops and parochial clergy were not likely to take the part of monks or monasteries. Between the clergy and the monks there had never been a good understanding. We might as well expect the bishops and clergy of the present day to undertake the deiV-n<-< of the Nonconfonr. • suppose, as some persons do,
that the bishops and clergy of the sixteenth century would plead the cause of the monks. Scarcely a v was utteivd in their favour by any of the clergy. To
•nipt themselves from episcopal jurisdiction had been, for many years, the object of ambition to the mon; teries. for which they wasted much of the money, the energy, and the time, that might have been more profitably employed. A kind of chronic eontrov. had long existed between the seculars and the regular and if active hostility had of late years ceased, r altered feeling only went so far as to prevent the
ulars from taking an active part in the proceedin inst the monasteries ; on the dissolution of which they looked with feelings of indifference.
The apathy evinced 1 >y the abbots is, however, m surprising, and remains to be accounted for. Witli very few brilliant exceptions, they yielded without i
Reynolds's Historical Essay, c. iii. for some proceedings of the secular clergy against the regular.
72 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, sistance, almost without a murmur, to the pressure of _ ', _ the times. This is the more remarkable, when we bear
Into°yUC" in mmd that the abbots were largely represented in the House of Peers, and many of them sat with the bishops as spiritual lords, forming a majority of the Upper House.
The condition of the monasteries and the policy of the Government must be taken into consideration.
The truth is, that in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies the leading men in the monastic establishments were not reclining on a bed of roses ; they were not enjoying that luxurious ease which is presented to the readers of historical romances in the nineteenth century. We have remarked, that, during this period, we seldom find the English monks engaged as heretofore, in the public affairs of the country ; they were too much occupied with the intricate but petty business of their respective establishments. That the heads of the larger monasteries were successful in sustaining a moral tone in their houses, we have the positive asser- tion of parliament, opposed to the ipse dixit of King Henry VIII, who coincided in the judgment of his parliament, until it became his interest to make the opposite statement. It could have been no easy task, and it required considerable ability, to keep anything like discipline and order in monasteries, which had become such as we have represented them during the Wars of the Roses. We may here add, that the corrupt- ing; influence occasioned by the admission of strangers
o •> o
to share the hospitality of monasteries, was not of a temporary nature. In the very constitution of a monastery, there was an arrangement which rendered discipline difficult, when piety ceased to be an en- thusiasm and was only partially a principle. There were many who, not monks themselves, claimed an
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 73
interest in the endowments, the nature of whose claim CHAP. was not very clearly defined. The representatives of — \ — a founder's family retained the right of granting ^ory!*0 corrodies, a privilege of nominating a certain number of persons, younger brothers, or decayed servants, who were billeted upon the house. The head of the family required frequent donations to secure his interest at court ; the younger brothers, having failed in court and camp, presented themselves daily hi tin- hall; they demanded the best cheer, and, under the sweet-smell- ing savour of the repast, the monks themselves were tempted to become epicures. If the abbot did not control the licence which ensued, the monastery was noted as corrupt ; if he exerted himself to restore dis- cipline, he raised a faction against himself ; and his enemies were ready to represent him as guilty of the very vicea which lit- had sought to repress. In most monasteries there arose two sets : what would now be called " the fast set,7' would bring against the strici the accusation, so easy to make, and so difficult to dis- prove, of hypocrisy ; the strict set would retaliate by indisputable facts charged upon their opponents; and afterwards, by setting one faction against another, the emissaries of Cruniwell were able to make out their and to involve the whole body in the disgrace, which literally attached to only a few of its members. For the preservation of discipline a corrody was fre- quently commuted for a money payment. Where the monastery had the honour of having a royal foun- dation, the king would forget the number of corrodies he had a right to grant ; and it was not for the loyal monks to resist or to set limits to the royal will. Among the State Papers we find the grant of some corrodies which evince recklessness on the part of the crown in yielding to the petition of courtiers and the
74 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, hangers-on of a court. Complaint could not be made when a large sum was demanded to support a student in one of the universities ; and the monastery of St. Frideswide may have felt itself honoured, when it was directed to contribute towards the education at Oxford, of a royal youth of great promise, — Eeginald Pole. But murmurs were assuredly whispered when corrodies were granted under the Privy Seal to Yeoman Ushers of the Wardrobe and the Chambers ; to secretaries of the queen, and to Clerks of the Sewers. The table kept at the monasteries was not always so splendid as that which presents itself to modern imagination. The funds of a monastery were eked out by taking boarders. Some monasteries became large boarding houses ; and discretion was required in the selection of a temporary domicile in one of these houses. Andrew Ammonius, in writing to Erasmus, states that the monastery in which he was himself lodged was crammed, and that they kept a poor table. He remarked, that there was a college of certain doctors near St. Paul's, who lived comfort- ably, but it was a stinking place. He thought that there were no Augustinians with whom Erasmus could chamber, and the Franciscans were wretchedly poor/""
The poverty of many monasteries, through the mismanagement of their property, was one of the complaints brought against them. If their property was well managed, it was said, they would have plenty themselves, and, at the same time, enough for the king. How to meet the heavy demands upon them, however inadequately, must have been a cause of much anxiety to heads of houses and their bursars.
There was scarcely a monastery, at this time, which was not involved in debt. This appears from the
' * State Papers. See especially Nos. 1235, 1360, 4190, 930, 60, 106, 5198.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. V 5
statements made in contemporary letters bearing upon CHAP. the subject of the monasteries. When living to the — - — full extent of their incomes, the monks would be In^uc thrown into consternation by a sudden demand from the king, not only for the subsidy which they were pre- pared to pay. but for a benevolence. Whatever was the condition of the conventual treasury this demand was to be met at once. The house might probably be, at the same time, involved in a lawsuit ; and, wit! many claims upon them, lawsuits could hardly be avoided. Lawless neighbours would occasionally render an application for the royal protection necessary. Such 11 could not be obtained without a bribe to the courtiers and a douceur to the king. Other circum- stances were continually occurring, implying an expenditure which it was impossible antecedently t.> calculate. These demands and expenses could only !»• met or defrayed by incurring a debt. There v times when money could only be borrowed at a rate of .30 per cent, interest
AYe are not surprised, therefore, at the result to which allusion has just been made ; that there was scarcely a monastery in England that was not involved in »1 There were instances in which the creditors took posses-
ii of the monastic buildings, and, having ousted the monks, resided in them with their wives and children.
