History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. III

“God save the King.⁴¹¹

“December 16, 1538.”

Testimony of the event to the wisdom of the executions.

Treason has bled to death.

Executions for high treason bear necessarily a character of cruelty, when the peril which the conspiracies create has passed away. In the sense of our own security we lose the power of understanding the magnitude or even the meaning of the danger. But that there had been no unnecessary alarm, that these noblemen were in no sense victims of tyranny, but had been cut off by a compelled severity, may be seen in the consequence of their deaths. Unjust sentences provoke indignation. Indignation in stormy times finds the means, sooner or later, of shaping itself into punishment. But the undercurrent of disaffection, which for ten years had penetrated through English life, was now exhausted, and gradually ceased to flow. The enemy had been held down; it acknowledged its master; and, with the exception of one unimportant commotion in Yorkshire, no symptom of this particular form of peril was again visible, until the king had received notice of departure, in his last illness, and the prospect of his death warmed the hopes of confusion into life again. The prompt extinction of domestic treason, in all likelihood, was the cause which really saved the country from a visit from the Emperor. “Laud be to God,” said an Englishman, “we are all now united and knit with a firm love in our hearts towards our prince. Ye never read nor heard that ever England was overcome by outward realms, nor dare any outward prince enterprize to come hither, except they should trust of help within the realm, which I trust in God none such shall ever be found.”⁴¹² The speaker expressed the exact truth; and no one was more keenly aware of it than Charles V.

Henry, on the pacification of Nice, makes advances to the Lutherans.

Lutheran divines are sent to England for a conference with the bishops.

The Landgrave of Hesse warns Henry to repress the Anabaptists.

We must once more go back over our steps. The Emperor being on good terms with France, England, obedient to the necessity of its position, again held out its hand to Germany. No sooner had the pacification of Nice been completed, and Henry had found that he was not, after all, to be admitted as a party contrahent, than, without quarrelling with Charles, he turned his position by immediate advances to the Smalcaldic League. In the summer of 1538 Lutheran divines were invited to England to discuss the terms of their confession with the bishops; and though unsuccessful in the immediate object of finding terms of communion, they did not return without having established, as it seemed, a generally cordial relationship with the English Reformers. Purgatory, episcopal ordination, the marriage of the clergy, were the comparatively unimportant points of difference. On the vital doctrine of the real presence the Lutherans were as jealously sensitive as the vast majority of the English; and on the points on which they continued orthodox the Reformers, German and English, united in a bigotry almost equal to that of Rome. On the departure of the theological embassy, the Landgrave of Hesse took the opportunity of addressing a letter of warning to Henry on the progress of heresy in England, and expressing his anxiety that the king should not forget his duty in repressing and extirpating so dangerous a disorder.⁴¹³

England accused of a leaning towards heresy.

November. The Anglican Reformers think it necessary to make a demonstration of orthodoxy.

John Lambert is accused of denying the real presence.

He is condemned by the bishops, and appeals to the king.

His advice found Cranmer and Cromwell as anxious as himself. The Catholics at home and abroad persisted more and more loudly in identifying a separation from Rome with heresy. The presence of these very Germans had given opportunity, however absurdly, for scandal; and, taken in connexion with the destruction of the shrines, was made a pretext for charging the king with a leaning towards doctrines with which he was most anxious to disavow a connexion.⁴¹⁴ The political clouds which were gathering abroad, added equally to the anxiety, both of the king and his ministers, to stand clear in this matter; and as Cromwell had recommended, after the Pilgrimage of Grace, that the Articles of Unity should be enforced against some offender or offenders in a signal manner – so, to give force to his principles, which had been faintly acted upon, either he, or the party to which he belonged, now chose out for prosecution a conspicuous member of the Christian brotherhood, John Lambert, who was marked with the dreadful reputation of a sacramentary. Dr. Barnes volunteered as the accuser. Barnes, it will be remembered, had been himself imprisoned for heresy, and had done penance in St. Paul’s. He was a noisy, vain man, Lutheran in his views, and notorious for his hatred of more advanced Protestants. Tyndal had warned the brethren against him several years previously; but his German sympathies had recommended him to the vicegerent; he had been employed on foreign missions, and was for the time undergoing the temptation of a brief prosperity. Lambert, the intended victim, had been a friend at Cambridge of Bilney the martyr; a companion at Antwerp of Tyndal and Frith; and had perhaps taken a share in the translation of the Bible. Subsequently, he had been in trouble for suspicion of heresy; he had been under examination before Warham, and afterwards Sir Thomas More; and having been left in prison by the latter, he had been set at liberty by Cranmer. He was now arrested on the charge preferred by Dr. Barnes, of having denied the real presence, contrary to the Articles of Faith. He was tried in the archbishop’s court; and, being condemned, he appealed to the king.

