These complaints being diffused every where, prepared the people for a rebellion; and had any foreign power given them encouragement, or any great man appeared to head them, the consequence might have proved fatal to the queen’s authority. But the king of France, though engaged in hostilities with the emperor, refused to concur in any proposal for an insurrection, lest he should afford Mary a pretence for declaring war against him.[*] And the more prudent part of the nobility thought that, as the evils of the Spanish alliance were only dreaded at a distance, matters were not yet fully prepared for a general revolt. Some persons, however, more turbulent than the rest, believed that it would be safer to prevent than to redress grievances; and they formed a conspiracy to rise in arms, and declare against the queen’s marriage with Philip. Sir Thomas Wiat purposed to raise Kent; Sir Peter Carew, Devonshire; and they engaged the duke of Suffolk, by the hopes of recovering the crown for the lady Jane, to attempt raising the midland counties.[**] Carew’s impatience or apprehensions engaged him to break the concert, and to rise in arms before the day appointed. He was soon suppressed by the earl of Bedford, and constrained to fly into France. On this intelligence, Suffolk, dreading an arrest, suddenly left the town with his brothers, Lord Thomas and Lord Leonard Gray, and endeavored to raise the people in the counties of Warwick and Leicester, where his interest lay; but he was so closely pursued by the earl of Huntingdon, at the head of three hundred horse, that he was obliged to disperse his followers, and being discovered in his concealment, he was carried prisoner to London.[***]
Wiat was at first more successful in his attempt; and having published a declaration, at Maidstone in Kent, against the queen’s evil counsellors, and against the Spanish match, without any mention of religion, the people began to flock to his standard. The duke of Norfolk, with Sir Henry Jernegan, was sent against him, at the head of the guards and some other troops, reënforced with five hundred Londoners commanded by Bret: and he came within sight of the rebels at Rochester, where they had fixed their head-quarters. Sir George Harper here pretended to desert from them; but having secretly gained Bret, these two malecontents so wrought on the Londoners, that the whole body deserted to Wiat, and declared that they would not contribute to enslave their native country. Norfolk, dreading the contagion of the example, immediately retreated with his troops, and took shelter in the city.[*]
After this proof of the disposition of the people, especially of the Londoners, who were mostly Protestants, Wiat was encouraged to proceed; he led his forces to Southwark, where he required of the queen that she should put the Tower into his hands, should deliver four counsellors as hostages, and in order to insure the liberty of the nation, should immediately marry an Englishman. Finding that the bridge was secured against him, and that the city was overawed, he marched up to Kingston, where he passed the river with four thousand men; and returning towards London, hoped to encourage his partisans who had engaged to declare for him. He had imprudently wasted so much time at Southwark, and in his march from Kingston, that the critical season, on which all popular commotions depend, was entirely lost: though he entered Westminster without resistance, his followers, finding that no person of note joined him, insensibly fell off, and he was at last seized near Temple Bar by Sir Maurice Berkeley.[**] Four hundred persons are said to have suffered for this rebellion:[***] four hundred more were conducted before the queen with ropes about their necks: and falling on their knees, received a pardon, and were dismissed. Wiat was condemned and executed: as it had been reported that, on his examination, he had accused the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire as accomplices, he took care, on the scaffold, before the whole people, fully to acquit them of having any share in his rebellion.
The lady Elizabeth had been, during some time, treated with great harshness by her sister; and many studied instances of discouragement and disrespect had been practised against her. She was ordered to take place at court after the countess of Lenox and the duchess of Suffolk, as if she were not legitimate:[*] her friends were discountenanced on every occasion: and while her virtues, which were now become eminent, drew to her the attendance of all the young nobility, and rendered her the favorite of the nation;[**] the malevolence of the queen still discovered itself every day by fresh symptoms, and obliged the princess to retire into the country. Mary seized the opportunity of this rebellion; and hoping to involve her sister in some appearance of guilt, sent for her under a strong guard, committed her to the Tower, and ordered her to be strictly examined by the council. But the public declaration made by Wiat rendered it impracticable to employ against her any false evidence which might have offered; and the princess made so good a defence, that the queen found herself under a necessity of releasing her.[***] In order to send her out of the kingdom, a marriage was offered her with the duke of Savoy; and when she declined the proposal, she was committed to custody under a strong guard at Wodestoke.[****] The earl of Devonshire, though equally innocent, was confined in Fotheringay Castle.
