Robin Tremayne / A Story of the Marian Persecution

by Emily Sarah Holt

Parliament was opened on the 13th of November, with a solemn mass of the Holy Ghost, the Queen herself being present in her robes; but as soon as the mass began, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of Lincoln and Hereford, rose and attempted to walk out of the House. Hands were laid on the Bishop of Lincoln, and his Parliament robe taken from him; and upon confession of his faith, (which he made boldly) he was cited before the Council. The Archbishop and the Bishop of Hereford were suffered to depart for that time; but rumour ran that Hereford would soon be deprived, being a married priest. Perhaps he was not made of metal that would bear the furnace; for God took His child home, before the day of suffering came. The rough wind was stayed again in the day of the east wind. But on the 14th of November came a more woeful sight. For the prisoners in the Tower were led on foot to the Guild Hall, the axe carried before them, there to be judged. First walked the Archbishop of Canterbury, his face cast down, between two others. Then followed the Lord Guilford Dudley, also between two. After him came his wife, the Lady Jane, apparelled in black, a black velvet book hanging at her girdle, and another open in her hand. After her followed her two gentlewomen, and Lords Ambrose and Henry Dudley. The Archbishop was attainted for treason, although he had utterly refused to subscribe the King’s letters patent for the disinheriting of his sisters.

Late in the evening Mr Ive looked in, to say that he hath spent all the day at the Guild Hall, and brought the sad news that the gentle Lady Jane and all the Lords Dudley were condemned to death. It was expected, however, that the Queen would not suffer the sentence to be executed on her own cousin Lady Jane. The Archbishop, Mr Ive told them, came back to the Tower, looking as joyful as he had before been cast down. He was entirely acquitted of treason, and remanded to be tried for heresy; for which he blessed God in the hearing of the Court.

“One step more,” said Mr Rose to Avery, whom he met in Cheapside. “The old service-book of King Henry must now be used, and the new of King Edward put away; and in every church in London shall the mass be next Sunday or Monday. And Saint Katherine’s Eve shall be processions, and Saint Nicholas shall go about as aforetime.”

So, slowly and darkly, closed the black year, 1553.

Married priests forbidden to minister—the English Service-Book prohibited—orders issued for every parish church to provide cross, censer, vestments, and similar decorations of the House of Baal—mass for the soul of King Edward in all the churches of London. It was not six months since the boy had died, with that last touching prayer on his lips—“Lord God, preserve this realm from Papistry!” Was that prayer lost in the blue space it had to traverse, between that soul and the altar of incense in Heaven? We know now that it was not. But it seemed utterly lost then. O Lord, we know not what Thou doest now. Give us grace to wait patiently, to be content with Thy promise that we shall know hereafter!

There was one bright spot visible to the tear-dimmed eyes of the Gospellers, and only one. The Parliament had been prorogued, and the Bloody Statute was not yet re-enacted. All statutes of premunire were repealed, and all laws of King Edward in favour of reformation in the Church. But that first and worst of all the penalties remained as yet in the oblivion to which he had consigned it. But in recompense for this, there was a very black cloud darkening the horizon of 1554. The Queen had announced to her Parliament her intended marriage with Prince Philip of Spain. All the old insular prejudices against foreigners rose up to strengthen the Protestant horror of a Spanish and Popish King. The very children in the streets were heard to cry, “Down with the Pope and the Spaniards!” Elizabeth would have known how to deal with such an emergency. But Mary was blind and deaf. Disregarding this outbreak of popular feeling, she went on, in the way which led to her ruin and England’s. It was only one of the two which was irremediable. The one was followed by a summer day of glory; the other closed only in the night of death.

The first news which reached the Lamb in 1554, was the startling information—if any information can be called startling in that age of sudden and shocking events—that the night before, Mr Ive had been hastily apprehended and committed to the Marshalsea. He was soon released, unhurt; but this occurrence quickened Mr Underhill’s tardy movements. He had already made up his mind to remove from the Limehurst, where his abode was too well-known to the enemy; the arrest of his friend and neighbour determined him to go at once. He took “a little house in a secret corner at the nether end of Wood Street,” Cheapside. About Epiphany was born Susan Bertie, the only daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk. Shortly before this the Emperor’s Ambassadors came over to treat concerning the Queen’s marriage, and were pelted with snowballs by children in the streets of the City. The vacant sees were filled up by Popish divines; Cardinal Pole was invited to return to England (from which he had been so many years exiled), in the capacity of Legate; the Queen dissolved the Court of First Fruits, and commanded that the title of “Head of the Church in earth” should be omitted from the enumeration of her titles in all future documents. Permission granted to Lady Jane to walk in the Queen’s garden and on Tower Hill revived for a moment the hopes of the Protestants so far as concerned her. No harm would come to her, they sanguinely repeated, if the Queen were left to herself. Possibly they were fight. But what likelihood was there that Gardiner would so leave her? and—a question yet more ominous—what might Philip of Spain require in this matter? Men not yet sixty years of age could remember the time when, previous to the marriage of Katherine of Aragon, the Earl of Warwick, last surviving male of the House of York, had been beheaded on Tower Hill. Once before, the royal blood of England had been shed at the demand of Spain: might the precedent not be repeated now? The only difference being, that the victim then was a tercel gentle, and now it would be a white dove.

In the middle of January, before his removal from the Limehurst, and when he was sufficiently recovered to “walk to London an easy pace,” Mr Underhill made his appearance one afternoon in the Minories. He came with the evident intention of telling his own story.

“And would you,” said he, “hear the tale of my examination and imprisonment?”

“That would we, and with a right good will,” answered Dr Thorpe, speaking for all. “We do know even what Mr Ive could tell us, but nothing further.”