The History of England, Volume III Henry VIII Farther progress of the reformation
by David Hume
The ambiguity of the king’s conduct, though it kept the courtiers in awe, served in the main, to encourage the protestant doctrine among his subjects, and promoted that spirit of innovation, with which the age was generally seized, and which nothing but an entire uniformity, as well as a steady severity in the administration, could be able to repress. There were some Englishmen, Tindal, Joye, Constantine, and others, who, dreading the exertion of the king’s authority, had fled to Antwerp;h where the great privileges possessed by the Low Country provinces, served, during some time, to give them protection. These men employed themselves in writing English books, against the corruptions of the church of Rome; against images, reliques, pilgrimages; and they excited the curiosity of men with regard to that question, the most important in theology, the terms of acceptance with the Supreme Being. In conformity to the Lutherans and other protestants, they asserted, that salvation was obtained by faith alone; and that the most infallible road to perditioni was a reliance on good works; by which terms they understood, as well the moral duties, as the ceremonial and monastic observances. The defenders of the ancient religion, on the other hand, maintained the efficacy of good works; but though they did not exclude from this appellation the social virtues, it was still the superstitions, gainful to the church, which they chiefly extolled and recommended. The books, composed by these fugitives, having stolen over to England, began to make converts every where; but it was a translation of the scriptures by Tindal, that was esteemed the most dangerous to the established faith. The first edition of this work, composed with little accuracy, was found liable to considerable objections; and Tindal, who was poor, and could not afford to lose a great part of the impression, was longing for an opportunity of correcting his errors, of which he had been made sensible. Tonstal, then bishop of London, soon after of Durham, a man of great moderation, being desirous to discourage, in the gentlest manner, these innovations, gave private orders for buying up all the copies, that could be found at Antwerp; and he burned them publicly in Cheapside. By this measure, he supplied Tindal with money, enabled him to print a new and correct edition of his work, and gave great scandal to the people, in thus committing to the flames the word of God.k
[Sir Thomas More] The disciples of the reformation met with little severity during the ministry of Wolsey, who, though himself a clergyman, bore too small a regard to the ecclesiastical order, to serve as an instrument of their tyranny: It was even an article of impeachment against him,l that by his connivance he had encouraged the growth of heresy, and that he had protected and acquitted some notorious offenders. Sir Thomas More, who succeeded Wolsey as Chancellor, is at once an object deserving our compassion, and an instance of the usual progress of men’s sentiments during that age. This man, whose elegant genius and familiar acquaintance with the noble spirit of antiquity, had given him very enlarged sentiments, and who had in his early years advanced principles, which even at present would be deemed somewhat too free, had, in the course of events, been so irritated by polemics, and thrown into such a superstitious attachment to the ancient faith, that few inquisitors have been guilty of greater violence in their prosecution of heresy. Though adorned with the gentlest manners, as well as the purest integrity, he carried to the utmost height his aversion to heterodoxy; and James Bainham, in particular, a gentleman of the Temple, experienced from him the greatest severity. Bainham, accused of favouring the new opinions, was carried to More’s house; and having refused to discover his accomplices, the chancellor ordered him to be whipped in his presence, and afterwards sent him to the Tower, where he himself saw him put to the torture. The unhappy gentleman, overcome by all these severities, abjured his opinions; but feeling afterwards the deepest compunction for his apostacy, he openly returned to his former tenets, and even courted the crown of martyrdom. He was condemned as an obstinate and relapsed heretic, and was burned in Smithfield.m
Many were brought into the bishops’ courts for offences, which appear trivial, but which were regarded as symbols of the party: Some for teaching their children the Lord’s prayer in English; others for reading the new testament in that language, or for speaking against pilgrimages. To harbour the persecuted preachers, to neglect the fasts of the church, to declaim against the vices of the clergy, were capital offences. One Thomas Bilney, a priest, who had embraced the new doctrine, had been terrified into an abjuration; but was so haunted by remorse, that his friends dreaded some fatal effects of his despair. At last, his mind seemed to be more relieved: but this appearing calm proceeded only from the resolution, which he had taken, of expiating his past offence, by an open confession of the truth, and by dying a martyr to it. He went through Norfolk, teaching the people to beware of idolatry, and of trusting for their salvation either to pilgrimages or to the cowle of St. Francis, to the prayers of the saints, or to images. He was soon seized, tried in the bishop’s court, and condemned as a relapsed heretic; and the writ was sent down to burn him. When brought to the stake, he discovered such patience, fortitude, and devotion, that the spectators were much affected with the horrors of his punishment; and some mendicant friars, who were present, fearing that his martyrdom would be imputed to them, and make them lose those alms, which they received from the charity of the people, desired him publicly to acquit themn of having any hand in his death. He willingly complied; and by this meekness gained the more on the sympathy of the people. Another person, still more heroic, being brought to the stake for denying the real presence, seemed almost in a transport of joy; and he tenderly embraced the faggots, which were to be the instruments of his punishment, as the means of procuring him eternal rest. In short, the tide turning towards the new doctrine, those severe executions, which, in another disposition of men’s minds, would have sufficed to suppress it, now served only to diffuse it the more among the people, and to inspire them with horror against the unrelenting persecutors.