Such was the condition of the monasteries, when to th' and the superior monks the offer was made
the Government of a handsome pension, on con- dition of their surrendering their establishments into the hands of the king. Most liberal pensions were offered, and all accounts agree in stating, that they wcre regularly and scrupulously paid. The debt was like a millstone round the neck of the abbot. When almost in despair, he saw no way of extricating himself
"76 LIVES OF THE
or the establishment, ease and comparative wealth were offered to him. He would lose the importance attached to high station ; but he would find a compensation in his freedom from care. If we add, that the pensions were granted subject to the condition of its termination when the pensioner obtained any ecclesiastical prefer- ment of proportionate value, we have in the two facts a proof, that either the Government was extremely corrupt, or, that the charges brought against the monasteries were greatly exaggerated. The policy of the Govern- ment did not end here : it extended to the appoint- ment of abbots known to be subservient to the king. The abbots were nominated by the king ; and the later appointments were made with the understand- ing, that, when the king attacked their establishments, they were at once to capitulate, and accept a pen- sion such as a generous sovereign was sure to concede to the friends who served him faithfully.
This was the state of things, when an attack upon the monasteries was finally resolved upon. In the year 1535, Thomas Crumwell having been appointed vicar-general of the king,* was authorized, in the king's name, to hold a visitation of the monasteries, with liberty to appoint assistant-commissioners or deputies. Although Crumwell proceeded, at first, with caution, and evinced considerable discretion in the measures he proposed ; yet we may date, from this time, the commencement of that reign of terror which lasted throughout his entire administration. What was at first proposed met with general acquiescence, if not with approbation. It was the suggestion of a measure very similar to that which was effected by
* He was also called Lord Vicegerent. Collier shows from his commission that these are only two names to describe the same, thing, and not two distinct offices. Vol. iv. 296.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 77
Sir Kobert Peel, with reference to the estates attached to the prebendaries of our cathedrals and the capitular bodies. Where monasteries had. in the lapse of ages, become useless to the ends, for the furtherance of which they were endowed, they were to be disincor- porated and dissolved. Where the estates had been :oo favourable to the tenant, they were to be subjected to certain regulations: which, without injury to the convent, would be productive of a sur- plus applicable to other religious and public obje<
The visitation commenced in the October of 1535. B ral religious houses immediately surrendered. "\\ e may presume, that these were the monasteries which had become notorious for that immorality and pro- fligacy which the visitors predicated of the whole cla-
* The Report was made to Parliament in what was called the Black Book, and is said to have horrified the hearers. This report has not been preserved, or has not been discovered. We are there- fore dependent for our information on the subject of the dissolution of the monasteries, on two series of letters. The Camden Society published, under the editorship of Mr. Wright, " Three Chapters of :s relating to the Suppression of Monasteries." They have been printed from a volume in the Cottonian Library in the British Museum (MS. < '...tton. Cleopatra E. IV.), composed of letters and documents which appear to the editor to have been selected from the C rum well Papers so long preserved in the Chapter House of :iiinster, and now lodged in the Record Office. He has added a few documents from other collections in our national repository, and more especially from the Scudamore Papers. The other series of letters are published by Sir Henry Ellis in his "Original Letters illustrative of English History." An advocate on either side might establish his case by attending to one of these series of letters to the exclusion of the other, and this has been too often the case. The series of letters first mentioned are, in fact, the private reports, made from time to time, by the commissioners in the employment of CrumwelL They knew what was expected at their hands ; and that they did not deceive the expectations of their employer we infer
78
LIVES OF THE
Introduc- tory.
The commissioners were ready with their report when parliament met in the following February. The
from certain documents which have lately been discovered in the Record Office. In 1536, a commission was issued to certain country gentlemen, in conjunction with nominees of the court, and they were required to report on the condition of the smaller monasteries. The reports from the three counties of Leicester, "Warwick, and Eutland are the reports which have been lately brought to light. These com- missioners enter fully into a detailed statement, both of the state of each monastery they visited, and of the character sustained by its members, including servants and pensioners. We find that almost all were in debt, that in many the houses were ruinous, that in some the inmates were desirous of being secularized ; but out of nineteen houses visited there is only one in which these country' gentlemen, assisted by the nominees of the court, found the existence of any moral delinquency. "We ought, certainly, to take this into account, when we consider the subject, and we cannot fail to be suspicious of unfair play, when we find this commission dropped ; and commissioners appointed, of whom we must say that there seems to be no one of a serious and religious turn of mind, while charges of immorality were brought against aD, and in one case fully established. Although it cannot be proved that Dr. London violated the nuns at Godstowe, although he was, probably, not guilty of this offence, yet such a report coidd be believed of him ; and it is certain that he was afterwards obliged to do open penance for an incestuous connexion; that he was convicted of perjury ; that he was condemned to ride with his face to the horse's tail at Windsor and at Ockingham. No one was more zealous than he, in punishing the suspected monks by turning them adrift into the world, seizing their houses, and confiscating their property. The correspondence of Legh and Layton bears out the charge brought against them by the Pilgrimage of Grace, when the king was petitioned to prosecute them and the other visitors or in- quisitors for bribery and extortion and other abominable acts. We are not on this account, to reject their reports as entirely untrue ; but we are inclined to attach more weight to the letters in Sir Henry Ellis's series, which were written by men of higher position in society and of better character, and these letters are generally favourable to the monasteries. We must add that even Crumwell's commissioners made strong appeals in favour of some monasteries, and were rebuked. Henry himself accused them of being bribed,
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 79
principal act of the session was an act grounded on the CHAP. report. The preamble is important, as showing what _J^_ the impression which the king and his minister introduc t this time, to make on the public mind. It iiat manifest sin, vicious, carnal, and abomi- nable living, was daily used and commonly committed in the religious houses of monks and nuns, when the congregation of such religious persons was under the number of : and that the property, goods,
and chattels «>f such houses were spoilt, destro; consumed, and utterly wasted. It is observed that, although these houses had been subjected to con- tinual visitations for the space of two hundred years and nioi there was little or no amendment.
