A contemporary writer draws a picture of “the Decay of England” almost too terrible for belief, yet all that we know tends to confirm his story. “Whether shall then they goo?” he cries in despair. “Foorth from shyre to shyre, and to be scathered thus abrode, within the Kynges maiestyes Realme, where it shall please Almighty God: and for lacke of maisters, by compulsion dryuen, some of them to begge, and some to steale.”[163] Happy those who in defence of their hearths had died in the West and in Norfolk at the hands of Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Albanians!
A calculation based upon the statements of this same writer on the “Decay of England” gives 675,000 persons thrown upon the country by the decay of husbandry.[164] But to this number we must add those turned out of the monasteries, the poor, formerly maintained by the monasteries and by the yeomanry, the sick and infirm, ejected from the hospitals established for “Christ’s poor,” as they are called in the act of foundation of a hospital in the thirteenth century. And this immense number out of a population estimated at 5,000,000! “And nowe they haue nothynge, but goeth about in England from dore to dore, and axe theyr almose for Goddes sake. And because they will not begge, some of them doeth steale, and then they be hanged.”[165] Great numbers flocked to London, seeking in vain redress of their grievances.
This was the great time of Tyburn.
In his fourth sermon, preached on March 29, 1549, Latimer mentions, quite incidentally, the frightful number of executions taking place in London, when he was “in ward” with the Bishop of Chichester in 1539. “I was desirous to heare of execution done (as ther was euri weke, some in one place of the citye or other) for there was thre wekes sessions at newgate, and fourth-nyghte Sessions at the Marshialshy, and so forth.”[166] That is, sessions every three weeks at the one place and every two weeks at the other. Never had the gallows been so crowded. In the sentence quoted on the title-page of this book Sir Thomas More, writing in Latin in 1516, had said that twenty were “sometimes” hanged together upon one gallows. In the English translation, first published in 1551, the translator changed “sometimes” (“nonnunquam”) into “for the most part.” So had the gallows thriven!
The bitter lamentations of Latimer, Brinklow, Ascham, Lever, Bernard Gilpin, Crowley, are not the cries of partisans of the old order. They had looked for a new heaven and a new earth—to see “the pure light of the gospel” kindled by John a Lasco, Stumphius, John ab Ulmis, illuminating homes freed for ever from taxation by the spoils of the monasteries. And “the Blessed Reformation” had sent countless thousands to the gallows, had reinstituted white slavery in England, and had established the “pauper,” no longer “Christ’s poor,” as a despised and degraded caste.
But of the judicial murders of this dreadful time we know next to nothing. As Harrison has been more than once quoted it is necessary to refer to a passage giving what purports to be a statement as to the numbers executed in the reign of Henry VIII. He says:—
It appeareth by Cardane (who writeth it vpon the report of the bishop of Lexouia) in the geniture of king Edward the sixt, how Henrie the eight, executing his laws verie seuerlie against such idle persons, I meane great theeues, pettie theeues and roges, did hang vp threescore and twelue thousand of them in his time.[167]
The statement has been repeated by countless writers from Hume downwards, not one of whom has taken the trouble to refer to the original. It is a misquotation hoary with age. Cardan gives the nativity of Henry VIII. and then says: “From these two causes, together with others, there fell out that which the bishop of Lisieux told me at Besançon, namely, that in the two years before his death it was found that seventy-two thousand men perished by the hangman after sentence (judicio et carnifice).”[168] Cardan was at Besançon in 1552, not long after the death of Henry. Possibly Harrison, finding the number incredible, as relating to two years, spread the number over the whole reign. But in the statement attributed to the bishop there is nothing to indicate the class of persons executed. That in one way or another Henry did in the course of his reign destroy seventy-two thousand persons does not seem improbable. It is said that “over 5,000 men were hanged within the space of six years” in a district of North Wales.[169] By the provisions of the Act 27 Henry VIII. (1535-6) c. 25, “rufflers” and vagabonds were to be whipped till their bodies were bloody; for a second offence they were to be again whipped and to lose a part of the right ear; if thereafter they were found idling, they were to be declared felons, and to be punished with death.
1537. The nine and twentith of March were 12. men of Lincolne drawne to Tyborne, and there hanged and quartered, fiue were priests, and 7. were lay men, 1. one was an Abbot, a suffragan, doctor Mackerel; another was the vicar of Louth in Lincolnshire, & two priests (Stow, p. 573).