But this rebellion proved still more fatal to the lady Jane Gray, as well as to her husband: the duke of Suffolk’s guilt was imputed to her; and though the rebels and malecontents seemed chiefly to rest their hopes on the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire, the queen, incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person from whom the least danger could be apprehended. Warning was given the lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had long expected, and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she had been exposed, rendered nowise unwelcome to her. The queen’s zeal, under color of tender mercy to the prisoner’s soul, induced her to send divines, who harassed her with perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve for three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be persuaded during that time to pay, by a timely conversion, some regard to her eternal welfare. The lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by all the topics then in use, but also to write a letter to her sister[v] in the Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the Scriptures in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain, in every fortune, a like steady perseverance.
On the day of her execution, her husband, Lord Guildford, desired permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and informed him by a message, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both, and would too much unbend their minds from that constancy which their approaching end required of them: their separation, she said, would be only for a moment; and they would soon rejoin each other in a scene where their affections would be forever united, and where death, disappointment, and misfortunes, could no longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.[*]
It had been intended to execute the lady Jane and Lord Guildford together on the same scaffold at Tower Hill; but the council, dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that she should be beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She saw her husband led to execution; and having given him from the window some token of her remembrance, she waited with tranquillity till her own appointed hour should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his headless body carried back in a cart; and found herself more confirmed by the reports which she heard of the constancy of his end, than shaken by so tender and melancholy a spectacle. Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on him some small present, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her: she gave him her table-book, on which she had just written three sentences on seeing her husband’s dead body; one in Greek, another in Latin, a third in English.[**] The purport of them was, that human justice was against his body, but divine mercy would be favorable to his soul; that if her fault deserved punishment, her youth at least, and her imprudence, were worthy of excuse; and that God and posterity, she trusted, would show her favor.
On the scaffold she made a speech to the bystanders; in which the mildness of her disposition led her to take the blame wholly on herself, without uttering one complaint against the severity with which she had been treated. She said, that her offence was not the having laid her hand upon the crown, but the not rejecting it with sufficient constancy; that she had less erred through ambition than through reverence to her parents, whom she had been taught to respect and obey: that she willingly received death, as the only satisfaction which she could now make to the injured state; and though her infringement of the laws had been constrained, she would show, by her voluntary submission to their sentence, that she was desirous to atone for that disobedience into which too much filial piety had betrayed her: that she had justly deserved this punishment for being made the instrument, though the unwilling instrument, of the ambition of others; and that the story of her life, she hoped, might at least be useful, by proving that innocence excuses not great misdeeds, if they tend anywise to the destruction of the commonwealth. After uttering these words, she caused herself to be disrobed by her women; and with a steady serene countenance submitted herself to the executioner.[*]
The duke of Suffolk was tried, condemned, and executed soon after; and would have met with more compassion, had not his temerity been the cause of his daughter’s untimely end. Lord Thomas Gray lost his life for the same crime. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried in Guildhall; but there appearing no satisfactory evidence against him, he was able, by making an admirable defence, to obtain a verdict of the jury in his favor. The queen was so enraged at this disappointment, that, instead of releasing him as the law required, she recommitted him to the Tower, and kept him in close confinement during some time. But her resentment stopped not here: the jury, being summoned before the council, were all sent to prison, and afterwards fined, some of them a thousand pounds, others two thousand apiece.[**] This violence proved fatal to several; among others to Sir John Throgmorton, brother to Sir Nicholas, who was condemned on no better evidence, than had formerly been rejected. The queen filled the Tower and all the prisons with nobility and gentry, whom their interest with the nation, rather than any appearance of guilt, had made the objects of her suspicion; and finding that she was universally hated, she determined to disable the people from resistance, by ordering general musters, and directing the commissioners to seize their arms, and lay them up in forts and castles.[***]
