lord-mayor and certain of the aldermen were forced to attend. In this court he could, with ease and great comfort to himself, condemn men to the flames at the rate of half a dozen a-day; but even Bonner was too slow for the government; the privy council kept continually urging him forward in this frightful persecution; and Mary and her husband addressed to him one letter (if not more), as if even he wanted excitement to the prosecution of heretics.' Cardinal Pole, whose moderation and mercy caused him to be suspected at Rome of entertaining himself some heretical notions, in vain endeavoured to stop the destructive torrent, and to prove to Mary and her government that the practice of persecution was not only highly dangerous to themselves but the scandal of all religion. Ever since the month of March of the preceding year, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, had been removed from the Tower to Oxford. The two latter, like the primate, had favoured the usurpation of the Lady Jane; and Ridley with great spirit, honestly avowed that he had acted with his eyes open- that he had never been actuated by fear of Northumberland or of any one else, but merely by a conviction that that step was NICHOLAS RIDLEY, Bishop of London.-From a rare print. necessary and indispensable for the preservation of the Protestant religion. If Cranmer had had the same decision and courage, it is possible that affairs might have taken a different turn, or, at the worst, he would have had a better excuse to plead than that of his having gone into the scheme of excluding Mary against his conscience, being overpowered by the importunities of the dying Edward. Ridley, and Latimer also, were Burnet; Strype: Hallam, Const. Hist. Burnet gives, in his Collection of Records, a letter from the king and queen to Bishop Tonner, recommending more activity. amenable to the same charge of treason as Cranmer; but for very evident purposes it was resolved to sink this offence in the more awful charge of heresy. The timid character of the primate was well known, and the Catholic party seem to have considered it possible to force all three to recant. On the 14th of April, about five weeks after their first arrival at Oxford, they were brought out of their prisons to St. Mary's Church, where questions relating to transubstantiation, and the efficacy of the mass as a sacrifice and propitiation for the sins of quick and dead, were submitted to them. They were allowed to debate these points in public, and, if they could convince their mortal enemies, then their prison gates would be opened. But the orthodox controversialists did not give themselves the trouble to preserve even the appearance of fair play; they would allow their opponents no books--no time for preparation-nor would they let them argue together. Cranmer was to face alone their entire battery on the 16th of April, Ridley on the 17th, and Latimer on the 18th. On the day appointed Cranmer appeared before the consistory assembled in the divinity school, and, with more courage than had been expected from him, he proceeded to support the tenets which he had taught; but there were many voices to one; the doctors called him unlearned, unskilful, ignorant; and the Oxford scholars very generally hissed and hooted, and clapped their hands, whenever he advanced any opinion they disliked. On the following day Ridley appeared in the same place, and met with much the same treatment; but Ridley had more nerve than Cranmer, and more learning than Latimer, and to him is generally attributed the glory of the contest on the Protestant side. But he might as well have held his tongue, for, whenever he pressed them closely with an argumentative syllogism, they all lifted up their voices against him together. "I have but one tongue," cried Ridley; "I cannot answer at once to you all." When poor Latimer was brought up to be baited on the following day, he was so weak and faint that he could scarcely stand. In spite of the persecutions which he had himself directed when the current ran in a different direction, his appearance was calculated to excite sympathy in every breast except those of controversialists and dogmatists. "Ha! good master," said the aged prelate to one of his judges, "I pray ye be good to an old man. You may be once as old as I am; you may come to this age, and this debility." Cranmer and Ridley had disputed in Latin, but Latimer spoke in his mother tongue, and was the better understood. But they would not permit him to proceed without frequent interruptions; and the Oxford scholars hissed and hooted and laughed at him, making | ger, a dial, and such other few things as he had altogether such a din that the divinity school about him; and among the by-standers were men In the helplooked more like a bear-garden than a scene ap- too happy to get any rag of him. pointed for the discussion of dogmas deemed lessness of old age Latimer had left it to his essential to the salvation of men's souls. Poor keeper to strip him; but when he stood up in his Latimer, a man of humble birth, and simple, if shroud, erect and fearless, by the side of the fagots, he seemed, in the eyes of some of the beholders, to be no longer the withered and decrepit old man, "but as comely a father as one might lightly behold." Ridley was tied first to the