[1556 A.D.]

missioners. Cranmer was led in; the commission was read, dwelling as usual on the papal impartiality, and stating what ample time had been given to the accused to proceed with his appeal and defence. "My lord," cried Cranmer, "what lies be these! that I, being continually in prison, and never suffered to have counsel or advocate at home, should procure witness and appoint counsel at Rome. God must needs punish this open and shameless falsehood." When the commission was read, the various Romish vestments, made of canvas by way of insult, were produced, and he was arrayed in them; a mock mitre was placed on his head, and a mock crosier in his hand. The brutal Bonner then began to scoff at him. "This is the man," cried he, "that hath despised the pope, and now is to be judged by him! This is the man that hath pulled down so many

churches, and now is come to be judged in a church! This is the man that contemned the blessed sacrament, and now is come to be condemned before that sacrament!" And so he ran on, though Thirlby, who was a man of gentle nature and had been very intimate with the primate, shed floods of tears, declared that he sat there against his will, and implored him to recant.

Cranmer was now civilly degraded, and might be burned; but his enemies would have him morally degraded also; every engine was therefore set at work to induce him to recant. He was assured that the queen felt favourably towards him; "but then," it was added, "her majesty will have Cranmer a Catholic, or she will have no Cranmer at all." To these various temptations he at length yielded.

There are in fact not less than six recantations preserved which Cranmer is said to have subscribed. Of these, the fifth alone contains an unequivocal assent to the doctrines of popery. The love of life led Cranmer into duplicity, and we have his own assertion that he had written or signed papers containing "many things untrue."

Aware of his duplicity, or determined that it should not save him, the government had sent down the writ for his execution, but his fate was concealed from him. Between nine and ten o'clock of March 21st, 1556, he was led forth to be burned in the place where his friends had suffered, but as the morning was wet, the sermon was to be preached in St. Mary's church. He walked thither-now, it would seem, aware of his fate-between two friars, who mumbled psalms as they went; and as they entered the church they sang the Nunc dimittis, which must have assured him that his time was come.

Cole then commenced his sermon, by assigning reasons why in the present case a heretic, though penitent, should be burned. He then exhorted Cranmer and assured him that masses and dirges should be chanted for the repose of his soul. He concluded by calling on all present to pray for the prisoner. All knelt. Cole then called on Cranmer to perform his promise and make a con

[1556 A.D.] fession of his faith, so that all might understand that he was a Catholic indeed. "I will do it," said Cranmer, "and that with a good will."

He rose, put off his cap, and gravely addressed the people, exhorting them "not to set overmuch by the false glosing world, to obey the king and queen, to love one another like brethren and sistren, to give unto the poor." He then declared his belief in the creed, and in all things taught in the Old and New Testaments. "And now," said he, "I am come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that I ever said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death and to save my life if might be; and that is all such papers as I have written or signed since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue; and forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand when I come to the fire shall first be burned. And as for the pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and Antichrist with all his false doctrine.'" At these words murmurs were heard. Lord Williams charged him with dissembling. "Alas, my lord," said he, "I have been a man that all my life loved plainness, and until this time never did I dissemble against the truth; I am most sorry for this my fault, but now is the time in which I must strip off all disguise.' He would have spoken more, but Cole cried out, "Stop the heretic's mouth, and take him away."

He was now hurried away to the stake. He again declared "that he repented his recantation right sore," whereupon the lord Williams cried, "Make short, make short!" Fire being now put to him, he stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space before the fire came to any other part of his body, when his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a loud voice, "This hand hath offended." His sufferings were short, as the fire soon blazed fiercely; his heart was found entire amidst the ashes.j

Macaulay's Estimate of Cranmer

If we consider Cranmer merely as a statesman, he will not appear a much worse man than Wolsey, Gardiner, Cromwell, or Somerset. But when an attempt is made to set him up as a saint, it is scarcely possible for any man of sense who knows the history of the times to preserve his gravity. The origin of his greatness, common enough in the scandalous chronicles of courts, seems strangely out of place in a hagiology. Cranmer rose into favour by serving Henry in the disgraceful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the marriage of Anne Boleyn with the king. On a frivolous pretence he pronounced that marriage null and void. On a pretence, if possible, still more frivolous, he dissolved the ties which bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He attached himself to Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished. He voted for cutting off Cromwell's head without a trial when the tide of royal favour turned. He conformed backwards and forwards as the king changed his mind.