But though Henry neglected not to punish the protestant doctrine, which he deemed heresy, his most formidable enemies, he knew, were the zealous adherents to the ancient religion, chiefly the monks, who, having their immediate dependance on the Roman pontiff, apprehended their own ruin to be the certain consequence of abolishing his authority in England. Peyto, a friar, preaching before the king, had the assurance to tell him, “That many lying prophets had deceived him, but he as a true Micajah, warned him, that the dogs would lick his blood, as they had done Ahab’s.”o The king took no notice of the insult; but allowed the preacher to depart in peace. Next Sunday he employed Dr. Corren to preach before him; who justified the king’s proceedings, and gave Peyto the appellations of a rebel, a slanderer, a dog, and a traitor. Elston, another friar of the same house, interrupted the preacher, and told him, that he was one of the lying prophets, who sought to establish by adultery the succession of the crown; but that he himself would justify all that Peyto had said. Henry silenced the petulant friar; but showed no other mark of resentment than ordering Peyto and him to be summoned before the council, and to be rebuked for their offence.p He even here bore patiently some new instances of their obstinacy and arrogance: When the earl of Essex, a privy counsellor, told them, that they deserved for their offence to be thrown into the Thames; Elston replied, that the road to heaven lay as near by water as by land.q
[The maid of Kent] But several monks were detected in a conspiracy, which, as it might have proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington in Kent, commonly called the holy Maid of Kent, had been subject to hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time, had soon after entirely escaped her memory. The silly people in the neighbourhood were struck with these appearances, which they imagined to be supernatural; and Richard Masters, vicar of the parish, a designing fellow, founded on them a project, from which he hoped to acquire both profit and consideration. He went to Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, then alive; and having given him an account of Elizabeth’s revelations, he so far wrought on that prudent, but superstitious prelate, as to receive orders from him to watch her in her trances, and carefully to note down all her future sayings. The regard, paid her by a person of so high a rank, soon rendered her still more the object of attention to the neighbourhood; and it was easy for Masters to persuade them, as well as the maid herself, that her ravings were inspirations of the Holy Ghost. Knavery, as is usual, soon after succeeding to delusion, she learned to counterfeit trances; and she then uttered, in an extraordinary tone, such speeches as were dictated to her by her spiritual director. Masters associated with him Dr. Bocking, a canon of Canterbury; and their design was to raise the credit of an image of the virgin, which stood in a chapel belonging to Masters, and to draw to it such pilgrimages as usually frequented the more famous images and reliques. In prosecution of this design, Elizabeth pretended revelations, which directed her to have recourse to that image for a cure; and being brought before it, in the presence of a great multitude, she fell anew into convulsions; and after distorting her limbs and countenance during a competent time, she affected to have obtained a perfect recovery by the intercession of the virgin.r This miracle was soon bruited abroad; and the two priests, finding the imposture to succeed beyond their own expectations, began to extend their views, and to lay the foundation of more important enterprizes. They taught their penitent to declaim against the new doctrines, which she denominated heresy; against innovations in ecclesiastical government; and against the king’s intended divorce from Catherine. She went so far as to assert, that, if he prosecuted that design, and married another, he should not be a king a month longer, and should not an hour longer enjoy the favour of the Almighty, but should die the death of a villain. Many monks throughout England, either from folly or roguery, or from faction, which is often a complication of both, entered into the delusion; and one Deering, a friar, wrote a book of the revelations and prophecies of Elizabeth.s Miracles were daily added, to encrease the