much to dissuade both the king and his Council, as I did. "And whereas it is contained in two Acts of Parliament, as I understand, that I, with the duke of Northumberland, should devise and compass the deprivation of your Majesty from your royal Crown, surely it is untrue. For the duke never opened his mouth to me, to move me [to] any such matter. Nor his heart was not such toward me, (seeking long time my destruction,) that he would ever trust me in such a matter, or think that I would be persuaded by him. It was other of the Council that moved me, and the king himself, the duke of Northumberland not being present. Neither before, neither after, had I ever any privy communication with the duke of that matter, saving that openly, at the council-table, the duke said unto me, that it became not me to say to the king, as I did, when I went about to dissuade him from his said will." 1 After his disputation too at Oxford, imploring the lords of the Council to intercede for him with the queen, he says, " some of you know by what means I was brought and 2 trained unto the will of our late sovereign lord, king Edward VI., and what I spake against the same; wherein 'His letter to the Council. Foxe. 2 Drawn by persuasion, namely, of the king. Shakspeare and Milton, both use train in this sense. 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. 1 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, 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 66 '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 3 Strype with hesitation follows Burnet, Ecc. Mem. ii. 432. |