Though the government labored under so general an odium, the queen’s authority had received such an increase from the suppression of Wiat’s rebellion, that the ministry hoped to find a compliant disposition in the new parliament which was summoned to assemble. The emperor also, in order to facilitate the same end, had borrowed no less a sum than four hundred thousand crowns, which he had sent over to England to be distributed in bribes and pensions among the members: a pernicious practice, of which there had not hitherto been any instance in England. And not to give the public any alarm with regard to the church lands, the queen, notwithstanding her bigotry, resumed her title of supreme head of the church, which she had dropped three months before. Gardiner, the chancellor, opened the session by a speech; in which he asserted the queen’s hereditary title to the crown; maintained her right of choosing a husband for herself; observed how proper a use she had made of that right, by giving the preference to an old ally, descended from the house of Burgundy; and remarked the failure of Henry VIII.‘s posterity, of whom there now remained none but the queen and the lady Elizabeth. He added, that, in order to obviate the inconveniencies which might arise from different pretenders, it was necessary to invest the queen, by law, with a power of disposing of the crown, and of appointing her successor: a power, he said, which was not to be thought unprecedented in England, since it had formerly been conferred on Henry VIII.[*]
The parliament was much disposed to gratify the queen in all her desires; but when the liberty, independency, and very being of the nation were in such visible danger, they could not by any means be brought to compliance. They knew both the inveterate hatred which she bore to the lady Elizabeth, and her devoted attachment to the house of Austria: they were acquainted with her extreme bigotry, which would lead her to postpone all considerations of justice or national interest to the establishment of the Catholic religion: they remarked, that Gardiner had carefully avoided in his speech the giving to Elizabeth the appellation of the queen’s sister; and they thence concluded that a design was formed of excluding her as illegitimate: they expected that Mary, if invested with such a power as she required, would make a will in her husband’s favor, and thereby render England forever a province to the Spanish monarchy; and they were the more alarmed with these projects, as they heard that Philip’s descent from the house of Lancaster was carefully insisted on, and that he was publicly represented as the true and only heir by right of inheritance.
The parliament, therefore, aware of their danger, were determined to keep at a distance from the precipice which lay before them. They could not avoid ratifying the articles of marriage,[*] which were drawn very favorable for England; but they declined the passing of any such law as the chancellor pointed out to them: they would not so much as declare it treason to imagine or attempt the death of the queen’s husband while she was alive; and a bill introduced for that purpose was laid aside after the first reading. The more effectually to cut off Philip’s hopes of possessing any authority in England, they passed a law in which they declared, “that her majesty, as their only queen, should solely, and as a sole queen, enjoy the crown and sovereignty of her realms, with all the preëminences, dignities, and rights thereto belonging, in as large and ample a manner after her marriage as before, without any title or claim accruing to the prince of Spain, either as tenant by courtesy of the realm, or by any other means.”[**]
A law passed in this parliament for reërecting the bishopric of Durham, which had been dissolved by the last parliament of Edward.[***] The queen had already, by an exertion of her power, put Tonstal in possession of that see: but though it was usual at that time for the crown to assume authority which might seem entirely legislative, it was always deemed more safe and satisfactory to procure the sanction of parliament. Bills were introduced for suppressing heterodox opinions contained in books, and for reviving the law of the six articles, together with those against the Lollards, and against heresy and erroneous preaching; but none of these laws could pass the two houses: a proof that the parliament had reserves even in their concessions with regard to religion; about which they seem to have been less scrupulous. The queen, therefore, finding that they would not serve all her purposes, finished the session by dissolving them.
