Volume III Part 45 (1/2)

[389] ”'The marquis was the man that should help and do them good' (men said). See the experience, how all those do prevail that were towards the marquis. Neither a.s.sizes, nisi prius, nor bill of indictment put up against them could take effect; and, of the contrary part, how it prevailed for them.”--Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton.

t.i.tus_, B 1, 386.

[390] Depositions relating to Lord Delaware: _Rolls House MS._ first series, 426.

[391] Depositions taken before Sir Henry Capel: Ibid. 1286.

[392] ”A man named Howett, one of Exeter's dependents, was heard to say, if the lord marquis had been put to the Tower, at the commandment of the lord privy seal, he should have been fetched out again, though the lord privy seal had said nay to it, and the best in the realm besides; and he the said Howett and his company were fully agreed to have had him out before they had come away.”--_Rolls House MS._ first series, 1286.

[393] Deposition of Geoffrey Pole: _Rolls House MS._

[394] Jane Seymour was dead, and the king was not remarried: I am unable to explain the introduction of the words, unless (as was perhaps the case) the application to the painter was in the summer of 1537, and he delayed his information till the following year.

[395] Sir William G.o.dolphin to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XIII.

[396] Ibid.

[397] Wriothesley to Sir Thos. Wyatt: Ellis, second series, Vol. II.

[398] G.o.dolphin's Correspondence: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XIII.

[399] Instructions by the King's Highness to John Becket, Gentleman of his Grace's Chamber, and John Wroth, of the same: printed in the _Archaeologia_.

[400] ”Kendall and Quyntrell were as arrant traitors as any within the realm, leaning to and favouring the advancement of that traitor Henry, Marquis of Exeter, nor letting nor sparing to speak to a great number of the king's subjects in those parts that the said Henry was heir-apparent, and should be king, and would be king, if the King's Highness proceeded to marry the Lady Anne Boleyn, or else it should cost a thousand men's lives. And for their mischievous intent to take effect, they retained divers and a great number of the king's subjects in those parts, to be to the lord marquis in readiness within an hour's warning.”--Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1.

[401] Deposition of Alice Paytchet: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. x.x.xIX.

[402] Examination of Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter: _Rolls House MS._ first series, 1262.

[403] ”The Lord Darcy played the fool,” Montague said; ”he went about to pluck the council. He should first have begun with the head. But I beshrew him for leaving off so soon.”--_Baga de Secretis_, pouch xi.

bundle 2.

[404] ”I am sorry the Lord Abergavenny is dead; for if he were alive, he were able to make ten thousand men.”--Sayings of Lord Montague: Ibid.

[405] ”On Monday, the fourth of this month, the Marquis of Exeter and Lord Montague were committed to the Tower of London, being the King's Majesty so grievously touched by them, that albeit that his Grace hath upon his special favour borne towards them pa.s.sed over many accusations made against the same of late by their own domestics, thinking with his clemency to conquer their cankeredness, yet his Grace was constrained, for avoiding of such malice as was prepensed, both against his person royal and the surety of my Lord Prince, to use the remedy of committing them to ward. The accusations made against them be of great importance, and duly proved by substantial witnesses. And yet the King's Majesty loveth them so well, and of his great goodness is so loath to proceed against them, that it is doubted what his Highness will do towards them.”--Wriothesley to Sir T. Wyatt: Ellis, second series, Vol. II.

[406] Southampton to Cromwell: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 110.

[407] Southampton to Cromwell: Ellis, second series, Vol. II. p. 114.

[408] Robert Warren to Lord Fitzwaters: _MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1, 143.

[409] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 494, &c.

[410] Hall, followed by the chroniclers, says that the executions were on the 9th of January; but he was mistaken. In a MS. in the State Paper Office, dated the 16th of December, 1538, Exeter is described as having suffered on the 9th of the same month. My account of these trials is taken from the records in the _Baga de Secretis_: from the Act of Attainder, 31 Henry VIII. cap. 15, not printed in the Statute Book, but extant on the Roll; and from a number of scattered depositions, questions, and examinations in the Rolls House and in the State Paper Office.

[411] The degrading of Henry Courtenay, late Marquis of Exeter, the 3d day of December, and the same day convicted; and the 9th day of the said month beheaded at Tower Hill; and the 16th day of the same month degraded at Windsor: _MS. State Paper Office_. Unarranged bundle.

[412] Examination of Christopher Chator: _Rolls House MS._ first series.

[413] Gibbon professes himself especially scandalized at the persecution of Servetus by men who themselves had stood in so deep need of toleration. The scandal is scarcely reasonable, for neither Calvin nor any other Reformer of the sixteenth century desired a ”liberty of conscience” in its modern sense. The Council of Geneva, the General a.s.sembly at Edinburgh, the Smalcaldic League, the English Parliament, and the Spanish Inquisition held the same opinions on the wickedness of heresy; they differed only in the definition of the crime. The English and Scotch Protestants have been taunted with persecution. When nations can grow to maturity in a single generation, when the child can rise from his first grammar lesson a matured philosopher, individual men may clear themselves by a single effort from mistakes which are embedded in the heart of their age. Let us listen to the Landgrave of Hesse. He will teach us that Henry VIII. was no exceptional persecutor.