Much of our information regarding Pecock comes from the Liber Veritatum (otherwise called Dictionarium Theologicum) of an orthodox contemporary who hated him well, Doctor Thomas Gascoigne. Pecock may have been in this Doctor's mind when the latter was defining "Haereticus" in his Dictionary, and stating as the first characteristic of the tribe that they do not follow the authority of the Scriptures but the pointings (sensum) of human reason. They are men of lust, yet endowed with ardent and acute minds, for only men so gifted can construct a heresy; and they change from one contrary error to another. Gascoigne was a man of birth and property, greatly respected at his university of Oxford, where he was chosen chancellor more than once; his integrity and his loyalty to church and crown were above all cavil. This exemplary doctor's Dictionarium gives a motley picture of the ecclesiastical debasement of his times. Its illustrations are vivid and direct, and filled with varied interest and entertainment as he tells of the preferment of boys and drunken fools to bishoprics, and of a bishop drawing revenue from the concubinage of his clergy.10 The author opposed the Lollards and also detested their opponent Pecock; he was a fearless and constant denouncer of those evils which later moved Luther to revolt, to wit, papal pardons, indulgences, and dispensations from onerous duties.11 Also he set an example of abstention from the fruits of ecclesiastical abuses, plural preferments and the like. For the reform of all these evils he could find no place but Rome to look to; and at the same time he was convinced that the condition of the papal court was such that nothing good could come from it. He had no thought of revolt; and an extract from his book will show how utter and how Poole's article in the Dictionary of National Biography. Apparently Pecock's examination dwelt mainly on matters other than those arousing our interest in him. 9 Edited with a full introduction by Thorold Rogers, (Oxford, 1881). Dr. Gairdner gives much of interest from it in his Lollardy, etc., I, p. 243 sqq. 10 Gower in Mirour de l'Omme, lines 20149-20160, speaks of deans drawing revenue_from harlots. Macaulay's ed. of Gower; French Works (Clarendon Press). 11 See pp. 76 sqq., 86 sqq., 92 sqq., and 118 sqq. of Roger's edition. sweeping, and yet how devoid either of revolutionary intent, or of hope of reform within the Church, might be the rebukes and upbraidings of a churchman: "For Rome as a singular and chief wild beast has laid waste the vineyard of the Church, by reserving to themselves [i. e. to the Roman Curia] the elections of the bishops, that none may confer an episcopal church on anyone unless he first pay the annates or firstfruits and revenue of the vacant church. Likewise she has destroyed the vineyard of the Church of God by annulling the elections of all bishops in England. Likewise she destroys the Church by promoting evil men as the king and himself [i. e. the Pope] agree. Likewise Rome as a wild beast has ravaged the churches by annulling all the elections of bishops made in cathedral churches, ordaining that all elections of bishops pertain to the Apostolic Chamber, to wit, to the decision of the pope and his cardinals. Likewise because Rome does not name anyone bishop save whom the pope and cardinals choose as bishop or archbishop, having rendered and prepaid at Rome thousands of marks in fruits and having made gifts to the Roman or papal courtiers." Time and again Gascoigne declares and instances his proofs, that the pope, even if he would, dared not take measures for reform, from fear of poison or death by open violence. This much has been said of Pecock and Gascoigne because they are interesting people, and also in order to cover the barrenness of the record of the "lay party through the fifteenth century. Yet one feels or may infer its inarticulate existence, representing in those disturbed and bloody English decades a certain laicizing of life and opinion in England, as opposed to sacerdotalism or ecclesiasticism, and perhaps monkery. There was scant feeling that church lands were sacrosanct. In 1410 the Commons petitioned for their confiscation in part or altogether; and through this century far fewer monasteries were founded, while foundations of hospitals and schools and colleges increased. Undoubtedly by the time of Henry VIII's accession, there was a wide lay intelligence in England, instructed or largely ignorant, yet prepared for the acceptance of Protestant ideas from the Continent, and ready at the royal behest to separate from papal Rome. CHAPTER XXI SOCIAL DISCONTENT AND LUTHERAN INFLUENCE: TYNDALE TURNING the pages of Gascoigne, one hears the resonant echoes of ancient denunciations of mankind, of knights and bourgeoisie, and so often of the Church. These satires or denunciations might be general or specifically pointed at the particular abuse or crime. Much also has been recorded, or more lately has been written, upon the state of the Church in England, and especially upon the state of its monasteries, at the time when Henry VIII bestrode the throne. Yet just how good or bad the Church and its monasteries were, one queries still. The Church had been and still was part of English society, in which the gentry were the favorite sons, and estates were inherited from one generation to the next. The landed classes furnished the Church's maintenance, and the