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

October. Arrest of an agent of the Poles.

The prisoner is seen by Sir Geoffrey Pole.

The meshes were thus cast fairly over Exeter. He was caught, and in Cromwell’s power. But one disclosure led to another. At or near about the same time, some information led to the arrest of a secret agent of the Poles; and the attitude and objects of the whole party were drawn fully into light. The St. Kevern fisherman had mentioned two men at Southampton who had spoken to him on the subject of the new rebellion. Efforts were made to trace these persons; and although the link is missing, and perhaps never existed, between the inquiry and its apparent consequences, a Southampton “yeoman” named Holland was arrested on suspicion of carrying letters between Cardinal Pole and his mother and family. There is no proof that papers of consequence were found in Holland’s custody; but the government had the right man in their hands. He was to be taken to London; and, according to the usual mode of conveyance, he was placed on horseback, with his feet tied under his horse’s belly. On the road it so happened that he was met and recognized by Sir Geoffrey Pole, Reginald’s younger brother. The worthlessness of conspirators is generally proportioned to their violence. Sir Geoffrey, the most deeply implicated of the whole family, except the cardinal, made haste to secure his own safety by the betrayal of the rest. A few words which he exchanged with Holland sufficed to show him that Cromwell was on the true scent. He judged Holland’s cowardice by his own; and “he bade him keep on his way, for he would not be long after.”401

A pardon is promised to Exeter if he will make a free confession.

Lord Exeter’s chances of escape were not yet wholly gone. His treasons were known up to a certain point, but forgiveness might generally be earned by confession and submission; and Cromwell sent his nephew Richard to him, with an entreaty that “he would be frank and plain.”402 But the accused nobleman would make no revelation which would compromise others. His proud blood perhaps revolted against submission to the detested minister. Perhaps he did not know the extent to which his proceedings had been already discovered, and still less anticipated the treachery by which he was about to be overwhelmed.

Sir Geoffrey Pole betrays the conspiracy.

Intentions of the Poles.

Sir Geoffrey Pole made haste to London; and, preventing the accusations which, in a few days, would have overtaken him, he secured the opportunity which had been offered to Exeter of saving himself by confession. He presented himself to the Privy Council, and informed them that he, with Lord Montague, the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville, and other persons whom he named, were in treasonable correspondence with his brother Reginald. They had maintained a steady communication with him from the time of his legacy into Flanders. They were watching their opportunities. They had calculated the force which they could raise, the Marquis of Exeter’s power in the west forming their especial reliance. The depositions survive only in portions. It does not appear how far the Poles would have supported Exeter’s ambition for the crown; they intended, however, this time to avoid Lord Darcy’s errors, and not to limit themselves to attacks upon the ministers.403 The death of Lord Abergavenny had been inopportune;404 but his brother, Sir Edward Neville, with Lady Salisbury, would supply his place in rallying the Neville powers. The Yorkshire rising had proved how large was the material of an insurrection if adequately managed; and the whole family, doubtless, shared with Reginald, or rather, to them Reginald himself owed the conviction which he urged so repeatedly on the Emperor and the Pope, that, on the first fair opportunity, a power could be raised which the government would be unable to cope with.

November. Combination of dangers driving the government to severity.

If it is remembered that these discoveries occurred when the Bull of Deposition was on the point of publication – when the “Liber de Unitate” was passing into print – when the pacification of Nice had restored the Continent to the condition most dangerous to England – when the Pope was known to be preparing again a mighty effort to gather against Henry the whole force of Christendom, this was not a time, it will be understood easily, when such plottings would be dealt with leniently by a weaker hand than that which then ruled the destinies of England.

The king is reluctant to prosecute.

Lady Salisbury is examined by Lord Southampton,

Whom he finds rather like a strong man than a woman.

She is placed under surveillance at Cowdray.

