HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
Effects of the Dissolution.
The progress of the Reformation was attended (as all great national convulsions are) with many and sad excesses. The work of destruction, when long continued, is in itself a thing which hardens the heart; and the Reformation was full of it. Monk and nun turned out of house and home, pensioned indeed, but (except in the case of superiors, who were treated with more lenity) pensioned with a miserable equivalent; their dwelling-places, beautiful as many of them were, laid low, that all hope of return might be cut off; their cells surrendered to the bats and owls; their chapels made a portion for foxes, the mosaic pavements torn up, the painted windows dashed in pieces, the bells gambled for, or sold into Russia and other countries,[4] though often before they reached their destination buried in the ocean—all and utterly dismantled, save where, happening to be parish churches also, as was the case at St. Alban's, Tewkesbury, Malvern, and elsewhere, they were rescued in whole, or in part, from Henry's harpies, by the petitions or the pecuniary contributions of the pious inhabitants;[5] libraries, of which most monasteries contained one, treated by their new possessors with barbaric contempt; "some books reserved for their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, some to rub their boots, some sold to the grocers and soap-boilers, and some sent over sea to book-binders, not in small numbers, but at times whole shipsful, to the wondering of foreign nations; a single merchant purchasing at forty shillings a piece two noble libraries to be used as grey-paper, and such as having already sufficed for ten years were abundantly enough (says the eye-witness whose words are here quoted) for many years more;"[6] these were some of the coarser features of those times; howbeit there were many besides these. For the churches were now treated with gross irreverence; horses and mules were led through them; they were profaned by dogs and hawks, by doves and owls, by stares and choughs;[7] they were plundered of their plate by churchwardens, or other powerful parishioners,[8] who might argue, that if they spared, others would spoil; or who might wish ill to the cause of the Reformation, and take such means to scandalize it. London, says Latimer, was never so full of ill; charity was waxen cold in it. "Oh, London, London," cries this earnest old man, "repent! repent! for I think God more displeased with London, than he ever was with the city of Nebo."[9] Such was the profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped not to swallow it up. There were many that denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a heaven or a hell.[10] Manly sports and pastimes had been exchanged for the gaming-table. Divorces, even amongst the inferior classes of society, were become common; for marriage being declared no sacrament, probably many chose to interpret the declaration to mean that it was no bond.[11] The elementary bread of the eucharist was expressed by base and indecent nicknames.[12] The alehouses were filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries of our faith, and the dissolute scoffers made songs upon them:[13] "Green Sleeves," "Maggy Lauder," and "John Anderson my Jo," with numbers more, were all of this class of compositions; and psalms (in this instance, perhaps, without any intentional levity) were set to hornpipes. To crown all, a multitude of disaffected persons were at large in the country, speaking evil of dignities, and exciting the idle, the hungry, and the aggrieved, to riot and rebellion; bearding the government with audacious demands of changes, both civil and ecclesiastical, to be made at their pleasure, couched in language the most imperative and insolent; "such," Cranmer observes in his answer to them, "as was not at any time used of subjects to their prince since the beginning of the world."[14]
Fox's Book of Martyrs.
For a history of that noble army of martyrs of whom it now becomes our business to speak, we are indebted to John Fox, himself an exile in Mary's reign, and like most of those who then lived abroad, a friend of the Puritan principles at home. He had access to the archives and registers of the bishops; Grindal, who was himself a great collector of such materials, amongst others, supplying him with what he knew; and in many instances to the letters of the martyrs themselves;[15] of all which documents, says Strype, he has been found, by those who have compared his books with his authorities, to have made a faithful use. He lived many years after his first edition was published, which was in 1563, and in the interval laboured to render it still more perfect; suppressing where he found reason to doubt, as in the story of Cranmer's heart remaining unconsumed when the rest of his body was reduced to ashes;[16] enlarging where he was furnished with fresh matter which he thought trustworthy, as in the story of Gardiner's being stricken with sickness on the day of Cranmer's martyrdom;[17] and taking journeys in order to confront witnesses and sift evidence when his facts chanced to be called in question;[18] such was his industry. But, independently of all knowledge of this, his pains-taking, the internal evidence of the book is enough to establish its general good faith. There is a simplicity in the narrative, particularly in many of its minute details, which is beyond all fiction; a homely pathos in the stories which art could not reach. Sometimes an expression casually drops out which suffices to prove the testimony to be that of an eye-witness; thus, where the terrible death of Ridley is described, the martyrologist speaks in general in his own person; yet we read, that "after the legs of the sufferer were consumed by reason of his struggling through the pain, he showed that side toward us clean, shirt and all untouched with flame," as though the informant (whose words the historian had here neglected to accommodate) had been himself the spectator. Sometimes there is a frank confession of ignorance, where a less scrupulous writer would have been under a great temptation to supply