Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
Dudley, earl of Warwic, was the son of that Dudley, minister to Dudley, earl of
Henry VII. who, having, by rapine, extortion, and perversion of Warwic.
law, incurred the hatred of the public, had been sacrificed to popular animosity, in the beginning of the subsequent reign. The late king, sensible of the iniquity, at least illegality, of the sentence, had afterwards restored young Dudley’s blood by act of parliament; and finding him endowed with abilities, industry, and activity, he had entrusted him with many important commands, and had ever found him successful in his undertakings. He raised him to the dignity of viscount Lisle, conferred on him the office of admiral, and gave him by his will a place among his executors. Dudley made still farther progress during the minority; and having obtained the title of earl of Warwic, and undermined the credit of Southampton, he bore the chief rank among the protector’s counsellors. The victory, gained at Pinkey, was much ascribed to his courage and conduct; and he was universally regarded as a man equally endowed with the talents of peace and of war.
But all these virtues were obscured by still greater vices; and exorbitant ambition, an insatiable avarice, a neglect of decency, a contempt of justice: And as he found, that lord Seymour, whose abilities and enterprizing spirit he chiefly dreaded, was involving himself in ruin by his rash counsels, he was determined to push him on the precipice; and thereby remove the chief obstacle to his own projected greatness.
When Somerset found, that the public peace was endangered by his brother’s seditious, not to say rebellious, schemes, he was the more easily persuaded by Warwic to employ the extent of royal authority against him; and after depriving him of the office of admiral, he signed a warrant for committing him to the Tower. Some of his accomplices were also taken into custody, and three privy counsellors, being sent to examine them, made a report, that they had met with very full and important discoveries. Yet still the protector suspended the blow, and showed a reluctance to ruin his brother. He offered to desist from the prosecution, if Seymour would promise him a cordial reconciliation; and renouncing all ambitious hopes, be contented with a private life, and retire into the country. But as Seymour made no other answer to these friendly offers than menaces and defiances, he ordered a charge to be drawn up against him, consisting of thirty-three articles;
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and the whole to be laid before the privy council. It is pretended, that every particular was so incontestibly proved, both by witnesses and his own hand-writing, that there was no room for doubt; yet did the council think proper to go in a body to the Tower, in order more fully to examine the prisoner. He was not daunted by the appearance: He boldly demanded a fair trial: required to be confronted by the witnesses; desired that the charge might be left with him, in order to be considered; and refused to answer any interrogatories, by which he might accuse himself.
It is apparent, that, notwithstanding what is pretended, there must have been some deficiency in the evidence against Seymour, when such demands, founded on the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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plainest principles of law and equity, were absolutely rejected. We shall indeed conclude, if we carefully examine the charge, that many of the articles were general, and scarcely capable of any proof; many of them, if true, susceptible of a more favourable interpretation; and that, though, on the whole, Seymour appears to have been a dangerous subject, he had not advanced far in those treasonable projects imputed to him. The chief part of his actual guilt seems to have consisted in some unwarrantable practices in the admiralty, by which pyrates were protected, and illegal impositions laid upon the merchants.
But the administration had, at that time, an easy instrument of vengeance, to wit, the Parliament; and needed not to give themselves any concern with regard either to the guilt of the persons whom they prosecuted, or the evidence which could be produced against them. A session of parliament being held,
it was resolved to proceed against Seymour by bill of attainder; A parliament. 4th
and the young king being induced, after much solicitation, to Novem.
give his consent to it, a considerable weight was put on his approbation. The matter was first laid before the upper-house; and several peers, rising up in their places, gave an account of what they knew concerning lord Seymour’s conduct and his criminal words or actions.
These narratives were received as undoubted evidence; and 1549. Attainder of
though the prisoner had formerly engaged many friends and lord Seymour.
partizans among the nobility, no one had either the courage or equity to move, that he might be heard in his defence, that the testimony against him should be delivered in a legal manner, and that he should be confronted with the witnesses. A little more scruple was made in the house of commons: There were even some members who objected against the whole method of proceeding by bill of attainder, passed in absence; and insisted, that a formal trial should be given to every man before his condemnation.
But when a message was sent by the king, enjoining the house to March 20.
proceed, and offering that the same narratives should be laid before them which had satisfied the peers, they were easily prevailed on to
acquiesce.o
The bill passed in a full house. Near four hundred voted for it; not above
The sentence was soon after executed, and the prisoner was His execution.
beheaded on Tower-hill. The warrant was signed by Somerset, who was exposed to much blame, on account of the violence of these proceedings.
The attempts of the admiral seem chiefly to have been levelled against his brother’s usurped authority; and though his ambitious, enterprizing character, encouraged by a marriage with the lady Elizabeth, might have endangered the public tranquillity, the prudence of foreseeing evils at such a distance, was deemed too great; and the remedy was plainly illegal. It could only be said, that this bill of attainder was somewhat more tolerable than the preceding ones, to which the nation had been enured. For here, at least, some shadow of evidence was produced.
All the considerable business transacted this session besides the Ecclesiastical affairs.
attainder of lord Seymour, regarded ecclesiastical affairs; which were now the chief object of attention throughout the nation. A committee of bishops and divines had been appointed by the council, to compose a liturgy; and they had PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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executed the work committed to them. They proceeded with moderation in this delicate undertaking: They retained as much of the ancient mass as the principles of the reformers would permit: They indulged nothing to the spirit of contradiction, which so naturally takes place in all great innovations: And they flattered themselves, that they had established a service, in which every denomination of Christians might, without scruple, concur. The mass had always been celebrated in Latin; a practice which might have been deemed absurd, had it not been found useful to the clergy, by impressing the people with an idea of some mysterious unknown virtue in those rites, and by checking all their pretensions to be familiarly acquainted with their religion.
