The History of Mary I, Queen of England / as found in the public records, despatches of ambassadors, in original private letters, and other contemporary documents

In deference to the wishes of the Council, he made several alterations in the oath administered to the King at Edward’s coronation, but he said the prescribed Mass of the Holy Ghost, and also sang a Requiem for the repose of Henry’s soul. Nevertheless, the whole tendency of the new Government was in sympathy with his private feelings, and it was not long before he made up his mind to swim with the tide. He headed a commission which deprived Bonner and Gardiner, and held a visitation of his diocese, to ascertain whether the destruction of images had been fully carried out. A bill having been passed in Parliament, “to take away all positive laws made against the marriage of priests,” Cranmer sent for his wife, invested in Abbey lands the money granted to him by Henry and confirmed by Edward’s Council, invited Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer and other Calvinists to settle in England, and did all he could to promote union between the Church of England, and the reformed Churches of the Continent. He renounced the Mass, advocated the overthrow of the altars and declared transubstantiation to be heresy. The Book of Common Prayer which he had compiled and put forth in 1551, under the auspices of the Government, having been criticised by the foreign Protestants, he set about its revision, aided by the Bishop of Ely. The so-called Black Rubric, which forbade the practice of kneeling at the Communion, was introduced a little later. Towards the close of 1552, the forty-two articles, afterwards reduced to thirty-nine, were published by the King’s command.

Cranmer was instrumental in Seymour’s execution, and by his treachery was partly responsible for Somerset’s fall. His abject submission to the upstart lords of the Council of Regency led to an act of high treason, by inducing him to sign Edward’s will drawn up by Northumberland.[570] Had Mary really possessed the vindictive feelings attributed to her, she had ample pretext for ordering his apprehension, thus avenging her own and her mother’s cause. But it was not until some time after the rebellion, when Cranmer had signalised himself by an act of open and aggressive opposition to her measures, that his liberty was threatened. Even then, opportunity was given him to escape if he had so willed. On his committal to the Tower, he was charged with having caused the Lady Jane to be proclaimed, and for sending twenty armed men to Cambridge to aid Northumberland. He pleaded not guilty, but afterwards withdrew the plea, and confessed to the indictment. He was then sentenced for treason, and would have been executed at Tyburn, but was saved by Mary’s clemency. Being sent to Oxford with Latimer and Ridley, to dispute with the most learned scholars in both universities, he appeared at St. Mary’s before the prolocutor, Dr. Weston, and thirty-three commissioners, and was presented with three articles setting forth the doctrine of the Mass, drawn up by Convocation. All three bishops refused to subscribe to them, and a disputation was appointed for the following Monday.

The day’s proceedings had been opened by a sermon from Dr. Weston on the unity of the Church, which he accused Cranmer of having violated by making, as it were, every year a new faith. The Queen, he said in conclusion, had commissioned the doctors assembled, on his repentance, to restore him to the unity of the Church.

On the day appointed for the disputation, Dr. Chedsey, Prebendary of St. Paul’s, afterwards a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, was Cranmer’s principal opponent, and kept up the discussion for nearly six hours, at the end of which time the assembly dispersed crying, Vicit Veritas! Cranmer wrote an account of what had passed, and complained to the Council that he had been unfairly treated in argument. He begged them to obtain for him the Queen’s pardon. Thereupon he was allowed to reopen the subject with John Harpsfield, a divinity student, and Dr. Weston,[571] but in the end, it was declared that neither Cranmer nor the other two bishops had successfully maintained their theses, and they were all sent back to Bocardo. Here they remained for eighteen months, continually pressed to recant. It was then decided that they should have a formal trial for heresy, and Cardinal Pole, as Papal Legate, was appointed to conduct it. The proceedings with regard to Cranmer, as Primate of all England, were different from those observed with the Bishops of London and Worcester. He was cited to appear at Rome, to answer the charges made against him, but this was a mere matter of form, as he was a prisoner, and the Pope commissioned Cardinal Dupuy, who delegated his functions to the Bishop of Gloucester, to represent his Holiness.[572] But Cranmer refused to recognise the Pope’s authority, declaring that he had sworn never again to consent to papal jurisdiction. On being reminded that he had also sworn obedience to Rome, he sheltered himself behind the protest which he had made before doing so. Sixteen charges in all were formulated against him, supported by eight witnesses. He admitted the facts, but not their interpretation, and objected to the witnesses as having also formerly abjured the Pope. A report of the trial having been sent to Rome, Cranmer wrote to the Queen, complaining that his “own natural sovereign” had cited him before a foreign tribunal. Judgment was at last pronounced against him for heresy in the papal courts, and he was accordingly deprived, but the sentence of degradation was not carried out for five months, during which time no efforts were spared to save him. A papal commission was then issued to Bonner, Bishop of London, and Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, for his degradation. The scene was a painful one, and Dr. Thirlby is said to have been moved to tears during the ceremony. The day fixed for it was the 14th February 1556. Cranmer was brought before the two bishops at Christ Church, and the function took place outside the church, in the great quadrangle. He was clothed successively in vestments proper to a sub-deacon, a deacon, a priest, a bishop and an archbishop, one over the other, but all made of canvas, with a mitre and pallium of the same material.

