Part 17 (1/2)
The faint good fortune came opportunely; for in England the harvest had again failed, and the threat of famine had become the reality. On the 23rd of December malt was sold in London for forty s.h.i.+llings a quarter, and white flour at six s.h.i.+llings a bushel. The helpless remedy was attempted of crying up the base money, but the markets answered only by a further rise.[588] In the utter misery of the people, some were feeding upon acorns; some, in London, more piteously, left their infant children at the doors of their wealthy neighbours, to save them from starvation.
A famine was considered to be the immediate work of Heaven, and to be sent for an immediate moral cause. And yet the monasteries were rising from their ruins. Westminster was again an abbey. f.e.c.kenham was installed abbot on the 29th of November, with the ancient ceremonies, and walked in sad procession round the cloisters at the head of his friars.[589] The remnant of the monks of Glas...o...b..ry had crawled back into the ruins of their home. The queen had spared no effort and no sacrifice where her own power extended; and she had exhorted and advised where she was unable to act. Yet enough had not been done. In Ireland, indeed, the Catholic spirit had life in it. The Earl of Desmond had allowed no stone to be thrown down from the religious houses which had fallen to his share in the distribution. He had sheltered and supported the monks in the bad times, he now replaced them at his private cost;[590] and the example was telling among the chiefs. But in England, unfortunately, the lay owners of the church lands, orthodox and unorthodox alike, were hopelessly impenitent.
This, perhaps, was one cause of G.o.d's displeasure-the heretics were another; the heretics, and the sympathy with heresy displayed by the inhabitants of London, which had compelled the temporary release of the prisoners sent up from Ess.e.x.
It has been mentioned that the legate took occasion to admonish the citizens for their behaviour. In the present or the following year[591] he issued a pastoral letter, laying before them, and before the educated inhabitants of England generally, their duty at the present crisis; with an explanation, not entirely accurate, of the spirit in which the church had hitherto dealt with them. ”That by license and dispensation,” he said, ”you do enjoy, and keep, and possess such goods and lands of the church as were found in your hands, this was done of the church your mother's tenderness unto you, considering your imbecility and weakness after so sore a sickness that you had in the schism, at the which time your appet.i.te served you to no meat, but to that fruit that came from the lands of the church; and by that you lived, which she was content you should keep still, and made promise it should not be taken from you. And so it was left in your hand, as it were an apple in a child's hand given by the mother, which she, perceiving him to feed too much of, and knowing it should do him hurt if he himself should eat the whole, would have him give her a little piece thereof, which the boy refusing, and whereas he would cry out if she would take it from him, letteth him alone therewith. But the father, her husband, coming in, if he shall see how the boy will not let go one morsel to the mother that hath given him the whole, she asking it with so fair means, he may peradventure take the apple out of the boy's hand, and if he cry, beat him also, and cast the apple out of the window.”
The maternal tenderness, under this aspect of the secularisation, had been more weak than wise.
”As the English laity had dishonoured the ministers of the church above all people,” continued the legate, ”so must they now honour them above all people, remembering Christ's words-'He that despiseth you despiseth Me.' They must obey the priests, therefore, implicitly; they must be careful to pay their t.i.thes honestly; what they denied their priests they denied their G.o.d; and they must show their repentance especially where they had especially offended, touching the injuries they had done to the ministers of G.o.d, whom G.o.d had set over them, to be honoured as they would their natural father.”
”And this,” he said, coming to the heart of the matter, ”this you cannot do if you favour heretics, who being the very enemies of G.o.d and man, yet specially their enmity extendeth against priests. Here is another point that you must show worthy of a repentant mind: that whereas you have sore offended G.o.d by giving favour to heretics, now temper your favour under such manner that if you can convert them by any ways unto the unity of the church, then do it, for it is a great work of mercy. But if ye cannot, and ye suffer or favour them, there cannot be a work of greater cruelty against the commonwealth than to nourish or favour any such. For be you a.s.sured, there is no kind of men so pernicious to the commonwealth as they be; there are no thieves, no murderers, no adulterers, nor no kind of treason, to be compared to theirs, who, as it were, undermining the chief foundation of all commonwealths, which is religion, maketh an entry to all kinds of vices in the most heinous manner.” ... ”You specially of the City of London, you being the first that received the fruit of grace in the new plantation, the seed of benediction being first cast upon you, to make you a ground to bring forth all fruit of sanct.i.ty and justice; ... shall I say, that after all this done, more briars and thorns hath grown here among you than in all the realm besides? I cannot say so, nor I will not; albeit it might so seem, for a greater mult.i.tude of these brambles and briars were cast in the fire here among you than in any place besides; but many of them being grown in other places, and brought in and burned among you, may give occasion that you have a worse name without your desert. The thing standeth not in the name-bethink you yourselves how it standeth.... Wherefore cometh this, that when any heretic shall go to execution, he shall lack no comforting of you, and encouraging to die in his perverse opinion? that when he shall be put in prison he shall have more cheris.h.i.+ng?... As it is now, this may not be suffered.... For their boldness in their death, it is small argument of grace to be in them; Christ himself showing more heaviness and dolour at his dying hour than did the thieves that hung beside him, which did blaspheme Christ, setting nought by him, specially one of them, showing no further fear. So do the heretics at their deaths like the blasphemer.”[592]
Cruel and savage as the persecution had become, it was still inadequate. The famine lasted, and therefore G.o.d was angry.
