Volume III Part 16 (1/2)
[Sidenote: The Abbott of Stratford excommunicates his monks for revealing convent scandals.]
[Sidenote: The Abbot of Woburn repents of his apostasy,]
[Sidenote: Takes up his cross and dies.]
Or, once more to turn to the surviving abbeys, here, too, each house was ”divided against itself, and could not stand.” The monks of Stratford complained to Sir Thomas Cholmondley that their abbot had excommunicated them for breach of oath in revealing convent secrets to the royal visitors. Their allegiance, the brave abbot had said, was to the superior of their order abroad, not to the secular sovereign in England.
He cared nothing for acts of parliament or king's commissions. The king could but kill him, and death was a small matter compared to perjury.[293] Death, therefore, he resolutely risked, and in some manner, we know not how, he escaped. Another abbot with the same courage was less fortunate. In the spring and summer of 1537 Woburn Abbey was in high confusion. The brethren were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to the times, anxious merely for secular habits, wives, and freedom. In the midst of them, Robert Hobbes the abbot, who in the past year had accepted the oath of supremacy in a moment of weakness, was lying worn down with sorrow, unable to govern his convent, or to endure the burden of his conscience. On Pa.s.sion Sunday in that spring, dying as it seemed of a broken heart, he called the fraternity to his side, and exhorted them to charity, and prayed them to be obedient to their vows. Hard eyes and mocking lips were all the answer of the monks of Woburn. ”Then, being in a great agony, the abbot rose up in his bed, and cried out, and said, 'I would to G.o.d it would please Him to take me out of this wretched world, and I would I had died with the good men that have suffered death for holding with the Pope. My conscience--my conscience doth grudge me for it.'” Abbot Hobbes should have his wish. Strength was left him to take up his cross once more where he had cast it down. Spiteful tongues carried his words to the council, and the law, remorseless as destiny, flung its meshes over him on the instant. He was swept up to London and interrogated in the usual form--”Was he the king's subject or the Pope's?” He stood to his faith like a man, and the scaffold swallowed him.[294]
[Sidenote: The king believes in unity.]
So went the world in England, rus.h.i.+ng forward, rocking and reeling in its course. What hand could guide it! Alone, perhaps, of living men, the king still believed that unity was possible--that these headstrong spirits were as horses broken loose, which could be caught again and harnessed for the road. For a thousand years there had been one faith in Western Christendom. From the Isles of Arran to the Danube thirty generations had followed each other to the grave who had held all to the same convictions, who had prayed all in the same words. What was this that had gone out among men that they were so changed? Why, when he had but sought to cleanse the dirt from off the temple, and restore its original beauty, should the temple itself crumble into ruins?
[Sidenote: Questions on the nature and number of the sacraments.]
[Sidenote: The real presence almost the only doctrine on which there is general agreement.]
The sacraments, the Divine mysteries, had existed in the Church for fifteen centuries. For all those ages they had been supposed to be the rivulets which watered the earth with the graces of the Spirit. After so long experience it should have been at least possible to tell what they were, or how many they were; but the question was suddenly asked, and none could answer it. The bishops were applied to. Interrogatories were sent round among them for opinions, and some said there were three sacraments, some seven, some a hundred. The Archbishop of York insisted on the apostolical succession; the Archbishop of Canterbury believed that priests and bishops might be nominated by the crown, and he that was so appointed needed no consecration, for his appointment was sufficient.[295] Transubstantiation remained almost the only doctrine beyond the articles of the three creeds on which a powerful majority was agreed.[296]
[Sidenote: Fresh rule of faith made necessary.]
[Sidenote: ”The Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man.”]
[Sidenote: Doctrine of sacramental grace.]
Something, however, must be done. Another statement must be made of the doctrine of the Church of England--if the Church of England were to pretend to possess a doctrine--more complete than the last. The slander must be put to silence which confounded independence with heresy; the clergy must be provided with some guide to their teaching which it should be penal to neglect. Under orders, therefore, from the crown, the bishops agreed at last upon a body of practical divinity, which was published under the t.i.tle of ”The Bishop's Book,” or ”the Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man.” It consisted of four commentaries, on the creed, the sacraments, the ten commandments, and the Lord's prayer, and in point of language was beyond question the most beautiful composition which had as yet appeared in English prose. The doctrine was moderate, yet more Catholic, and, in the matter of the sacraments, less ambiguous than the articles of 1536. The mystic number seven was restored, and the nature of sacramental grace explained in the old manner. Yet there was a manifest attempt, rather, perhaps, in tendency than in positive statement, to unite the two ideas of symbolic and instrumental efficacy, to indicate that the grace conveyed through the mechanical form was the spiritual instruction indicated in the form of the ceremony. The union among the bishops which appeared in the t.i.tle of the book was in appearance only, or rather it was a.s.sumed by the will of the king, and in obedience to his orders. When the doctrines had been determined by the bench, he even thought it necessary to admonish the composers to observe their own lesson.
