[536] Epist. Reginaldi Poli, Vol. V. p. 150. In this paper Pole says that the Duke of Norfolk stated to the king, in a despatch from Doncaster, when a battle seemed imminent, “that his troops could not be trusted, their bodies were with the king, but their minds with the rebels.” His information was, perhaps, derived from his brother Geoffrey, who avowed an intention of deserting.

[537] “The said Helyard said to me that the Emperor was come into France, and should marry the king’s daughter; and the Duke of Orleans should marry the Duchess of Milan, and all this was by the Bishop of Rome’s means; and they were all confedered together, and as for the Scottish king, he was always the French king’s man, and we shall all be undone, for we have no help now but the Duke of Cleves, and they are so poor they cannot help us.”—Depositions of Christopher Chator: Rolls House MS. first series.

[538] Sir Thos. Wyatt to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 219 &c.

[539] Southampton’s expressions were unfortunately warm. Mentioning a conversation with the German ambassadors, in which he had spoken of his anxiety for the king’s marriage, “so as if God failed us in my Lord Prince, we might have another sprung of like descent and line to reign over us in peace,” he went on to speak to them of the other ladies whom the king might have had if he had desired; “but hearing,” he said, “great report of the notable virtues of my lady now with her excellent beauty, such as I well perceive to be no less than was reported, in very deed my mind gave me to lean that way.” These words, which might have passed as unmeaning compliment, had they been spoken merely to the lady’s countrymen, he repeated in his letters to the king, who of course construed them by his hopes.

[540] Deposition of Sir Anthony Brown: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 252, &c.

[541] Those who insist that Henry was a licentious person, must explain how it was that, neither in the three years which had elapsed since the death of Jane Seymour, nor during the more trying period which followed, do we hear a word of mistresses, intrigues, or questionable or criminal connexions of any kind. The mistresses of princes are usually visible when they exist, the mistresses, for instance, of Francis I., of Charles V., of James of Scotland. There is a difficulty in this which should be admitted, if it cannot be explained.

[542] Deposition of Sir Anthony Denny: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II.

[543] Cromwell to the King: Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 109.

[544] Deposition of the Earl of Southampton: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II.

[545] Questions to be asked of the Lord Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 418.

[546] Compare Cromwell’s Letter to the King from the Tower, Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 109, with Questions to be asked of the Lord Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 418. Wyatt’s report of his interview and the Emperor’s language could not have arrived till the week after. But the fact of Charles’s arrival with Brancetor in his train, was already known and was sufficiently alarming.

[547] Cromwell to the King: Burnet’s Collectanea. The morning after his marriage, and on subsequent occasions, the king made certain depositions to his physicians and to members of the council, which I invite no one to study except under distinct historical obligations. The facts are of great importance. But discomfort made Henry unjust; and when violently irritated he was not careful of his expressions.—See Documents relating to the Marriage with Anne of Cleves: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II.

[548] Hall.

[549] The discharge of heretics from prison by an undue interference formed one of the most violent accusations against Cromwell. He was, perhaps, held responsible for the general pardon in the summer of 1539. The following letter, however, shows something of his own immediate conduct, and of the confidence with which the Protestants looked to him.

“God save the king.

“Thanks immortal from the Father of Heaven unto your most prudent and honourable lordship, for your mercy, and pity, and great charity that your honourable lordship has had on your poor and true orator Henry King, that almost was in prison a whole year, rather of pure malice and false suspicion than of any just offence committed by your said orator, to be so long in prison without any mercy, pity, or succour of meat and drink, and all your said orator’s goods taken from him. Moreover, whereas your said orator did of late receive a letter from your most honourable lordship by the hands of the Bishop of Worcester, that your said orator should receive again such goods as was wrongfully taken from your said orator of Mr. George Blunt (the committing magistrate apparently); thereon your said orator went unto the said George Blunt with your most gentle letter, to ask such poor goods as the said George Blunt did detain from your poor orator; and so with great pain and much entreating your said orator, within the space of three weeks, got some part of his goods, but the other part he cannot get. Therefore, except now your most honourable lordship, for Jesus sake, do tender and consider with the eye of pity and mercy the long imprisonment, the extreme poverty of your said orator, your said orator is clean undone in this world. For where your said orator had money, and was full determined to send for his capacity, all is spent in prison, and more. Therefore, in fond humility your said orator meekly, with all obedience, puts himself wholly into the hands of your honourable lordship, desiring you to help your orator to some succour and living now in his extreme necessity and need; the which is not only put out of his house, but also all his goods almost spent in prison, so that now the weary life of your said orator stands only in your discretion. Therefore, exaudi preces servi tui, and Almighty God increase your most honourable lordship in virtue and favour as he did merciful Joseph to his high honour Amen. Your unfeigned and true orator ut supra. Beatus qui intelligit super egenum et pauperem. In die malâ liberabit eum Dominus.”—MS. State Paper Office, Vol. IX. first series.

