[456] 31 Henry VIII. cap. 8.

[457] The limitation which ought to have been made was in the time for which these unusual powers should be continued; the bill, however, was repealed duly in connexion with the treason acts and the other irregular measures in this reign, as soon as the crisis had passed away, or when those who were at the head of the state could no longer be trusted with dangerous weapons.—See 1 Edward VI. cap. 7. The temporary character of most of Henry’s acts was felt, if it was not avowed. Sir Thomas Wyatt in an address to the Privy Council, admitted to having said of the Act of Supremacy, “that it was a goodly act, the King’s Majesty being so virtuous, so wise, so learned, and so good a prince; but if it should fall unto an evil prince it were a sore rod:” and he added, “I suppose I have not mis-said in that; for all powers, namely absolute, are sore rods when they fall into evil men’s hands.”—Oration to the Council: Nott’s Wyatt, p. 304.

[458] The same expressions had been used of the Lollards a hundred and fifty years before. The description applied absolutely to the Anabaptists; and Oliver Cromwell had the same disposition to contend against among the Independents. The least irregular of the Protestant sects were tainted more or less with anarchical opinions.

[459] A considerable part of this address is in Henry’s own handwriting See Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 434.

[460] See Fuller, Vol. III. p. 411.

[461] 31 Henry VIII. cap. 9

[462] In some instances, if not in all, this was actually the case.—See the Correspondence between Cromwell and the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury: MS. State Paper Office, second series.

[463] Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, and Westminster.

[464] Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, Norwich, Worcester, Rochester, Durham, and Carlisle.

[465] “Per Dominum cancellarium declaratum est quod cum non solum proceres spirituales verum etiam regia majestas ad unionem in precedentibus articulis conficiendam multipliciter studuerunt et laboraverunt ita ut nunc unio in eisdem confecta sit regia igitur voluntatis esse ut penale aliquod statutum efficeretur ad coercendum suos subditos, ne contra determinationem in eisdem articulis confectam contradicerent, aut dissentirent, verum ejus majestatem proceribus formam hujusmodi malefactorum hujusmodi committere. Itaque ex eorum communi consensu concordatum est quod Archiepiscopus Cant., Episcopus Elien., Episcopus Menevensis et Doctor Peter, unam formam cujusdam actus, concernentem Punitionem hujusmodi malefactorum dictarent et componerent similiterque quod Archiepisc. Ebor., Episc. Dunelm., Episc. Winton et Doctor Tregonwell alteram ejusmodi effectus dictitarent et componerent formam.”—Lords Journals, 31 Henry VIII.

[466] Foxe’s rhetoric might be suspected, but a letter of Melancthon to Henry VIII. is a more trustworthy evidence: “Oh, cursed bishops!” he exclaims; “oh, wicked Winchester!”—Melancthon to Henry VIII.: printed in Foxe, Vol. V.

[467] “The judge shall be bounden, if it be demanded of him, to deliver in writing to the party called before him, the copy of the matter objected, and the names and depositions of the witnesses ... and in such case, as the party called answereth and denyeth that that is objected, and that no proof can be brought against him but the deposition of one witness only, then and in that case, be that witness never of so great honesty and credit, the same party so called shall be without longer delay absolved and discharged by the judge’s sentence freely without further cost or molestation.”—The Six Articles Bill as drawn by the King: Wilkins’s Consilia, Vol. III. p. 848.

[468] Act for Abolishing Diversity of Opinions: 31 Henry VIII. cap. 14.

[469] Printed in Strype’s Cranmer, Vol. II. p. 743.

[470] Philip Melancthon to Henry VIII., Foxe, Vol. V.

[471] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 265.

[472] Hall’s Chronicle, p. 828. Hall is a good evidence on this point. He was then a middle-aged man, resident in London, with clear eyes and a shrewd, clear head, and was relating not what others told him, but what he actually saw.

[473] In Latimer’s case, against Henry’s will, or without his knowledge. Cromwell, either himself deceived or desiring to smooth the storm, told Latimer that the king advised his resignation; “which his Majesty afterwards denied, and pitied his condition.”—State Papers, Vol. I. p. 849.

[474] Hall.

[475] Notes of Erroneous Doctrines preached at Paul’s Cross by the Vicar of Stepney: MS. Rolls House.

[476] Henry Dowes to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 258.

[477] Richard Cromwell to Lord Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. VII. p. 188.