stake. As they were chaining Latimer to the reverse of the stake, the hardy old man exclaimed, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." Then the flames arose, and Latimer was soon seen to expire in the midst of them; but Ridley's sufferings were long and dreadful. The Lord Williams of Thame, the vice-chancellor of the university, the other commissioners appointed by the court, and a multitude of Oxford scholars and gentlemen, stood by and witnessed the whole, and for the most part with pious and complacent countenances, like men that felt the happy assurance that they were doing God service. But there were other spectators who looked on with very different eyes. The fortitude of the sufferers confirmed Protestants in their faith; every execution made some converts, and went to awaken a thorough and most lasting abhorrence of the persecuting church.' HUGH LATIMER, Bishop of Worcester.-From a rare print. not rustic manners, said, with a naïveté which About six weeks before these executions at Oxford, King Philip passed over to the Continent, in no very good humour with our island, for he found that he had in a manner thrown himself away in a marriage with a disagreeable woman. Mary's uncomfortable fondness seemed to increase with his absence: she wrote him tender letters, to which he seldom replied, except when he wished her to obtain money for his use from her parliament; and he entertained his courtiers (if not a mistress) with unmanly criticisms on his wife's person and manners. On the 21st of October, five days after the death of Ridley and Latimer, the parliament met in a mood less obsequious than usual, and the queen, in her anxiety to serve the Church of Rome, excited a somewhat stormy opposition. Some months before, in her ardent zeal for the pope, she had the imprudence to consult certain members of the privy council touching the restoration of all the abbey lands in England, which she told them she considered had been taken away from their proper owners in time of schism, and that by unlawful means, and such as were contrary both to the interests of God and of the church. She told them that, for her own part, she considered an immediate surStrype: Fox: Godwin: Blunt. was given to another ecclesiastic-to Heath, Archbishop of York; but, though keen in the persecuting of Protestants, the new chancellor had not the talent and address of the old one. Meanwhile (A.D. 1556) Mary's unthankful husband kept pressing her for money, and still more render of what the crown had received essential | ease on the 12th of November. The great seal to salvation. From her vehemence it was expected that she would press for the surrender of the lands by whomsoever held, and on this head the sensitive parliament were never at their ease during the short remainder of her reign. But during the present session she only required them to legalize her restoring the first-fruits and tenths, and the impropriations vested in the crown. Even to this parliament objected; and when the commons came to vote supplies, it was asked, with some violence, what justice there was in taxing the subject to relieve the sovereign's necessities, to when she refused to avail herself of funds legally at her disposal? -and it was also suggested that the Catholic clergy, who were grow. ing rich by the royal liberality, ought make large sacrifices for the relief of their benefactress. At last the house passed the supplies, but with a considerable deduction from the amount originally proposed; and they also passed the bills about the first- fruits, and tenths, and impropriations, but in such a spirit as showed that it would be unsafe to urge them to further concessions in that direction. After a short session, the queen dissolved parliament on the 9th of December.' During the session Bishop Gardiner, the chancellor, had gone to his final account. He attended at the opening of the houses, and displayed his usual ability and energy; but on the third day his bodily sufferings obliged him to quit his post, and he expired of a painful dis Journals: Holinshed; Stow. money. To make up for the scanty supplies voted by parliament, she and her new chancellor had recourse to a variety of illegal and violent expedients. All the money was spent as soon as got; the mass of it went to her husband or to Rome. It appears that the court calculated that when Cranmer should be no longer supported by the more courageous spirit of Ridley and Latimer, he would temporize, as he had so often done before, and, in the fear of death, take such steps as would cover himself with infamy and bring discredit on the whole Protestant party; and that for these express reasons he was left alive. It should be mentioned, however, that there were other reasons, and that, as a metropolitan, his case was reserved for the pope himself, the tribunal which had despatched the two suffragan bishops not being competent, in canonical law, to take cognizance of it. By a grievous mockery the pope cited this close prisoner at Oxford to appear at Rome and answer for his heresies. At the end of the eighty days, having taken no care, as it was said in the Papal instrument, to appear at Rome, he was pronounced guilty, and Bonner, Bishop of London, and Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, were appointed commissioners