One day there rode into the village an old doctor, of strange aspect; he wore no shirt, but was covered with a long gown that reached down to the horse’s heels, ‘all bedirted like a slobber,’ says a chronicler.[[190]] He took no care for the things of the body, in order that people should believe he was the more given up to the contemplation of the interests of the soul. He dismounted gravely from his horse, proclaimed his intention of fasting, and began a series of long prayers. This person, by name Hubberdin, the Don Quixote of Roman-catholicism, went wandering all over the kingdom, extolling the pope at the expense of kings and even of Jesus Christ, and declaiming against Luther, Zwingle, Tyndale, and Latimer.
On a feast-day Hubberdin put on a clerical gown rather cleaner than the one he generally wore, and went into the pulpit, where he undertook to prove that the new doctrine came from the devil—which he demonstrated by stories, fables, dreams, and amusing dialogues. He danced and hopped and leaped about, and gesticulated, as if he were a stage-player, and his sermon a sort of interlude.[[191]] His hearers were surprised and diverted; Latimer was disgusted. ‘You lie,’ he said, ‘when you call the faith of Scripture a new doctrine, unless you mean to say that it makes new creatures of those who receive it.’
Hubberdin being unable to shut the mouth of the eloquent chaplain with his mountebank tricks, the bishops and nobility of the neighborhood resolved to denounce Latimer. A messenger handed him a writ, summoning him to appear personally before the Bishop of London to answer touching certain excesses and crimes committed by him.[[192]] Putting down the paper which contained this threatening message, Latimer began to reflect. His position was critical. He was at that time suffering from the stone, with pains in the head and bowels. It was in the dead of winter, and moreover he was alone at West Kington, with no friend to advise him. Being of a generous and daring temperament, he rushed hastily into the heat of the combat, but was easily dejected. ‘Jesu mercy! what a world is this,’ he exclaimed, ‘that I shall be put to so great labor and pains above my power for preaching of a poor simple sermon! But we must needs suffer, and so enter into the kingdom of Christ.’[[193]]
The terrible summons lay on the table. Latimer took it up and read it. He was no longer the brilliant court-chaplain who charmed fashionable congregations by his eloquence; he was a poor country minister, forsaken by all. He was sorrowful. ‘I am surprised,’ he said, ‘that my lord of London, who has so large a diocese in which he ought to preach the Word in season and out of season,[[194]] should have leisure enough to come and trouble me in my little parish ... wretched me, who am quite a stranger to him.’ He appealed to his ordinary; but Bishop Stokesley did not intend to let him go, and being as able as he was violent, he prayed the archbishop, as primate of all England, to summon Latimer before his court, and to commission himself (the Bishop of London) to examine him. The chaplain’s friends were terrified, and entreated him to leave England; but he began his journey to London.
Attempt To Entrap Latimer.
On the 29th of January, 1532, a court composed of bishops and doctors of the canon law assembled, under the presidency of Primate Warham, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Latimer having appeared, the Bishop of London presented him a paper, and ordered him to sign it. The reformer took the paper and read it through. There were sixteen articles on belief in purgatory, the invocation of saints, the merit of pilgrimages, and lastly on the power of the keys which (said the document) belonged to the bishops of Rome, ‘even should their lives be wicked,’[[195]] and other such topics. Latimer returned the paper to Stokesley, saying: ‘I cannot sign it.’ Three times in one week he had to appear before his judges, and each time the same scene was repeated: both sides were inflexible. The priests then changed their tactics: they began to tease and embarrass Latimer with innumerable questions. As soon as one had finished, another began with sophistry and plausibility, and interminable subterfuges. Latimer tried to make his adversaries keep within the circle from which they were straying, but they would not hear him.
One day, as Latimer entered the hall, he noticed a change in the arrangement of the furniture. There was a chimney, in which there had been a fire before: on this day there was no fire, and the fireplace was invisible. Some tapestry hung down over it, and the table round which the judges sat was in the middle of the room. The accused was seated between the table and the chimney. ‘Master Latimer,’ said an aged bishop, whom he believed to be one of his friends, ‘pray speak a little louder: I am hard of hearing, as you know.’ Latimer, surprised at this remark, pricked up his ears, and fancied he heard in the fireplace the noise of a pen upon paper.[[196]] ‘Ho, ho!’ thought he, ‘they have hidden some one behind there to take down my answers.’ He replied cautiously to captious questions, much to the embarrassment of the judges.
Latimer was disgusted, not only with the tricks of his enemies, but still more with their ‘troublesome unquietness;’[[197]] because by keeping him in London they obliged him to neglect his duties, and especially because they made it a crime to preach the truth. The archbishop, wishing to gain him over by marks of esteem and affection, invited him to come and see him; but Latimer declined, being unwilling at any price to renounce the freedom of the pulpit. The reformers of the sixteenth century did not contend that all doctrines should be preached from the same pulpit, but that evangelical truth should be freely preached everywhere. ‘I have desired and still desire,’ wrote Latimer to the archbishop, ‘that our people should learn the difference between the doctrines which God has taught and those which proceed only from ourselves. Go, said Jesus, and teach all things.... What things?... all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and not whatsoever you think fit to preach.[[198]] Let us all then make an effort to preach with one voice the things of God. I have sought not my gain, but Christ’s gain; not my glory, but God’s glory. And so long as I have a breath of life remaining, I will continue to do so.’[[199]]
Thus spoke the bold preacher. It is by such unshakable fidelity that great revolutions are accomplished.
Latimer Excommunicated.