It was thus impossible.' tu apply any remedy except that of suj ( >n the suppression of the smaller
mo; ligious persons, their inmates, would be
committed to yrvat and I •< of
where they would be com- pelled to live ivligiously , for the reformation of their lives. The king solemnly returns thanks to Almiglr 1, for that, in the great and solemn rnon; >f this
I in, religion is right well kept and observed.* But he remarks, that they were generally destitute of such full number of religious persons as they ought to keep ; therefore no hardship upon them to have the monks of dissolved monasteries quartered upon them.
when they asked for mercy to be shown to the little monastery of . against which no accusation could be substantiated. The whole case is stated with great fairness by a Protestant writer in the Home and Foreign Review, whose name I am not at liberty to mention ; to whom I desire to express my obligations.
* If the king spoke truly now, he spoke falsely afterwards. If he knew now that the larger monasteries were corrupt, then he thanked God for what he must have believed to be the work of the enemy of God and man.
80 LIVES OF THE
Upon this, the Lords and Commons " by a great de- liberation" finally resolved, that all the monasteries which not land or other hereditaments above the clear yearly value of two hundred pounds ; with their lands and other hereditaments and their ornaments, jewels, goods, chattels, and debts, should be given to the king, his heirs and assigns for ever, to do and to use therewith of his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of the realm."
For reasons already expressed, there was no oppo- sition to this measure.* That Crumwell from the beginning was prepared to proceed further, we may fairly conjecture ; when we observe with what ability and craft he made provision against certain con- tingencies, of which he afterwards availed himself. To the king himself it is due to observe that, from documents which have lately been brought to light, we are justified in crediting him with a desire, at this time, of acting up to the spirit of the statute. Through the surplus revenue he expected so to replenish his treasury as not to subject his people to further taxation : at the same time he designed to carry into effect some public works for the benefit both of the country and of the Church.
The king devised several projects in his mind. It occurred to him that an increase in the episcopate was the most proper mode of expending the surplus revenue. For want of episcopal superintendence, the monasteries had fallen into disrepute, and by an increase of the
A troublesome opposition might have been offered at this period to the proposed measure ; for when this parliament, in which had been passed so many Acts for the Reformation of the Church, was first called, the House of Lords consisted of forty- six tem- poral peers, two archbishops, sixteen bishops, two guardians of spiritualties, twenty-six abbots, and two priors. Twenty-five tem- poral peers sat for the first time.
AECHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 81
episcopate it was hoped that the discipline of the clergy would be more efficiently increased.
There is in the Cottonian Library a list of the "Byshop- lnit™fc' prychys to be new made;""" from which we discover, that the project was entertained of forming episcopal sees in Rssex and Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buck- inghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire, Northampton- shire and Huntinordonshire, Middlesex, Leicestershire
O ' *
and Rutlandshire, Lancashire, Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Staffordshire and Salop, Nottinghamshire and Derby- shire, and lastly, Cornwall.
The project was nobly conceived, but it was very imperfectly carried out. The income which the king obtained from the confiscation of the monasteries was evidently Ir.ss than Lad been expected by himself and his minister. t Besides, Henry was, like C'atiline, if " alieni appetens," yet "sui profusus." This has become a proverbial expression ; but we may apply to the case a still more homely proverb, and say, " What was got
" MS. Cotton. Cleop. E. IV. foL 304. The list is printed in Strype, Burnet, and Collier. More credit is given to Henry than, he deserves, for having established six new sees, Westminster in. 1540, Chester, Gloucester, and Peterborough in 1541, Oxford and Bristol in 1542. These were old monastic establishments. Henry seized on a portion of their property, and left but a scanty provision for the new foundations when the monks or canons regular, were changed into prebendaries.
t People are apt to give full rein to their imaginations as regards the wealth of corporate bodies. Historians have repeated without examination the statement relating to monastic property made by Sprot, a chronicler of the time of Edward I. Wherever his state- ment has been examined, in any detail, his inaccuracy has been dis- covered ; and I have little doubt, that the time will soon come, when what is said of the 28,000 knight's fees will be discarded as a fable. This does not interfere with the fact, that so much land was held in mortmain in the sixteenth century, that a confiscation of part of it was a political necessity. We may applaud the act, while we con- demn the agents, their mode of action, and their motives.
VOL. VI. G
82 LIVES OF THE
on the devil's back was soon spent under his belly," The income obtained from the suppression of three IlltoryUC~ hundred and seventy-six monasteries supplying the exchequer with a revenue of 30,000/. a year, and 100,000£. in addition, as ready money, the value of realized property confiscated, — all this was insuffi- cient to meet the demands of a reckless expendi- ture, of a careless good nature, and of that which is worse than the two daughters of the horse-leech, ever saying, Give, give, — the gaming-table. That the stakes were high may be gathered from one instance. It was recounted that Jesus bells, hanging in a steeple not far from St. Paul's, and renowned for their metal and their tone, were lost to Sir Miles Partridge at one cast of the royal dice.*
Crumwell had his own fortune to make, and was well a ware, that his very existence depended upon his success- ful management of the public finances. He could not be contented with what the confiscation of the lesser monasteries supplied. With the foresight and self- possession of a powerful mind, he had already provided against future contingencies, and was watching events. At first, they involved him in difficulties, but to over- come difficulties is the pastime as well as the glory of genius.
A reaction in the public mind soon took place. The public, high and low, had some complaint against the monks and friars ; they felt pleasure in the prospect of " taking down their pride;" thoughtful persons saw the importance of diminishing their possessions, and bring- ing some portion at least, of their estates into the market.
Stow's Survey, 351. This Sir Miles Partridge, a man whom Strype describes as a gamester and a ruffian, perished by the hands of justice. The property was given to the king because of the alleged immorality of the monks.
AECHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 83
But the reform, easy and agreeable when viewed as CHAP. a distant prospect, assumed another aspect when theory — -.— was reduced to practice. The monastery was destroyed ; Int™.y' and the nobleman began to inquire what provision could be made for the younger sou, whom he had destined to a stall in the ancestral abbey : and younger brothers, who had there been quartered as lay members, knew not where now to look for a dinner. While fivsh de- mands were made upon them, heads of families found themselves poorer ; corrodies were stopped, and with them the means of pensioning a worn-out servant, or of ing a tenant's son at the university. The school 1, at which the surrounding gentry had thought to educate their boys ; and the medical adviser had b«-en driven from the hospital where the sick had received medicine and advice. It was with sad and sorrowing hearts, that the pious of either sex heard of th«.- demolition of the holy and beautiful house w! their fathers had worshipped ; and mothers were seen weeping as they received back their unmarried daughters from nunneries, which had been to them a happy home. It was with feelings of indignant sym- pathy, that the people of a district saw turned adrift upon the world the holy women, who had been to them sisters of mercy.