Henry decided that he would hear the cause in person. A few years before, a sacramentary was despatched with the same swift indifference as an ordinary felon: a few years later, a sacramentary had ceased to be a criminal. In the interval, the proportions of the crime had so dilated in apparent magnitude, that a trial for it was a national event – an affair of vast public moment.

November 16.

On the 16th of November, while London was ringing with the arrest of the Marquis of Exeter, the court was opened in Westminster Hall. In the grey twilight of the late dawn, the whole peerage of England, lay and spiritual, took their seats, to the right and left of the throne. The twelve judges placed themselves on raised benches at the back. The prisoner was brought in; and soon after the king entered, “clothed all in white,” with the yeomen of the guard.

The appeal is heard by Henry in Westminster Hall.

The Bishop of Carlisle rose first to open the case. The king, he said, had put down the usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, but it was not to be thought, therefore, that he intended to give license to heresy. They were not met, at present, to discuss doctrines, but to try a person accused of a crime, by the laws of the Church and of the country.

Lambert was then ordered to stand forward.

“What is your name?” the king asked. “My name is Nicholson,” he said, “though I be called Lambert.” “What!” the king said, “have you two names? I would not trust you, having two names, though you were my brother.”

The persecutions of the bishops, Lambert answered, had obliged him to disguise himself; but now God had inspired the king’s mind, enduing him with wisdom and understanding to stay their cruelty.

“I come not here,” said Henry, “to hear mine own praises painted out in my presence. Go to the matter without more circumstance. Answer as touching the sacrament of the altar, is it the body of Christ or no?”

“I answer with St. Augustine,” the prisoner said; “it is the body of Christ after a certain manner.”

“Answer me not out of St. Augustine,” said the king; “tell me plainly whether it be He.”

“Then I say it is not,” was the answer.

“Mark well,” the king replied, “you are condemned by Christ’s own words – ‘Hoc est corpus meum.’” He turned to Cranmer, and told him to convince the prisoner of his error.

The bishops’ arguments fail.

The argument began in the morning. First Cranmer, and after him nine other bishops laboured out their learned reasons – reasons which, for fifteen hundred years, had satisfied the whole Christian world, yet had suddenly ceased to be of cogency. The torches were lighted before the last prelate had ceased to speak. Then once more the king asked Lambert for his opinion. “After all these labours taken with you, are you yet satisfied?” he said. “Choose, will you live or will you die!”

“I submit myself to the will of your Majesty,” Lambert said.

“Commit your soul to God,” replied Henry, “not to me.”

“I commit my soul to God,” he said, “and my body to your clemency.”

The appeal is rejected,

“Then you must die,” the king said. “I will be no patron of heretics.”

It was over. The appeal was rejected. Cromwell read the sentence. Four days’ interval was allowed before the execution. In a country which was governed by law, not by the special will of a despot, the supreme magistrate was neither able, nor desired, so long as a law remained unrepealed by parliament, to suspend the action of it.

And Lambert dies at the stake.

The morning on which Lambert suffered he was taken to Cromwell’s house, where he breakfasted simply in the hall; and afterwards he died at Smithfield, crying with his last breath, “None but Christ – none but Christ.”⁴¹⁵ Foxe relates, as a rumour, that Cromwell, before Lambert suffered, begged his forgiveness. A more accurate account of Cromwell’s feelings is furnished by himself in a letter written a few days later to Sir Thomas Wyatt: —

Nov. 28. Cromwell’s opinion of the sentence.