[478] More’s Utopia, Burnet’s translation, p. 13.

[479] Respectable authorities, as most of my readers are doubtless aware, inform us that seventy-two thousand criminals were executed in England in the reign of Henry VIII. Historians who are accustomed to examine their materials critically, have usually learnt that no statements must be received with so much caution as those which relate to numbers. Grotius gives, in a parallel instance, the number of heretics executed under Charles V. in the Netherlands as a hundred thousand. The Prince of Orange gives them as fifty thousand. The authorities are admirable, though sufficiently inconsistent, while the judicious Mr. Prescott declares both estimates alike immeasurably beyond the truth. The entire number of victims destroyed by Alva in the same provinces by the stake, by the gallows, and by wholesale massacre, amount, when counted carefully in detail, to twenty thousand only. The persecutions under Charles, in a serious form, were confined to the closing years of his reign. Can we believe that wholesale butcheries were passed by comparatively unnoticed by any one at the time of their perpetration, more than doubling the atrocities which startled subsequently the whole world? Laxity of assertion in matters of number is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood. Men not remarkably inaccurate will speak of thousands, and, when cross-questioned, will rapidly reduce them to hundreds, while a single cipher inserted by a printer’s mistake becomes at once a tenfold exaggeration. Popular impressions on the character of the reign of Henry VIII. have, however, prevented inquiry into any statement which reflects discredit upon this; the enormity of an accusation has passed for an evidence of its truth. Notwithstanding that until the few last years of the king’s life no felon who could read was within the grasp of the law, notwithstanding that sanctuaries ceased finally to protect murderers six years only before his death, and that felons of a lighter cast might use their shelter to the last,—even those considerable facts have created no misgiving, and learned and ignorant historians alike have repeated the story of the 72,000 with equal confidence.

I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on which it rests.

The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the Description of Britain prefixed to Hollinshed’s Chronicle. Harrison, speaking of the manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and adds, “It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop of Lexovia, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father, executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them.”

I am unable to discover “the Bishop of Lexovia;” but, referring to the Commentaries of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of his birth, and after it this passage:—

“Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father, wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction with Cauda, Lampas partook of the nature of Mars; Luna in occiduo cardine was among the dependencies of Mars; and Mars himself was in the ill-starred constellation Virgo and in the quadrant of Jupiter Infelix. Moreover, he quarrelled with the Pope, owing to the position of Venus and to influences emanating from her. He was affected also by a constellation with schismatic properties, and by certain eclipses, and hence and from other causes, arose a fact related to me by the Bishop of Lexovia, namely, that two years before his death as many as seventy thousand persons were found to have perished by the hand of the executioner in that one island during his reign.”

The words of some unknown foreign ecclesiastic discovered imbedded in the midst of this abominable nonsense, and transmitted through a brain capable of conceiving and throwing it into form, have been considered authority sufficient to cast a stigma over one of the most remarkable periods in English history, while the contemporary English Records, the actual reports of the judges on assize, which would have disposed effectually of Cardan and his bishop, have been left unstudied in their dust.

[480] As we saw recently in the complaints of the Marquis of Exeter. But in this general sketch I am giving the result of a body of correspondence too considerable to quote.

[481] In healthier times the Pope had interfered. A bull of Innocent VIII. permitted felons repeating their crimes, or fraudulent creditors, to be taken forcibly out of sanctuary.—Wilkins’s Concilia, Vol. III. p. 621.

[482] The Magistrates of Frome to Sir Henry Long: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 102. Mr. Justice Fitzjames to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XI. p. 43.

[483] The letter which I quote is addressed to Cromwell as “My Lord Privy Seal,” and dated July 17. Cromwell was created privy seal on the 2d of July, 1536, and Earl of Essex on the 17th of April, 1540. There is no other guide to the date.

[484] The Magistrates of Chichester to my Lord Privy Seal: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. X.

[485] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 1.

[486] Humfrey Wingfield to my Lord Privy Seal: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. LI.

[487] Richard Layton to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XX.

[488] MS. State Paper Office, second series.

[489] Correspondence of the Warden and Council of the Welsh Marches with the Lord Privy Seal: MS. State Paper Office, second series.

[490] MS. Rolls House, first series, 494.

[491] At the execution, Latimer’s chaplain, Doctor Tailor, preached a sermon. Among the notes of the proceedings I find a certain Miles Denison called up for disrespectful language.