Mary’s thoughts were now entirely employed about receiving Don Philip, whose arrival she hourly expected. This princess, who had lived so many years in a very reserved and private manner, without any prospect or hopes of a husband, was so smitten with affection for her young consort, whom she had never seen, that she waited with the utmost impatience for the completion of the marriage; and every obstacle was to her a source of anxiety and discontent.[*] She complained of Philip’s delays as affected; and she could not conceal her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of Lord Effingham, had been fitted out to convoy Philip from Spain, where he then resided; but the admiral informing her that the discontents ran very high among the seamen, and that it was not safe for Philip to intrust himself in their hands, she gave orders to dismiss them.[***] She then dreaded lest the French fleet, being masters of the sea, might intercept her husband; and every rumor of danger, every blast of wind, threw her into panics and convulsions. Her health, and even her understanding, were visibly hurt by this extreme impatience; and she was struck with a new apprehension lest her person, impaired by time and blasted by sickness, should prove disagreeable to her future consort. Her glass discovered to her how haggard she was become; and when she remarked the decay of her beauty, she knew not whether she ought more to desire or apprehend the arrival of Philip.[****]
At last came the moment so impatiently expected; and news was brought the queen of Philip’s arrival at Southampton.[*] A few days after they were married in Westminster; and having made a pompous entry into London, where Philip displayed his wealth with great ostentation, she carried him to Windsor, the palace in which they afterwards resided. The prince’s behavior was ill calculated to remove the prejudices which the English nation had entertained against him. He was distant and reserved in his address; took no notice of the salutes even of the most considerable noblemen; and so intrenched himself in form and ceremony that he was in a manner inaccessible:[**] but this circumstance rendered him the more acceptable to the queen, who desired to have no company but her husband’s, and who was impatient when she met with any interruption to her fondness. The shortest absence gave her vexation; and, when he showed civilities to any other woman, she could not conceal her jealousy and resentment.
Mary soon found that Philip’s ruling passion was ambition, and that the only method of gratifying him and securing his affections was to render him master of England. The interest and liberty of her people were considerations of small moment in comparison of her obtaining this favorite point. She summoned a new parliament, in hopes of finding them entirely compliant; and, that she might acquire the greater authority over them, she imitated the precedent of the former reign, and wrote circular letters, directing a proper choice of members.[***] The zeal of the Catholics, the influence of Spanish gold, the powers of prerogative, the discouragement of the gentry, particularly of the Protestants; all these causes, seconding the intrigues of Gardiner, had procured her a house of commons which was in a great measure to her satisfaction; and it was thought, from the disposition of the nation, that she might now safely omit, on her assembling the parliament, the title of “supreme head of the church,” though inseparably annexed by law to the crown of England.[****] Cardinal Pole had arrived in Flanders, invested with legatine powers from the pope: in order to prepare the way for his arrival in England, the parliament passed an act reversing his attainder and restoring his blood; and the queen, dispensing with the old statute of provisors, granted him permission to act as legate. The cardinal came over, and, after being introduced to the king and queen, he invited the parliament to reconcile themselves and the kingdom to the apostolic see, from which they had been so long and so unhappily divided.
This message was taken in good part; and both houses voted an address to Philip and Mary, acknowledging that they had been guilty of a most horrible defection from the true church; professing a sincere repentance of their past transgressions; declaring their resolution to repeal all laws enacted in prejudice of the church of Rome; and praying their majesties, that, since they were happily uninfected with that criminal schism, they would intercede with the holy father for the absolution and forgiveness of their penitent subjects.[*] The request was easily granted. The legate, in the name of his holiness, gave the parliament and kingdom absolution, freed them from all censures, and received them again into the bosom of the church. The pope, then Julius III., being informed of these transactions, said that it was an unexampled instance of his felicity to receive thanks from the English for allowing them to do what he ought to give them thanks for performing.[**]
Notwithstanding the extreme zeal of those times for and against popery, the object always uppermost with the nobility and gentry was their money and estates: they were not brought to make these concessions in favor of Rome till they had received repeated assurances, from the pope as well as the queen, that the plunder which they had made on the ecclesiastics should never be inquired into; and that the abbey and church lands should remain with the present possessors.[***] But not trusting altogether to these promises, the parliament took care, in the law itself[****] by which they repealed the former statutes enacted against the pope’s authority, to insert a clause, in which, besides bestowing validity on all marriages celebrated during the schism, and fixing the right of incumbents to their benefices, they gave security to the possessors of church lands, and freed them from all danger of ecclesiastical censures. The convocation also, in order to remove apprehensions on that head, were induced to present a petition to the same purpose;[v] and the legate, in his master’s name, ratified all these transactions. It now appeared that, notwithstanding the efforts of the queen and king, the power of the papacy was effectually suppressed in England, and invincible barriers fixed against its reëstablishment. For though the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastics was for the present restored, their property, on which their power much depended, was irretrievably lost, and no hopes remained of recovering it.