“The sixteenth of this present month, the King’s Majesty, for the reverence of the holy sacrament of the altar, did sit openly in his hall, and there presided at the disputation, process, and judgment of a miserable heretic sacramentary, who was burnt the twentieth of the same month. It was a wonder to see how princely, with how excellent gravity, and inestimable majesty, his Majesty exercised the very office of a superior head of his Church of England; how benignly his Grace essayed to convert the miserable man; how strong and manifest reason his Highness alleged against him. I wished the princes of Christendom to have seen it; undoubtedly they should have much marvelled at his Majesty’s most high wisdom and judgment, and reputed him none otherwise after the same than in manner the mirrour and light of all other kings and princes in Christendom. The same was done openly, with great solemnity.”⁴¹⁶

Intentions of the Emperor against England.

The circumstances which accompanied Pole’s mission into Spain, and those which occasioned the catastrophe of the marriage treaties, can now be understood. The whole secret of the Emperor’s intentions it is not easy, perhaps it is not necessary, to comprehend; but, as it was not till late in the spring that the threatening symptoms finally cleared, so it is impossible to doubt that an enterprise against England was seriously meditated, and was relinquished only when the paralysis of the domestic factions who were to have risen in its support could no longer be mistaken.

Sir Thomas Wyatt protests against the reception of Reginald Pole in Spain; but the Emperor will not refuse to see him.

The French ambassador as well as the Spanish leaves England.

The official language of the Spanish court through the winter “had waxed from colder to coldest.”⁴¹⁷ On Pole’s arrival in the Peninsula, Sir Thomas Wyatt, by the king’s instructions, protested against his reception. The Emperor, who in 1537 had forbidden his entrance into his dominions when on a similar errand, replied now that, “if he was his own traitor, he could not refuse him audience, coming as a legate from the Holy Father.” The next step was the arrest of the English ships in Flanders, and the recall of the Spanish ambassador; and meanwhile a mysterious fleet was collected at Antwerp and in other ports, every one asking with what object, and no one being able to answer, unless it were for a descent on Ireland or England.⁴¹⁸ Mendoza’s departure from London was followed immediately after by the withdrawal of M. de Chatillon, the ambassador of France. “It is in every man’s mouth,” reported Wriothesley, “that we shall have war. It has been told me that the commission that was sent hither for our matters⁴¹⁹ was dispatched only to keep us in hopes, and to the intent that we might be taken tardy and without provision.”⁴²⁰

Wriothesley demands an explanation of the arrest of the ships.

He can obtain no redress, and threatens reprisals.

Wriothesley’s duty required him to learn the meaning of the arrests. The ministers at Brussels affected to say that the Emperor required sailors for his fleet, and, until it had sailed on its mysterious errand, no other vessels could leave the harbours. The ambassador refused to accept a reply so insolent and unsatisfactory; he insisted on an interview with the regent herself, and pointing to the clause in the commercial treaty between England and Flanders, which stipulated, on behalf of the ships of both nations, for free egress and ingress, he required an explanation of the infringement. “You give us fair words,” he said to her, “but your deeds being contrary, the King’s Majesty my master shall join words and deeds together, and see that all is but finesse. If you had declared open war, by the law of nations merchant ships should have six weeks allowed them to depart;” while peace remained, they might not be detained a day. The queen regent, like her council, gave an evasive answer. The Emperor must be served, she said; the fleet would soon sail, and the ships would be free. She tried to leave him; his anxiety got the better of his courtesy; he placed himself between her and the door, and entreated some better explanation. But he could obtain nothing, She insisted on passing, and he found himself referred back to the council. Here he was informed that she could not act otherwise; she was obeying absolute orders from the Emperor. Wriothesley warned them that the king would not bear it, that he would make reprisals, and “then should begin a broiling.” It was no matter; they seemed indifferent.

Rumours in Flanders of the intended invasion of England,

Which may be ill-founded, but it will be well to be prepared.

