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

565

Lords Journals, 31 Henry VIII.

566

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

567

32 Henry VIII. cap. 50.

568

Ibid. cap. 57. Unprinted Rolls House MS.

569

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

570

Stow.

571

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

572

Strype’s Memorials, Vol. I. p. 556.

573

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

574

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

575

Strype’s Memorials, Vol. II. p. 459.

576

MSS. State Paper Office, second series, 52 volumes.

577

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

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

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

578

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 349.

579

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

580

Hall, p. 838.

581

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

582

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

583

Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 500.

584

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

585

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

586

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

587

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 362.

588

Pate to the Duke of Norfolk: Ibid. p. 355.

589

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

590

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

591

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

592

Communi omnium procerum consensu nemine discrepante.

593

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

594

Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. July 6.

595

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

596

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

597

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

598

MS. Cotton. Otho, X. 240.

599

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 404.

600

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

601

Ibid. p. 633.

602

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

603

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

604

Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII.

605

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

606

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 407.

607

Ibid., 408.

608

Ibid., 410.

609

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

610

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 392.

611

Ibid. p. 386.

612

State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 397.

613

Pate to the Duke of Suffolk: Ibid. p. 412.

614

No draft of the bill exists in its original form. As it passed it conferred on lay impropriators the same power of recovering tithes as was given to the clergy. The members of the lower house had been, many of them purchasers of abbey lands, and impropriated tithes formed a valuable item of the property. It is likely that the bishops overlooked, and that the commons remembered this important condition. —Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. Session of July 12.

615

32 Henry VIII. cap. 10.

616

32 Henry VIII. cap. 26.

617

Philpot’s confession is preserved. He describes how Sir Gregory Botolph, returning to Calais from a journey to Rome, took him one night upon the walls, and after swearing him to secrecy, showed himself a worthy pupil of Reginald Pole.

“If England have not a scourge in time,” Botolph said, “they will be all infidels, and no doubt God to friend, there shall be a redress; and know ye for a truth what my enterprise is, with the aid of God and such ways as I shall devise. I shall get the town of Calais into the hands of the Pope and Cardinal Pole, who is as good a Catholic man as ever I reasoned with; and when I had declared everything of my mind unto them, no more but we three together in the Pope’s chamber, I had not a little cheer of the Pope and Cardinal Pole; and after this at all times I might enter the Pope’s chamber at my pleasure.”

Philpot asked him how he intended to proceed, Calais being so strong a place. “It shall be easy to be done,” Botolph said. “In the herring time they do use to watch in the lantern gate, whereat there be in the watch about a dozen persons, and against the time which shall be appointed in the night, you, with a dozen persons well appointed for the purpose, shall enter the watch and destroy them. That done, ye shall recoil back with your company and keep the stairs, and at the same time I with my company shall be ready to scale the walls over the gate. I will have five or six hundred men that shall enter with me on the first burst. We shall have aid both by sea and land, within short space.” – Confession of Clement Philpot: Rolls House MS. Viscount Lisle, the old commandant of Calais, an illegitimate son of Edward IV., was suspected of having been privy to the conspiracy, and was sent for to England. His innocence was satisfactorily proved, but he died in the Tower on the day when he would have been liberated.

618

32 Henry VIII. cap. 58: unprinted, Rolls House MS.

619

Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. The clerk of the parliament has attached a note to the summary of the session declaring that throughout its progress the peers had voted unanimously. From which it has been concluded, among other things, that Cranmer voted for Cromwell’s execution. The archbishop was present in the house on the day on which the bill for the attainder was read the last time. There is no evidence, however, that he remained till the question was put; and as he dared to speak for him on his arrest, he is entitled to the benefit of any uncertainty which may exist. It is easy to understand how he, and the few other peers who were Cromwell’s friends, may have abstained from a useless opposition in the face of an overwhelming majority. We need not exaggerate their timidity or reproach them with an active consent, of which no hint is to be found in any contemporary letter, narrative, or document.

620

Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 160.

621

Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 160; this is apparently the letter printed by Burnet, Collectanea, p. 500.

622

“Vereor ne frustra cum Reverendissimâ Dominatione vestrâ per litteras de Cromwelli resipiscentiâ sum gratulatus, nec enim quæ typis sunt excusa quæ ad me missa sunt, in quibus novissima ejus verba recitantur, talem animum mihi exprimunt qualem eorum narratio qui de ejus exitu et de extremis verbis mecum sunt locuti.” – Pole to Beccatelli: Epist. Vol. III.

623

Prayer of the Lord Cromwell on the Scaffold: Foxe, Vol. V.

624

His death seems to have been needlessly painful through the awkwardness of the executioner, “a ragged and butcherly miser, who very ungoodly performed the office.” – Hall.

625

“Men know not what part to follow or to take.” – Foxe, Vol. V.