[550] Traheron to Bullinger: Original Letters, p. 316; Hall, p. 837.

[551] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 431.

[552] Hall, p. 837.

[553] “The bishop was ably answered by Dr. Barnes on the following Lord’s-day, with the most gratifying and all but universal applause.”—Traheron to Bullinger: Original Letters, p. 317.

[554] Wyatt to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 240, &c.

[555] Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 245, &c. Henry held out a further inducement. “If the duke shall see the French king persevere in his good mind and affection towards the King’s Highness, he shall yet further of himself say that his opinion is, and in his mind he thinketh undoubtedly that in such a case as that a new strait amity might now be made between the French king and the king his master, his Majesty would be content to remit unto him the one half of his debt to his Highness, the sum whereof is very great; and also the one half of the pensions for term of the said French king’s life, so as it may please him to declare what honourable reciproque he could be content to offer again to his Majesty.”—State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 251.

[556] State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 318. The Queen of Navarre, who was constant to the English interests, communicated to the secretary of Sir John Wallop (the resident minister at Paris), an account of a conversation between herself and the Papal nuntio.

Ferrara had prayed her “to help and put her good hand and word that the French king might join the Emperor and his master for the wars against the Almayns and the King of England, which king was but a man lost and cast away.”

“Why, M. l’Ambassadeur,” the queen answered, “what mean you by that? how and after what sort do you take the King of England?”—“Marry,” quoth he, “for a heretic and a Lutheryan. Moreover, he doth make himself head of the Church.”—“Do you say so?” quoth she. “Now I would to God that your master, the Emperor, and we here, did live after so good and godly a sort as he and his doth.” The nuntio answered, “the king had pulled down the abbeys,” “trusting by the help of God it should be reformed or it were long.” She told him that were easier to say than to do. England had had time to prepare, and to transport an army across the Channel was a difficult affair. Ferrara said, “It could be landed in Scotland.”—“The King of Scotland,” she replied, “would not stir without permission from France;” and then (if her account was true) she poured out a panegyric upon the Reformation in England, and spoke out plainly on the necessity of the same thing in the Church of Rome. State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 289, &c.

[557] Hall, p. 839. The case broke down, and Sampson was afterwards restored to favour; but his escape was narrow. Sir Ralph Sadler, writing to Cromwell, said, “I declared to the King’s Majesty how the Bishop of Chichester was committed to ward to the Tower, and what answer he made to such things as were laid to his charge, which in effect was a plain denial of the chief points that touched him. His Majesty said little thereto, but that he liked him and the matter much the worse because he denied it, seeing his Majesty perceived by the examinations there were witnesses enough to condemn him in that point.”—State Papers, Vol. I. p. 627.

[558] The Bishop of Chichester to Cromwell: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 381.

[559] Another instance of Tunstall’s underhand dealing had come to light. When he accepted the oath of supremacy, and agreed to the divorce of Queen Catherine, he entered a private protest in the Register Book of Durham, which was afterwards cut out by his chancellor. Christopher Chator, whose curious depositions I have more than once quoted, mentions this piece of evasion, and adds a further feature of some interest. Relating a conversation which he had held with a man called Craye, Chator says, “We had in communication the Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More attainted of treason. Craye said to me he marvelled that they were put to death for such small trespasses; to whom I answered that their foolish conscience was so to die. Then I shewed him of one Burton, my Lord of Durham’s servant, that told me he came to London when the Bishop of Rochester and Thomas More were endangered, and the said More asked Burton, ‘Will not thy master come to us and be as we are?’ and he said he could not tell. Then said More, ‘If he do, no force, for if he live he may do more good than to die with us.’”—Rolls House MS. first series.

[560] Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII.

[561] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 1.

[562] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 2.