to degrade him, and to see the sentence executed upon him. Cranmer, who was delivered over to the secular power-for by a delicate fiction the persecuting church was never the executor of its own sentences-trembled at the near ap THE MARTYRS' MEMORIAL OXFORD.2 From a view by Mackenzie. "This noble monument, designed to commemorate the deaths of the Protestant martyrs, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, was erected in 1841, near the spot which witnessed their sufferings. It is executed in magnesian limestone; has a total height of 73 feet; and is placed in the centre of St. Giles Street, adjoining St. John's College and the University Galleries, Oxford. conscience by subscribing the recantations. It was not convenient to permit him to make a long address; he was soon pulled down from the platform in the church on which he stood, and hurried away to the same ditch, over against Baliol College, where his more fortunate friends, Ridley and Latimer, had suffered five months before. He was stripped to the shirt, and tied to the stake: he made no moan or useless prayer for mercy in this world: the death which he had so dreaded, and for so long a time, seemed less dreadful when he saw it face to face. As soon as the flames began to rise he thrust into them his right hand-that erring hand which had signed the recantations." The Romish church of England, with all its absolute hopes, may almost be said to have perished in the flames that consumed Cranmer. The impression made by his martyrdom was immense, and as lasting as it was wide and deep. On the side of the Catholics, the putting him to death was as gross an error in policy as it was atrocious and detestable as a crime. proach of a horrible death, and betrayed that | certain assurance of death. Accordingly, Cranweakness upon which his enemies had calculated. mer acted as every man would have done in the He had written in abject terms to the queen be- like situation; he renounced the pope and all his fore, and, by receiving the visits in his cell, and doctrines-he gave a brief summary of his real listening to the arguments of a learned Spanish faith-he protested against the atrocious means monk-a certain friar Soto-and other Catholics, which had been used-he accused himself of havhe seems to have wished that it should be be-ing, from fear of death, sacrificed truth and his lieved he was still open to conviction. He now renewed his applications for mercy, and turned a ready ear to those who suggested that mercy might be obtained, though only by recantation. It was a vital point with his enemies to lead him to this; and, if the truth is told, they proceeded with a dexterity and malice truly infernal, softening the hardships of his captivity, which might have rendered death less terrible, and giving him again to taste of the pleasures of life. They removed him to the house of the dean of Christchurch, where he fared delicately, and was allowed to play at bowls and walk about at his pleasure. Not to dwell upon this miserable scene, in which, after all, Cranmer excites rather pity and compassion than contempt, and in which he is far more easily excused than in many others of his preceding career, he formally renounced the faith he had taught, and, as his enemies were not satisfied with his signature to one scroll, he signed recantation after recantation until the number amounted to six! But if we make a charitable and a proper allowance for the weakness of human nature in the case of the victim, we can make none for the diabolical malice of his persecutors, who, when they had thus, as they conceived, loaded him with eternal obloquy, led him to the stake. While the monks and the learned doctors at Oxford were in great jubilee at having brought down to the very mire one of the proudest columns of the Reformed church, Mary sent secret orders to Dr. Cole, provost of Eton College, to prepare his condemned sermon. On the 21st of March the prisoner was brought up to St. Mary's Church, where Cole explained in the sermon that repentance does not avert all punishment, as examples in the Bible proved; that Cranmer had done the church and the Roman Catholics so much mischief that he must die; and that their majesties had, besides, other good reasons for burning him. The fallen Primate of England had learned the day before what was intended for him, aud, having no longer the slightest hope of life, he seems to have summoned up resolution to meet his inevitable doom like a man. Some few men-their number was wonderfully small considering that death of torture-had recanted when brought to the stake and offered the queen's pardon on that condition; but it was not to be expected that any one would do so when there was no offer of pardon, but, on the contrary, a Strype has published them all. See Eccles. Mem. iv. 407. | On the very day after Cranmer's death, Cardinal Pole, who had now taken priest's orders, was consecrated and installed Archbishop of Canterbury. But, though primate and Papal legate, and fully convinced of the atrocity and worse than uselessness of persecution, he could not change the temper of the queen, nor stay the bloody hands of her favourites and ministers. Paul IV., who now wore the tiara, had been his personal enemy; and Pole, who apparently had not more courage than Cranmer, seems to have stood in awe of his fierce and intolerant spirit. On the 27th of June thirteen persons, being condemned for opinions concerning the sacrament, were burned at Stratford-le-Bow." "Neither did the cruelty of the persecutors exercise itself on the living only: the bones of Martin Bucer and Paul Phagius, long since dead, were dug up, formally accused of heresy, and, no man undertaking their cause (as who durst?), condemned, and publicly burned in the market-place at Cambridge. And Peter Martyr's wife, who died at Oxford, was disinterred, and with barbarous and inhuman spite buried in a dunghill.”