“The said Miles did say: The bishop sent one yesterday for to preach at the gallows, and there stood upon the vicar’s colt and made a foolish sermon of the new learning, looking over the gallows. I would the colt had winced and cast him down.”—“Also during the sermon he did say, I would he were gone, and I were at my dinner.”—MS. State Paper Office.

[492] Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 386.

[493] The Sheriff of Hampshire to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, first series, Vol. IX.

[494] The traditions of severity connected with this reign are explained by these exceptional efforts of rigour. The years of licence were forgotten; the seasons recurring at long intervals, when the executions might be counted by hundreds, lived in recollection, and when three or four generations had passed, became the measure of the whole period.

[495] “These three abbots had joined in a conspiracy to restore the Pope.”—Traherne to Bullinger: Original Letters on the Reformation, second series, p. 316.

[496] “Yesterday I was with the Abbot of Colchester, who asked me how the Abbot of St. Osith did as touching his house; for the bruit was the king would have it. To the which I answered, that he did like an honest man, for he saith, I am the king’s subject, and I and my house and all is the king’s; wherefore, if it be the king’s pleasure, I, as a true subject, shall obey without grudge. To the which the abbot answered, the king shall never have my house but against my will and against my heart; for I know, by my learning, he cannot take it by right and law. Wherefore, in my conscience, I cannot be content; nor he shall never have it with my heart and will. To the which I said beware of such learning; for if ye hold such learning as ye learned in Oxenford when ye were young ye will be hanged; and ye are worthy. But I will advise you to confirm yourself as a good subject, or else you shall hinder your brethren and also yourself.”—Sir John St. Clair to the Lord Privy Seal: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XXXVIII. The abbot did not take the advice, but ventured more dangerous language.

“The Abbot of Colchester did say that the northern men were good men and mokell in the mouth, and ‘great crackers’ and nothing worth in their deeds.” “Further, the said abbot said, at the time of the insurrection, ‘I would to Christ that the rebels in the north had the Bishop of Canterbury, the lord chancellor, and the lord privy seal amongst them, and then I trust we should have a merry world again.’”—Deposition of Edmund ——: Rolls House MS. second series, No. 27.

But the abbot must have committed himself more deeply, or have refused to retract and make a submission; for I find words of similar purport sworn against other abbots, who suffered no punishment.

[497] Lords Journals, 28 Henry VIII.

[498] “The Abbot of Glastonbury appeareth neither then nor now to have known God nor his prince, nor any part of a good Christian man’s religion. They be all false, feigned, flattering hypocrite knaves, as undoubtedly there is none other of that sort.”—Layton to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 247.

[499] Confession of the Abbot of Barlings: MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, E 4.

[500] “And for as much as experience teacheth that many of the heads of such houses, notwithstanding their oaths, taken upon the holy evangelists, to present to such the King’s Majesty’s commissioners as have been addressed unto them, true and perfect inventories of all things belonging to their monasteries, many things have been left out, embezzled, stolen, and purloined—many rich jewels, much rich plate, great store of precious ornaments, and sundry other things of great value and estimation, to the damage of the King’s Majesty, and the great peril and danger of their own souls, by reason of their wilful and detestable perjury; the said commissioners shall not only at every such house examine the head and convent substantially, of all such things so concealed or unlawfully alienated, but also shall give charge to all the ministers and servants of the same houses, and such of the neighbours dwelling near about them as they shall think meet, to detect and open all such things as they have known or heard to have been that way misused, to the intent the truth of all things may the better appear accordingly.”—Instructions to the Monastic Commissioners: MS. Tanner, 105, Bodleian Library.

[501] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 499.

[502] Pollard, Moyle, and Layton to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. I. p. 619.

[503] Ibid. 621.

[504] Butler, Elliot, and Traherne to Conrad Pellican: Original Letters, second series, p. 624.

[505] Thomas Perry to Ralph Vane: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 140.

[506] I should have distrusted the evidence, on such a point, of excited Protestants (see Original Letters on the Reformation, p. 626), who could invent and exaggerate as well as their opponents; but the promise of these indulgences was certainly made, and Charles V. prohibited the publication of the brief containing it in Spain or Flanders. “The Emperor,” wrote Cromwell to Henry, “hath not consented that the Pope’s mandament should be published neither in Spain, neither in any other his dominions, that Englishmen should be destroyed in body, in goods, wheresoever they could be found, as the Pope would they should be.”—State Papers, Vol. I. p. 608.