The act stipulated for pensions and preferments for those who held high office in a monastery, but the in- ferior members received a priest's gown and forty shil- lings if they became seculars. Xo provision was made for the servants, who were thus deprived of the means of subsistence ; and we may form some notion of their comparative numbers by remarking, that in one monas- tery, where we find thirty monks, there were not fewer than one hundred and forty-four servants. To these must be added the many out-door labourers employed
G 2
84 LIVES OF THE
CHAP on the farms, and now thrown out of work. All these were prepared to become sturdy beggars, at a time when vagrancy was a capital crime.* They were to be joined by others not quite incapable of action, the dependants on the doles and alms still given at the abbey gates. I
'' The punishment for vagrancy had been sufficiently cruel in former reigns ; but the cruelty was increased by the act of the 27th of Henry VIII. an act called the king's own act against vagrants, "rufflers, sturdy vagabonds, and valiant beggars," after such time as any of them had been once whipped, and sent to any place, " if they shall happen to wander, loiter, or idly use them- selves, and play the vagabonds, or willingly absent themselves from labour they have been appointed to," might be sentenced by a justice of the peace, not only to be whipped again, but also to have " the upper part of the gristle of his right ear clean cut off, so that it may appear for a perpetual token after that time, that he hath been a contemner of the good order of the commonwealth." Constables and the most substantial inhabitants of every parish were to forfeit five marks for every time they refused, when ordered to whip, or cut off the gristle of an ear. For the third act of vagrancy committed by one " the gristle of whose ear had been cut off clean," the punishment was death as a felon and enemy of the commomv ealth ; and, in order not to lose a chance of profit, how- ever remote, the pauper was condemned to "forfeit all his lands and goods." — Amos, 85. By a statute passed in the 22d year of this king " licences were grantable for begging within limits, with a provision " that if any such impotent person do beg within any other place than within such limits, then the justices, king's officers, and ministers, shall, at their discretions, punish all such persons by imprisonment in the stocks by the space of two days and two nights, giving them only bread and water." Impotent persons begging, without a licence, were to be " stripped naked from the middle upwards," and to be scourged. " Men or women, being whole and mighty in body," who were found vagrant, were subject " to be had to the next market town, and there to be tied to the end of a cart, naked, and to be beaten with whips throughout the same town till his body be bloody by reason of such whipping." — Amos, 84. The age was cruel ; and this should be borne in mind when we read of the little compunction with which victim after victim was sent to the block, whether offending politically or as religionists, or as having incurred the king's displeasure.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 85
am aware that, passing from one extreme to another, CHAP. modern historians treat as mythical the stories told of . — J — the charity displayed by the monks. But it is scarcely rn*r00^ur possible for a large establishment, conducted by Chris- tian men or women, to exist, without an exhibition of charity to various hangers-on ; and this must have been particularly the case in establishments, where the cultivation of an eleemosynary spirit was encouraged as a merit.
All these circumstances combined to induce a re- action in the public mind, and this reaction was proved by two formidable insurrections. The first broke out at Louth, in Lincolnshire, on the 2d of October, 1536. It was headed by the Prior of Barlings, Dr. Mackerel, Bishop of Chalcedon, in partibus, in con- junction with another leader, who assumed the name of Captain Cobler. The second, of a more formidable character, broke out early in 1537, in Cumberland, and directed by Robert Aske, of Howden in York- shire, is known in history and in poetry, as ft the Pil- grimage of Grace." "We see from the correspondence of Henry in the State Papers, how alarmed the Go- vernment was at this crisis ; how vigorous and self- possessed the king was ; and how, as usual, the insur- gents, under the marvellous influence of that spirit of loyalty, which seems to be characteristic of Englishmen, abstained from censuring the king, while they vowed vengeance against his ministers.
The reader is aware, that these insurrections were quelled not by force of arms, but by diplomacy — in plain English, the victory was won not by fighting but by lying. The insurgents in Lincolnshire were dis- armed by an amnesty, which the king broke ; and the insurgents in the north were dispersed by promises which the king neither kept nor designed to keep. "We
86 LIVES OF THE
CHAP, gather from the State Papers, that Henry had been — ^_ alarmed. He had acted with firmness and prompti-
1 -f 1 i x
"torv!" tude, and was triumphant. He retired from the con- test an impassioned man ; and neither he nor his minister was likely to overlook the fact, that by no- thing are the hands of a Government so much strength- ened as by unsuccessful resistance. Henry now lent a ready ear to the suggestion of Crumwell, that his throne would not be secure so long as a single monastic establishment remained in the land. The monasteries, it was urged, stood opposed to the king ; they were a burden to the Church; they were an expense to the country, and they owed allegiance neither to the king nor yet to the Church, but only to that foreign prince and potentate, the Bishop of Rome. And then came, as a climax, the strongest of the strong arguments to be addressed to the royal mind — money was wanted. The insurrection was not quelled without expense ; the treasures accumulated from the confiscation of the pro- perty of the lesser monasteries had been consumed : of one thing only the people were impatient, and that was taxation. The property of the larger monasteries must be confiscated to the service of the crown. But there was a lion in the path. By the three estates of the realm it had been solemnly declared and proclaimed that in the larger houses "religion was well kept and observed;" and, in the fervour of his piety, the king had given God thanks for the fact.
The great statesman was equal to the crisis ; he had foreseen and provided for the coming events. All things were ready, so far as he was concerned, to com- pel the abbots, by weapons, if not carnal, yet certainly not hallowed, to a voluntary surrender of their estates and property. The acts of parliament already ob- tained had a deeper meaning than those, who passed
I.
Introdn' torv*.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
them, had suspected. They had been so framed as to arm <'HA: the Executive with despotic power. It only remained now, to conciliate or to terrify the different parties in the state, if not into co-operation, at least into submission. The king, — Cruniwell knew how to manage him. " They that rule about the king, " said the people, and they spoke the truth, "make him great banquets and give him sweet wines, and make him drunk ; and then they bring him bills, and he putteth his sign to them, whereby they do what they wish, and no man may correct them." Crumwell supplied the king with the means of indulging his taste and appetites ; and, so long as he did this, and the people were kept in subjection, he might rule in tlie king's name ;* when he failed to do this, his admini- stration came to an end, and with his administration, his life.
