I refer me to the reports of your honours and worships." And was this appeal to living witnesses answered by any confutation of the veracity of his statement? No, not even by a solitary witness, although in that Council were assembled some of his bitterest and acutest enemies. It remained for an historian of our own days to challenge it; but it is beyond his power to destroy it. In truth, the archbishop was well aware of the injustice, and seems to have expected the failure, of placing Jane upon the throne, although he wanted sufficient firmness altogether to reject the proposition.

The days of Edward now closed, not without the suspicion, Strype and others relate, that poison shortened them. But the letter of the Council, two days after his death, to Sir Philip Hoby, the ambassador at the court of the emperor Charles, describes the consumptive disease that overcame him. Cranmer probably wrote it. "We must tell you," the writer says, "a great heap of infelicity;" (to none greater, indeed, than to Cranmer himself;) "God hath called out of this world our sovereign lord the sixth of this month, (July) towards night, whose manner of death was such towards God as assureth us that his soul is in place of eternal joy. The disease whereof he

1 Cotton. MSS. Galba. B. xii. 249. b.

364 THE LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.

died was of the putrefaction of the lungs, being utterly uncurable."

The temporary accession of the lady Jane, and the ineffectual attempts of her partisans to prolong it, now followed. In vain did Cranmer and his fellow-councillors call upon Mary to recognise the sovereignty, which had been forced upon her young rival. In vain did he join the decreased number of the lords, in calling upon others to remain firm in the allegiance which had been promised to Jane. Eleven days only witnessed the sceptre in her hands; the Council that had placed it in them then agreed to acknowledge, that they had placed it erroneously, and to Mary tendered their loyalty. The dethroned lady, and the misguided primate, we shall soon find within the walls of the same prison.

'Their number was now only sixteen; it had been twentyfour.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

MARY.

1553.

The lady Jane committed to the Tower-Funeral of Edward -The archbishop reported to have restored the service of the mass-His public denial of the report-Summoned before the queen's commissioners and the Council-Committed to the Tower-Accused and declared guilty of high treason— His companions in prison, the lady Jane, Ridley, Bradford, and Latimer-Curious anecdote of the lady.

MARY was no sooner seated on the throne, than the lady Jane was committed a prisoner to the Tower. There, till more than a month after the ceremony of the former's coronation, the latter remained without a trial. Meantime Edward was buried, 1 Mary suffering the archbishop to officiate," Dr. Lingard says, "according to the Protestant form at the funeral in Westminster Abbey, while a solemn dirge and high mass were chanted for him, at the same time, in the chapel

66 1

Hist. Eng. 8vo. vii. 181.

66

1

of the Tower, in the presence of the nobility and courtiers, to the number of three hundred persons." But there is no authority for the assertion which is, from 2 Burnet, that Cranmer thus officiated. Foxe would not have failed to record so memorable a circumstance. The chroniclers, Holinshed and Stow, are also silent respecting it. We must consider Day, at this time, restored by Mary to his bishopric, as Godwin relates it, as having performed the solemn service: "The exequies of the king," says the old historian, were celebrated, Day, bishop of Chichester, preaching, executing in English, and administering the sacrament, according to the manner and form received in the reign of Edward: for as yet, nothing had been determined concerning any change in point of religion." It had been reported indeed, of the archbishop, that he had offered not only to chant the mass and requiem at the royal funeral, but that, in his cathedral at Canterbury, he had already restored thus much of the Romish ritual. The mass certainly appears to have been now renewed in that church by the vicedean of it, Dr. Thornden, who was also suffragan

1 Stow relates only, that "the queen held an obsequy in the Tower for Edward, the dirge being sung in Latin; and on the morrow a mass of requiem, whereat the queen with her ladies offered." 1038.

2

Strype with hesitation follows Burnet, Ecc. Mem. ii. 432. 3 Annals, ed. 1630. 276.

bishop of Dover, whom Cranmer, hastening to refute the charges against himself, pronounces " a false, flattering, lying monk." The archbishop with a "boldness that does honour to his courage," but, "betrays by its asperity the bitterness of his feelings," as Dr. Lingard describes it, drew up a declaration, with a view to public use, in defence of the Reformation as well as himself. And who wonders at the "bitterness of his feelings," when he is unjustly charged with restoring what had cost him the labour of many years to abolish; and when he, whom he had trusted as his own familiar friend, (for Thornden had lived with him,) had dared to give occasion for the charge. This paper Cranmer submitted first to Scory, now deprived of the bishopric of Chichester, for the advantage of his private and friendly consideration. Scory indiscreetly gave copies of it, while as yet it was considered by Cranmer incomplete. Of these, one was read in Cheapside, and others were dispersed, but without the knowledge or consent, on the contrary, to the great mortification, of the archbishop. Some of these copies were brought to the lords of the Council, by whom, when he was asked if he was the author of the declaration, he answered, that certainly he was; but that he was very sorry to

1

1 It has been supposed by some, that, "the intemperance of the style bespeaks the hand of Peter Martyr, rather than of Cranmer himself." Martyr, who was now resident with the