[507] MS. Cotton.

[508] Lord Russell to Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, E 4.

[509] Ibid.

[510] Pollard to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 261.

[511] Henry Fitz Roy, Duke of Richmond, died July 22, 1536.

[512] “Animadvertens sua clementia quod maxime hoc convenerat parliamentum pro bono totius Regni publico et concordiâ Christianæ religionis stabiliendà non tam cito quam propter rei magnitudinem quæ non solum regnum ipsum Angliæ concernit verum etiam alia regna et universi Christianismi Ecclesias quantumvis diversarum sententiarum quæ in eam rem oculos et animum habebant intentos, sua Majestas putavit tam propriâ suâ regiâ diligentiâ et studio quam etiam episcoporum et cleri sui sedulitate rem maturius consultandam, tractandam et deliberandam.”—Speech of the Lord Chancellor at the Prorogation: Lords Journals, Vol. I. p. 137.

[513] Brother of Jane Seymour; afterwards Protector.

[514] “I am as glad of the good resolutions of the Duke of Cleves, his mother, and council, as ever I was of anything since the birth of the prince: for I think the King’s Highness should not in Christendom marry in no place meet for his Grace’s honour that should be less prejudicial to his Majesty’s succession.”—Hertford to Cromwell: Ellis, first series, Vol. II. p. 119.

[515] “I find the council willing enough to publish and manifest to the world that by any covenants made by the old Duke of Cleves and the Duke of Lorraine, my Lady Anne is not bounden; but ever hath been and yet is at her free liberty to marry wherever she will.”—Wotton to the King: Ellis, first series, Vol. II. p. 121.

[516] Ellis, first series, Vol. II. p. 121.

[517] “The Duke of Cleves hath a daughter, but I hear no great praise, either of her personage nor beauty.”—Hutton to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 5.

[518] Stow.

[519] Butler to Bullinger: Original Letters on the Reformation, p. 627.

[520] Partridge to Bullinger: Ibid. 614.

[521] The Elector of Saxony to Henry VIII.: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 437.

[522] See a correspondence between Cranmer and a Justice of the Peace, Jenkins’s Cranmer, Vol. I.

[523] “I would to Christ I had obeyed your often most gracious grave councils and advertisements. Then it had not been with me as now it is.”—Cromwell to the King: Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 510.

[524] MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, E 4.

[525] He required, probably, no information that his enemies would spare no means, fair or foul, for his destruction. But their plots and proceedings had been related to him two years before by his friend Allen, the Irish Master of the Rolls, in a report of expressions which had been used by George Paulet, brother of the lord treasurer, and one of the English commissioners at Dublin. Cromwell, it seems, had considered that estates in Ireland forfeited for treason, or non-residence, would be disposed of better if granted freely to such families as had remained loyal, than if sold for the benefit of the crown. Speaking of this matter, “The king,” Paulet said, “beknaveth Cromwell twice a week, and would sometimes knock him about the pate. He draws every day towards his death, and escaped very hardly at the last insurrection. He is the greatest briber in England, and that is espied well enough. The king has six times as much revenues as ever any of his noble progenitors had, and all is consumed and gone to nought by means of my Lord Privy Seal, who ravens all that he can get. After all the king’s charges to recover this land, he is again the only means to cause him to give away his revenues; and it shall be beaten into the king’s head how his treasure has been needlessly wasted and consumed, and his profits and revenues given away by sinister means.” “Cromwell,” Paulet added, “has been so handled and taunted by the council in these matters, as he is weary of them; but I will so work my matter, as the king shall be informed of every penny that he hath spent here; and when that great expence is once in his head, it shall never be forgotten there is one good point. And then I will inform him how he hath given away to one man seven hundred marks by the year. And then will the king swear by God’s body, have I spent so much money and now have given away my land? There was never a king so deceived by man. I will hit him by means of my friends.”—State Papers, Vol. II. p. 551. It is not clear how much is to be believed of Paulet’s story so far as relates to the king’s treatment of Cromwell. The words were made a subject of an inquiry before Sir Anthony St. Leger; and Paulet meant, it seemed, that the “beknaving and knocking about the pate” took place in private before no witnesses; so that, if true, it could only have been known by the acknowledgments of the king or of Cromwell himself. But the character of the intrigues for Cromwell’s destruction is made very plain.

[526] Foxe’s History of Cromwell.