He assisted, while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out, as soon as Henry was dead, that the doctrine was false. He was, however, not at a loss for people to burn. The authority of his station and of his gray hairs was employed to overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child regarded persecution. Intolerance is always bad; but the sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed excites a loathing to which it is

[1556 A.D.]

difficult to give vent without calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious obligations, the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then the tool of Northumberland. When the protector wished to put his own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the course of the succession.

The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct more contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better judgment, because he could not resist the entreaties of Edward. A holy prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed by the bedside of a dying child than in committing crimes at the request of the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown half as much firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he might have saved the country from one of the greatest misfortunes that it ever underwent. He became, from whatever motive, the accomplice of the worthless Dudley. The virtuous scruples of another young and amiable mind were to be overcome. As Edward had been forced into persecution, Jane was to be seduced into treason. No transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable than this.

To the part which Cranmer, and, unfortunately, some better men than Cranmer, took in this most reprehensible scheme, much of the severity with which the Protestants were afterwards treated must in fairness be ascribed.

The plot failed, popery triumphed, and Cranmer recanted. Most people look on his recantation as a single blemish on an honourable life, the frailty of an unguarded moment. But, in fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with the system on which he had constantly acted. It was part of a regular habit. It was not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all probability, if it had answered its purpose, it would not have been the last. We do not blame him for not choosing to be burned alive. It is no very severe reproach to any person that he does not possess heroic fortitude. But surely a man who liked the fire so little should have had some sympathy for others. A persecutor who inflicts nothing which he is not ready to endure, deserves some respect. But when a man who loves his doctrines more than the lives of his neighbours, loves his own little finger better than his doctrines, a very simple argument a fortiori will enable us to estimate the amount of his benevolence.

But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed everything. It is extraordinary that so much ignorance should exist on this subject. The fact is that, if a martyr be a man who chooses to die rather than to renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more a martyr than Doctor Dodd. He died, solely because he could not help it. He never retracted his recantation till he found he had made it in vain. The queen was fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he should burn. Then he spoke out, as people generally speak out when they are at the point of death and have nothing to hope or to fear on earth. If Mary had suffered him to live, we suspect that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would then have purchased, by another apostasy, the power of burning men better and braver than himself.

We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid,

H. W.-VOL. XIX. S

[1556 A.D.]

interested courtier in times of frequent and violent change. That which has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest effaces past services and past injuries from their minds together. Their only object is self-preservation; and for this they conciliate those who wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them. Before we extol a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire whether he is above revenge or below it."

In contrast with the tremendous scorn of Macaulay for the weaknesses of Cranmer, we may quote Sir James Mackintosh in his defence. He begins with a citation from Strype,w who quotes the testimony of a Catholic eyewitness of Cranmer's death, a

Mackintosh's Estimate of Cranmer

"His patience in the torment, his courage in dying, if it had been for the glory of God, the weal of his country, or the testimony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error, I could worthily have commended the example, and marked it with the fame of any father of ancient time. His death much grieved every man-his friends for love, his enemies for pity, strangers for a common kind of humanity whereby we are bound to one another."I

To add anything to this equally authentic and picturesque narration from the hand of a generous enemy,2 which is one of the most beautiful specimens of ancient English, would be an unskilful act of presumption. The language of Cranmer speaks his sincerity, and demonstrates that the love of truth still prevailed in his inmost heart. It gushed forth at the sight of death, full of healing power, engendering a purifying and ennobling penitence, and restoring the mind to its own esteem after a departure from the strict path of sincerity. Courage survived a public avowal of dishonour, the hardest test to which that virtue can be exposed; and if he once fatally failed in fortitude, he in his last moments atoned for his failure by a magnanimity equal to his transgression. Let those who require unbending virtue in tempestuous times condemn the amiable and faulty primate. Others, who are not so certain of their own steadiness, will consider the fate of Cranmer as perhaps the most memorable example in history of a soul which, though debased, was not depraved by an act of weakness, and preserved a heroic courage after the forfeiture of honour, its natural spur, and, in general, its inseparable companion.