Lastly, a crosier was put into his hand, and Bonner standing before him, declared the cause of his degradation, Cranmer interrupting him at intervals with protests and retorts. When the ceremony of unvesting began, he refused to yield up the crosier, which was then wrested from him by force, and when the pallium was to be removed, he exclaimed, “Which of you, having a pallium is able to divest me of mine!” They replied, that they held their commission from the Pope. He then drew out of his sleeve a formal protest, appealing from the Pope to a General Council, and handed the document to Thirlby, who took it, saying, “Well, if it may be admitted it shall,” and bursting into tears, he promised to petition the Queen for a pardon. When Cranmer had been stripped of all the vestments, with appropriate words and ceremonies at each of them, he was degraded from his minor orders, after which his hair was closely cut, and Bonner proceeded to scrape his hands, at the places where he had been anointed priest. His gown was then taken off, and that of a yeoman substituted, in which he returned to prison. This was the regular form of degrading a bishop.

Thirlby was as good as his word. Cranmer had drawn up two separate forms of submission before his degradation, and in consequence of these, a pardon such as had been granted to other recanters, was contemplated by the Council. But it was finally decided that the enormity of his offences required that he should suffer “for ensample sake”. During the six weeks which intervened before his execution, he made repeated recantations “without fear, and without hope of favour” as he himself said, “for the discharge of his conscience, and as a warning to others,” abjuring his former errors, and “beseeching the people, the Queen and the Pope, to pray for his wretched soul”.

He signed in all seven recantations, and it was expected that he would read the last of them at his execution. But instead of doing so, at the supreme moment, he repudiated them all, expressing repentance for having written “contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death”.[573] Being bound to the stake, he is said to have thrust his right hand into the flame exclaiming: “This hand hath offended”.[574] From first to last, he had proved himself so base a dissembler, that no confidence could possibly have been placed in the sincerity of his recantations. That he had lied therein also, he admitted by his final recantation of them all.

Cranmer suffered according to the notions of the day, on his own principles, and for causes which he had himself judged sufficient for death. He had not only sent men and women to the stake for the very same opinions which he afterwards professed, and had burned Catholics because they would not acknowledge the King’s supreme Headship, but had also burned Protestants because their Protestantism differed from his own. All things considered, it was wonderful that he did not receive shorter shrift, and we do not find that his miserable end excited much regret or pity among his contemporaries.[575]

It was part of Foxe’s method, in claiming for his martyrs the sympathy of his readers, to cast as much odium as possible on their judges. Thus, Bonner, Bishop of London, has been made to appear an extremely violent persecutor, although after the publication of his articles in 1554, he was rather the reverse of zealous in enforcing the revived statute. But whatever may be said for or against it, it was the law of the land, and Bonner could no more help sitting on the Bench in his own diocese to examine into the offences committed against it, than could any other judge of any court over which he had jurisdiction. His functions were purely judicial, and it does not anywhere appear that he was guided by passion, or that he overstepped his prerogative. He had, on the contrary, been somewhat negligent in the exercise of the duty which the law imposed on him, and hence the reprimand which he received in the following letter from the King and Queen in Council:—

“Right reverend Father in God, right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas of late, we addressed our letters to the justices of peace, within every of the counties of this our realm, whereby, amongst other instructions given them for the good order and quiet government of the country round about them, they are willed to have a special regard unto such disordered persons as (forgetting their duty towards God and us) do lean to any erroneous and heretical opinions, refusing to show themselves conformable to the Catholic religion of Christ’s Church; wherein, if they cannot by good admonitions and fair means reform them, they are willed to deliver them to the ordinary, to be by him charitably travailed withal, and removed (if it may be) from their naughty opinions; or else if they continue obstinate, to be ordered according to the laws provided in that behalf: understanding now, to our no little marvel, that divers of the said disordered persons, being by the justices of peace for their contempt and obstinacy, brought to the ordinaries to be used as is aforesaid, are either refused to be received at their hands, or if they be received, are neither so travailed with, as christian charity requireth, nor yet proceeded withal, according to the order of justice, but are suffered to continue in their errors, to the dishonour of Almighty God, and dangerous example of others; like as we find this matter very strange, so we have thought convenient both to signify this our knowledge, and therewith also to admonish you to have in this behalf such regard henceforth to the office of a good pastor and bishop, as when any such offenders shall be by the said officers or justices of peace brought unto you, you, to use your good wisdom and discretion, in procuring to remove them from their errors, if it may be; or else in proceeding against them (if they shall continue obstinate) according to the order of the laws; so as through your good furtherance, both God’s glory may be better advanced, and the Commonwealth more quietly governed. Given under our signet, at our honour of Hampton Court, the 24th May, the first and second years of our reigns.”[576]