the defect of information by conjecture; thus, in the details of the same execution of Ridley and Latimer, it is observed, that after they rose from their knees the one talked with the other a little while, but what they said, adds Fox, "I can learn of no man." Above all, there is such candour in the developement even of his most favourite characters, their failings as well as their virtues so fairly told, that it is plain they have not been packed. Thus it is by him we are taught that Cranmer moved the King to the execution of Joan of Kent, though Cranmer's general disposition would seem repugnant to such an office, and though no mention is made in Edward's Journal of any such interference, or, indeed, of any reluctance on his own part which should render it needful: thus of Latimer, he does not conceal that he probably subscribed on one occasion certain articles which the bishops presented to him, of fear rather than of conscience;[19] and of Hooper, his favourite, if he had one among the martyrs, that he disputed too pertinaciously, and to the breach of mutual charity, with his opponents on the subject of the episcopal habits, and that the prospect of their approaching death for the common cause, and nothing less, could effect the cordial union of the parties. Neither does he suppress any instance of kindness by which the sufferings of the martyrs were mitigated; and as St. Luke tells us of the centurion entreating Paul courteously, so does Fox relate of Saunders, that when his wife came to the prison gate, with her young child in her arms, to visit her husband, the keeper, though he durst not suffer her to enter the prison, yet took the little babe out of her arms and brought him to his father, to his exceeding great joy: and of Hooper's guard, that they interceded with the sheriffs of Gloucester on behalf of their charge, that he might not be sent to the common gaol, they declaring at large how quietly, mildly, and patiently he had behaved himself in the way, and adding, that they would rather themselves be at the pains to watch with him than that he should be so handled: and of Rowland Taylor, that his wife and son Thomas were permitted to sup with him in the Counter, "by the gentleness of his keepers;" and afterwards, that of his guard three out of the four used him friendly. It was to be expected that a work which, had it been published a few years sooner (supposing this possible), would probably have added its author to the catalogue of his own martyrs, should excite no small stir amongst the Catholics, and so it came to pass. But they weakened the force of their attack by betraying prematurely the spirit which animated them, sarcastically inquiring, even before its publication, when the "Golden Legend" was to appear, and denouncing the "Calendar of Saints," which they had heard was to be prefixed to it, as blasphemy against their own. But Fox went on, as he says, without fear and without favour; and no sooner was Elizabeth, to whom he dedicated, out of the way, than an examination of the book appeared, by Parsons the Jesuit, in his "Three Conversions of England," which has furnished more modern objectors with most of the weapons of their warfare. But Parsons writes in a temper which defeats itself. He deals in vague vituperation, rather than in specific accusations of error; or where he ventures upon the latter, he often either wilfully or ignorantly misreads Fox, as in the vapid pleasantry wasted upon Joan Lashford, a married maid, as he is pleased to call her;[20] or he triumphs over him by exposing some flaw in the character of a martyr with an eureka, which the honest martyrologist himself did not affect to conceal, and for the knowledge indeed of which Parsons is altogether indebted to him, as where he makes himself merry with the discordant sentiments of nine martyrs executed together, though their want of uniformity is a fact which he learns from Fox himself, who at the same time asserts that their disagreement was in smaller things only;[21] or he prefers charges against him at random without troubling himself to ascertain whether there is foundation for them or not, as where he accuses him of defacing or destroying the records of cathedrals, which he had been permitted to use, lest they should convict him of negligence or fraud; and this not upon investigation of the fact, but simply, "he presuming it," as though a charge so serious was to be an affair of presumption only;[22] or, lastly, he comments upon his author in so fiendish a temper of mind, as would be in itself enough to satisfy every calm and dispassionate judge that he spoke not of truth or a love for it, but of mere malice; as where, after debasing the circumstances of Rowland Taylor's story throughout, he concludes with a repetition of his joke about the worms in Hadley churchyard, as given in Fox, and subjoins "this noteth Fox in the margin for a goodly apophthegm of Dr. Taylor, martyr; and with this, he saith, he went to the fire; where we must leave him eternally as I fear;"[23] and in a similar vein he has the heart to write of Latimer and Ridley, "they were burned together, each of them taking gunpowder to despatch himself quickly, as by Fox is seen, which yet is not read to have been practised by old martyrs, and it seemeth that these men would have the fame of martyrdom without the pain; and now they have incurred the everlasting pain, if by their end we may judge."[24] The man who could write thus can scarcely lay claim to our credence; for his prejudice has evidently stifled in him every sense by which a regard for truth can be guaranteed.
It is not thought out of place to introduce here this brief vindication of a book, which, so far as it is a contemporary history, has been, both of old, and of late, an object of unfair depreciation, but from which no right-hearted Protestant can rise, without being at once a sadder and a better man;—a book out of which we shall now fearlessly draw our information, whilst we offer to our readers a few examples of those terrible sufferings which it is at once humiliating to think that man could inflict, and animating to think that man could so nobly bear.—Family Library, vol. xxvi.