Exeter, Montague, and Neville were sent to the Tower on the 3d and 4th of November. Lady Exeter followed with her attendant, Constance Beverley, who had been her companion on her secret pilgrimage to the Nun. It is possible that Sir Geoffrey’s revelations were made by degrees; for the king was so unwilling to prosecute, that ten days passed before their trial was determined on.405 Lady Salisbury was not arrested; but Lord Southampton went down to Warblington, her residence in Hampshire, to examine her. She received his questions with a fierce denial of all knowledge of the matters to which they referred, and, for a time, he scarcely knew whether to think her innocent or guilty. “Surely,” he said, in giving an account of his interview, “there hath not been seen or heard of a woman so earnest, so manlike in countenance, so fierce as well in gesture as in words; either her sons have not made her privy to the bottom and pit of their stomachs, or she is the most arrant traitress that ever lived.”406 But her rooms were searched; letters, Papal bulls, and other matters were discovered, which left no doubt of her general tendencies, if they were insufficient to implicate her in actual guilt; and one letter, or copy of a letter, unsigned, but, as Southampton said, undoubtedly hers, and addressed to Lord Montague, was found, the matter of which compromised her more deeply. She was again interrogated, and this time important admissions were extracted from her; but she carried herself with undaunted haughtiness. “We have dealed with such an one,” the earl said, “as men have not dealed with tofore; we may rather call her a strong and constant man than a woman.”407 No decisive conclusions could be formed against her; but it was thought well that she should remain under surveillance; and, three days later she was removed to Cowdray, a place belonging to Southampton himself, where she was detained in honourable confinement.

The general case meanwhile continued to enlarge. The surviving materials are too fragmentary to clear the whole circumstances; but allusions to witnesses by name, whose depositions have not been preserved, show how considerable those materials were. The world at least were satisfied of the guilt of the chief prisoners. “They would have made as foul a work,” says a letter written from London on the 21st of November, “as ever was in England.”408 Henry made up his mind that they should be proceeded against. Treason at home was too palpably connected with conspiracies against England abroad; and the country could not risk a repetition of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Circular issued to the justices of the peace,

Directing them to search out all the cankered clergy in their districts.

While preparations were made for the trials, the king took the opportunity of issuing a calming circular to the justices of the peace. The clergy, as before, had been the first to catch the infection of disorder: they had been again eager propagators of sedition, and had spread extravagant stories of the intentions of the government against the Church. Emboldened by the gentleness with which the late insurgents had been handled, “these miserable and Papistical superstitious wretches,” the king said, “not caring what danger and mischief our people should incur, have raised the said old rumours, and forged new seditious tales, intending as much as in them lyeth a new commotion. Wherefore, for the universal danger to you and to all our good subjects, and trouble that might ensue unless good and earnest provision to repress them be taken thereupon, we desire and pray you that within the precincts of your charges ye shall endeavour yourselves to enquire and find out all such cankered parsons, vicars, and curates as bid the parishioners do as they did in times past, to live as their fathers, and that the old fashions is best. And also with your most effectual vigilance try out such seditious tale tellers, spreaders of brutes, tidings, and rumours, touching us in honour and surety, or [touching] any mutation of the laws and customs of the realm, or any other thing which might cause sedition.”409

December 3. New trials in Westminster Hall.

The Marquis of Exeter arraigned.

And now once more the peers were assembled in Westminster Hall, to try two fresh members of their order, two of the noblest born among them, for high treason; and again the judges sate with them to despatch the lower offenders. On the 2d and 3d of December Lord Montague and Lord Exeter were arraigned successively. On the part of the crown it was set forth generally that “the king was supreme head on earth of the Church of England, and that his progenitors, from times whereof there was no memory to the contrary, had also been supreme heads of the Church of England; which authority and power of the said king, Paul the Third, Pope of Rome, the public enemy of the king and kingdom, without any right or title, arrogantly and obstinately challenged and claimed; and that one Reginald Pole, late of London, Esqr., otherwise Reginald Pole, late Dean of Exeter, with certain others of the king’s subjects, had personally repaired to the said Pope of Rome, knowing him to be the king’s enemy, and adhered to and became liege man of the said Pope, and falsely and unnaturally renounced the king, his natural liege lord; that Reginald Pole accepted the dignity of a cardinal of the court of Rome without the king’s license, in false and treasonable despite and contempt of the king, and had continued to live in parts beyond the seas, and was there vagrant, and denying the king to be upon earth supreme head of the Church of England.”

Caring only to bring the prisoners within the letter of the act, the prosecution made no allusion to Exeter’s proceedings in Cornwall. It was enough to identify his guilt with the guilt of the great criminal. Against him, therefore, it was objected —

“That, as a false traitor, machinating the death of the king, and to excite his subjects to rebellion, and seeking to maintain the said Cardinal Pole in his intentions, the Marquis of Exeter did say to Geoffrey Pole the following words in English: ‘I like well the proceedings of the Cardinal Pole; but I like not the proceedings of this realm; and I trust to see a change of this world.’

