John Tewkesbury, one of the most respected merchants in London, whom the bishops had put twice to the rack already, and whose limbs they had broken,[[164]] felt his courage revived by the martyrdom of his friend. Christ alone, he said habitually: these two words were all his theology. He was arrested, taken to the house of Sir Thomas More at Chelsea, shut up in the porter’s lodge, his hands, feet, and head being held in the stocks;[[165]] but they could not obtain from him the recantation they desired. The officers took him into the chancellor’s garden, and bound him so tightly to the tree of truth, as the renowned scholar called it, that the blood started out of his eyes; after which they scourged him.[[166]] Tewkesbury remained firm.

On the 16th of December the Bishop of London went to Chelsea and formed a court. ‘Thou art a heretic,’ said Stokesley, ‘a backslider; thou hast incurred the great excommunication. We shall deliver thee up to the secular power.’ He was burnt alive at Smithfield on the 20th of December, 1531. ‘Now,’ said the fanatical chancellor, ‘now is he uttering cries in hell!’

Utopias Of The Bishops.

Such were at this period the cruel utopias of the bishops and of the witty Sir Thomas More. Other evangelical Christians were thrown into prison. In vain did one of them exclaim: ‘the more they persecute this sect, the more will it increase.’[[167]] That opinion did not check the persecution. ‘It is impossible,’ says Foxe (doubtless with some exaggeration), ‘to name all who were persecuted before the time of Queen Anne Boleyn. As well try to count the grains of sand on the seashore!’

Thus did the real Reformation show by the blood of its martyrs that it had nothing to do with the policy, the tyranny, the intrigues, and the divorce of Henry VIII. If these men of God had not been burnt by that prince, it might possibly have been imagined that he was the author of the transformation of England; but the blood of the reformers cried to heaven that he was its executioner.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE KING DESPOILS THE POPE AND THE CLERGY.
(March to May 1532.)

Henry VIII. having permitted the bishops to execute their task of persecution, proceeded to carry out his own, that of making the papacy disgorge. Unhappily for the clergy, the king could not attack the pope, and they entirely escaped the blows. The duel between Henry and Clement was about to become more violent, and in the space of three months (March, April, and May) the Romish Church, stripped of important prerogatives, would learn that, after so many ages of wealth and honor, the hour of its humiliation had come at last.

Henry was determined, above all things, not to permit his cause to be tried at Rome. What would be thought if he yielded? ‘Could the pope,’ wrote Henry to his envoys, ‘constrain kings to leave the charge God had entrusted to them, in order to humble themselves before him? That would be to tread under foot the glory of our person and the privileges of our kingdom. If the pope persists, take your leave of the pontiff, and return to us immediately,’—‘The pope,’ added Norfolk, ‘would do well to reflect if he intend the continuance of good obedience of England to the see apostolic.’[[168]]

Catherine on her part did not remain behind: she wrote a pathetic letter to the pope, informing him that her husband had banished her from the palace. Clement, in the depths of his perplexity, behaved, however, very properly: he called upon the king (25th January) to take back the queen, and to dismiss Anne Boleyn from court. Henry spiritedly rejected the pontiff’s demand. ‘Never was a prince treated by a pope as your Holiness has treated me,’ he said; ‘not painted reason,[[169]] but the truth alone, must be our guide.’ The king prepared to begin the emancipation of England.

Character Of Cromwell.