The firm endurance of sufferings by the martyrs of conscience, if rightly contemplated, is the most consolatory spectacle in the clouded life of man; far more ennobling and sublime than the outward victories of virtue, which must be partly won by weapons not her own, and are often the lot of her foulest foes. Magnanimity in enduring pain for the sake of conscience is not, indeed, an unerring mark of rectitude; but it is, of all other destinies, that which most exalts the sect or party whom it visits, and bestows on their story an undying command over the hearts of their fellow-men.t

The extracts above are from the narrative of a Catholic who was present; it is given by Strype in his Life of Cranmer.

[The narrative of the Catholic eye-witness quoted by Strype.]

Compared to others of his rank and station, Cranmer appears a miracle of constancy and perseverance. Lords and ladies were almost everywhere on the side of the queen.

Eliza

beth herself was an assiduous embroiderer of petticoats for female saints, and a devout walker in solemn processions. Cecil, Sadler, and all the great names we shall meet with in the next reign, were vacillating bondsmen of the pope.-WHITE.¿¿]

[1556-1557 A.D.]

Froude on Cranmer

As the translation of the Bible bears upon it the imprint of the mind of Tyndale, so, while the church of England remains, the image of Cranmer will be seen reflected on the calm surface of the liturgy. The most beautiful portions of it are translations from the breviary; yet the same prayers translated by others would not be those which chime like church-bells in the ears of the English child. The translations, and the addresses which are original, have the same silvery melody of language, and breathe the same simplicity of spirit. So long as Cranmer trusted himself, and would not let himself be dragged beyond his convictions, he was the representative of the feelings of the best among his countrymen. He was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than he had effected by his teaching while alive.m

THE PUNISHMENT OF DEAD BODIES

The day after the murder of Cranmer, Cardinal Pole was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, and he then assumed the public functions of the papal legate. He was a man of too much moderation to suit the temper of the furious Paul IV, who subsequently attempted to supersede him as legate, which attempt Mary had the spirit to resist. But he either wanted the inclination or the power to control the extravagant bigotry of the English universities, whose authorities, in 1557, perpetrated deeds that show how little learning is akin to wisdom when it associates itself with superstitions that outrage the natural feelings of mankind.

At the period when two new colleges were founded in Oxford-Trinity by Sir Thomas Pope, and St. John's by Sir Thomas White-that university was visited by the commissioners of the cardinal, who not only burned all the English Bibles and other heretical books, but went through the farce of making a process against the body of Peter Martyr's wife, who had been buried in one of the churches. They could find no witnesses who had heard her utter any heresies, for she could speak no English. So, under the direction of the cardinal, they transferred her body to a dunghill, upon the plea that she had been a nun and had died excommunicated. A scene equally disgusting was perpetrated by Pole's commissioners at Cambridge. They laid the churches of St. Mary's and St. Michael's under interdict, because the bodies of the great reformers, Bucer and Fagius, were buried in them. The dead were then cited to appear; but not answering to the summons, they were judged to be obstinate heretics, and their bodies were to be taken out of their graves and delivered to the secular power. On the 6th of February these bodies were publicly burned, according to the ancient ceremonies, which Rome had found so effectual in the case of Wycliffe.

WAR WITH FRANCE (1557-1558 A.D.)

Philip, who was now at war with France, was anxious to obtain the aid of England; for this purpose he came over in March, 1557. He assured the queen that it would be his last visit if he was refused. Mary was, of course,

[The resources of the kingdom were at Philip's command, and he even took ships of the English fleet to escort his father, the emperor, on his abdication, to Spain. More extra