Treasonable language is sworn against him.

“Furthermore, that the Marquis of Exeter, machinating with Lord Montague the death and destruction of the king, did openly declare to the Lord Montague, ‘I trust once to have a fair day upon those knaves which rule about the king; and I trust to see a merry world one day.’

“And, furthermore persevering in his malicious intention, he did say, ‘Knaves rule about the king;’ and then stretching his arm, and shaking his clenched fist, spoke the following words: ‘I trust to give them a buffet one day.’”

December 3. He is condemned.

Sir Geoffrey Pole was in all cases the witness. The words were proved. It was enough. A verdict of guilty was returned; and the marquis was sentenced to die.

Lord Montague also sentenced to die.

If the proof of language of no darker complexion was sufficient to secure a condemnation, the charges against Lord Montague left him no shadow of a hope. Montague had expressed freely to his miserable brother his approbation of Reginald’s proceedings. He had discussed the chances of the impending struggle and the resources of which they could dispose. He had spoken bitterly of the king; he had expressed a fear that when the world “came to strypes,” as come it would, “there would be a lack of honest men,” with other such language, plainly indicative of his disposition. However justly, indeed, we may now accuse the equity which placed men on their trial for treason for impatient expressions, there can be no uncertainty that, in the event of an invasion, or of a rebellion with any promise of success in it, both Montague and Exeter would have thrown their weight into the rebel scale. Montague, too, was condemned.

The date of the expressions which were sworn against them is curious. They belong, without exception, to the time when Reginald Pole was in Flanders. That there was nothing later was accounted for by the distrust which Geoffrey said that soon after they had begun to entertain towards him. Evidently they had seen his worthlessness; and as their enterprise had become more critical, they had grown more circumspect. But he remembered enough to destroy them, and to save by his baseness his own miserable life.

Convictions of Sir Edward Neville,

He was himself tried, though to receive a pardon after conviction. With Sir Edward Neville and four other persons he was placed at the bar on charges of the same kind as those against Exeter and his brother. Neville had said that he “would have a day upon the knaves that were about the king;” “that the king was a beast, and worse than a beast;” “machinating and conspiring to extinguish the love and affection of the king’s subjects.” Sir Geoffrey Pole, beyond comparison the most guilty, had been in command of a company under the Duke of Norfolk at Doncaster; and was proved to have avowed an intention of deserting in the action, if an action was fought, – real, bad, black treason. Of the others, two had spoken against the supremacy; one had carried letters to the cardinal; another had said to Lord Montague, that “the king would hang in hell for the plucking down of abbeys.”

And of Sir Nicholas Carew.

The scaffold on Tower Hill.

The last case was the hardest. Sir Nicholas Carew, Master of the Horse, had been on the commission which had taken the indictments against Exeter, and had said “that he marvelled it was so secretly handled; that the like was never seen.” The expression brought him under suspicion. He was found to have been intimate with Exeter; to have received letters from him of traitorous import, which he had concealed and burnt. With the rest he was brought in guilty, and received sentence as a traitor. On the 9th of December the Marquis of Exeter, Montague, and Sir Edward Neville were beheaded on Tower Hill.410 On the 16th the following proclamation was issued: —

Lord Exeter is degraded from the order of the Garter.

“Be it known unto all men, that whereas Henry Courtenay, late Marquis of Exeter, knight companion of the most noble order of the Garter, hath lately committed and done high treason against the king our dread sovereign lord, sovereign of the said most noble order of the Garter, compassing and imagining the destruction of his most royal person in the most traitorous and rebellious wise, contrary to his oath, duty, and allegiance, intending thereby, if he might have obtained his purpose, to have subverted the whole good order of the commonwealth of England, for the which high and most detestable treason the said Henry hath deserved to be degraded of the said most noble order, and expelled out of the same company, and is not worthy that his arms, ensigns, and hatchments should remain amongst the virtuous and approved knights of the said most noble order, nor to have any benefit thereof, – the right wise king and supreme head of the most noble order, with the whole consent and counsel of the same, wills and commands that his arms, which he nothing deserveth, be taken away and thrown down, and he be clean put from this order, and never from henceforth to be taken of any of the number thereof; so that all others by his example, from henceforth for evermore, may beware how they commit or do the like crime or fault, unto like shame or rebuke.

“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!”