Volume II Part 18 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Private communications are made to them by Cromwell that the king will accept their apology.]

In the bill, therefore, as it was first read, More and Fisher found themselves declared guilty of misprision of treason. But the object of this measure was rather to warn than to punish, nor was there any real intention of continuing their prosecution. Cromwell, under instructions from the king, had communicated privately with both of them. He had sent a message to Fisher through his brother, telling him that he had only to ask for forgiveness to receive it;[239] and he had begged More through his son-in-law, Mr. Roper, to furnish him with an explicit account of what had pa.s.sed at any time between himself and the Nun,[240] with an intimation that, if honestly made, it would be accepted in his favour.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas More complies elaborately and reasonably.]

[Sidenote: More is pardoned.]

These advances were met by More in the spirit in which they were offered. He heartily thanked Cromwell, ”reckoning himself right deeply beholden to him;”[241] and replied with a long, minute, and evidently veracious story, detailing an interview which he had held with the woman in the chapel of Sion Monastery. He sent at the same time a copy of a letter which he had written to her, and described various conversations with the friars who were concerned in the forgery. He did not deny that he had believed the Nun to have been inspired, or that he had heard of the language which she was in the habit of using respecting the king. He protested, however, that he had himself never entertained a treasonable thought. He told Cromwell that ”he had done a very meritorious deed in bringing forth to light such detestable hypocrisy, whereby every other wretch might take warning, and be feared to set forth their devilish dissembled falsehoods under the manner and colour of the wonderful work of G.o.d.”[242] More's offence had not been great. His acknowledgments were open and unreserved; and Cromwell laid his letter before the king, adding his own intercession that the matter might be pa.s.sed over. Henry consented, expressing only his grief and concern that Sir Thomas More should have acted so unwisely.[243] He required, nevertheless, as Cromwell suggested, that a formal letter should be written, with a confession of fault, and a request for forgiveness. More obeyed; he wrote, gracefully reminding the king of a promise when he resigned the chancellors.h.i.+p, that in any suit which he might afterwards have to his Grace, either touching his honour or his profit, he should find his Highness his good and gracious lord.[244] Henry acknowledged his claim; his name was struck out of the bill, and the prosecution against him was dropped.

[Sidenote: Fisher is obstinate. His fault had been deeper than More's; yet he undertakes to defend it.]

[Sidenote: Folly of his position;]

Fisher's conduct was very different; his fault had been far greater than More's, and promises more explicit had been held out to him of forgiveness. He replied to these promises by an elaborate and ridiculous defence,--not writing to the king, as Cromwell desired him, but vindicating himself as having committed no fault; although he had listened eagerly to language which was only pardonable on the a.s.sumption that it was inspired, and had encouraged a nest of fanatics by his childish credulity. The Nun ”had showed him not,” he said, ”that any prince or temporal lord should put the king in danger of his crown.” He knew nothing of the intended insurrection. He believed the woman to have been a saint; he supposed that she had herself told the king all which she had told to him; and therefore he said that he had nothing for which to reproach himself.[245] He was unable to see that the exposure of the imposture had imparted a fresh character to his conduct, which he was bound to regret. Knowingly or unknowingly, he had lent his countenance to a conspiracy; and so long as he refused to acknowledge his indiscretion, the government necessarily would interpret his actions in the manner least to his advantage.

[Sidenote: Which Cromwell exposes,]

[Sidenote: And once more urges him to apologize.]