The new year opened with the appointment of a commission, consisting of Bonner, Thirlby, and twenty other peers, gentlemen, and canon lawyers, on whom the court could rely. ”Wicked persons” had invented slanders against the queen's person, and had sown ”pestilent heresies” in the realm. The queen, therefore, ”minding to punish such enormities,” and having especial trust in the wisdom of these persons, gave them power to inst.i.tute inquiries at their pleasure into the conduct and opinions of every man and woman in all parts of the kingdom. The protection of the law was suspended. The commissioners might arrest any person at any place. Three of them were enough to form a court; and mayors, sheriffs, and magistrates were commanded to a.s.sist at their peril.
The object of the commission was ”to search and find out” the sellers of heretical books, or those who in any way professed heresy or taught it; to ascertain who refused to attend ma.s.s, to walk in procession, to use holy water, or in any way betrayed disrespect for the established religion. Those who ”persisted in their bad opinions” were to be given up to their ordinary, to be punished according to law. The commissioners were themselves empowered to punish with fine or imprisonment those who yielded, or those whose offences were in the second degree, taking care to collect the fines which they inflicted, and to certify the exchequer of their receipts. They were not embarra.s.sed by a necessity of impanelling juries; they might call juries if they pleased; they might use ”all other means and politic ways that they could devise.” No Spanish inquisition possessed larger or less tolerable powers; no English sovereign ever more entirely set aside the restrictions of the law.[593] The appointment of the commission was followed up by Pole in a visitation of the diocese of Canterbury. Persons were nominated to examine into the doctrines of the clergy; to learn whether those who had been married held communication with their wives; whether the names of those who had not been reconciled had been registered as he had ordered; and from every clergyman to ascertain the habits, beliefs, and opinions of every resident, male or female, in his parish.[594]
Other commissioners again were sent to the universities, with powers extending, not over the living only, but the dead.
Scot, Bishop of Chester, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, and Christopherson, Master of Trinity and Bishop of Chichester, went in January to Cambridge, accompanied by Ormaneto, the Venetian, a confidential friend of the legate. Bucer and f.a.gius slept in St. Mary's and St. Michael's. The 10th of January, the day after the bishops' arrival, the two churches were laid under an interdict, as defiled with the presence of unhallowed bodies. On the 15th a summons was fixed to St. Mary's door, citing Martin Bucer and Paul f.a.gius, or any other who would plead on their behalf, to make answer three days after, before the commission, on a charge of heresy. The court sate, and no one appeared. The session was adjourned for a week, while the colleges were searched, and Primers, Prayer-books, Bibles, or other interdicted volumes, were hunted out and brought together. On the 26th the bishops met again; the accused remained undefended, and the heresy was taken to be proved; sentence was pa.s.sed therefore, that the bodies should be disinterred and burnt. On the 6th of February the coffins were taken out of the graves, and chained to a stake in the market-place; the Bibles and prayer-books were heaped round them with a pile of f.a.ggots, and books and bodies were reduced to ashes.
Having purged Cambridge, Ormaneto proceeded to Oxford, on business of the same description.
Peter Martyr, when he came into residence as divinity professor at Christ Church, had outraged the orthodox party in the university by bringing a wife within the college walls; and Catherine Cathie, so the wife was named, had, like the wife of Luther, been a professed nun. She had died before Mary's accession, and had been buried in the cathedral. A process has now inst.i.tuted against her similar to that at Cambridge.
An unforeseen difficulty occurred in the conduct of the prosecution. Catherine Cathie had lived quietly and un.o.btrusively; she had taught nothing and had written no books; and no evidence could be found to justify her conviction on a charge of heresy.
Ormaneto wrote to the legate for instructions; and as burning was not permissible, the legate replied that, ”forasmuch as Catherine Cathie, of detestable memory, had called herself the wife of Peter Martyr, a heretic, although both he and she had before taken vows of religion; forasmuch as she had lived with him in Oxford in fornication, and after her death was buried near the sepulchre of the Holy Virgin St. Frideswide, Ormaneto should invite the dean of the cathedral to cast out the carcase from holy ground, and deal with it according to his discretion.”
Catherine Cathie, therefore, was dug up, taken out of her coffin, and flung into a cesspool at the back of the dean's house, and it was hoped that by this means the blessed St. Frideswide would be able to rest again in peace. Human foresight is imperfect; years pa.s.sed and times changed; and Elizabeth, when she had the power to command, directed that the body should be restored to decent burial. The fragments were recovered with difficulty, and were about to be replaced in the earth under the floor of the cathedral, when some one produced the sacred box which contained the remains of St. Frideswide. Made accessible to the veneration of the faithful by Cardinal Pole, the relics had been concealed on the return of heresy by some pious wors.h.i.+pper. They were brought out at the critical moment, and an instant sense of the fitness of things consigned to the same resting-place the bones of the wife of Peter Martyr. The married nun and the virgin saint were buried together, and the dust of the two still remains under the pavement inextricably blended.[595]
But Pole did not live to see the retribution. Convinced, if ever there was a sincere conviction in any man, that the course which he was pursuing was precisely that which G.o.d required of him, he laboured on in his dark vocation. Through the spring and summer the persecution, under the new commission, raged with redoubled fury.