But as the reformers pretended, in some few particulars, to encourage private judgment in the laity, the translation of the liturgy, as well as of the Scriptures, into the vulgar tongue, seemed more conformable to the genius of their sect; and this innovation, with the retrenching of prayers to saints, and of some superstitious ceremonies, was the chief difference between the old mass and the new liturgy. The parliament established this form of worship in all the churches, and ordained a uniformity to be observed in all the rites and ceremonies.
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There was another material act, which passed this session. The former canons had established the celibacy of the clergy; and though this practice is usually ascribed to the policy of the court of Rome, who thought, that the ecclesiastics would be more devoted to their spiritual head, and less dependant on the civil magistrate, when freed from the powerful tye of wives and children; yet was this institution much forwarded by the principles of superstition inherent in human nature. These principles had rendered the panegyrics on an inviolate chastity so frequent among the ancient fathers, long before the establishment of celibacy. And even this parliament, though they enacted a law, permitting the marriage of priests, yet confess in the preamble,
“that it were better for priests and the ministers of the church to live chaste and without marriage, and it were much to be wished they would of themselves abstain.”
The inconveniencies, which had arisen from the compelling of chastity and the prohibiting of marriage, are the reasons assigned for indulging a liberty in this
particular.r
The ideas of penance also were so much retained in other particulars, that an act of parliament passed, forbidding the use of flesh-meat during Lent and other
The principal tenets and practices of the catholic religion were now abolished, and the reformation, such as it is enjoyed at present, was almost entirely completed in England. But the doctrine of the real presence, though tacitly condemned by the new communion-service and by the abolition of many ancient rites, still retained some hold on the minds of men; and it was the last doctrine of popery, that was wholly abandoned by the people.
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The great attachment of the late king to that tenet might, in part, be the ground of this obstinacy; but the chief cause was really the extreme absurdity of the principle itself, and the profound veneration, which of course it impressed on the imagination. The priests likewise were much inclined to favour an opinion, which attributed to them so miraculous a power; and the people, who believed, that they participated of the very body and blood of their Saviour, were loth to renounce so extraordinary, and as they imagined, so salutary a privilege. The general attachment to this dogma was so violent, that the Lutherans, notwithstanding their separation from Rome, had thought proper, under another name, still to retain it: PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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And the catholic preachers, in England, when restrained in all other particulars, could not forbear, on every occasion, inculcating that tenet. Bonner, for this offence among others, had been tried by the council, had been deprived of his see, and had been committed to custody. Gardiner also, who had recovered his liberty, appeared anew refractory to the authority, which established the late innovations; and he seemed willing to countenance that opinion, much favoured by all the English catholics, that the king was indeed supreme head of the church, but not the council, during a minority. Having declined to give full satisfaction on this head, he was sent to the Tower, and threatened with farther effects of the council’s displeasure.
These severities, being exercised on men, possessed of office and authority, seemed, in that age, a necessary policy, in order to enforce a uniformity in public worship and discipline: But there were other instances of persecution, derived from no origin but the bigotry of theologians; a malady, which seems almost incurable. Though the protestant divines had ventured to renounce opinions, deemed certain during many ages, they regarded, in their turn, the new system as so certain, that they would suffer no contradiction with regard to it; and they were ready to burn in the same flames, from which they themselves had so narrowly escaped, every one that had the assurance to differ from them. A commission by act of council was granted to the primate and some others, to examine and search after all anabaptists, heretics, or
contemners of the book of common prayer.u
The commissioners were injoined to reclaim them, if possible; to impose penance on them; and to give them absolution: Or if these criminals were obstinate, to excommunicate and imprison them, and to deliver them over to the secular arm: And in the execution of this charge, they were not bound to observe the ordinary methods of trial; the forms of law were dispensed with; and if any statutes happened to interfere with the powers in the commission, they were over-ruled and abrogated by the council. Some tradesmen in London were brought before these commissioners, and were accused of maintaining, among other opinions, that a man regenerate could not sin, and that, though the outward man might offend, the inward was incapable of all guilt. They were prevailed on to abjure, and were dismissed. But there was a woman accused of heretical pravity, called Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, who was so pertinacious, that the commissioners could make no impression upon her. Her doctrine was, “That Christ was not truly incarnate of the virgin, whose flesh, being the outward man, was sinfully begotten and born in sin; and consequently, he could take none of it. But the word, by the consent of the inward man of the virgin, was made flesh.”
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This opinion, it would seem, is not orthodox; and there was a necessity for delivering the woman to the flames for maintaining it.
But the young king, though in such tender years, had more sense than all his counsellors and preceptors; and he long refused to sign the warrant for her execution.
Cranmer was employed to persuade him to compliance; and he said, that there was a great difference between errors in other points of divinity, and those which were in direct contradiction to the Apostles creed: These latter were impieties against God, which the prince, being God’s deputy, ought to repress; in like manner, as inferior magistrates were bound to punish offences against the king’s person. Edward, overcome by importunity, at last submitted, though with tears in his eyes; and he told Cranmer, that, if any wrong were done, the guilt should lie entirely on his head. The primate, after making a new effort to reclaim the woman from her errors, and finding her obstinate against all his arguments, at last committed her to the flames. Some time PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)