Even these arbitrary, powerful, and bigoted princes, while the transactions were yet recent, could not regain to the church her possessions so lately ravished from her; and no expedients were left to the clergy for enriching themselves but those which they had at first practised, and which had required many ages of ignorance, barbarism, and superstition to produce their effect on mankind.[*] 21
The parliament, having secured their own possessions, were more indifferent with regard to religion, or even to the lives of their fellow-citizens: they revived the old sanguinary laws against heretics,[**] which had been rejected in the former parliament: they also enacted several statutes against seditious words and rumors;[***] and they made it treason to imagine or attempt the death of Philip during his marriage with the queen.[****] Each parliament hitherto had been induced to go a step farther than their predecessors; but none of them had entirely lost all regard to national interests. Their hatred against the Spaniards, as well as their suspicion of Philip’s pretensions, still prevailed; and though the queen attempted to get her husband declared presumptive heir of the crown, and to have the administration put into his hands, she failed in all her endeavors, and could not so much as procure the parliament’s consent to his coronation.[v] All attempts likewise to obtain subsidies from the commons, in order to support the emperor in his war against France, proved fruitless: the usual animosity and jealousy of the English against that kingdom seemed to have given place, for the present, to like passions against Spain. Philip, sensible of the prepossessions entertained against him, endeavored to acquire popularity by procuring the release of several prisoners of distinction; Lord Henry Dudley, Sir George Harper, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Sir Edmond Warner, Sir William St. Lo, Sir Nicholas Arnold, Harrington, Tremaine, who had been confined from the suspicions or resentment of the court.[v*] But nothing was more agreeable to the nation than his protecting the lady Elizabeth from the spite and malice of the queen, and restoring her to liberty. This measure was not the effect of any generosity in Philip, a sentiment of which he was wholly destitute; but of a refined policy, which made him foresee that, if that princess were put to death, the next lawful heir was the queen of Scots, whose succession would forever annex England to the crown of France. The earl of Devonshire also reaped some benefit from Philip’s affectation of popularity, and recovered his liberty: but that nobleman, finding himself exposed to suspicion, begged permission to travel;[v**] and he soon after died at Padua, from poison, as is pretended, given him by the imperialists. He was the eleventh and last earl of Devonshire of that noble family, one of the most illustrious in Europe.
The queen’s extreme desire of having issue had made her fondly give credit to any appearance of pregnancy; and when the legate was introduced to her, she fancied that she felt the embryo stir in her womb.[*] Her flatterers compared this motion of the infant to that of John the Baptist, who, leaped in his mother’s belly at the salutation of the Virgin.[**] Despatches were immediately sent to inform foreign courts of this event: orders were issued to give public thanks: great rejoicings were made: the family of the young prince was already settled;[***] for the Catholics held themselves assured that the child was to be a male: and Bonner, bishop of London, made public prayers be said, that Heaven would please to render him beautiful, vigorous, and witty. But the nation still remained somewhat incredulous; and men were persuaded that the queen labored under infirmities which rendered her incapable of having children. Her infant proved only the commencement of a dropsy, which the disordered state of her health had brought upon her. The belief, however, of her pregnancy was upheld with all possible care; and was one artifice by which Philip endeavored to support his authority in the kingdom.
1555.
The parliament passed a law, which, in case of the queen’s demise, appointed him protector during the minority; and the king and queen, finding they could obtain no further concessions, came unexpectedly to Westminster and dissolved them.
There happened an incident this session which must not be passed over in silence. Several members of the lower house, dissatisfied with the measures of the parliament, but finding themselves unable to prevent them, made a secession, in order to show their disapprobation, and refused any longer to attend the house.[*] For this instance of contumacy they were indicted in the king’s bench, after the dissolution of parliament: six of them submitted to the mercy of the court, and paid their fines: the rest traversed; and the queen died before the affair was brought to an issue. Judging of the matter by the subsequent claims of the house of commons, and, indeed, by the true principles of free government, this attempt of the queen’s ministers must be regarded as a breach of privilege; but it gave little umbrage at the time, and was never called in question by any house of commons which afterwards sat during this reign. The count of Noailles, the French ambassador, says that the queen threw several members into prison for their freedom of speech.[**]
1555.