♦ In order that we may not have to return to this revolting subject, we will here throw together a few other incidents, in completion of the picture of Mary's persecutions. From 'he mar 2 Godwin; Burnet; Strype; Blunt, Sketch of the Reformation. 3 Stow. 4 Godwin, tyrdom of John Rogers, who suffered on the 4th of February, 1555, about six months after Mary's accession, to the five last victims, who were burned at Canterbury on the 10th of November, 1558, only seven days before her death, not fewer than 288 individuals, among whom were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, fifty-five women, and four children, were burned in different places for their religious opinions; and, in addition to these, there were several hundreds who were tortured, ruined in their goods and estates, and many poor and friendless victims that were left to die of hunger in their prisons. With the exception of some few of the churchmen, these individuals were almost entirely of the middling or humbler classes the rich and great, as we have noticed, and as has been observed by several writers before us, showing little disposition to martyrdom. Only eight laymen of the rank of gentlemen are named; but it would be unjust to represent all the aristocracy as supple hypocrites, though they did not expose themselves voluntarily to persecution. The Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland and Lord Willoughby got into trouble, and were censured by the council for religion; and the second Earl of Bedford suffered a short imprisonment. Among those who were said to have "contemptuously gone over the seas," there were several persons of rank, whose property and interests suffered during their forced travels on the Continent. Other individuals, who held profitable places under government, voluntarily resigned them, and retired to the obscurity of a country life. The politic Cecil, who in heart and in head detested the course pursued, which he saw to be as bad in a political as in a religious light, conformed outwardly to what he could not resist; and it is said that he drew the line of conduct for the Princess Elizabeth, recommending humility and obedience, and certain compliances with the times. But it is quite certain that Elizabeth possessed a natural turn both for simulation and dissimulation, and that she scarcely stood in need of a guide and instructor in these particulars. She opened a chapel in her house, as commanded; she entertained masspriests; she kept a large crucifix constantly suspended in her chamber; she worked with her own hands garments for saints and Madonnas; and, when permitted to visit the court, and take part in the entertainments, she also, as a price paid therefor, accompanied the queen in her religious processions, which VOL. II. were conducted with great pomp, and in her visits to the re-Catholicized churches, which were in part restored to more than their ancient magnificence.' Elizabeth suffered more annoyance and persecution in the way of matrimony than on account of religion. Philip, who was most anxious to remove her by marriage out of the kingdom, proposed, and in fact insisted that she should give her hand to the Duke of Savoy, who came into England to press his own suit; but the princess obstinately refused, and had the art or good fortune to gain over to her side her sister Mary, who rarely opposed the wishes of her husband. Soon after the King of Sweden tried to obtain her hand for his eldest son Eric. The Swedish ambassador intrusted with this delicate mission was directed by his sovereign to make his application directly to Elizabeth herself, by a message in which neither the queen nor her council was at present to participate. Elizabeth, who confidently looked to the succession of the English crown, as one well aware of the state of Mary's health and of her own great popularity with a large portion of the nation, not only rejected the suit, but resolved to turn the gallant and generous mode in which it was opened by the Swede to her own immediate advantage. She declared that she could never listen to any overtures of this nature which had not previously received the sanction of her majesty. Her majesty was charmed at this declaration, and the two sisters thenceforward lived in tolerable friendship. Elizabeth, who lavished her protestations of gratitude for the queen's goodness-her acknowledgments that she was bound to honour, HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE.-From Hall's Baronial Halls. serve, love, and obey her highness in all things passed the greater part of the remainder of her sister's reign at her pleasant manor of Hatfield, 1 Relazione, by Michele, the Venetian ambassador; Despatches 115 |