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

304

Sir William Fitzwilliam to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office.

305

Sir William Godolphin to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XIII.

306

MS. State Paper Office, Letters to the King and Council, Vol I.

307

MS. ibid.

308

Cromwell’s Memoranda: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1. Many of the plans are in the Cotton Library, executed, some of them, with great rudeness; some finished with the delicacy of monastic illuminations; some, but very few, are good working drawings. It is a mortifying proof of the backwardness of the English in engineering skill, that the king for his works at Dover sent for engineers to Spain.

309

32 Henry VIII. cap. 50.

310

Details of the equipments of many of these fortresses lie scattered among the State Papers. The expenses were enormous, but were minutely recorded.

311

On whatever side we turn in this reign, we find the old and the new in collision. While the harbours, piers, and the fortresses were rising at Dover, an ancient hermit tottered night after night from his cell to a chapel on the cliff, and the tapers on the altar, before which he knelt in his lonely orisons, made a familiar beacon far over the rolling waters. The men of the rising world cared little for the sentiment of the past. The anchorite was told sternly by the workmen that his light was a signal to the king’s enemies, and must burn no more; and when it was next seen, three of them waylaid the old man on his road home, threw him down, and beat him cruelly. —MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XXXIII.

312

Lord Montague, on the 24th of March, 1537, said, “I dreamed that the king was dead. He is not dead, but he will die one day suddenly, his leg will kill him, and then we shall have jolly stirring.” – Trial of Lord Montague: Baga de Secretis. The king himself, in explaining to the Duke of Norfolk his reason for postponing his journey to Yorkshire in the past summer, said: “To be frank with you, which we desire you in any wise to keep to yourself, being an humour fallen into our legs, and our physicians therefore advising us in no wise to take so far a journey in the heat of the year, whereby the same might put us to further trouble and displeasure, it hath been thought more expedient that we should, upon that respect only, though the grounds before specified had not concurred with it, now change our determination.” —State Papers, Vol. I. p. 555.

313

“I assure your lordship his Grace is very sorry that ye might not be here to make good cheer as we do. He useth himself more like a good fellow among us that be here, than like a king, and, thanked be God, I never saw him merrier in his life than he is now.” – Sir John Russell to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XXXVI.

314

“Michael Throgmorton gave great charge to William Vaughan to enquire if there had been any communication upon the opinions of the physicians, whether the Queen’s Grace were with child with a man child or not.” – Hutton to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. VII. p. 703.

315

State Papers, Vol. I. p. 570.

316

Latimer to Cromwell: State Paper Office, Vol. I. p. 571.

317

Hall is made to say she died on the 14th. The mistake was due probably to the printer. He is unlikely himself to have made so large an error.

318

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 1.

319

Sir John Russell to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XXXVI.; State Papers, Vol. I. p. 573.

320

Hall, p. 825.

321

Leland wrote an ode on the occasion, which is not without some beauty: —

Spes erat ampla quidem numerosâ prole Joanna

Henricum ut faceret regem facunda parentem.

Sed Superis aliter visum est, cruciatus acerbus

Distorsit vacuum lethali tormine ventrem.

Frigora crediderim temere contracta fuisse

In causâ, superat vis morbi: jamque salute

Desperatâ omni, nymphis hæc rettulit almis.

Non mihi mors curæ est, perituram agnosco creavit

Omnipotens – Moriar – terram tibi debeo terra:

At pius Elysiis animus spatiabitur hortis.

Deprecor hoc unum. Maturos filius annos

Exigat, et tandem regno det jura paterno.

Dixit et æternâ claudebat lumina nube.

Nulla dies pressit graviori clade Britannum.

Genethliacon Edwardi Principis.

322

Rolls House MS., A 2, 30. I trace the report to within a month of Jane Seymour’s death. Sanders therefore must be held acquitted of the charge of having invented it. The circumstances of the death itself are so clear as to leave no trace of uncertainty. How many of the interesting personal anecdotes of remarkable people, which have gained and which retain the public confidence, are better founded than this? Prudence, instructed by experience, enters a general caution against all anecdotes particularly striking.

323

Rolls House MS. A 2, 30.

324

Instructions for the Household of Edward Prince of Wales: Rolls House MS.

325

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 2.

326

Pole to the Bishop of Liège: Epist. Vol. II. p. 41.

327

Nott’s Wyatt, p. 312.

328

Nott’s Wyatt, p. 319.

329

Ibid.

330

Ibid. p. 322.

331

Mary’s submission dates from the fall of Anne Boleyn. It was offered by her on the instant, in three successive letters; two of which are printed in the State Papers, a third is in MS. in the State Paper Office.