From their manner Wriothesley did not believe that they would begin a war; yet he could feel no security. “I have heard,” he wrote to Cromwell, “that the French king, the Bishop of Rome, and the King of Scots be in league to invade us this summer: and how the Emperor will send to their aid certain Spaniards which shall arrive in Scotland; which Spaniards shall, as it were in fury, upon the arrival in Spain of the ships here prepared, enter the same, half against the Emperor’s will, with the oath never to return till they shall revenge the matter of the dowager.” “This,” he added, “I take for no gospel, howbeit our master is daily slandered and villanously spoken against. It is possible that all shall be well; but in the mean season, I pray to God to put in the King’s Majesty’s mind rather to spend twenty thousand pounds in vain, to be in perfect readiness, than to wish it had so been done if any malicious person would attempt any thing. Weapons biddeth peace; and good preparation maketh men to look or they leap. The Emperor hath made great provision. It may yet be that he will do somewhat against the Turks; but as many think nay, as otherwise. But he maketh not his preparation in vain. England is made but a morsel among these choppers. They would have the Duke of Orleans a king;⁴²¹ and the Duke of Guise, they say, will visit his daughter in Scotland. It is not unlike that somewhat may be attempted; which, nevertheless, may be defeated. God hath taken the King’s Majesty into his own tuition.”⁴²²

Large fleet in preparation at Antwerp.

Warning advices from Spain.

Each day the news from Flanders become more alarming. The wharves at Antwerp were covered with ammunition and military stores. Contributions had been levied on the clergy, who had been taught to believe that the money was to be spent in the Pope’s quarrel against the King of England. On the 24th of March two hundred and seventy sail were reported as ready for sea; and the general belief was that, if no attack were ventured, the preparations to meet it, which Henry was known to have made, would be the sole cause of the hesitation.⁴²³ Information of a precisely similar kind was furnished from Spain. The agent of a London house wrote to his master: “You shall understand that, four days past, we had news how the Bishop of Rome had sent a post to the Emperor, which came in seven days from Rome, and brought letters requiring and desiring his Majesty, jointly with the French king and the King of Scots, to give war against the king our sovereign lord; and all his subjects to be heretics and schismatics, and wherever they could win and take any of our nation by land or sea, to take us for Jews or infidels, and to use our persons as slaves. We have hope that in this the Emperor will not grant the request of his Holiness, being so much against charity, notwithstanding that divers our friends in this country give us secret monition to put good order for the safeguard of our goods; and they think, verily, the Emperor will have war with the king our master this March next, and that the army of men and ships in Flanders shall go against England.”⁴²⁴

March. Danger of a surprise.

The king goes down to the coast of Kent to survey the fortifications.

Instructions to Cromwell to place the citizens of London under arms.

The thing to be feared, if there was cause for fear, was a sudden treacherous surprise. The point of attack would probably be the open coast of Kent. An army would be landed on the beach somewhere between Sandwich and Dover, and would march on London. Leaving Cromwell to see to the defence of the metropolis, Henry went down in person to examine his new fortresses, and to speak a few words of encouragement to the garrisons. The merchant-ships in the Thames were taken up by the government and armed. Lord Southampton took command of the fleet at Portsmouth; Lord Russell was sent into the west; Lord Surrey into Norfolk. The beacons were fresh trimmed; the musters through the country were ordered to be in readiness. Sir Ralph Sadler, the king’s private secretary, sent from Dover to desire Cromwell to lose no time in setting London in order. “Use your diligence,” he wrote, “for his Grace saith that diligence passe sense; willing me to write that French proverb unto your lordship, the rather to quicken you in that behalf. Surely his Majesty mindeth nothing more than, like a courageous prince of valiant heart, to prepare and be in readiness, in all events, to encounter the malice of his enemies; in which part, no doubt, Almighty God will be his helper, and all good subjects will employ themselves to the uttermost, both lives and goods, to serve his Highness truly… All that will the contrary, God send them ill-hap and short life.”⁴²⁵

Sir Thomas Cheyne in command at Dover.

Light English vessels watch the Flanders harbours.

The inspection proving satisfactory, Sir Thomas Cheyne was left at Dover Castle, with command of the coast from the mouth of the Thames westward. We catch sight through March and April of soldiers gathering and moving. Look-out vessels hung about the Channel, watching the Flanders ports. One morning when the darkness lifted, sixty strange sail were found at anchor in the Downs;⁴²⁶ and swiftly two thousand men were in arms upon the sand-flats towards Deal. Cheyne never took off his clothes for a fortnight. Strong easterly gales were blowing, which would bring the fleet across in a few hours. “Mr. Fletcher of Rye,” in a boat of his own construction, “which he said had no fellow in England,” beat up in the wind’s eye to Dover, “of his own mind, to serve the King’s Majesty.” At daybreak he would be off Gravelines, on the look-out; at noon he would be in the new harbour, with reports to the English commander. Day after day the huge armada lay motionless. At length sure word was brought that an order had been sent out for every captain, horseman, and footman to be on board on the last of March.⁴²⁷ In a few days the truth, whatever it was, would be known. The easterly winds were the chief cause of anxiety. If England was their object, they would come so quickly, Cheyne said, that although watch was kept night and day all along the coast, yet, “if evil were, the best would be a short warning for any number of men to repulse them at their landing.” However, his information led him to think the venture would not be made.

