Volume III Part 47 (1/2)

[469] Printed in Strype's _Cranmer_, Vol. II. p. 743.

[470] Philip Melancthon to Henry VIII., Foxe, Vol. V.

[471] Foxe, Vol. V. p. 265.

[472] Hall's _Chronicle_, p. 828. Hall is a good evidence on this point.

He was then a middle-aged man, resident in London, with clear eyes and a shrewd, clear head, and was relating not what others told him, but what he actually saw.

[473] In Latimer's case, against Henry's will, or without his knowledge.

Cromwell, either himself deceived or desiring to smooth the storm, told Latimer that the king advised his resignation; ”which his Majesty afterwards denied, and pitied his condition.”--_State Papers_, Vol. I.

p. 849.

[474] Hall.

[475] Notes of Erroneous Doctrines preached at Paul's Cross by the Vicar of Stepney: _MS. Rolls House_.

[476] Henry Dowes to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, Vol. III. p. 258.

[477] Richard Cromwell to Lord Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. VII. p. 188.

[478] More's _Utopia_, Burnet's translation, p. 13.

[479] Respectable authorities, as most of my readers are doubtless aware, inform us that seventy-two thousand criminals were executed in England in the reign of Henry VIII. Historians who are accustomed to examine their materials critically, have usually learnt that no statements must be received with so much caution as those which relate to numbers. Grotius gives, in a parallel instance, the number of heretics executed under Charles V. in the Netherlands as a hundred thousand. The Prince of Orange gives them as fifty thousand. The authorities are admirable, though sufficiently inconsistent, while the judicious Mr. Prescott declares both estimates alike immeasurably beyond the truth. The entire number of victims destroyed by Alva in the same provinces by the stake, by the gallows, and by wholesale ma.s.sacre, amount, when counted carefully in detail, to twenty thousand only. The persecutions under Charles, in a serious form, were confined to the closing years of his reign. Can we believe that wholesale butcheries were pa.s.sed by comparatively unnoticed by any one at the time of their perpetration, more than doubling the atrocities which startled subsequently the whole world? Laxity of a.s.sertion in matters of number is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood. Men not remarkably inaccurate will speak of thousands, and, when cross-questioned, will rapidly reduce them to hundreds, while a single cipher inserted by a printer's mistake becomes at once a tenfold exaggeration. Popular impressions on the character of the reign of Henry VIII. have, however, prevented inquiry into any statement which reflects discredit upon this; the enormity of an accusation has pa.s.sed for an evidence of its truth. Notwithstanding that until the few last years of the king's life no felon who could read was within the grasp of the law, notwithstanding that sanctuaries ceased finally to protect murderers six years only before his death, and that felons of a lighter cast might use their shelter to the last,--even those considerable facts have created no misgiving, and learned and ignorant historians alike have repeated the story of the 72,000 with equal confidence.

I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on which it rests.

The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the _Description of Britain_ prefixed to Hollinshed's _Chronicle_. Harrison, speaking of the manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and adds, ”It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop of Lexovia, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father, executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them.”

I am unable to discover ”the Bishop of Lexovia;” but, referring to the _Commentaries_ of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of his birth, and after it this pa.s.sage:--

”Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father, wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction with Cauda, Lampas partook of the nature of Mars; Luna in occiduo cardine was among the dependencies of Mars; and Mars himself was in the ill-starred constellation Virgo and in the quadrant of Jupiter Infelix. Moreover, he quarrelled with the Pope, owing to the position of Venus and to influences emanating from her. He was affected also by a constellation with schismatic properties, and by certain eclipses, and hence and from other causes, arose a fact related to me by the Bishop of Lexovia, namely, that two years before his death as many as seventy thousand persons were found to have perished by the hand of the executioner in that one island during his reign.”

The words of some unknown foreign ecclesiastic discovered imbedded in the midst of this abominable nonsense, and transmitted through a brain capable of conceiving and throwing it into form, have been considered authority sufficient to cast a stigma over one of the most remarkable periods in English history, while the contemporary English Records, the actual reports of the judges on a.s.size, which would have disposed effectually of Cardan and his bishop, have been left unstudied in their dust.

[480] As we saw recently in the complaints of the Marquis of Exeter. But in this general sketch I am giving the result of a body of correspondence too considerable to quote.

[481] In healthier times the Pope had interfered. A bull of Innocent VIII. permitted felons repeating their crimes, or fraudulent creditors, to be taken forcibly out of sanctuary.--Wilkins's _Concilia_, Vol. III.

p. 621.

[482] The Magistrates of Frome to Sir Henry Long: _MS. Cotton. t.i.tus_, B 1, 102. Mr. Justice Fitzjames to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XI. p. 43.

[483] The letter which I quote is addressed to Cromwell as ”My Lord Privy Seal,” and dated July 17. Cromwell was created privy seal on the 2d of July, 1536, and Earl of Ess.e.x on the 17th of April, 1540. There is no other guide to the date.

[484] The Magistrates of Chichester to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. X.

[485] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 1.

[486] Humfrey Wingfield to my Lord Privy Seal: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. LI.

[487] Richard Layton to Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office_, second series, Vol. XX.