[Sidenote: The king's exhortation to the bishops.]
[Sidenote: He will have all preachers agree;]
”Experience,” he wrote to them, ”has taught us that it is much better for no laws to be made, than when many be well made none to be kept; and even so it is much better nothing should be written concerning religion, than when many things be well written nothing of them be taught and observed.... Our commandment is, therefore, that you agree in your preaching, and that vain praise of crafty wits and worldly estimation be laid aside, and true religion sought for. You serve G.o.d in your calling, and not your own glory or vile profit. We will no correcting of things, no glosses that take away the text; being much desirous, notwithstanding, that if in any place you have not written so plainly as you might have done, in your sermons to the people you utter all that is in G.o.d's Word. We will have no more thwarting--no more contentions whereby the people are much more set against one another than any taketh profit by such undiscreet doctrines. We had much sooner to pray you than command you, and if the first will serve we will leave out the second.
Howbeit, we will in any case that all preachers agree; for if any shall dissent, let him that will defend the worser part a.s.sure himself that he shall run into our displeasure.”[297]
[Sidenote: And he will find that they cannot agree.]
”The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but we cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Henry would have the bishops agree; as easily could he bind the winds, and bid them blow at his pleasure. Under conditions, and within limits which he did not imagine, some measure of the agreement which he desired would be at last accomplished when the time and season would permit. Meanwhile, though his task was an impossible one, it was better to try and fail than to sit by and let the dissensions rage. Nor was Henry a man to submit patiently to failure. He would try and try again; when milder methods were unsuccessful he would try with bills of six articles, and pains and penalties. He was wrestling against destiny; yet then, now, and ever, it was and remains true, that in this great matter of religion, in which to be right is the first condition of being right in anything--not variety of opinion, but unity--not the equal licence of the wise and the foolish to choose their belief, but an ordered harmony, where wisdom prescribes a law to ignorance, is the rule which reasonable men should most desire for themselves and for mankind.
But if Henry erred, his errors might find excuse in the mult.i.tude of business which was crowded upon him. Insurrection and controversy, foreign leagues, and Papal censures did not exhaust the number of his difficulties. All evil things in nature seemed to have combined to thwart him.
[Sidenote: Neglected state of the English navy.]
[Sidenote: The Iceland fleet.]
[Sidenote: Piracy in the Channel.]
[Sidenote: English fis.h.i.+ng vessels plundered by the French and the Flemings.]
[Sidenote: Unprotected state of the harbours.]
[Sidenote: Battle between the French and the Spaniards in Falmouth harbour.]
In the first few years after he became king, he had paid particular attention to the navy. He had himself some skill as a naval engineer, and had conducted experiments in the construction of hulls and rigging, and in s.h.i.+p artillery. Other matters had subsequently called off his attention, and especially since the commencement of the Reformation every moment had brought with it its own urgent claims, and the dockyards had fallen into decay. The finances had been straitened by the Irish wars, and from motives of economy the s.h.i.+ps which the government possessed had fallen many of them out of commission, and were rotting in harbour. A few small vessels were kept on the coast of Ireland; but in the year 1536 there was scarcely in all the Channel a single royal cruiser carrying the English flag. Materials to man a fleet existed amply in the fishermen who went year after year in vast numbers to Iceland and to Ireland,[298]--hardy sailors, who, taught by necessity, went always armed, and had learnt to fight as well as to work; but, from a neglect not the less injurious because intelligible, the English authority in their own waters had sunk to a shadow. Pirates swarmed along the coasts--entering fearlessly into the harbours, and lying there in careless security. The war breaking out between Charles and Francis, the French and Flemish s.h.i.+ps of war captured prizes or fought battles in the mouths of English rivers, or under the windows of English towns; and through preying upon each other as enemies in the ordinary sense, both occasionally made prey of heretic English as enemies of the Church.
While the courts of Brussels and Paris were making professions of goodwill, the cruisers of both governments openly seized English traders and plundered English fis.h.i.+ng vessels, and Henry had for many months been compelled by the insurrection to submit to these aggressions, and to trust his subjects along the coasts to such inadequate defences as they could themselves provide. A French gallia.s.s and galleon came into Dartmouth harbour and attempted to cut out two merchantmen which were lying there: the mayor attacked them in boats and beat them off:[299]