wonder; and the pulpit every where resounded with accounts of the sanctity and inspirations of the new prophetess. Messages were carried from her to queen Catherine, by which that princess was exhorted to persist in her opposition to the divorce; the pope’s ambassadors gave encouragement to the popular credulity; and even Fisher, bishop of Rochester, though a man of sense and learning, was carried away by an opinion so favourable to the party which he had espoused.t The king at last began to think the matter worthy of his attention: and having ordered Elizabeth and her accomplices to be arrested, he brought them before the star-chamber, where they freely, without being put to the torture, made confession of their guilt. The parliament, in the session held the beginning of this year, passed an act of attainder against some who were engaged in this treasonable imposture;u and Elizabeth herself, Masters, Bocking, Deering, Rich, Risby, Gold, suffered for their crime. The bishop of Rochester, Abel, Addison, Lawrence, and others were condemned for misprision of treason; because they had not discovered some criminal speeches which they heard from Elizabeth:w And they were thrown into prison. The better to undeceive the multitude, the forgery of many of the prophetess’s miracles was detected: and even the scandalous prostitution of her manners was laid open to the public. Those passions, which so naturally insinuate themselves amidst the warm intimacies maintained by the devotees of different sexes, had taken place between Elizabeth and her confederates; and it was found, that a door to her dormitory, which was said to have been miraculously opened, in order to give her access to the chapel, for the sake of frequent converse with heaven, had been contrived by Bocking and Masters for less refined purposes.
[1535.] The detection of this imposture, attended with so many odious circumstances, both hurt the credit of the ecclesiastics, particularly the monks, and instigated the king to take vengeance on them. He suppressed three monasteries of the Observantine friars; and finding that little clamour was excited by this act of power, he was the more encouraged to lay his rapacious hands on the remainder. Meanwhile, he exercised punishment on individuals, who were obnoxious to him. The parliament had made it treason to endeavour depriving the king of his dignity or titles: They had lately added to his other titles, that of supreme head of the church: It was inferred, that to deny his supremacy was treason; and many priors and ecclesiastics lost their lives for this new species of guilt. It was certainly a high instance of tyranny to punish the mere delivery of a political opinion, especially one that nowise affected the king’s temporal right, as a capital offence, though attended with no overt act; and the parliament, in passing this law, had overlooked all the principles, by which a civilized, much more a free people, should be governed: But the violence of changing so suddenly the whole system of government, and making it treason to deny what, during many ages, it had been heresy to assert, is an event which may appear somewhat extraordinary. Even the stern unrelenting mind of Henry was, at first, shocked with these sanguinary measures; and he went so far as to change his garb and dress; pretending sorrow for the necessity by which he was pushed to such extremities. Still impelled, however, by his violent temper, and desirous of striking a terror into the whole nation,Trial and execution of Fisher, bishop of Rochester. he proceeded, by making examples of Fisher and More, to consummate his lawless tyranny.
[h] Burnet, vol. i. p. 159.
[i] Sacrilegium est et impietas velle placere Deo per opera et non per solam fidem. Luther adversus regem. Ita vides quam dives sit homo christianus sive baptizatus, qui etiam volens not potest perdere salutem suam quantiscunque peccatis. Nulla enim peccata possunt eum damnare nisi incredulitas. Id. de captivitate Babylonica.
[k] Hall, fol. 186. Fox, vol. i. p. 138. Burnet, vol. i. p. 159.
[l] Articles of impeachment in Herbert. Burnet.
[m] Fox. Burnet, vol. i. p. 165.
[n] Burnet, vol. i. p. 164.
[o] Strype, vol. i. p. 167.
[p] Collier, vol. ii. p. 86. Burnet, vol. i. p. 151.
[q] Stowe, p. 562.
[r] Stowe, p. 570. Blanquet’s Epitome of Chronicles.
[s] Strype, vol. i. p. 181.
[t] Collier, vol. ii. p. 87.
[u] 25 Hen. VIII. c. 12. Burnet, vol. i. p. 149. Hall, fol. 220.
