CHAPTER IV
CHURCH AND STATE
The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had received from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a respite of two years, during which they might reconsider the complaints of the people, and consult among themselves upon the conduct which they would pursue with respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of their interval of repose in a manner little calculated to recover the esteem which they had forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's administration, the Protestants, though threatened and imprisoned, had escaped the most cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a warm-hearted and genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as his brother bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive alike to the institutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his memory can be reproached with nothing worse than assiduous but humane efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism, and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter, and proceed for the present with the progress of the secular changes.
Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget the alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall; and as they had shown in the unfortunate document which they had submitted to the king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature of that alteration, it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it upon them. Until that moment they had virtually held the supreme power in the state. The nobility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into the second place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a definite policy; and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a matter of course to the only persons who for the moment were competent to hold them. The jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey had but symbolised the position of his order. But Wolsey was now gone, and the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness while they envied it, were compelled to participate also in his change of fortune.
This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to fasten upon him a charge of high treason,—a charge which, vindictively pressed through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by the Commons,—had been prosecuted with greater justice for a breach of the law, in having exercised the authority of papal legate within the realm of England. His policy had broken down: he had united against him in a common exasperation all orders in the state, secular and spiritual; and the possible consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen upon him. The parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the Anglican church, under penalty of a premunire; the provisions of these acts extending not only to the persons themselves who accepted office under such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever acknowledged their authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors, maintainers, and receivers."287 The importance attached to these laws was to be seen readily in the frequent re-enactment of them, with language of increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralise the supposed right of the pope to present to English benefices, and although the office of papal legate is not especially named in any one of the prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the crown, he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to urge it.288 The contingency of a possible violation of the law by the king himself had been expressly foreseen and provided against in the act under which he was prosecuted,289 and being himself the king's legal adviser, it was his duty to have kept his sovereign290 informed of the true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his immediate obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when Henry's eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to interfere to shield his minister from the penalties which he had incurred, nor is it likely that in the face of the irritation of the country he could have done so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed, that the long services of Wolsey, and his generally admirable administration, might fairly save him (especially under the circumstances of the case) from extremity of punishment; and if he had been allowed to remain unmolested in the affluent retirement which was at first conceded to him, his treatment would not have caused the stain which we have now to lament on the conduct of the administration which succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that the final attack upon him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but to the hatred of Anne Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This, however, is a matter which does not concern us here, and I need not pursue it. It is enough that he had violated the law of England, openly and knowingly, and on the revival of the national policy by which that law had been enacted, he reaped the consequences in his own person.
It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of Wolsey did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised him in his capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two Houses of Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons, and indirectly to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of things was not contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and where in point of law all persons were equally guilty, in equity they were equally innocent; the circumstances of the case, therefore, rendered necessary a general pardon, which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the helplessness of their flocks.
In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity: and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons, Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.291 The session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of disrespectfully.292 His consent had been obtained with great difficulty, on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard with an auto da fé, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside; when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover, were solemnly burned.
From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect, it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a hundred thousand pounds—a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments spread over a period of five years.293 The demand was serious, but the clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law; and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them, they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.
The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill, under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the council to designate the king by the famous title which gave occasion for such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England."294 It is not very easy to see what Henry proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to the papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces, which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;295 or perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this title was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it was conferred by act Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed by it from the Roman communion.
But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in requiring that the title should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging Henry as Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham, just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.
