Volume II Part 15 (1/2)

[Sidenote: ”Followed” to London; arrested, and probably tortured.]

The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the course of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October, or the beginning of November,[192] two friars were reported as having been at Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to escape observation. Secret agents of the government, who had been ”set” for the purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding ”many wiles and cautells by them invented to escape,”

the suspected persons were arrested and brought before Cromwell.

Cromwell ”upon examination, could gather nothing from them of any moment or great importance;” but, ”entering on further communication,” he said ”he found one of them a very seditious person, and so committed them to ward.” The king was absent from London, but had left directions that, in the event of any important occurrence of the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for; but Cranmer not being immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as, he said, ”it is undoubted that they (the monks) have intended, and would confess, some great matter, if they might be examined as they ought to be--that is to say, by pains.”

[Sidenote: Conspiracy, in which the Princess Mary was implicated, to dethrone the King.]

The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether they were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but we may naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the events which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a commission sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Latimer, ravelling out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole was disentangled, it appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary, and a large and formidable party in the country, the king, on the faith of a pretended revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that his death, either by visitation of G.o.d or by visitation of man, was daily expected; and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was immediately looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.

[Sidenote: Prophecies of the Nun of Kent.]

[Sidenote: December.]

The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by G.o.d to tell him that he should lose his power and authority. She had not specified the manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against him. The form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said that he should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a providential judgment, she left to conjecture;[193] and the period within which his punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at one month or at six.[194] She had attempted no secresy with these prophecies; she had confined herself in appearance to words; and the publicity which she courted having prevented suspicion of secret conspiracy, Henry quietly accepted the issue, and left the truth of the prophecy to be confuted by the event. He married. The one month pa.s.sed; the six months pa.s.sed: eight--nine months. His child was born and was baptized, and no divine thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless verbal thunder, from a poor old man at Rome. The illusion, as he imagined, had been lived down, and had expired of its own vanity.

[Sidenote: The Nun half deceiver, and half herself deceived.]

But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural a.s.sistance. It is remarkable that, hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to be, they were not without a half belief that some supernatural intervention was imminent; but the career on which they had entered was too fascinating to allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed them. They were swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the Reformation, and allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to victory or to destruction.

The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published like the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions were known.[195]

[Sidenote: On the failure of the first prophecy, an interpretation is discovered of a perilous kind. The king is declared to be in the condition of Saul after his rejection.]

”When the King's Grace,” says the report of the commissioners, ”had continued in good health, honour, and prosperity more than a month, Dr.

Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his kingdom by G.o.d, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her said revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this information, forged another revelation, that her words should be understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the reputation or acceptation of G.o.d, not one month or one hour after that he married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved a great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge against the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and also induced such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to look for the destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he married the Queen's Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in that expectation, the second revelation was devised not only as an interpretation of the former, but to the intent to induce the king's subjects to believe that G.o.d took the King's Grace for no king of this realm; and that they should likewise take him for no righteous king, and themselves not bounden to be his subjects; which might have put the King and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy of their crown and of their issue, and the people of this realm in great danger of destruction.”[196]

[Sidenote: The prophecies in extensive secret circulation in a written form.]

[Sidenote: The Friars Mendicant.]

It was no light matter to p.r.o.nounce the king to be in the position of Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested her divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by an Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission recollected that the king was threatened further with dying ”a villain's death”; and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out, and were in private circulation through the country, the matter a.s.sumed a dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and among what cla.s.ses of the state, these things had penetrated. The Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege of vagrancy without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in England was intimately known to them. No movement, therefore, could be securely overlooked in which these orders had a share; the country might be undermined in secret; and the government might only learn their danger at the moment of explosion.

[Sidenote: Arrest of the Nun and five monks.]

[Sidenote: She confesses.]

[Sidenote: A list is obtained of the persons who were implicated with her.]

No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the general facts, than the princ.i.p.al parties--that is to say, the Nun herself and five of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury--with whom her intercourse was most constant, were sent to the Tower to be ”examined,”--the monks it is likely by ”torture,” if they could not otherwise be brought to confession. The Nun was certainly not tortured.

On her first arrest, she was obstinate in maintaining her prophetic character; and she was detected in sending messages to her friends, ”to animate them to adhere to her and to her prophecies.”[197] But her courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her position. She soon made a full confession, in which her accomplices joined her; and the half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did not attempt to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an insurrection. The five monks--Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby, Father Dering, and Father Goold--had a.s.sisted the Nun in inventing her ”Revelations”: and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to communicate them in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome.

When we remember that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman, and that even Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from believing in her power, we are not surprised to find high names among those who were implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of regular and secular clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen also, and London merchants. The Bishop of Rochester had ”wept for joy”

at the first utterances of the inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More, ”who at first did little regard the said revelations, afterwards did greatly rejoice to hear of them.”[198] We learn, also, that the Nun had continued to _communicate with ”the Lady Princess Dowager” and ”the Lady Mary, her daughter_.”[199]

[Sidenote: The Countess of Salisbury and the Marchioness of Exeter.]

[Sidenote: Danger of a White Rose confederacy under the papal sanction.]

[Sidenote: Arrest of the Nevilles.]