The nobility ami gentry were to be propitiated : the first 1 >y grants from the crown out of the spoils of the monasteries ; " the merchant adventurers" and gen- try, by being permitted to purchase land on favourable terms. Opponents were thus adroitly converted into allies.
Parliament was to be won not merely by that system
of " packing" the House of Commons, of which we hav<>
i'al instances in the letters of the period ; but by the
rumours spread of a threatened invasion. It was re-
* "We see from the State Papers, that, either from a sense of duty or from a love of business, Henry always attended to such details of business as it was necessary to bring before him : but, more than any of his contemporaries, he yielded himself to the guidance of his ministers. For the glories of his reign he was indebted to that consummate statesman, Cardinal Wolsey ; for the commencement of the Eeformation he was indebted to CrumwelL After Crumwell's death, there was no minister in whom he could place confidence. He was in fact his own minister, and under difficult circumstances he then showed himself a statesman of no mean ability.
88 LIVES OF THE
ported, that Cardinal Pole was exciting a crusade against England, and that already a league against Henry had Into?yUC~ been f°rme(l by the Emperor and the French king. The thought of an insult offered to this country by France always fired the blood of Englishmen ; and there was not a man in the country who would not have aided the king if he were to buckle on his armour for a French war ; but where was the money to come from ? A dread of imposing a tax, or raising a sub- sidy, was the besetting sin of the Parliament men of that age ; and, instead of seeing how power went with the purseholder, they preferred an economical despotism to the purchase of their liberties by making the sove- reign a pensioner of his Parliament. They again looked to the monasteries.
The insurrections had excited feelings of alarm in the breasts of that large body of peaceful subjects, who for the sake of a quiet life, would submit, readily, to a despotism like that of the Tudors ; which was chiefly felt as an oppression to those who made themselves prominent either in religion or in politics. They form the great bulk of a nation, and, generally speak- ing, they would rather bear the ills they know, than fly to others that they know not of. In the days of which we are speaking, an insurrection was a more serious thing than it is even now. On either side, the belligerents would require free quarters; they de- manded everything and paid for nothing ; if the rebels could not force a man to take up arms with them, the king's generals might press him into the royal army. The War ol the Eoses was the bugbear of the age ; to prevent a repetition of such a calamity the country was willing to permit the king to exercise despotic power, so long as he adhered to those forms of consti- tution, an attachment to which has been almost a
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 89
superstition among the English.* Many lamented CHAP. the dissolution of the monasteries : we have letters _-J^ which show how grieved they often were at witnessing In^oduc- their spoliation ; at the same time, they would not move a finger to prevent the king from taking possession of property, which had been voted to him by parliament. AVhen the country was in this position, Cruniwell placed himself at the head of the reforming party. He was certainly not a Protestant, so far as doctrine oncerned. In his last speech, after his condem- nation, he professed opinions directly repugnant to what •-.t that time regarded as Protestantism. He is generally supposed to have been a man of no religion — a kind of religious tradesman, who supported the party from which he could gain most ; or a stnu-sman to whom religion was a branch of politics, t But the
* The Tudor Dynasty was not so firmly seated on the throne, as to permit Henry VIIL to set at nought the feelings of the people. The King of Spain, under an apprehension that Henry's succession to the throne would "be disputed, placed the Spanish army at his disposal, and offered to head it. It is important to note this, be- cause it enables us to understand why Henry was so careful to obtain an apparent legal sanction for his most despotic acts ; and why also he prefixed long, elaborate, and often false preambles, ex- planatory of his intentions and conduct, to the bills he caused to be introduced into Parliament.
t In Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, he speaks of Crumwell at the time of his master's fall. " It chanced me upon All Allowne day to come into the great chamber at Asher, where I found Mr. Crumwell leaning on the great window with a primer in his hand, saying Our Lady Matins — ichich had been a strange fight in him afore." He was not wont to have recourse to his devotions ; and now when he " thought he was like to lose all he had laboured for all the days of his life," as a rare thing, he thought of prayer, and was saying " Our Lady Matins." This his admirers have striven to explain away, by altering the text ; but Mr. Maitland remarks ; "that Crumwell before that time avowed infidel principles is beyond a doubt.'1
90 LIVES OF THE
AP. extreme reformers rallied round him ; and moderate re- formers felt that they could not do without him. From tneir letters we gather, that moderate reformers feared rather than loved him, although almost every one was under some obligation to him. To his supporters he was wisely generous, and when they supported him in his schemes of plunder they were sure to have a fair share of the spoil. During the reign of Henry VIII. neither Cranmer nor those who acted with him professed to be Protestants, whether we apply the term to Lutherans or to Zuinglians. They watched with interest the Protestant movement on the Continent; and sup- ported the minister, who warned the king that, if he intended the Reformation of the Church to be complete, his reform must extend from discipline to doctrine. Of the pusillanimity of Cranmer in yield- ing to the insolence of Crumwell, and in not resenting the insults offered to his office, we shall have to speak hereafter. Cranmer was evidently willing to concede much, under the conviction that Crumwell was a sincere reformer. Crumwell, like Cranmer, under the fear of death repudiated the doctrines which he had previously patronized ; but, unlike Cranmer, he did not, when death was certain, recant his recantation.