April. The Flanders fleet is broken up.

He was right. A few days later the look-out boats brought the welcome news that the fleet had broken up. Part withdrew to the ports of Zealand, where the stores and cannon were relanded, and the vessels dismasted. Part were seen bearing down Channel before the wind, bound for Spain and the Mediterranean; and Cromwell, who had had an ague fit from anxiety, informed the king on the 19th of April that he had received private letters from Antwerp, telling him that the enterprise had been relinquished from the uncertainty which appeared of success.⁴²⁸

The Emperor has relinquished the enterprise from a due sense of Henry’s strength.

When Germany is composed he will engage to undertake it once more.

Despondency of Reginald Pole.

Such, in fact, was the truth. The Emperor, longing, and yet fearing to invade, and prepared to make the attempt if he could be satisfied of a promising insurrection in his support, saw in the swift and easy extinction of the Marquis of Exeter’s conspiracy an evidence of Henry’s strength which Pole’s eloquence could not gainsay. He had waited, uncertain perhaps, till time had proved the consequences of the execution; and when he found that the country was in arms, but only to oppose the invaders whom the English legate had promised it would welcome as deliverers, he was too wise to risk an overthrow which would have broken his power in Germany, and ensured the enduring enmity of England. The time, he told the Pope, did not serve; and to a second more anxious message he replied that he could not afford to quarrel with Henry till Germany was in better order. The King of France might act as he pleased. He would not interfere with him. For himself, when the German difficulty was once settled, he would then take up arms and avenge the Pope’s injuries and his own.⁴²⁹ Once more Pole had failed. He has been accused of personal ambition; but the foolish expectations of his admirers in Europe have been perhaps mistaken for his own.⁴³⁰ His worst crime was his vanity; his worst misfortune was his talent – a talent for discovering specious reasons for choosing the wrong side. The deliberate frenzy of his conduct shows the working of a mind not wholly master of itself; or, if we leave him the responsibility of his crimes, he may be allowed the imperfect pity which attaches to failure. The results of his labours to destroy the Reformation had, so far, been to bring his best friends and Lord Montague to the scaffold. His mother, entangled in his guilt, lay open to the same fate. His younger brother was a perjured traitor and a fratricide. In bitter misery he now shrank into the monastery of Carpentras, where, if he might be allowed, he wrote to Contarini, that he would hide his face for ever in mourning and prayer. Often, he said, he had heard the King of England speak of his mother as the most saintly woman in Christendom. First priests, then nobles, and now, as it seemed, women were to follow. Had the faith of Christ, from the beginning, ever known so deadly an enemy?

He went on to bewail the irresolution of Charles: —

He had supposed the Emperor to have been the chosen instrument to punish Henry.

He is now alarmed for the Emperor himself.

“Surely,” he exclaimed, “if the Emperor had pronounced against the tyrant, this worse antagonist of God than the Turk, he would have found God more favourable to him in the defence of his own empire. I the more dread some judgment upon Cæsar, for that I thought him chosen as a special instrument to do God’s work in this matter. God, as we see in the Scriptures, was wont to stir up adversaries against those whom he desired to punish; and when I saw that enemy of all good in his decline into impiety commencing with an attack on Cæsar’s honour and Cæsar’s family, what could I think but that, as Cæsar’s piety was known to all men, so God was in this manner influencing him to avenge the Church’s wrongs with his own? Now we must fear for Cæsar himself. Other princes are ready in God’s cause. He in whom all our hopes were centered is not ready. I have no consolation, save it be my faith in God and in Providence. To Him who alone can save let us offer our prayers, and await his will in patience.”⁴³¹

May 8. The London train bands reviewed by the king.