There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges appeared in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to inform them finally that the king had determined to allow no qualifications. The clergy begged for one more day, and the following morning the bishops held a private meeting among themselves, to discuss some plan to turn aside the blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn, perhaps, if there was a chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and after an interview with the minister which could not have been encouraging, they sent two of their number, the Bishops of Exeter and Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task. It was in vain; the miserable old men were obliged to return with the answer that the king would not see them—they had seen only the judges, who had assured them, in simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled until the supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House, and again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They attempted another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should hold a conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might, some possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would have a clear answer, "yes, or no." They might say "yes," and their pardon was ready. They might say "no"—and accept the premunire and its penalties. And now, what should the clergy have done? No very great courage was required to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is against God's will, and therefore it must not be, whether premunire come or do not come." They might have said it, and if they could have dared this little act of courage, victory was in their hands. With the cause against them so doubtful, their very attitude would have commanded back the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's threats would have exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons with whom he had to deal—forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of dignity—who only by some such rough method could be brought to a knowledge of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"—I find in a state paper of the time—"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay their faults roundly and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and will lightly be reformed, for their consciences will not suffer them to resist."296
They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop submitted the clause containing the title to the Upper House, with a saving paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of things did require to be supposed.297 "Ecclesiæ et cleri Anglicani," so it ran, "singularem protectorem, et unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum per legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem agnoscimus—We recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign lord, the singular protector of the church and clergy of England, and as far as is allowed by the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The words were read aloud by the archbishop, and were received in silence. "Do you assent?" he asked. The House remained speechless. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," the archbishop said. A voice answered out of the crowd, "Then are we all silent." They separated for a few hours to collect themselves. In the afternoon sitting they discussed the sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at length agreeing that it saved their consciences, the clause was finally passed, the Bishop of Rochester, among the rest, giving his unwilling acquiescence.
So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;298 and this act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.
The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy, they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age, must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he was in no need of any addition to his burdens.
Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.
He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by some one of her party, to remove out of the way the most influential of the English opponents of the divorce.299 The story was possibly without foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it. The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or lance—incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered times—an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not till recent years been heard of.300 Even revenge and passion recognised their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of wickedness, not to be received or passed by as a common incident, and not to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording. The English were a stern people—a people knowing little of compassion where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful and solemn horror of evil things,—a feeling which, in proportion as it exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only by doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.
"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., "calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred; and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed or practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to say, on the eighteenth day of February, in the twenty-second year of his most victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester, in the county of Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most wicked and damnable disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into a vessel replenished with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the reverend father in God, John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth Marsh; with which yeast or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or gruel was forthwith made for his family there being; whereby not only the number of seventeen persons of his said family, which did eat of that porridge, were mortally infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan, gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor people which resorted to the said bishop's place, and were there charitably fed with the remains of the said porridge and other victuals; were in like wise infected; and one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand and be attainted of high treason.
"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed, requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed, deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."
The sentence was carried into effect301 in Smithfield, "on the tenebra Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the stake,302 for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,—the two most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed; a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which, rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably hurried out the penalties of it.
Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people called Egyptians;"303 and attached to it another of analogous import, "for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially, illustrates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies and fantastic fore-shadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving and half itself deceived, was grasping the lever of the popular excitement to work out its own ends.304 The power which had ruled the hearts of mankind for ten centuries was shaking suddenly to its foundation. The Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or pronounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction, the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing, foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems, indeed, to be in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however limited their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the true bearings of outward things,—an insight which puts to shame the sagacity of statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them, the wisdom even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.
Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England, at the time of which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by their understandings at the moment when their understandings were the most deeply needed: and they saw the realities which were round them transfigured into phantoms through the mists of their hopes and fears. The present was significant only as it seemed in labour with some gigantic issue, and the events of the outer world flew from lip to lip, taking as they passed every shape most wild and fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided, there was no censorship upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the great subjects of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or with the perils of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk was of St. Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of the points in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the general imagination.305
These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement, the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant, who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.306 Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.307 The tendencies to treason were still incipient—they were tendencies only, which had as yet shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the means by which it was fed.
Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under leaden seal.308 Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed, fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland, without further punishment.309
Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her reputation—the celebrated Nun of Kent—whose cell at Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired. Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world, when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we cannot observe it too accurately.
In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a country girl called Elizabeth Barton—a decent person, so far as we can learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance. The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so, we continue the story.
This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and many,310 consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and vice;"311 or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."312 This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.
An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its marvel by the way,313 the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage, instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of God." Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his mistress and the parson.314 The story spread rapidly through the country; inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions; and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."315 Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.