While Crumwell overruled the Reformers at home, he sought to extend his influence yet further ; and in foreign politics he took the line directly opposite to that which had been pursued by his master, Wolsey. Wolsey deferred to the pope ; Crumwell was willing to make common cause with the Protestants of Germany. Whenever a German or Swiss Protestant visited Eng-
o
land, he found a friend and protector in Crumwell. But after all, he had only one object in view, — to enrich himself and his royal master by the entire confiscation of the monastic property ; when that was
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 91
accomplished, he quietly acquiesced in the Act of the CHAP. Articles. The measures to which he had recourse — L. to intimidate the monks and their supporters were, some of them legitimate, while others were most in- iquitous. He acted wisely and well, when he en- couraged learned foreigners to visit England and enter into discussion with our own divines on the conrro- f the day. He acted still better, when he persuaded the king to extend his patronage to those who had devoted their minds to the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue ; and to permit throughout his dominions a free circulation of the red volume.* He wielded the lawful weapons of
* This may be a convenient place to make some remarks upon a subject upon which much idle declamation has been wasted, and to point out the different feelings with which a free circulation of
:pture has been regarded by men, who differing from one another on this and other important subjects, may fairly entertain their different opinions without being subjected to personal abuse. The study of Scripture, as a book of devotion, was encouraged, as have had frequent occasion to show, in all ages of the Church all classes of divines. • From the time of Alfred, translations were made from time to time for the edification of those, who were unable to read their Bibles in the original. When Wiclif appeared he
..-lated the Vulgate, and would probably have been unmolested in his holy work, if he had not proclaimed his object. The Church currupt. It was to be brought to the test of Scripture ; •' to the law and to the testimony." If the Church's teaching was not con- firmed and corroborated by Scripture, the Church was in error, and required Reformation. He circulated the Scriptures, therefore, with the avowed purpose of making every one a reformer, and his version
- eagerly sought by those who wished to bring an accusation against the Church, and to cause an ecclesiastical revolution. The heads of the Church may have been in error, when they opposed the circulation of Scripture for this purpose, — as a weapon of offence — but they do not deserve the hard names sometimes heaped upon them, even by those who profess to be influenced by conser- vative feelings. Our reformers, in the sixteenth century, conceded the fact, and admitted the trui-m, that religious knowledge, like all
92
LIVES OF THE
introduc-
tory.
controversy in the cause of sincerity and truth, when he exposed to the public gaze the impostures which jia(j j^^ fae disgrace of too many monasteries. He
J
exhibited to the astonished multitude, the strings and wires and pulleys by which the image, too long wor- shipped by an idolatrous people, was made to open its eyes, to move its lips, to expand its mouth, and to per- form other grimaces indicative of approbation when a wealthy ignoramus made an offering of jewels or of gold. He did what was right when he condemned the inanimate heretic to the flames. He placed in men's hands the crystal phial containing the blood, as it was said, of a saint ; which became visible to the money- giving, and invisible to the niggardly beholder ; he showed how it was opaque on the one side, and transparent on the other, and he dashed the lying relic to the ground. Men are never more indignant, than when they find that they have been subjected to delusion, and when by impious men, their holiest feelings have been trifled with.
These tricks were played upon pilgrims by the
knowledge, is transmissive. They received it as a tradition, — but then they desired to place the Bible in every man's hands, as the only safeguard for preventing the Church from transmitting as an article of faith what has never been revealed as such. The Church comes to us, as St. Paul to the Bereans, and says, These things are so. We accept what is handed down to us ; and then, admitting it to be probable, that those who have no object in deceiving us, have told us the truth, we do, as the noble Bereans did, we search the Scripture to see whether these things be so. The notion of making a religion each man for himself out of the Bible is a modern notion, and must stand for what it is worth. As the subject will frequently come before us, the reader will probably agree with the author in think- ing the protestant system the right one ; but it does not follow, that those who, at a revolutionary period, took another view of the subject are deserving of the hard terms which Foxe and his admirers heap upon them.
AECHB1SHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 93
lowest class of persons in the monasteries, and were laughed at by some at the head of affairs. The indignation of all classes was directed against the Introdu<>
tory.
abbots and priors, who having the power to put them down, had abstained from using it. So for they de- served their fate. They confounded credulity with faith, and forgot who is the father of lies.
It is with mitigated feelings of disgust, that we approach the shrines where were exhibited the relics, real or imaginary, of holy men of old. Men like Erasmus may have laughed ; men like Colet may have sighed, as they gazed at the wasted treasures of a be- jewelled shrine ; but here there was not of necessity, as in the former case, conscious deceit on the part of the exhibitor. The deceivers were themselves often deceived ; and even when miracles appeared to be wrought, we know the power of the imagination too well, not to believe that cures were effected where cures weiv expected. But whatever may be said in pallia- tion of the offence, the offence, in conjunction with other iniquities, was sufficient to create a vast number of conscientious iconoclasts. Their feelings were still further excited, when they compared the second com- mandment as taught in the Church, with the same commandment when printed in their Bibles. When the mysteries of the convent became revelations of its hidden pollutions, the doom of the monasteries was sealed.
Had Crumwell been contented with the legitimate modes of party warfare, he would have deserved only the gratitude of posterity. The exposure of a lie is a victory on the side of truth. But in his zeal to create a public opinion against the monasteries, he resorted to measures which, if they are regarded with feelings of ap- probation by any, must be so only by the mere partizans
1)4 LIVES OF THE
of religion, and not by persons, under the influence of a religion the characteristic virtue of which is charity.
A partizan of Protestantism was Foxe, the martyr- ologist. Describing Crumwell as a valiant soldier and captain of Christ, he informs us, that he had in his pay and kept near him " divers fresh and quick wits, by whose industry " (pious or profane, as the reader may think fit to regard it) the country was inundated "with pictures, jests, songs, interludes ;" of which some remain to exhibit to us what he regarded as wit ; and how wit might, in his estimation, be made subservient to religion, or at least to the propagation of what he regarded as such.
The stage plays and interludes, says Bishop Burnet, were acted, and the churches were too often the theatres. With a view of interesting men in the history of the Bible, sacred dramas had, in times past, been performed in consecrated buildings ; and, following this precedent, the buffoon, who formerly appeared as the arch enemy of man, amused the popu- lace by his representation of a profligate monk or by the exhibition of such indecencies as convulsed the assembly with malignant laughter. Perhaps another place might have been more appropriately selected, when, advancing from men to things, the ordinances of the Church were burlesqued and things most sacred were turned into ridicule."5'" We have speci- mens of what was regarded as wit ; the consecrated oil was the Bishop of Home's butter ; the holy water was
* Burnet apologizes for mentioning what he describes as the greatest blemish of the times ; but the sincerity of an historian, he says, obliges him to do so. " Surely," remarks Dr. Maitland, " a more quaint acknowledgment of party views was never made. A man need not set up for an historian at any time, but if he does, 'the greatest blemish of that time' cannot be passed over with any pretence to common honesty."
torv.
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 95
represented as something adapted to make sauce for a CHAP.
goose, or as medicine for a horse with a galled back ; J —
the tonsure was a mark of the whore of Babylon ; the stole of a priest was the Bishop of Rome's rope ; the sacrament of the altar was called the sacrament of the halter ; it was spoken of as Jack in the box, or the round robin.