[527] A paper of ten interrogatories is in the Rolls House, written in Cromwell’s hand, addressed to a Mr. John More. More’s opinion was required on the supremacy, and among the questions asked him were these:—

What communication hath been between you and the Bishop of Winchester touching the primacy of the Bishop of Rome?

What answers the said Bishop made unto you upon such questions as ye did put to him?

Whether ye have heard the said Bishop at any time in any evil opinion contrary to the statutes of the realm, concerning the primacy of the Bishop of Rome or any other foreign potentate?—Rolls House MS. A 2, 30, fol. 67.

In another collection I found a paper of Mr. More’s answers; but it would seem (unless the MS. is imperfect) that he replied only to the questions which affected himself. The following passage, however, is curious: “The cause why I demanded the questions (on the primacy) of my Lord of Winchester was for that I heard it, as I am now well remembered, much spoken of in the parliament house, and taken among many there to be a doubt as ye, Mr. Secretary, well know. And for so much as I esteemed my lord’s wisdom and learning to be such, that I thought I would not be better answered, because I heard you, Mr. Secretary, say he was much affectionate to the Papacy.”—Rolls House MS. first series, 863.

[528] “The Bishop of Winchester was put out of the Privy Council, because my Lord Privy Seal took displeasure with him because he should say it was not meet that Dr. Barnes, being a man defamed of heresy, should be sent ambassador. Touching the Bishop of Chichester there was not heard any cause why he was put forth from the Privy Council.”—Depositions of Christopher Chator: Rolls House MS. first series.

[529] “Then said Craye to me, there was murmuring and saying by the progress of time that my Lord Privy Seal should be out of favour with his prince. Marry, said I, I heard of such a thing. I heard at Woodstock of one Sir Launcelot Thornton, a chaplain of the Bishop of Durham, who shewed me that the Earl of Hampton, Sir William Kingston, and Sir Anthony Brown were all joined together, and would have had my Lord of Durham to have had rule and chief saying under the King’s Highness. Then said Craye to me, It was evil doing of my lord your master that would not take it upon hand, for he might have amended many things that were amiss; for, if the Bishop of Winchester might have had the saying, he would have taken it upon hand. Well, said I, my lord my master is too good a lawyer, knowing by his book the inconstancy of princes, where there is a text that saith: Lubricus est primus locus apud Reges.”—MS. ibid.

[530] “There was an honest man in London called Dr. Watts, which preacheth much against heresy; and this Dr. Watts was called before my Lord of Canterbury, and Dr. Barnes should be either his judge or his accuser.”—Rolls House MS., first series.

[531] “There was an alderman in Gracechurch-street that came to my Lord of Canterbury, and one with him, and said to my Lord of Canterbury: Please your Grace that we are informed that your Grace hath our master Watts by hold. And if it be for treason we will not speak for him, but if it be for heresy or debt we will be bound for him in a thousand pound; for there was ten thousand of London coming to your lordship to be bound for him, but that we stayed them.”—MS. ibid.

[532] Butler to Bullinger: Original Letters on the Reformation, p. 627.

[533] “As to the matter concerning the Duchess of Milan, when his Highness had heard it, he paused a good while, and at the last said, smiling, ‘Have they remembered themselves now?’ To the which I said, ‘Sir, we that be your servants are much bound to God, they to woo you whom ye have wooed so long.’ He answered coldly: ‘They that would not when they might, percase shall not when they would.’”—Southampton to Cromwell, Sept. 17, 1539: State Papers, Vol. I.

[534] “There should be three causes why the Emperor should come into these parts—the one for the mutiny of certain cities which were dread in time to allure and stir all or the more part of the other cities to the like; the second, for the alliance which the King’s Majesty hath made with the house of Cleves, which he greatly stomacheth; the third, for the confederacy, as they here call it, between his Majesty and the Almayns. The fear which the Emperor hath of these three things hath driven him to covet much the French king’s amity.”—Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 203.

[535] “There is great suspicion and jealousy to be taken to see these two great princes so familiar together, and to go conjointly in secret practices, in which the Bishop of Rome seemeth to be intelligent, who hath lately sent his nephew, Cardinal Farnese, to be present at the parlement of the said princes in France. The contrary part cannot brook the King’s Majesty and the Almains to be united together, which is no small fear and terror as well to Imperials as the Papisticals, and no marvel if they fury, fearing thereby some great ruin.”—Harvel to Cromwell from Venice, December 9.