The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (217 page)

No prince in Europe was possessed of such absolute authority as Henry, not even the pope himself, in his own capital, where he united both the civil and ecclesiastical powers;
NOTE [I]
and there was small likelihood, that any doctrine, which lay under the imputation of encouraging sedition, could ever pretend to his favour and countenance.

But besides this political jealousy, there was another reason, Of the king.

which inspired this imperious monarch with an aversion to the reformers. He had early declared his sentiments against Luther; and having entered the lists in those scholastic quarrels, he had received, from his courtiers and theologians, infinite applause for his performance. Elated by this imaginary success, and blinded by a natural arrogance and obstinacy of temper, he had entertained the most lofty opinion of his own erudition; and he received with impatience, mixed with contempt, any contradiction to his sentiments. Luther also had been so imprudent, as to treat in a very indecent manner his royal antagonist; and though he afterwards made the most humble submissions to Henry, and apologized for the vehemence of his former expressions, he never could efface the hatred, which the king had conceived against him and his doctrines. The idea of heresy still appeared detestable as well as formidable to that prince; and whilst his resentment against the see of Rome had corrected one considerable part of his early prejudices, he had made it a point of honour never to relinquish the remainder. Separate as he stood from the catholic church and from the Roman pontiff, the head of it, he still valued himself on maintaining the catholic doctrine, and on guarding, by fire and sword, the imagined purity of his speculative principles.

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Henry’s ministers and courtiers were of as motley a character as Of the ministers.

his conduct; and seemed to waver, during this whole reign, between the ancient and the new religion. The queen, engaged by interest as well as inclination, favoured the cause of the reformers: Cromwel, who was created secretary of state, and who was daily advancing in the king’s confidence, had embraced the same views; and as he was a man of prudence and abilities, he was able, very effectually, though in a covert manner, to promote the late innovations: Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, had secretly adopted the protestant tenets; and he had gained Henry’s friendship by his candour and sincerity; virtues which he possessed in as eminent a degree as those times, equally distracted with faction, and oppressed by tyranny, could easily permit. On the other hand, the duke of Norfolk adhered to the ancient faith; and by his high rank, as well as by his talents, both for peace and war, he had great authority in the king’s council: Gardiner, lately created bishop of Winchester, had inlisted himself in the same party; and the suppleness of his character, and dexterity of his conduct, had rendered him extremely useful to it.

All these ministers, while they stood in the most irreconcilable opposition of principles to each other, were obliged to disguise their particular opinions, and to pretend an entire agreement with the sentiments of their master. Cromwel and Cranmer still carried the appearance of a conformity to the ancient speculative tenets; but they artfully made use of Henry’s resentment to widen the breach with the see of Rome. Norfolk and Gardiner feigned an assent to the king’s supremacy, and to his renunciation of the sovereign pontiff; but they encouraged his passion for the catholic faith, and instigated him to punish those daring heretics, who had presumed to reject his theological principles. Both sides hoped, by their unlimited compliance, to bring him over to their party: The king meanwhile, who held the balance between the factions, was enabled, by the courtship payed him both by protestants and catholics, to assume an unbounded authority: And though in all his measures he was really driven by his ungoverned humour, he casually steered a course, which led more certainly to arbitrary power, than any which the most profound politics could have traced out to him. Artifice, refinement, and hypocrisy, in his situation, would have put both parties on their guard against him, and would have taught them reserve in complying with a monarch, whom they could never hope thoroughly to have gained: But while the frankness, sincerity, and openness of Henry’s temper were generally known, as well as the dominion of his furious passions; each side dreaded to lose him by the smallest opposition, and flattered themselves that a blind compliance with his will would throw him, cordially and fully, into their interests.

The ambiguity of the king’s conduct, though it kept the courtiers in awe, served in the main, to encourage the protestant doctrine among his subjects, and promoted that spirit of innovation, with which the age was generally seized, and which nothing but an entire uniformity, as well as a steady severity in the administration, could be able to repress. There were some Englishmen, Tindal, Joye, Constantine, and others, who,

dreading the exertion of the king’s authority, had fled to Antwerp;h
where the great privileges possessed by the Low Country provinces, served, during some time, to give them protection.

These men employed themselves in writing English books,

Farther progress of

against the corruptions of the church of Rome; against images, the reformation.

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reliques, pilgrimages; and they excited the curiosity of men with regard to that question, the most important in theology, the terms of acceptance with the Supreme Being. In conformity to the Lutherans and other protestants, they asserted, that salvation was obtained by faith alone; and that the most infallible road to perdition
i

was a reliance on
good works;
by which terms they understood, as well the moral duties, as the ceremonial and monastic observances. The defenders of the ancient religion, on the other hand, maintained the efficacy of
good works;
but though they did not exclude from this appellation the social virtues, it was still the superstitions, gainful to the church, which they chiefly extolled and recommended. The books, composed by these fugitives, having stolen over to England, began to make converts every where; but it was a translation of the scriptures by Tindal, that was esteemed the most dangerous to the established faith. The first edition of this work, composed with little accuracy, was found liable to considerable objections; and Tindal, who was poor, and could not afford to lose a great part of the impression, was longing for an opportunity of correcting his errors, of which he had been made sensible. Tonstal, then bishop of London, soon after of Durham, a man of great moderation, being desirous to discourage, in the gentlest manner, these innovations, gave private orders for buying up all the copies, that could be found at Antwerp; and he burned them publicly in Cheapside. By this measure, he supplied Tindal with money, enabled him to print a new and correct edition of his work, and gave great scandal to the people, in

thus committing to the flames the word of God.k

The disciples of the reformation met with little severity during the ministry of Wolsey, who, though himself a clergyman, bore too small a regard to the ecclesiastical order, to serve as an instrument of their tyranny: It was even an article of impeachment against him,
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that by his connivance he had encouraged the growth of heresy, and that he had protected and acquitted some notorious offenders.