To the coarse ribaldry of the friars of old as directed against the secular clergy must be traced the relish for that whkli. whether regarded as piety or as blasphemy, certainly repugnant to good taste and correct feeling. It is to the credit of the clergy that, when the weapons formerly directed against themselves were iniw pointed against the monks, the Convocation, through its prolocutor, remonstrated with the Govern- ment for encouraging that which was introducing " inv- ligion, — even atheism/' Such, however, is the obtu>e- of religious partisanship that, instead of seeing in the courage thus displayed in a reign of terror, something worthy of praise, Bishop Bumet can only express his surprise and indignation at the proceeding.*
In party warfare and in rationalistic argument,
the puritan and the infidel are sometimes found to
make common cause. It is so difficult to distinguish
' en what is to one man profane and another
ludicrous, that we are not inclined to speak with undue
i ity upon what has been just described. But we
have a sadder ink- to tell ; we have to pass from mental
excruciation to the infliction of corporal punishment.
AVe have reminded the reader of the tumults, which had been caused by pity for the monks or by their su< -cos in the arts of insurrection. The probability of this had been foreseen by Crumwell. He had taken
* The reader who -would investigate this painful subject may be referred to Dr. Maitland's Essays on the Eeformation.
96 LIVES OF THE
steps to terrify the abbots of the larger monasteries into the surrender of their houses, treasures, and Intorduc" estates. He had already taken steps to prevent further insurrections in their behalf. The master stroke of his Machiavellian policy — one of those wonderful acts of political foresight by which provision was made for a probable future — is to be found in the Treason Act ; an act unostentatiously introduced as a mere rider to the Supremacy Act.
Convocation first, and the Parliament afterwards, in recognition of powers, from time immemorial attached to the prerogatives of the crown, conceded to Henry the title, — which he assumed, but which Queen Elizabeth repudiated, — of Supreme Head of the Church. Another bill was, towards the close of the session, introduced, in which it was enacted, that " if any person do mali- ciously wish, will, or desire, by words or in writing, or by craft, imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, or the queen's, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates; or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, that the king our sovereign lord should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown, every such person and their accessories shall be judged traitors."
This was not all. If an individual were obnoxious to the Government, if he were even accused, if he were suspected, to him the oath of supremacy might be tendered ; and if he refused to take it he might be led to execution, as in the case of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher for denying the royal title.
Thus was constituted an offence hitherto unheard of, — verbal treason; and terrible was the power with which it invested an unscrupulous sovereign and a
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.
yet more unscrupulous minister. Under legal forms, CHAP. a despotism was tacitly established; some were in- — ^ terested in upholding it, no one was bold enough to InJ^n<
-t.
Armed with this authority, and with manners most attractive, Crumwell caused his influence to be felt, even when not acknowledged, in ever}* class of society.* The House of Commons was led by him, for, as we gather from his letters, by him the House was packed. In political trials, he dictated the verdict : for every juryman knew that if a verdict hostile to the rnmeut should be returned, there was at the head of that crovernment a man, who was generous when
O O
pleased, but was terrible in his anger. He exercised all the functions, and possessed all the powers, of a modern prime minister. He was a man of progress, who was urging the king to adopt yet stronger measures of reform ; and to him therefore the discontented of all parties looked up as to a leader ; all who, having nothing to lose, only desired a scramble, where some- thing might be gained ; all who, in disgust at the ex- isting state of affairs, were ready to support the most extreme measures of reform ; all who cared little for the building up, if they were permitted to pull down.
The immoralities of the powerful partizan of a religious faction are, by the expectants of his favour or the enthusiasts of his party, regarded as mere pecca-
* For the statements made with reference to Crumwell, I must express my obligations to Professor Brewer and to Mr. Duffus Hardy. In his preface to The Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII. Mr. Brewer has constituted himself the ian of that reign. I am indebted for much information on the subject to an article on the Royal Supremacy, published by him in the National Review. The whole has been authenticated by Mr. Hardy, to whose friendly criticisms these pages were submitted as they passed through the i :
VOL. VI. H
98 LIVES OP THE
CHAP, dillos, or are discredited as inventions of the enemy. We are not surprised, therefore, at finding men of
Infory.UC fervent piety and of earnest religious principle at- tributing to Crumwell, virtues which he did not possess ; at the same time, we must admit, that he himself did not seek through hypocrisy, the high spiritual honours to which he attained. He was of this world, thoroughly worldly. He simply accepted what was thrust upon him ; and he used the almost boundless power, which caused him to be respected, served and feared. In every county and village, almost in every homestead, he had a secret force of informers and spies. They depended for all they possessed upon the patronage of the Vicegerent, who, — generous and despotic, — could give as well as take away. In the enthusiasm of their selfish loyalty, they were on the watch for traitors ; and in the well- paid piety of their hearts, they had a terrible dread of superstition. For a word uttered in argument, in anger, or in jocularity, an offender might be summoned before the magistrate and cross-examined. The ac- cused was not permitted to see his accuser ; each case was decided by depositions, and the depositions were sometimes garbled. If, for no assignable cause, a man obnoxious to the Government was accused of dis- loyalty, and refused to acknowledge his guilt, the oath of supremacy might be tendered to him ; and the officer who tendered it, would advert significantly to the fate of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher. If further proof were wanted, the house of a suspected person might be ransacked and his papers searched. If this did not suffice to prove his guilt, the accused might be sent to London to be there examined ; and that examination was sometimes conducted when the prisoner was on the rack. Crumwell himself sometimes
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 99
superintended the torture.* When a clergyman was CHAP.
suspected, his service-book might be examined, or even !