The subject is one to which it will not be necessary to return, except with some brief details. In this place, therefore, shall be given an extract from a tract in circulation among the Protestants who were expecting death; and it may be judged, from the sentiments with which these n.o.ble-natured men faced the prospect of their terrible trial, with what justice Pole called them brambles and briars only fit to be burnt-criminals worse than thieves, or murderers, or adulterers.[596]
”The cross of persecution, if we will put childishness apart, and visibly weigh the worthiness thereof, is that sovereign, tried medicine that quencheth the daily digested poison of self-love, worldly pleasure, fleshly felicity. It is the only worthy poison of ambition, covetousness, extortion, uncleanness, licentiousness, wrath, strife, sedition, sects, malice, and such other wayward worms: it is the hard hammer that breaketh off the rust from the anchor of a Christian faith. O profitable instrument! O excellent exercise, that cannot be spared in a Christian life! with what alacrity of mind, with what desirous affection, with what earnest zeal, ought we to embrace this incomparable jewel, this sovereign medicine, this comfortable cup of tribulation.
”When a piece of ground is limited and bounded, it doth not only signify that it goeth no further, but also it tendeth and stretcheth to the bound. It is not enough to consider that we shall not pa.s.s the time that G.o.d hath limited and determined us to live, but we must a.s.suredly persuade ourselves that we shall live as long as He hath ordained us to live; and so shall we do, in despite of all our enemies.
”And tell me, have men given us our life? No, forsooth. No more can they take it away from us. G.o.d hath given it, and G.o.d only doth take it away, for He is the Lord of death as well as of life; wherefore when the appointed time of our death is come, let us a.s.sure ourselves, that it is G.o.d only and none other that doth kill us, for He saith, It is I that kill and make alive again.
”Let us follow the example of Christ, our Master, who seeing His death approaching, said to G.o.d, My Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt; thy will be done, and not mine.-Let us offer then, unto G.o.d our Father, ourselves for a sacrifice, whose savour, although it be evil in the nose of the world, yet it is good and agreeable unto G.o.d, by Jesus Christ his Son, in the faith of whom we do dedicate and offer ourselves, when we perceive our hour to approach.
”And, whatsoever betide, let us not fear men; let us not fear them. G.o.d doth inhibit and forbid us in the same, saying, by his prophet, Fear them not, for I am with you; and seeing G.o.d doth forbid us to fear men, can we fear them without sin? No truly. To what purpose do we fear them? Men of themselves can do nothing, and if at any time they have any power, the same only cometh unto them from G.o.d, and is given unto them only to accomplish the will of G.o.d. But peradventure ye will say to me that Jesus Christ himself, in the time of his cross, did fear death, and therefore it is no marvel though we do fear it, in whom is no such perfection and constancy. Truly the flesh doth always abuse herself with the example of Jesus Christ; she doth abuse it, for she cannot rightfully use it, inasmuch as the flesh is in all ways repugnant unto the spirit and the good will of G.o.d. Forasmuch as ye will herein follow Christ-well, I am contented-fear death, but fear it as he did fear it. If you will say that Christ had fear of death, consider the same also to be on such sort as the fear did not keep him back from the voluntary obedience of his Father, and from saying, with unfeigned lips, Thy will be done.
”Ye will say, We fear not death for any fear we have to be d.a.m.ned, neither for any diffidence that we have of eternal life; but we fear death for the human understanding that we have of the great pain that some do suffer in dying, and especially in dying by fire; for we suppose that pain to surmount all patience. O fond flesh, thy voice is always full of love of thyself, and of a secret diffidence and mistrust of the Almighty power, wisdom, and goodness of G.o.d.”
While the true heroes of the age were fighting for freedom with the weapons of n.o.ble suffering, the world was about to recommence its own battles, with which it is less easy to sympathise. The attempt on Calais having failed, it became a question at the French court, whether, after having given so just cause of quarrel to England, wisdom would not suggest an abandonment of the intention of recommencing the war with Philip. Noailles crossed to Paris in December, where the king questioned him whether Mary would be able to declare war. Noailles a.s.sured him, ”that out of doubt she would not; for if she should send those whom she trusted out of the realm, then would they whom she trusted not, not fail to be busy within the realm.”[597] Rea.s.sured by the amba.s.sador's opinion, Henry resumed his intentions. In March, the Duke of Guise led an army into Italy. The pope recovered courage, defied Alva, and again laid claim to Naples; and it was to be seen now whether Noailles was right-whether the English people would unite with the court to resent the French king's conduct sufficiently to permit Mary at last to join in the quarrel.