[563] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 3. “Many goes oft begging,” “and it causeth much robbing.”—Deposition of Christopher Chator. Here is a special picture of one of these vagabonds. Gregory Cromwell, writing to his father from Lewes, says, “The day of making hereof came before us a fellow called John Dancy, being apparelled in a frieze coat, a pair of black hose, with fustian slops, having also a sword, a buckler, and a dagger; being a man of such port, fashion, and behaviour that we at first took him only for a vagabond, until such time as he, being examined, confessed himself to have been heretofore a priest, and sometime a monk of this monastery.”—MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. VII.

[564] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 12.

[565] Lords Journals, 31 Henry VIII.

[566] It was so difficult to calculate at the time the amount likely to be raised by this method of taxation, or the degree in which it would press, that it is impossible at present even to guess reasonably on either of these points. In 1545, two fifteenths and tenths which were granted by parliament are described as extending to “a right small sum of money,” and a five per cent. income tax was in consequence added.—37 Henry VIII. cap. 25. Aliens and clergy generally paid double, and on the present occasion the latter granted four shillings in the pound on their incomes, to be paid in two years, or a direct annual tax of ten per cent.—32 Henry VIII. cap. 13. But all estimates based on conjecture ought to be avoided.

[567] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 50.

[568] Ibid. cap. 57. Unprinted Rolls House MS.

[569] “Hodie lecta est Billa attincturæ Ricardi Fetherstone, etc.; et communi omnium Procerum assensu nemine discrepante expedita.”—Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII.

[570] Stow.

[571] The Ladies Rutland, Rochford, and Edgecombe, all being together with the queen, “they wished her Grace with child, and she answered and said she knew well she was not with child. My Lady Edgecombe said, ‘How is it possible for your Grace to know that?’ ‘I know it well I am not,’ said she. Then said my Lady Edgecombe, ‘I think your Grace is a maid still.’ With that she laughed; ‘How can I be a maid,’ said she, ‘and sleep every night with the king? When he comes to bed he kisses me, and takes me by the hand, and bids me “Good night, sweetheart;” and in the morning kisses me, and bids me “Farewell, darling.” Is not this enough?’ Then said my Lady Rutland, ‘Madame, there must be more than this, or it will be long or we have a Duke of York, which all this realm most desireth.’ ‘Nay,’ said the queen, ‘I am contented I know no more.’”—Deposition on the Marriage of the Lady Anne of Cleves: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 462.

[572] Strype’s Memorials, Vol. I. p. 556.

[573] Cromwell to the King: Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 109.

[574] The Letter sent to Cromwell is printed in State Papers, Vol. I. p. 628.

[575] Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 459.

[576] MSS. State Paper Office, second series, 52 volumes.

[577] Lady Elizabeth Burgh’s letter to him will show the character of interference which he was called upon to exercise: “My very good lord, most humbly I beseech your goodness to me your poor bounden bedewoman, considering the great trouble I am put unto by my Lord Burgh, who always hath lien in wait to put me to shame and trouble, which he shall never do, God willing, you being my good and gracious lord, as I have found you merciful to me ever hitherto; and so I most humbly beseech you of your good continuance, desiring now your good lordship to remember me, for I am comfortless, and as yet not out of the danger of death through the great travail that I had. For I am as yet as a prisoner comfortless, only trusting to your lordship’s goodness and to the King’s Grace’s most honourable council. For I hear say my Lord Burgh hath complained on me to your lordship and to all the noble council; and has enformed your lordship and them all that the child that I have borne and so dearly bought is none of his son’s my husband. As for me, my very good lord, I do protest afore God, and also shall receive him to my eternal damnation, if ever I designed for him with any creature living, but only with my husband; therefore now I most lamentably and humbly desire your lordship of your goodness to stay my Lord Burgh that he do not fulfil his diabolical mind to disinherit my husband’s child.

“And thus am I ordered by my Lord Burgh and my husband (who dare do nothing but as his father will have him do), so that I have nothing left to help me now in my great sickness, but am fain to lay all that I have to gage, so that I have nothing left to help myself withal, and might have perished ere this time for lack of succour, but through the goodness of the gentleman and his wife which I am in house withal. Therefore I most humbly desire your lordship to have pity on me, and that through your only goodness ye will cause my husband to use me like his wife, and no otherwise than I have deserved; and to send me money, and to pay such debts as I do owe by reason of my long being sick, and I shall pray for your lordship daily to increase in honour to your noble heart’s desire. Scribbled with the hand of your bounden bedewoman, Elizabeth Burgh.” MS. State Paper Office, first series, Vol. XIII.