332

“And here Sir Thomas Wyatt shall deliver unto the Emperor the letter written unto him from the said Lady Mary, whereby it shall appear how she doth repent herself, and how she would that he should repent, and take of her the tenour. Whereof it shall like him to consider, it is not to be thought but it will acquit him therein, his Grace, nevertheless, being so good a lord and father to her as he is, and undoubtedly will be.” – Instructions to Sir Thomas Wyatt: Nott’s Wyatt, p. 314.

333

Cromwell to Wyatt: Nott, p. 321.

334

State Papers, Vol. VIII., p. 34.

335

“My lord: this shall be to advertise you that the Imperials and Frenchmen have taken a truce for ten months, which, as we think, be great news, and of great weight and moment. Howbeit, my trust is, the King’s Highness knows what is the occasion of this sudden turn, or else it will trouble my brain to think of it.” – Sir William Fitzwilliam to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XI.

336

Henry VIII. to Wyatt: Nott’s Wyatt.

337

Cromwell to Wyatt, November 29, 1537: Nott’s Wyatt.

338

Better known as Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots.

339

Commission of Peter Mewtas to Madame de Longueville: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 10.

340

Hutton to Sir Thomas Wriothesley: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 9.

341

Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Wyatt: Nott’s Wyatt.

342

Same to the same: Ibid.

343

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 17.

344

Hutton to Cromwell: Ibid.

345

A story passes current with popular historians, that the Duchess of Milan, when Henry proposed for her, replied that she had but one head; if she had two, one should be at his Majesty’s service. The less active imagination of contemporaries was contented with reporting that she had said that the English ministers need not trouble themselves to make the marriage; “they would lose their labours, for she minded not to fix her heart that way.” Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who was then resident at Brussels, thought it worth his while to ask her whether these words had really been used by her.

“M. Ambassador,” she replied, “I thank God He hath given me a better stay of myself than to be of so light sort. I assure you, that neither those words that you have spoken, nor any like to them, have passed at any time from my mouth: and so I pray you report for me.”

Wriothesley took courage upon this answer, and asked what was her real inclination in the matter.

“At this she blushed exceedingly. ‘As for mine inclination,’ quoth she, ‘what should I say? You know I am at the Emperor’s commandment.’ – ‘Yea, madam,’ quoth Wriothesley; ‘but this matter is of such nature, that there must be a concurrence between his commandment and your consent, or else you may percase repent it when it shall be too late. Your answer is such as may serve both for your modesty and for my satisfaction; and yet, if it were a little plainer, I could be the better contented.’ With that she smiled, and again said, ‘You know I am the Emperor’s poor servant, and must follow his pleasure.’ – ‘Marry,’ quoth Wriothesley, ‘then I may hope to be among the Englishmen that shall be first acquainted with my new mistress, for the Emperor hath instantly desired it. Oh, madam!’ quoth he, ‘how happy shall you be if it be your chance to be matched with my master. If God send you that hap, you shall be matched with the most gentle gentleman that liveth; his nature so benign and pleasant, that I think till this day no man hath heard many angry words pass his lips. As God shall help me, if he were no king, I think, and you saw him, you would say, that for his virtue, gentleness, wisdom, experience, goodliness of person, and all other qualities meet to be in a prince, he were worthy before all others to be made a king.’… She smiled, and Wriothesley thought would have laughed out, had not her gravity forbidden it… She said she knew his Majesty was a good and noble prince. Her honest countenance, he added, and the few words that she wisely spake, together with that which he knew by her chamberers and servants, made him to think there could be no doubt of her.” —State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 146.

346

“Mr. Wyatt, now handle this matter in such earnest sort with the Emperor, as the king, who by your fair words hath conceived as certain to find assured friendship therein, be not deceived. The Frenchmen affirm so constantly and boldly that nothing spoken by the Emperor, either touching the principal contrahents or further alliance, hath any manner of good faith, but such fraud and deceit, that I assure you, on my faith, it would make any man to suspect his proceeding. Labour, Mr. Wyatt, to cause the Emperor, if it be possible, to write.” – Cromwell to Wyatt: Nott’s Wyatt, p. 333.

347

Wyatt’s Oration to the Judges: Nott’s Wyatt.

348

“I have received three houses since I wrote last to your lordship, the which I think would not a little have moved your lordship, if ye had known the order of them: some sticking fast in windows, naked, going to drabs, so that the pillar was fain to be sawed, to have him out; some being plucked from under drabs’ beds; some fighting, so that the knife hath stuck in the bones; with such other pretty business, of the which I have too much.” – Richard suffragan Bishop of Dover to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 198.