In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor. The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.316 At first, not knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle with the matter.317 They submitted, however, "from the obedience which they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the belief of others, and he therefore set himself to assist her inspiration towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St. Catherine of Sienna.318 In these women she found an enlarged reflection of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.
As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were forwarded319 regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries. It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood. Conscious wilful deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind; and supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.
The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many stories of miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the apostles, and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox form of credential than clairvoyance or second sight. Being now cured of her real disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind, and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.320 Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her disorder.321 The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."
"And when she was brought thither322 and laid before the image of our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly, that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession, and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was finished and solemnly sung; and a book was written of all the whole story thereof, and put into print; which ever since that time was commonly sold, and went abroad among the people."
The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was no longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin informed her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her exclusive service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial favourite; and Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory of St. Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her profession; and as soon as she was established in her cell, she became a recognised priestess or prophetess, alternately communicating revelations, or indulging the curiosity of foolish persons, and for both services consenting to be paid. The church had by this time spread her reputation through England. The book of her oracles, which extended soon to a considerable volume, was shown by Archbishop Warham to the king, who sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him to look at it. More's good sense had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it "a right poor production, such as any simple woman might speak of her own wit;"323 and Henry himself "esteemed the matter as light as it afterwards proved lewd." But the world were less critical censors: the saintly halo was round her head, and her most trivial words caught the reflection of the glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm as mean men, and many learned men, but specially many religious men, had great confidence in her, and often resorted to her."324 They "consulted her much as to the will of God touching the heresies and schisms in the realm;" and when the dispute arose between the bishops and the House of Commons, they asked her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking away the liberties of the church;" to which questions her answers, being dictated by her confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could desire. Her position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric periods of her earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight she was taken up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with heavenly lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of ascent was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore, that she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence, to pass the dormitory door when she pleased—a privilege of which the Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less respectable purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward behaviour was in full keeping with her language and profession. She related many startling stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the angels were in fact alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on one occasion, burnt a mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of these infernal visits, "great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from her chamber, "savouring grievously through all the dorture;" with which, however, it was suspected subsequently that a paper of brimstone and assafœtida, found among her property after her arrest, had been in some way connected. We smile at these stories, looking back at them with eyes enlightened by scientific scepticism; but they furnished matter for something else than smiles when the accounts of them could be exhibited by the clergy as a living proof of the credibility of the Aurea Legenda,—when the subject of them could be held up as a witness, accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old faith, a living evidence to shame the incredulity of the Protestant sectaries. She became a figure of great and singular significance; a "wise woman," to whom persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to have recourse to inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate commensurate with their credulity.325
This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops, she issued boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn prohibition against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not "reign a month, but should die a villain's death."326 Burdened with this message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;327 and when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits. The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.328 He, too, in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon herself to threaten Clement,329 assuming, in virtue of her divine commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.
It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into which we are soon to see her launched.
Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to discuss the marriage question further, he interfered with no one, and therefore not with her. If her own word was to be taken, he even showed her much personal kindness, having offered to make her an abbess, which is difficult to believe, especially as she said that she had refused his offer. She stated also that at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to the emperor, the Countess of Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to accept a place at the court, as a companion to Anne; which again is unsupported by other evidence, and sounds improbable.330 But it is plain, that until she was found to be meditating treason, she experienced no treatment from the government of which she had cause to complain; and thus for the present we may leave her pursuing her machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the parliament.
The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on the 16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March, which was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of Commons, and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was much disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had heard in their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might perceive that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or pleasure, as some strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his realm."331 This appears to have been the first time that the subject was mentioned before parliament, and the occasion was reasonably and sensibly chosen. The clergy having possession of the pulpits, had used their opportunity to spread a false impression where the ignorance of the people would allow them to venture the experiment; the king having resolved to fall back upon the support of his subjects, naturally desired the assistance of the country gentlemen and the nobles to counteract the efforts of disaffection, and provided them with accurate information in the simplest manner which he could have chosen.
But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary form, for as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the divorce as the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use all means by which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the Lords, shortly after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the parliament thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English men, for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things peace and order and a secured succession.
The language of this remarkable document332 was as follows:—