I should have been glad to have added a more remarkable letter from Lady Hungerford, who was locked up by her husband in a country house for four years, and “would have died for lack of sustenance,” “had not,” she wrote, “the poor women of the country brought me, to my great window in the night, such poor meat and drink as they had, and gave me for the love of God.” But the letter contains other details not desirable to publish.—MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 397.

[578] State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 349.

[579] “His Majesty remembering how men wanting the knowledge of the truth would else speak diversely of it, considering the credit he hath had about his Highness, which might also cause the wisest sort to judge amiss thereof if that his ingratitude and treason should not be fully opened unto them.”—Ibid. The opening sentences of the letter (it was evidently a circular) also deserve notice: “These shall be to advertize you that when the King’s Majesty hath of long season travelled, and yet most godly travaileth to establish such an order in matters of religion as neither declining on the right hand or on the left hand, God’s glory might be advanced, the temerity of such as would either obscure or refuse the truth of his Word refrained, stayed, and in cases of obstinacy duly corrected and punished; so it is that the Lord Privy Seal, to whom the King’s Majesty hath been so special good and gracious a lord, hath, only out of his sensual appetite, wrought clean contrary to his Grace’s intent, secretly and indirectly advancing the one of the extremes, and leaving the mean, indifferent, true, and virtuous way which his Majesty so entirely desired, but also hath shewed himself so fervently bent to the maintenance of that his outrage, that he hath not spared most privily, most traitorously to devise how to continue the same, and in plain terms to say,” &c. Then follow the words in the text.—Ibid.

[580] Hall, p. 838.

[581] “He is committed to the Tower of London, there to remain till it shall please his Majesty to have him tried according to the order of his laws.” State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 350.

[582] Act of Attainder of Thomas Lord Cromwell, 32 Henry VIII. The act is not printed in the Statute Book, but it is in very good condition on the parliament roll. Burnet has placed it among his Collectanea.

[583] Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 500.

[584] “Most Gracious Lord, I never spoke with the chancellor of the augmentation and Throgmorton together at one time. But if I did, I am sure I never spake of any such matter, and your Grace knows what manner of man Throgmorton has ever been towards your Grace’s proceedings.”—Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 500.

[585] Cranmer to the King: a fragment printed by Lord Herbert.

[586] “The said Privy Seal’s intent was to have married my Lady Mary, and the French king and the Cardinal du Bellay had much debated the same matter, reckoning at length by the great favour your Majesty did bear to him he should be made some earl or duke, and therefore presumed your Majesty would give to him in marriage the said Lady Mary your daughter, as beforetime you had done the French queen unto my Lord of Suffolk. These things they gathered of such hints as they had heard of the Privy Seal, before knowing him to be fine witted, in so much as at all times when any marriage was treated of for my said Lady Mary, he did always his best to break the same.”—State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 379, and see p. 362.

[587] State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 362.

[588] Pate to the Duke of Norfolk: Ibid. p. 355.

[589] Richard Pate, a priest of high Anglican views, and now minister at the Imperial court, supplied the Emperor’s silence by his own enthusiasm. He wrote to Henry an ecstatic letter on the “fall of that wicked man who, by his false doctrines and like disciples, so disturbed his Grace’s subjects, that the age was in manner brought to desperation, perceiving a new tradition taught.” “What blindness,” he exclaimed, “what ingratitude is this of this traitor’s, far passing Lucifer’s, that, endeavouring to pluck the sword out of his sovereign’s hand, hath deserved to feel the power of the same. But lauded be our Lord God that hath delivered your Grace out of the bear’s claws, as not long before of a semblable danger of the lioness!”—Pate to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 364.

[590] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 7; Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. Session June 22.

[591] 32 Henry VIII. cap. 15; Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. July 1.

[592] Communi omnium procerum consensu nemine discrepante.

[593] “Excepted alway all and all manner of heresies and erroneous opinions touching or concerning, plainly, directly, and only the most holy and blessed sacrament of the altar; and these heresies and erroneous opinions hereafter ensuing: that infants ought not to be baptized, and if they be baptized, they ought to be rebaptized when they come to lawful age; that it is not lawful for a Christian man to bear office or rule in the commonwealth; that no man’s laws ought to be obeyed; that it is not lawful for a Christian man to take an oath before any judge; that Christ took no bodily substance of our blessed Lady; that sinners, after baptism, cannot be restored by repentance; that every manner of death, with the time and hour thereof, is so certainly prescribed, appointed, and determined to every man of God, that neither any prince by his sword can alter it, nor any man by his own wilfulness prevent or change it; that all things be common and nothing several.”—32 Henry VIII. cap. 49.