A gleam of pageantry shoots suddenly across the sky. Pole delighted to picture his countrymen to himself cowering in terror before a cruel tyrant, mourning their ruined faith and murdered nobility. The impression was known to have contributed so largely to the hopes of the Catholics abroad, that the opportunity was taken to display publicly the real disposition of the nation. All England had been under arms in expectation of invasion; before the martial humour died away, the delight of the English in splendid shows was indulged with a military spectacle. On the 8th of May a review was held of the musters of the city of London.

“The King’s Grace,” says a contemporary record, “who never ceased to take pains for the advancement of the commonwealth, was informed by his trusty friends how that the cankered and venomous serpent Paul, Bishop of Rome, and the arch-traitor Reginald Pole, had moved and stirred the potentates of Christendom to invade the realm of England with mortal war, and extermine and destroy the whole nation with fire and sword.”

The king, therefore, in his own person, “had taken painful and laborious journeys towards the sea coast,” to prevent the invasion of his enemies; he had fortified all the coasts both of England and Wales; he had “set his navy in readiness at Portsmouth,” “in all things furnished for the wars.” The people had been called under arms, and the “harness viewed,” in all counties in the realm; and the Lord Mayor of London was instructed by the Lord Thomas Cromwell that the King’s Majesty “of his most gentle nature” would take the pains to see “his loving and benevolent subjects muster in order before his Excellent Highness.”

The mayor and his brethren “determined, after long consultation,” “that no alien, though he were a denizen, should muster,” but only native-born English; and “for especial considerations, they thought it not convenient” that all their able-bodied men should be absent from the City at once. They would have but a picked number; “such as were able persons, and had white harness and white coats, bows, arrows, bills, or poleaxes, and none other except such as bare morris pikes or handguns;” the whole to be “in white hosen and cleanly shod.”

“And when it was known,” says the record, “that the king himself would see the muster, to see how gladly every man prepared him, what desire every man had to do his prince service, it was a joyful sight to behold of every Englishman.”

White was the City uniform. The lord mayor and the aldermen rode in white armour, with light coats of black velvet, and the arms of London embroidered on them. Massive gold chains hung on their breasts. Their caps were of velvet with plumes; and steel battle-axes were slung at their side. Every alderman was attended by a body-guard, in white silk, with gilded halberds. The richer citizens were in white silk also, “with broaches and owches,” and “breast-plates studded with silver.” The remainder had white coats of cotton, worked into a uniform, with the City arms, white shoes, and long woven, closely-fitting hose; “every man with a sword and dagger,” besides his special arms. The whole number to be reviewed were fifteen thousand men, divided into battles or battalions of five thousand each. The aldermen were at the head each of his ward. The wards were in companies of archers, pikemen, musketeers, and artillery. A preliminary review was held on the evening of the 7th of May. The next morning, before six o’clock, “all the fields from Whitechapel to Mile-end, from Bethnal-green to Radcliffe and Stepney, were covered with men in bright harness, with glistening weapons.” “The battle of pikes, when they stood still, seemed a great wood.”

At eight o’clock the advance began to move, each division being attended by a hundred and twenty outriders, to keep stragglers into line. First came thirteen fieldpieces, “with powder and stones in carts,” followed by the banners of the City, the musketeers, “five in a rank, every rank five foot from another, and every shoulder even with his fellows; “and next them the archers, five in a rank also, “and between every man his bow’s length.”

After the archers came “the pikemen,” and then “the billmen”; the five companies with their officers on horseback, their colours, and their separate bands.

The other divisions were preceded by an equal number of cannon. At the rear of the second, the banner of St. George was carried, and the banner of the Prince of Wales. Behind these, “at a convenient distance,” the sword-bearer of London, in white damask, “upon a goodly horse, freshly trapped,” with the sword of the City, “the scabbard whereof was set full of orient pearl.” Here, too, came the splendid cavalcade of Sir William Foreman, the lord mayor, with himself in person, – a blaze of white silk, white satin, gold, crimson, and waving plumes, – the choice company of the City; the retinue being composed, for their especial worth and approved valour, of the attorneys, the barristers, their clerks, and the clerks of the courts of law, with white silk over their armour, and chains, and clasps.