Sir Thomas More, who succeeded Wolsey as Chancellor, is at Sir Thomas More.

once an object deserving our compassion, and an instance of the usual progress of men’s sentiments during that age. This man, whose elegant genius and familiar acquaintance with the noble spirit of antiquity, had given him very enlarged sentiments, and who had in his early years advanced principles, which even at present would be deemed somewhat too free, had, in the course of events, been so irritated by polemics, and thrown into such a superstitious attachment to the ancient faith, that few inquisitors have been guilty of greater violence in their prosecution of heresy. Though adorned with the gentlest manners, as well as the purest integrity, he carried to the utmost height his aversion to heterodoxy; and James Bainham, in particular, a gentleman of the Temple, experienced from him the greatest severity.

Bainham, accused of favouring the new opinions, was carried to More’s house; and having refused to discover his accomplices, the chancellor ordered him to be whipped in his presence, and afterwards sent him to the Tower, where he himself saw him put to the torture. The unhappy gentleman, overcome by all these severities, abjured his opinions; but feeling afterwards the deepest compunction for his apostacy, he openly returned to his former tenets, and even courted the crown of martyrdom. He was condemned as an obstinate and relapsed heretic, and was burned in Smithfield.
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Many were brought into the bishops’ courts for offences, which appear trivial, but which were regarded as symbols of the party: Some for teaching their children the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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Lord’s prayer in English; others for reading the new testament in that language, or for speaking against pilgrimages. To harbour the persecuted preachers, to neglect the fasts of the church, to declaim against the vices of the clergy, were capital offences.

One Thomas Bilney, a priest, who had embraced the new doctrine, had been terrified into an abjuration; but was so haunted by remorse, that his friends dreaded some fatal effects of his despair. At last, his mind seemed to be more relieved: but this appearing calm proceeded only from the resolution, which he had taken, of expiating his past offence, by an open confession of the truth, and by dying a martyr to it. He went through Norfolk, teaching the people to beware of idolatry, and of trusting for their salvation either to pilgrimages or to the cowle of St. Francis, to the prayers of the saints, or to images. He was soon seized, tried in the bishop’s court, and condemned as a relapsed heretic; and the writ was sent down to burn him. When brought to the stake, he discovered such patience, fortitude, and devotion, that the spectators were much affected with the horrors of his punishment; and some mendicant friars, who were present, fearing that his martyrdom would be imputed to them, and make them lose those alms, which they received from the charity of the people, desired him

publicly to acquit themn
of having any hand in his death. He willingly complied; and by this meekness gained the more on the sympathy of the people. Another person, still more heroic, being brought to the stake for denying the real presence, seemed almost in a transport of joy; and he tenderly embraced the faggots, which were to be the instruments of his punishment, as the means of procuring him eternal rest. In short, the tide turning towards the new doctrine, those severe executions, which, in another disposition of men’s minds, would have sufficed to suppress it, now served only to diffuse it the more among the people, and to inspire them with horror against the unrelenting persecutors.

But though Henry neglected not to punish the protestant doctrine, which he deemed heresy, his most formidable enemies, he knew, were the zealous adherents to the ancient religion, chiefly the monks, who, having their immediate dependance on the Roman pontiff, apprehended their own ruin to be the certain consequence of abolishing his authority in England. Peyto, a friar, preaching before the king, had the assurance to tell him, “That many lying prophets had deceived him, but he as a true Micajah, warned him, that the dogs would lick his blood, as they had done Ahab’s.”
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The king took no notice of the insult; but allowed the preacher to depart in peace.

Next Sunday he employed Dr. Corren to preach before him; who justified the king’s proceedings, and gave Peyto the appellations of a rebel, a slanderer, a dog, and a traitor. Elston, another friar of the same house, interrupted the preacher, and told him, that he was one of the lying prophets, who sought to establish by adultery the succession of the crown; but that he himself would justify all that Peyto had said.

Henry silenced the petulant friar; but showed no other mark of resentment than ordering Peyto and him to be summoned before the council, and to be rebuked for their offence.
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He even here bore patiently some new instances of their obstinacy and arrogance: When the earl of Essex, a privy counsellor, told them, that they deserved for their offence to be thrown into the Thames; Elston replied, that the road to heaven lay as near by water as by land.
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But several monks were detected in a conspiracy, which, as it might have proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton,

of Aldington in Kent, commonly called the
holy Maid of Kent,
The maid of Kent.

had been subject to hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time, had soon after entirely escaped her memory. The silly people in the neighbourhood were struck with these appearances, which they imagined to be supernatural; and Richard Masters, vicar of the parish, a designing fellow, founded on them a project, from which he hoped to acquire both profit and consideration. He went to Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, then alive; and having given him an account of Elizabeth’s revelations, he so far wrought on that prudent, but superstitious prelate, as to receive orders from him to watch her in her trances, and carefully to note down all her future sayings. The regard, paid her by a person of so high a rank, soon rendered her still more the object of attention to the neighbourhood; and it was easy for Masters to persuade them, as well as the maid herself, that her ravings were inspirations of the Holy Ghost. Knavery, as is usual, soon after succeeding to delusion, she learned to counterfeit trances; and she then uttered, in an extraordinary tone, such speeches as were dictated to her by her spiritual director. Masters associated with him Dr.