[594] Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. July 6.

[595] “Upon Tuesday, the sixth of this month, our nobles and commons made suit and request unto us to commit the examination of the justness of our matrimony to the clergy; upon which request made we sent incontinently our councillors the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the Bishop of Winchester, &c., advertising the queen what request was made, and in what sort, and thereupon to know what answer she would make unto the same. Whereunto, after divers conferences at good length, and the matter by her thoroughly perceived and considered, she answered plainly and frankly that she was contented that the discussion of the matter should be committed to the clergy as unto judges competent in that behalf.”—State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 404; and see Anne of Cleves to the King; Ibid. Vol. I. p. 637.

[596] Luculentâ Oratione: Strype’s Memorials, Vol. I. p. 553.

[597] “Inspectâ hujus negotii veritate ac solum Deum præ oculis habentes, quod verum, quod honestum, quod sanctum est, id nobis, de communi consilio scripto authentico renuncietis et de communi consensu licere diffiniatis. Nempe hoc unum a vobis nostro jure postulamus ut tanquam fida et proba ecclesiæ membra causæ huic ecclesiasticæ quæ maxima est in justitiâ et veritate adesse velitis.”—State Papers, Vol. I. p. 630.

[598] MS. Cotton. Otho, X. 240.

[599] State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 404.

[600] “Tum vero quid ecclesia in ejusmodi casibus et possit facere et sæpenumero ante hac fecerit perpendentes.”—Judgment of the Convocation: State Papers, Vol. I. p. 632.

[601] Ibid. p. 633.

[602] “Heretofore divers and many persons, after long continuance together in matrimony, and fruit of children having ensued of the same, have nevertheless, by an unjust law of the Bishop of Rome (which is upon pretence of a former contract made and not consummate by carnal copulation, for proof whereof two witnesses by that law were only required), been divorced and separate contrary to God’s law, and so the true matrimonies solemnized in the face of the Church and confirmed by fruit of children, have been clearly frustrate and dissolved. Further, also, by reason of other prohibitions than God’s law admitteth, for their lucre by that court invented, the dispensation whereof they always reserved to themselves, as in kindred or affinity between cousin germains, and so to the fourth and fifth degree, and all because they would get money by it, and keep a reputation to their usurped jurisdiction, not only much discord between lawful married persons hath, contrary to God’s ordinances, arisen, much debate and suit at the law, with the wrongful vexation and great danger of the innocent party hath been procured, and many just marriages brought in doubt and danger of undoing, and also many times undone: marriages have been brought into such uncertainty, that no marriage could be so surely knit and bounden but it should lie in either of the parties’ power and arbitre, casting away the fear of God, by means and compasses to prove a pre-contract, a kindred, an alliance, or a carnal knowledge, to defeat the same, and so, under the pretence of these allegations afore rehearsed, to live all the days of their lives in detestable adultery, to the utter destruction of their own souls and the provocation of the terrible wrath of God upon the places where such abominations were suffered and used.”—32 Henry VIII. cap. 38.

[603] The Protestant refugees became at once as passionate, as clamorous, and as careless in their statements as the Catholics.—See especially a letter of Richard Hilles to Bullinger (Original Letters, 196): to which Burnet has given a kind of sanction by a quotation. This letter contains about as trustworthy an account of the state of London as a letter of a French or Austrian exile in England or America would contain at present of the Courts of Paris or Vienna.

[604] Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII.

[605] See State Papers, Vol. I. p. 637 and Vol. VIII. p. 403, &c.

[606] State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 407.

[607] Ibid., 408.

[608] Ibid., 410.

[609] The bishop, nevertheless, was not satisfied that it would be refused, if it could be had. He thought, evidently, that Henry would act prudently by being liberal in the matter. Speaking of the miscontentment which had been shown, he added: “For any overture that yet hath been opened you may do your pleasure. How be it, in case of their suit unto your Majesty, if the duke shall be content by his express consent to approve your proceeding, specially the said decree of your clergy, whereby all things may be here ended and brought to silence, and the lady there remaining still, this duke, without kindling any further fire, made your Majesty’s assured friend with a demonstration thereof to the world, and that with so small a sum of money to be given unto him (sub colore restitutionis pecuniæ pro oneribus et dote licet vere nulla interesset), or under some other good colour.... God forbid your Majesty should much stick thereat.”—Bishop of Bath to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 425.