THE success which Gardiner, from his cautious and prudent conduct, had met with in governing the parliament, and engaging them to concur both in the Spanish match and in the reëstablishment of the ancient religion,—two points to which, it was believed, they bore an extreme aversion,—had so raised his character for wisdom and policy that his opinion was received as an oracle in the council; and his authority, as it was always great in his own party, no longer suffered any opposition or control. Cardinal Pole himself, though more beloved on account of his virtue and candor, and though superior in birth and station, had not equal weight in public deliberations; and while his learning, piety, and humanity were extremely respected, he was represented more as a good man than a great minister. A very important question was frequently debated before the queen and council by these two ecclesiastics; whether the laws lately revived against heretics should be put in execution, or should only be employed to restrain by terror the bold attempts of these zealots. Pole was very sincere in his religious principles; and though his moderation had made him be suspected at Rome of a tendency towards Lutheranism, he was seriously persuaded of the Catholic doctrines, and thought that no consideration of human policy ought ever to come in competition with such important interests. Gardiner, on the contrary, had always made his religion subservient to his schemes of safety or advancement; and by his unlimited complaisance to Henry, he had shown that, had he not been pushed to extremity under the late minority, he was sufficiently disposed to make a sacrifice of his principles to the established theology. This was the well-known character of these two great counsellors; yet such is the prevalence of temper above system, that the benevolent disposition of Pole led him to advise a toleration of the heretical tenets which he highly blamed; while the severe manners of Gardiner inclined him to support by persecution that religion which, at the bottom, he regarded with great indifference.[*] This circumstance of public conduct was of the highest importance; and from being the object of deliberation in the council, it soon became the subject of discourse throughout the nation. We shall relate, in a few words, the topics by which each side supported, or might have supported, their scheme of policy; and shall display the opposite reasons which have been employed, with regard to an argument that ever has been, and ever will be, so much canvassed.
The practice of persecution, said the defenders of Pole’s opinion, is the scandal of all religion; and the theological animosity, so fierce and violent, far from being an argument of men’s conviction in their opposite sects, is a certain proof that they have never reached any serious persuasion with regard to these remote and sublime subjects. Even those who are the most impatient of contradiction in other controversies, are mild and moderate in comparison of polemical divines; and wherever a man’s knowledge and experience give him a perfect assurance in his own opinion, he regards with contempt, rather than anger, the opposition and mistakes of others. But while men zealously maintain what they neither clearly comprehend nor entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined faith by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts, of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the understanding. They then easily embrace any pretense for representing opponents as impious and profane; and if they can also find a color for connecting this violence with the interests of civil government, they can no longer be restrained from giving uncontrolled scope to vengeance and resentment. But surely never enterprise was more unfortunate than that of founding persecution upon policy, or endeavoring, for the sake of peace, to settle an entire uniformity of opinion in questions which, of all others, are least subjected to the criterion of human reason. The universal and uncontradicted prevalence of one opinion in religious subjects can be owing, at first, to the stupid ignorance alone and barbarism of the people, who never indulge themselves in any speculation or inquiry; and there is no expedient for maintaining that uniformity so fondly sought after, but by banishing forever all curiosity, and all improvement in science and cultivation. It may not indeed appear difficult to check, by a steady severity, the first beginnings of controversy; but besides that this policy exposes forever the people to all the abject terrors of superstition, and the magistrate to the endless encroachments of ecclesiastics, it also renders men so delicate that they can never endure to hear of opposition; and they will some time pay dearly for that false tranquillity in which they have been so long indulged. As healthful bodies are ruined by too nice a regimen, and are thereby rendered incapable of bearing the unavoidable incidents of human life, a people who never were allowed to imagine that their principles could be contested fly out into the most outrageous violence when any event (and such events