It will be admitted that the above document does not correspond in any sense to the “rattling letters” by which popular historians suppose Mary to have stimulated the zeal of her “bloody executioners”. Its tone is calm, judicial, charitable and even wise, if we consider the stand-point from which the great majority then regarded any divergence from authorised doctrine.

Foxe would have us believe that Bonner entertained a furious, personal grudge against those who were brought to be examined, and the pages of the Acts and Monuments teem with such picturesque allusions to him as “bloody wolf,” “the bishop being in a raging heat, as one clean void of humanity,” “he was in a marvellous rage,” “in a great fury,” etc.; but when we divest the stories of these adornments, there is little or nothing to support the epithets. As a learned writer has aptly remarked, this kind of description reminds us of the mountain being in labour, and bringing forth—a mouse.[577] For when we examine what Bonner, even according to Foxe, really did say, on the occasion of his appearing before the Commissioners of the Council in 1549 when he was supposed to be in such a “raging heat,” that he appeared “as one clean void of humanity,” we find that turning himself about to the people he said: “Well, now, hear what the Bishop of London saith for his part”. But the Commissioners “seeing his inordinate contumacy, denied him to speak any more, saying that he had used himself very disobediently”.[578] Equally unjustified by the context are most of the other vituperative epithets, by which the martyrologist sought to prejudice Bonner in the minds of his credulous and uncritical readers.

The truth is, that when brought before the bishops, the would-be martyrs, by Foxe’s own showing, frequently twitted their judges, gave them home thrusts and “privy nips,” and behaved themselves generally in a very insolent, provocative and irritating manner. In spite of this however, the judges seldom lost their tempers, and bore with these things in a singularly good-humoured spirit, doing their best to give the accused a chance of escape. Of the six who came under Bonner’s examination on the 8th February 1555, Foxe affirms that the bishop sentenced them the next day after they were charged, and killed them out of hand without mercy, “such quick speed these men could make in despatching their business at once”—a terrible indictment if it could be proved. But Bonner not only knew about the accused, long before the 8th February, three of them having been for months in prison, where he had again and again reasoned with them; but after sentence was passed, an interval of five weeks was the shortest respite granted for reflection, before any one of them was executed. The others we find suffered consecutively on the 26th, 28th and 29th March, and on the 10th June.

With as little accuracy did Foxe pen the following remarkable distich, which however served his purpose of vilifying Bonner.

Of the 200 persons who were burned for spreading opinions considered subversive of public order, in the reign of Mary, about 120 came under Bonner’s jurisdiction, so that Foxe’s assertion that the Bishop of London “slew” 300 must be discounted by more than half, leaving a sufficiently heavy record. But his supposed thirst for blood has no foundation in fact, for we have many instances of his labouring not unsuccessfully in causing many to recant, upon which they were restored to liberty. Instances of Foxe’s perversion of truth might be multiplied, but enough has been said, to prove his untrustworthiness wherever his prejudices are involved. An appreciation of Bonner’s character from the pen of the late Dr. S. R. Maitland will fitly close this chapter.

“In plainer terms, setting aside declamation, and looking at the details of facts left by those who may be called if people please, Bonner’s victims and their friends, we find very consistently maintained, the character of a man, straightforward and hearty, familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coarse, naturally hot-tempered, but obviously (by the testimony of his enemies) placable and easily entreated, capable of bearing most patiently, much intemperate and insolent language, much reviling and low abuse directed against himself personally, against his order, and against those peculiar doctrines and practices of his church, for maintaining which, he had himself suffered the loss of all things, and borne long imprisonment. At the same time, not incapable of being provoked into saying harsh and passionate things, but much more frequently meaning nothing by the threatenings and slaughter which he breathed out, than to intimidate those on whose ignorance and simplicity argument seemed to be thrown away—in short we can scarcely read with attention any one of the cases detailed by those who were no friends of Bonner, without seeing in him a judge who (even if we grant that he was dispensing bad laws badly) was obviously desirous to save the prisoner’s life.”[580]