349

A finger of St. Andrew was pawned at Northampton for 40l.; “which we intend not,” wrote a dry visitor, “to redeem of the price, except we be commanded so to do.” – Ibid. p. 172.

350

Printed in Fuller’s Church History, Vol. III. p. 394.

351

Fuller’s Church History, Vol. III. p. 398.

352

“According to your commission, we have viewed a certain supposed relic, called the blood of Hales, which was enclosed within a round beryll, garnished and bound on every side with silver, which we caused to be opened in the presence of a great multitude of people. And the said supposed relic we caused to be taken out of the said beryll, and have viewed the same, being within a little glass, and also tried the same according to our powers, by all means; and by force of the view and other trials, we judge the substance and matters of the said supposed relic to be an unctuous gum, coloured, which, being in the glass, appeared to be a glistening red, resembling partly the colour of blood. And after, we did take out part of the said substance out of the glass, and then it was apparent yellow colour, like amber or base gold, and doth cleave as gum or bird-lime. The matter and feigned relic, with the glass containing the same, we have enclosed in red wax, and consigned it, with our seals.” – Hugh Bishop of Worcester, with the other Commissioners, to Cromwell: Latimer’s Remains, p. 407.

The Abbot of Hales subsequently applied for permission to destroy the case in which the blood had been.

“It doth stand yet in the place where it was, so that I am afraid lest it should minister occasion to any weak person looking thereupon to abuse his conscience therewith; and therefore I beseech for license that I may put it down every stick and stone, so that no manner of token or remembrance of that forged relict shall remain.” – Abbot of Hales to Cromwell: MS. Tanner 105.

353

Barlow to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 183.

354

Latimer to Cromwell: Remains, p. 395.

355

Geoffrey Chambers to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series.

356

Ibid.

357

“Invisit aulam regis, regem ipsum novus hospes. Conglomerant ipsum risu aulico barones duces marchiones comites. Agit ille, minatur oculis, aversatur ore, distorquet nares; mittit deorsum caput, incurvat dorsum, annuit aut renuit. Rex ipse incertum gavisusne magis ob patefactam imposturam an magis doluerit ex animo tot seculis miseræ plebi fuisse impositum.” – Hooker to Bullinger: Original Letters on the Reformation.

358

“He said that blessed man St. Thomas of Canterbury suffered death for the rights of the Church; for there was a great man – meaning thereby King Harry the Second – which, because St. Thomas of Canterbury would not grant him such things as he asked, contrary to the liberties of the Church, first banished him out of this realm; and at his return he was slain at his own church, for the right of Holy Church, as many holy fathers have suffered now of late: as that holy father the Bishop of Rochester: and he doubteth not but their souls be now in heaven.

“He saith and believeth that he ought to have a double obedience: first, to the King’s Highness, by the law of God; and the second to the Bishop of Rome, by his rule and profession.

“He confesseth that he used and practised to induce men in confession to hold and stick to the old fashion of belief, that was used in the realm of long time past.” —Rolls House MS.

359

“The Bishop of Worcester and I will be to-morrow with your lordship, to know your pleasure concerning Friar Forest. For if we should proceed against him according to the order of the law, there must be articles devised beforehand which must be ministered unto him; and therefore it will be very well done that one draw them against our meeting.” – Cranmer to Cromwell: Cranmer’s Works, Vol. I. p. 239.

360

Rolls House MS. A 1, 7, fol. 213.

361

Ellis Price to Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, E 4.

362

MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XXXIV.

363

Latimer to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XLIX. Latimer’s Letters, p. 391.

364

Stow’s Chronicle, p. 575.

365

Hall, p. 875, followed by Foxe.

366

MS. State Paper Office, unarranged bundle. The command was obeyed so completely, that only a single shrine now remains in England; and the preservation of this was not owing to the forbearance of the government. The shrine of Edward the Confessor, which stands in Westminster Abbey, was destroyed with the rest. But the stones were not taken away. The supposed remains of St. Edward were in some way preserved; and the shrine was reconstructed, and the dust replaced, by Abbot Feckenham, in the first year of Queen Mary. – Oration of Abbot Feckenham in the Parliament House: MS. Rawlinson, Bodleian Library.

367

Cranmer to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. I.

368

“The abuses of Canterbury” are placed by the side of those of Boxley in one of the official statements of the times. – Sir T. Wriothesley to Henry VIII., Nov. 20. 1538: State Papers, Vol. VIII.