If he desired that his conduct should be forgotten, it was indispensable that he should change his att.i.tude, and so Cromwell warned him. ”Ye desire,” the latter wrote, ”for the pa.s.sion of Christ, that ye be no more quickened in this matter; for if ye be put to that strait ye will not lose your soul, but ye will speak as your conscience leadeth you; with many more words of great courage. My Lord, if ye had taken my counsel sent unto you by your brother, and followed the same, submitting yourself by your letter to the King's Grace for your offences in this behalf, I would have trusted that ye should never be quickened in the matter more. But now where ye take upon you to defy the whole matter as ye were in no default, I cannot so far promise you. Wherefore, my Lord, I would eftsoons advise you that, laying apart all such excuses as ye have alleged in your letters, which in my opinion be of small effect, ye beseech the King's Grace to be your gracious lord, and to remit unto you your negligence, oversight, and offence committed against his Highness in this behalf; and I dare undertake that his Highness shall benignly accept you into his gracious favour, all matter of displeasure past afore this time forgotten and forgiven.”[246]

[Sidenote: Fisher again refuses, and sends in his defence to the House of Lords.]

Fisher must have been a hopelessly impracticable person. Instead of following More's example, and accepting well-meant advice, he persisted in the same tone, and drew up an address to the House of Lords, in which he repeated the defence which he had made to Cromwell. He expressed no sorrow that he had been engaged in a criminal intrigue, no pleasure that the intrigue had been discovered; and he doggedly adhered to his a.s.sertions of his own innocence.[247]

[Sidenote: March 6. The bill pa.s.ses.]

[Sidenote: The Nun and the monks to be executed. The Bishop of Rochester and Father Abel to be imprisoned with forfeiture of goods.]

There was nothing to be done except to proceed with his attainder. The bill pa.s.sed three readings, and the various prisoners were summoned to the Star Chamber to be heard in arrest of judgment. The Bishop of Rochester's attendance was dispensed with on the ground of illness, and because he had made his defence in writing.[248] Nothing of consequence was urged by either of the accused. The bill was most explicit in its details, going carefully through the history of the imposture, and dwelling on the separate acts of each offender. They were able to disprove no one of its clauses, and on the 12th of March it was read a last time. On the 21st it received the royal a.s.sent, and there remained only to execute the sentence. The Nun herself, Richard Masters, and the five friars being found guilty of high treason, were to die; the Bishop of Rochester, Father Abel, Queen Catherine's confessor, and four more, were sentenced for misprision of treason to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment. All other persons implicated, whose names did not appear, were declared pardoned at the intercession of Queen Anne.[249]

[Sidenote: April 21.]

The chief offenders suffered at Tyburn on the 21st of April, meeting death calmly, as it appears; receiving a fate most necessary and most deserved,[250] yet claiming from us that partial respect which is due to all persons who will risk their lives in an unselfish cause. For the Nun herself, we may feel even a less qualified regret. Before her death she was permitted to speak a few words to the people, which at the distance of three centuries will not be read without emotion.

[Sidenote: Last words of the Nun at Tyburn.]

”Hither am I come to die,” she said, ”and I have not been the only cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved; but also I am the cause of the death of all these persons which at this time here suffer.

And yet I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto these learned men that I was a poor wench without learning; and therefore they might have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well judge that they were altogether feigned.

But because the things which I feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost and not I that did them. And I being puffed up with their praises, fell into a pride and foolish fantasye with myself, and thought I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me to this case, and for the which I now cry G.o.d and the King's Highness most heartily mercy, and desire all you good people to pray to G.o.d to have mercy on me, and on all them that here suffer with me.”[251]

[Sidenote: Fisher, in spite of himself, is left unpunished.]

The inferior confederates were committed to their prisons with the exception only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh provocation the miserable old man forced himself upon his fate.[252]

[Sidenote: The Act of Succession.]

[Sidenote: The necessity of it.]

And now the closing seal was to be affixed to the agitation of the great question of the preceding years. I have said that throughout these years the uncertainty of the succession had been the continual anxiety of the nation. The birth of a prince or princess could alone provide an absolute security; and to beget a prince appeared to be the single feat which Henry was unable to accomplish. The marriage so dearly bought had been followed as yet only by a girl; and if the king were to die, leaving two daughters circ.u.mstanced as Mary and Elizabeth were circ.u.mstanced, a dispute would open which the sword only could decide.