are common) produces a faction among their clergy, and gives rise to any difference in tenet or opinion. But whatever may be said in favor of suppressing, by persecution, the first beginnings of heresy, no solid argument can be alleged for extending severity towards multitudes, or endeavoring, by capital punishments, to extirpate an opinion which has diffused itself among men of every rank and station. Besides the extreme barbarity of such an attempt, it commonly proves ineffectual to the purpose intended, and serves only to make men more obstinate in their persuasion, and to increase the number of their proselytes. The melancholy with which the fear of death, torture, and persecution inspires the sectaries, is the proper disposition for fostering religious zeal: the prospect of eternal rewards, when brought near, overpowers the dread of temporal punishments: the glory of martyrdom stimulates all the more furious zealots, especially the leaders and preachers: where a violent animosity is excited by oppression, men naturally pass from hating the persons of their tyrants to a more violent abhorrence of their doctrines: and the spectators, moved with pity towards the supposed martyrs, are easily seduced to embrace those principles which can inspire men with a constancy that appears almost supernatural. Open the door to toleration, mutual hatred relaxes among the sectaries, their attachment to their particular modes of religion decays; the common occupations and pleasures of life succeed to the acrimony of disputation; and the same man who, in other circumstances, would have braved flames and tortures, is induced to change his sect from the smallest prospect of favor and advancement, or even from the frivolous hope of becoming more fashionable in his principles. If any exception can be admitted to this maxim of toleration, it will only be where a theology altogether new, nowise connected with the ancient religion of the state, is imported from foreign countries, and may easily, at one blow, be eradicated, without leaving the seeds of future innovation. But as this exception would imply some apology for the ancient pagan persecutions, or for the extirpation of Christianity in China and Japan, it ought surely, on account of this detested consequence, to be rather buried in eternal silence and oblivion.
Though these arguments appear entirely satisfactory, yet such is the subtlety of human wit, that Gardiner and the other enemies to toleration were not reduced to silence; and they still found topics on which to maintain the controversy. The doctrine, said they, of liberty of conscience, is founded on the most flagrant impiety, and supposes such an indifference among all religions, such an obscurity in theological doctrines, as to render the church and magistrate incapable of distinguishing with certainty the dictates of Heaven from the mere fictions of human imagination. If the Divinity reveals principles to mankind, he will surely give a criterion by which they may be ascertained; and a prince who knowingly allows these principles to be perverted or adulterated, is infinitely more criminal than if he gave permission for the vending of poison, under the shape of food, to all his subjects. Persecution may, indeed, seem better calculated to make hypocrites than converts; but experience teaches us, that the habits of hypocrisy often turn into reality; and the children, at least, ignorant of the dissimulation of their parents, may happily be educated in more orthodox tenets. It is absurd, in opposition to considerations of such unspeakable importance, to plead the temporal and frivolous interests of civil society; and if matters be thoroughly examined, even that topic will not appear so universally certain in favor of toleration as by some it is represented. Where sects arise whose fundamental principle on all sides is to execrate, and abhor, and damn, and extirpate each other, what choice has the magistrate left but to take part, and by rendering one sect entirely prevalent, restore, at least for a time, the public tranquillity? The political body, being here sickly, must not be treated as if it were in a state of sound health; and an affected neutrality in the prince, or even a cool preference, may serve only to encourage the hopes of all the sects, and keep alive their animosity. The Protestants, far from tolerating the religion of their ancestors, regard it as an impious and detestable idolatry; and during the late minority, when they were entirely masters, they enacted very severe, though not capital, punishments against all exercise of the Catholic worship, and even against such as barely abstained from their profane rites and sacraments. Nor are instances wanting of their endeavors to secure an imagined orthodoxy by the most rigorous executions: Calvin has burned Servetus at Geneva; Cranmer brought Arians and Anabaptists to the stake; and if persecution of any kind be admitted, the most bloody and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: but the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics inclined to give disturbance, and in the entire silence and submission of the rest.