nobility and gentry put their younger sons and needy relations into the bishoprics and other goodly benefices. This regular operation of family interest was but one remove from the law of inheritance of secular landed estates. It was much the same in Germany and elsewhere. The condition of the Church paralleled that of society at large; it was not abnormally bad, but merely permeated with normal human slackness, selfishness, materialism and ignorance, with occasional instances of a better energy and enlightenment in its upper or lower orders. The monasteries possessed large revenues or small; the denizens managed their fat lands, or subsisted leanly; generally they lived slackly enough and, like normal human beings, were disinclined to exert themselves beyond the goading of their needs. The monasteries also exercised charity and hospitality, and the richer ones provided funds for the support of scholars at the universities. Probably the poorer monasteries were spiritually the more squalid and inert. Sadly general statements these, sounding like truisms! the clergy are part of society, and made what they are by education, convention and environment; they are good or bad, but on the whole tending, by virtue of their education, to be a little better than the corresponding upper or middle classes from which they are drawn. And as one part of society is jealous of another, and not apt to sympathize with its difficulties and temptations, so the laity tended to be captious as to the clergy, and to envy them the wealth which they did not seem to earn. It was thus in England, as we might assume, if we were not so informed. The matter may, however, be regarded in another light. There come times when some order in society fails to function in correspondence with the demands of society at large. Or the ideas conventionally represented by a certain order may no longer meet the best thoughts of contemporaries. This touches the clergy and their functions. The needs of society, and its somewhat clearer or advancing ideas, may pass beyond the current observances and practices of the Church. And therefore, from this point of view, the question of church abuses and clerical corruption resolves itself into the question whether the habits of the clergy and the methods and institutions of the established religion fittingly correspond with the ideas, and meet the needs, of the time. An answer in the negative means that Church and clergy are no longer suited to the time, and reform is needed. Contemporary verdicts will declare that Church and clergy are corrupt. The clergy may be as good, as moral, as the laity, or even better; but methods and institutions, and perhaps principles of belief, need refashioning. What is called for, is the application of intelligence and the best available knowledge in matters of religion. In fact, to make one more general statement before turning to specific illustration of the English situation, it may be said that the German, French, and English reformations represent intellectual advance, rather than moral or religious improvement, except as the latter is involved in the former. For example, to give up image worship, relics, pilgrimages, and indeed to renounce the authority of the Roman bishop, was to become more intelligent, rather than better. In the reign of Henry VIII two currents, or perhaps three, of popular criticism assailed the established Church. Distinguishable in origin, in their working they tended to unite. The one was the surviving loosely heterodox dissent of the so-called "lay party "; which was no longer (if it ever was) a "party," or anything so concrete and articulate. The other current, confusedly Lutheran or Zwinglian, came from the Continent, where it also may have had its ancient sources. But in England it represented the "new learning." Thirdly, if one will, social and economic discontent, the stress of poverty, the sense of disadvantage. This was aggravated by the enclosure of parks and pastures by great proprietors, which dispossessed many tenants, and by the middle of the sixteenth century, may have thrown out of employment ten per cent. of the Kingdom's population.1 Such sense of poverty and oppression had always made part of the indigenous condemnation of the clergy's wealth, and readily combined with the "new learning" when it came from the Continent. Indeed one may say that most reforms which have issued out of Christianity against its own corruptions, as they have been called for by the avarice and lusts of priests and prelates and rich seculars, so have they carried the motive of relieving the distress of the poor. In some way they all seem popular movements, and to represent some assertion of popular rights as against the oppression of the rich. So had it been with Wyclif and the Lollards, so was it with the Lutheran reform, in spite of Luther's violent protests, and so was it to be in England. Thus, although distinguishable, these 1 A tract on "the decay of England by the great multitude of sheep" (Early Eng. Text. Soc. Extra series XIII), written about 1550 in the reign of Edward VI, shows with statistics and calculations the vast number of plows rendered idle by the enclosing of arable land for pasture. See also on the economic evils of Edward's time Crowley's Petition against the Oppressors of the Poor Commons, in Strype, Ecclesiastical' Memorials II, II, p. 217 (Chapter XVII), also ib. II, II, Chapter XXIII. |