369

Madame de Montreuil, though a Frenchwoman and a good Catholic, had caught the infection of the prevailing unbelief in saints and saintly relics. “I showed her St. Thomas’s shrine,” writes an attendant, “and all such other things worthy of sight, of the which she was not little marvelled of the great riches thereof, saying it to be innumerable, and that if she had not seen it all the men in the world could never have made her to believe it. Thus overlooking and viewing more than an hour as well the shrine as St. Thomas’s head, being at both set cushions to kneel, the prior, opening St. Thomas’s head, said to her three times, this is St. Thomas’s head, and offered her to kiss it, but she neither kneeled nor would kiss it, but (stood), still viewing the riches thereof.” – Penison to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. I. p. 583.

370

These marks are still distinctly visible.

371

Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 494. A story was current on the Continent, and so far believed as to be alluded to in the great bull of Paul the Third, that an apparitor was sent to Canterbury to serve a citation at Becket’s tomb, summoning “the late archbishop” to appear and answer to a charge of high treason. Thirty days were allowed him. When these were expired a proctor was charged with his defence. He was tried and condemned – his property, consisting of the offerings at the shrine, was declared forfeited – and he himself was sentenced to be exhumed and burnt. In the fact itself there is nothing absolutely improbable, for the form said to have been observed was one which was usual in the Church, when dead men, as sometimes happened, were prosecuted for heresy; and if I express my belief that the story is without foundation, I do so with diffidence, because negative evidence is generally of no value in the face of respectable positive assertion. All contemporary English authorities, however, are totally silent on a subject which it is hard to believe that they would not at least have mentioned. We hear generally of the destruction of the shrine, but no word of the citation and trial. A long and close correspondence between Cromwell and the Prior of Canterbury covers the period at which the process took place, if it took place at all, and not a letter contains anything which could be construed into an allusion to it. – Letters of the Prior of Canterbury to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series.

So suspicious a silence justifies a close scrutiny of the authorities on the other side. There exist two documents printed in Wilkins’s Concilia, Vol. III. p. 835, and taken from Pollini’s History of the English Reformation, which profess to be the actual citation and actual sentence issued on the occasion. If these are genuine, they decide the question; but, unfortunately for their authenticity, the dates of the documents are, respectively, April and May, 1538, and in both of them Henry is styled, among his official titles, Rex Hiberniæ. Now Henry did not assume the title of Rex Hiberniæ till two years later. Dominus Hiberniæ, or Lord of Ireland, is his invariable designation in every authentic document of the year to which these are said to belong. This itself is conclusively discrediting. If further evidence is required, it may be found in the word “Londini,” or London, as the date of both citation and sentence. Official papers were never dated from London, but from Westminster, St. James’s, Whitehall; or if in London, then from the particular place in London, as the Tower. Both mistakes would have been avoided by an Englishman, but are exceedingly natural in a foreign inventor.

372

“We be daily instructed by our nobles and council to use short expelition in the determination of our marriage, for to get more increase of issue, to the assurance of our succession; and upon their oft admonition of age coming fast on, and (seeing) that the time flyeth and slippeth marvellously away, we be minded no longer to lose time as we have done, which is of all losses the most irrecuperable.” – Henry VIII. to Sir T. Wriothesley: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 116.

“Unless his Highness bore a notable affection to the Emperor, and had a special remembrance of their antient amity, his Majesty could never have endured to have been kept thus long in balance, his years, and the daily suits of his nobles and council well pondered.” – Wriothesley to Cromwell: ibid, p. 160.

373

See the Wriothesley Correspondence: State Papers, Vol. VIII.

374

Wriothesley to Henry VIII., November 20, 1538: Ibid.

375

Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII: printed in Burnet’s Collectanea.

376

Wriothesley Correspondence: State Papers, Vol. VIII.

377

Wriothesley to Cromwell: Ibid.

378

Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell, Feb. 21, 1539: State Papers, Vol. VIII.

379

“Of the evils which now menace Christendom those are held most grievous which are threatened by the Sultan. He is thought most powerful to hurt: he must first be met in arms. My words will bear little weight in this matter. I shall be thought to speak in my own quarrel against my personal enemy. But, as God shall judge my heart, I say that, if we look for victory in the East, we must assist first our fellow Christians, whom the adversary afflicts at home. This victory only will ensure the other.” —Apol. ad Car. Quint.

380

He speaks of Cromwell as “a certain man,” a “devil’s ambassador,” “the devil in the human form”. He doubts whether he will defile his pages with his name. As great highwaymen, however, murderers, parricides, and others, are named in history for everlasting ignominy, as even the devils are named in Holy Scripture, so he will name Cromwell. —Apol. ad Car. Quint.

381

Ibid.

382