The arguments of Gardiner, being more agreeable to the cruel bigotry of Mary and Philip, were better received; and though Pole pleaded, as is affirmed,[*] the advice of the emperor, who recommended it to his daughter-in-law not to exercise violence against the Protestants, and desired her to consider his own example, who, after endeavoring through his whole life to extirpate heresy, had in the end reaped nothing but confusion and disappointment, the scheme of toleration was entirely rejected. It was determined to let loose the laws in their full vigor against the reformed religion; and England was soon filled with scenes of horror, which have ever since rendered the Catholic religion the object of general detestation and which prove, that no human depravity can equal revenge and cruelty covered with the mantle of religion.
The persecutors began with Rogers, prebendary of St. Paul’s, a man eminent in his party for virtue as well as for learning. Gardiner’s plan was first to attack men of that character, whom, he hoped, terror would bend to submission, and whose example, either of punishment or recantation, would naturally have influence on the multitude: but he found a perseverance and courage in Rogers, which it may seem strange to find in human nature, and of which all ages and all sects do nevertheless furnish many examples. Rogers, beside the care of his own preservation, lay under other powerful temptations to compliance: he had a wife whom he tenderly loved, and ten children; yet such was his serenity after his condemnation, that the jailers, it is said, waked him from a sound sleep when the hour of his execution approached. He had desired to see his wife before he died; but Gardiner told him that he was a priest, and could not possibly have a wife; thus joining insult to cruelty. Rogers was burned in Smithfield.[*]
Hooper, bishop of Glocester, had been tried at the same time with Rogers; but was sent to his own diocese to be executed. This circumstance was contrived to strike the greater terror into his flock; but it was a source of consolation to Hooper, who rejoiced in giving testimony, by his death, to that doctrine which he had formerly preached among them. When he was tied to the stake, a stool was set before him, and the queen’s pardon laid upon it, which it was still in his power to merit by a recantation; but he ordered it to be removed, and cheerfully prepared himself for that dreadful punishment to which he was sentenced. He suffered it in its full severity: the wind, which was violent, blew the flame of the reeds from his body: the fagots were green, and did not kindle easily: all his lower parts were consumed before his vitals were attacked: one of his hands dropped off: with the other he continued to beat his breast: he was heard to pray, and to exhort the people; till his tongue, swollen with the violence of his agony, could no longer permit him utterance. He was three quarters of an hour in torture, which he bore with inflexible constancy.[**]
Sanders was burned at Coventry: a pardon was also offered him; but he rejected it, and embraced the stake, saying, “Welcome the cross of Christ; welcome everlasting life.” Taylor, parson of Hadley, was punished by fire in that place, surrounded by his ancient friends and parishioners. When tied to the stake, he rehearsed a psalm in English: one of his guards struck him on the mouth, and bade him speak Latin: another, in a rage, gave him a blow on the head with his halbert, which happily put an end to his torments.
There was one Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester, inflamed with such zeal for orthodoxy, that having been engaged in dispute with an Arian, he spit in his adversary’s face, to show the great detestation which he had entertained against that heresy. He afterwards wrote a treatise to justify this unmannerly expression of zeal: he said, that he was led to it in order to relieve the sorrow conceived from such horrid blasphemy, and to signify how unworthy such a miscreant was of being admitted into the society of any Christian.[*] Philpot was a Protestant; and falling now into the hands of people as zealous as himself, but more powerful, he was condemned to the flames, and suffered at Smithfield. It seems to be almost a general rule, that in all religions, except the true, no man will suffer martyrdom who would not also inflict it willingly on all that differ from him. The same zeal for speculative opinions is the cause of both.
The crime for which almost all the Protestants were condemned, was their refusal to acknowledge the real presence. Gardiner, who had vainly expected that a few examples would strike a terror into the reformers, finding the work daily multiply upon him, devolved the invidious office on others, chiefly on Bonner, a man of profligate manners, and of a brutal character, who seemed to rejoice in the torments of the unhappy sufferers.[**] He sometimes whipped the prisoners with his own hands, till he was tired with the violence of the exercise: he tore out the beard of a weaver who refused to relinquish his religion; and that he might give him a specimen of burning, he held his hand to the candle till the sinews and veins shrunk and burst.[***]