a private manual of devotion might be searched. The In|^ltl( object of the search was to discover whether, in obedience to a royal injunction, he had duly erased the name of the pope and that of St. Thomas of Canterbury. If this had not been done, the omis- sion was a sufficient proof of his treason ; and his life depended upon the caprice of Crumwell, or upon the
* See particularly the case of Dr. Lush, Vicar of Aylesbury, Ellis, 3d Series, iii. 70. At page 96 we find Robert SouthweD writing to Crumwell, then Lord Privy Seal, signifying the attainder of two priests for denying the king's supremacy, and humbly praying, that a day might be fixed for their execution. In a lettc^ from Crumwell to the king, concerning an Irish monk suspected of treasonable practices, he says, " We cannot as yet get the pith oi his evidence, whereby I am advertised to-morrow to go to the Tower, and see him set in the bracks, and by torment be compelled to confess the truth." — Ellis, 2d Series, ii. 130. Sir Henry E11L- informs us that the Brack or Brake was a species of rack. The very instrument which Crumwell professes the intention of using, or a por- tion of the horrid machine, was till lately to be seen in the Tower. It is engraved on wood in the Notes to Isaac Reed's Edition oi' Shakspeare, voL vi. p. 231. It is also mentioned by Judge Black stone in his Commentaries, vol. iv. ch. 25 ; he says, " The trial by rack is utterly unknown to the law of England, though once when the Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk and other Ministers of Henry VI. had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this kingdom as the rule of government, for a beginning thereof they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision, The Duke, of Exeter's (1fi.ii<ihter, and still remains in the Tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an engine of State, not of law, more than once in the reign of Elizabeth. In Mary's time it had been frequently used.'' Among the unpublished papers of Crumwell there are several references to the use of torture. For the state- ments given above, the reader is referred to the " Original Letters," published by Sir Henry Ellis, especially to the 3d Series, except when other authorities are quoted. Numerous letters and docu- ments relating to this period of Henry's reign are to be found unpublished in the Record Office.
H 2
100
LIVES OF THE
CHAP. I.
Introduc- tory.
cause hanged
judicious administration of a bribe. The Franciscans were the persons who were most zealous in favour of the pope, and it may have been a political necessity to apprehend two hundred of these men in one day. This was a strong measure ; but to stronger measures the court found it necessary to resort. Friar Forest was pro- claimed a heretic and traitor for maintaining the of the Bishop of Kome, and as such he was and burnt at Smithfield. Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, accompanied by several of the courtiers of Henry, attended in great state on the occasion ; and the preacher was no less a person than the Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer.* We read of the execu- tion, on another occasion, of eight poor men and of two women, for offences against the act of supremacy ; the sermon was preached by the chaplain of Hugh
* Our admiration of Bishop Latimer, who himself died bravely for his opinions, must not make us blind to his faults. There is some- thing offensively facetious and flippant in his letter to Crumwell, when the latter ordered him to preach at the burning of Forest : " And Sir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool in my customable manner, when Forest shall suffer, I should wish that my stage stood next unto Forest." It is due to the memory of a reformer, in many respects so justly admired, especially for his own martyrdom, to add that in another part of his letter he says, " If he would, in heart, return to his abjuration, I should wish his pardon, such is my foolishness." It was a sad time, when a bishop thought he should be accounted a fool, for pleading the cause of an innocent man. Much allowance must be made for the coarseness and cruelty of the age ; but there is something revolting in the conduct of Bishop Latimer, as narrated by Sir Thomas More, when More was under trial for his life before Cranmer, at Lambeth. " I was in con- clusion commanded to go down into the garden. And thereupon I tarried in the old burned chamber that looketh into the garden, and would not go down because of the heat. In that time saw I Master Doctor Latimer come into the garden, and there walked he with, divers other doctors and chaplains of my lord of Canterbury. And very merry I saw him, for he laughed and took one or two about the neck so handsomely, that if they had been women, I should have went [weened] he hadd waxen wanton."
AECHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 101
Latimer, Bishop of Worcester. What was peculiarly CHAP.
hard, upon this occasion, was, the imprisonment of one ^
Denison ; he expressed his disapprobation of the sermon, J11^1110 and called the preacher of it a foolish knave priest, " come to preach the new heresy which I set not by." There was a poor woman of whom Sir Roger Towns- hend writes to Cmmwell, that, " as far forth as his conscience and perceiving could lead him," was the originator of a report, that a miracle had been wrought by Our Lady of Walsingham. The credulous old woman, a few years sooner, would have been honoured as a saint, but how she was treated in King Henry's time shall be given in the words of Sir Roger himself : —
" I committed her to the ward of the constables of Wal- singham. The next day after, being market day, there I I her to be set in stocks in the morning, and about six of the clock, when the market was fullest of people, with a paper set about her head, written with these words upon the same, A reporter of false tales, was set in a cart and so carried about the market and other streets in the town, staying at divers places where most people assembled, young people and boys of the town casting snowballs at her. This done and executed, was brought to the stocks again, and there set till the market was ended. This was her penance, for I knew no law otherwise to punish her but by discretion ; trusting it shall be a warning to other light persons in such wise to order themselves. Howbeit I cannot perceive, but the said image is not yet out of some of their heads. I thought it con- venient to advertise your Lordship of the truth of this matter, lest the report thereof coming into many men's mouths might be made otherwise than the truth was. Therefore I have sent to your Lordship, by Richard Townshend, the said examina- tion. Thus I beseech Almighty Jesu evermore to have your good Lordship in His best preservation. Written the 20th of
January.*
Humbly at your commandment,
EOGER TOWXSHEXD. * Ellis, 3d Series, iii. 162.
102 LIVES OF THE
CHAP. What reward Sir Roger obtained or expected for his
— X zeal, I am unable to say ; but one other case must be
J"u™v "' " mentioned, as it shows how completely the country was
at this time governed, and felt itself to be governed, by
Crumwell. He is the only minister who so completely
identified himself with the king, that calumny against
the minister was confounded, in the opinion even of
educated men, with treason against the sovereign.
J O O
The justices of Ludlow, eager to gain favour with the all-powerful Crumwell, informed him, that they had apprehended a priest for speaking words against Crum- well; that they had sealed his house; they had taken pos- session of his property ; they had made an inventory of his goods, and had put his plate in trust for the use of the king. They had examined his papers to discover if there were " any untruth" to our lord the king. Although the inquisitors failed in their search, they were not to take all this trouble for nothing. Their expenses must be paid ; to their delight they found a bag containing 76/. 16s. ; they appropriated 201. as a remuneration to themselves — a sum equivalent to about 200/. according to the present value of money: another sum amounting to half of this, they gave to the scrivener for endorsing the inventory ; ten pounds were given to the fortunate messenger who was elected to convey this message to Crumwell.
To an Englishman, taught to regard his home as his castle, these acts of invasion upon property appear to be monstrous ; our blood boils within us, when we learn, that