Sir Thomas had broken his victim’s limbs, but not his courage; and accordingly when Bainham was summoned before the Bishop of London, he went to the palace rejoicing to have to confess his Master once more. ‘Do you believe in purgatory?’ said Stokesley to him sternly. Bainham answered: ‘The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.’[[210]] ‘Do you believe that we ought to call upon the saints to pray for us?’ He again answered: ‘If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous.’[[211]]
A man who answered only by texts from Scripture was embarrassing. More and Stokesley made the most alluring promises, and no means were spared to bend him.[[212]] Before long they resorted to more serious representations: ‘The arms of the Church your mother are still open to you,’ they said; ‘but if you continue stubborn, they will close against you forever. It is now or never!’ For a whole month the bishop and the chancellor persevered in their entreaties; Bainham replied: ‘My faith is that of the holy Church.’ Hearing these words, Foxford, the bishop’s secretary, took out a paper. ‘Here is the abjuration,’ he said; ‘read it over.’ Bainham began: ‘I voluntarily, as a true penitent returned from my heresy, utterly abjure’.... At these words he stopped, and glancing over what followed, he continued: ‘No, these articles are not heretical, and I cannot retract them.’ Other springs were now set in motion to shake Bainham. The prayers of his friends, the threats of his enemies, especially the thought of his wife, whom he loved, and who would be left alone in destitution, exposed to the anger of the world: these things troubled his soul. He lost sight of the narrow path he ought to follow, and five days later he read his abjuration with a faint voice. But he had hardly got to the end before he burst into tears, and said, struggling with his emotion: ‘I reserve the doctrines.’ He consented to remain in the Roman Church, still preserving his evangelical faith. But this was not what the bishop and his officers meant. ‘Kiss that book,’ they said to him threateningly. Bainham, like one stunned, kissed the book; that was the sign; the adjuration was looked upon as complete. He was condemned to pay a fine of twenty pounds sterling, and to do penance at St. Paul’s Cross. After that he was set at liberty, on the 17th of February.
Bainham returned to the midst of his brethren: they looked sorrowfully at him, but did not reproach him with his fault. That was quite unnecessary. The worm of remorse was preying on him; he abhorred the fatal kiss by which he had sealed his fall; his conscience was never quiet; he could neither eat nor sleep, and trembled at the thought of death. At one time he would hide his anguish and stifle it within his breast; at another his grief would break forth, and he would try to relieve his pain by groans of sorrow. The thought of appearing before the tribunal of God made him faint. The restoration of conscience to all its rights was the foremost work of the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, and an endless number of more obscure reformers had reached the haven of safety through the midst of such tempests. ‘A tragedy was being acted in all protestant souls,’ says a writer who does not belong to the Reformation—the eternal tragedy of conscience.
Bainham felt that the only means of recovering peace was to accuse himself openly before God and man. Taking Tyndale’s New Testament in his hand, which was at once his joy and his strength, he went to St. Austin’s church, sat down quietly in the midst of the congregation, and then at a certain moment stood up and said: ‘I have denied the truth.’... He could not continue for his tears.[[213]] On recovering, he said: ‘If I were not to return again to the doctrine I have abjured, this word of Scripture would condemn me both body and soul at the day of judgment.’ And he lifted up the New Testament before all the congregation. ‘O my friends,’ he continued, ‘rather die than sin as I have done. The fires of hell have consumed me, and I would not feel them again for all the gold and glory of the world.’[[214]]
Then his enemies seized him again and shut him up in the bishop’s coal-cellar, where, after putting him in irons, they left him for four days. He was afterwards taken to the Tower, where he was scourged every day for a fortnight, and at last condemned as a relapsed heretic.
Bainham Executed.
On the eve of the execution four distinguished men, one of whom was Latimer, were dining together in London. It was commonly reported that Bainham was to be put to death for saying that Thomas à Becket was a traitor worthy of hell. ‘Is it worth a man’s while to sacrifice his life for such a trifle?’ said the four friends. ‘Let us go to Newgate and save him if possible.’ They were taken along several gloomy passages, and found themselves at last in the presence of a man, sitting on a little straw, holding a book in one hand and a candle in the other.[[215]] He was reading; it was Bainham. Latimer drew near him: ‘Take care,’ he said, ‘that no vainglory make you sacrifice your life for motives which are not worth the cost.’ ‘I am condemned,’ answered Bainham, ‘for trusting in Scripture and rejecting purgatory, masses, and meritorious works.’—‘I acknowledge that for such truths a man must be ready to die.’ Bainham was ready; and yet he burst into tears. ‘Why do you weep?’ asked Latimer. ‘I have a wife,’ answered the prisoner, ‘the best that man ever had. A widow, destitute of everything and without a supporter, everybody will point at her and say, That is the heretic’s wife.’[[216]] Latimer and his friends tried to console him, and then they departed from the gloomy dungeon.
The next day (30th of April, 1532) Bainham was taken to the scaffold. Soldiers on horseback surrounded the pile: Master Pave, the city clerk, directed the execution. Bainham, after a prayer, rose up, embraced the stake, and was fastened to it with a chain. ‘Good people,’ he said to the persons who stood round him, ‘I die for having said it is lawful for every man and woman to have God’s book. I die for having said that the true key of heaven is not that of the Bishop of Rome, but the preaching of the Gospel. I die for having said that there is no other purgatory than the cross of Christ, with its consequent persecutions and afflictions.’—‘Thou liest, thou heretic,’ exclaimed Pave; ‘thou hast denied the blessed sacrament of the altar.’—‘I do not deny the sacrament of Christ’s body,’ resumed Bainham, ‘but I do deny your idolatry to a piece of bread.’—‘Light the fire,’ shouted Pave. The executioners set fire to a train of gunpowder, and as the flame approached him, Bainham lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and said to the town clerk: ‘God forgive thee! the Lord forgive Sir Thomas More ... pray for me, all good people!’ The arms and legs of the martyr were soon consumed, and thinking only how to glorify his Saviour, he exclaimed: ‘Behold! you look for miracles, you may see one here; for in this fire I feel no more pain than if I were on a bed of roses.’[[217]] The primitive Church hardly had a more glorious martyr.
Pave had Bainham’s image continually before his eyes, and his last prayer rang day and night in his heart. In the garret of his house, far removed from noise, he had fitted up a kind of oratory, where he had placed a crucifix, before which he used to pray and shed bitter tears.[[218]] He abhorred himself: half mad, he suffered indescribable sorrow, and struggled under great anguish. The dying Bainham had said to him: ‘May God show thee more mercy than thou hast shown to me!’ But Pave could not believe in mercy: he saw no other remedy for his despair than death. About a year after Bainham’s martyrdom, he sent his domestics and clerks on different errands, keeping only one servant-maid in the house. As soon as his wife had gone to church, he went out himself, bought a rope, and hiding it carefully under his gown, went up into the garret. He stopped before the crucifix, and began to groan and weep. The servant ran upstairs. ‘Take this rusty sword,’ he said, ‘clean it well, and do not disturb me.’ She had scarcely left the room when he fastened the rope to a beam and hanged himself.
The maid, hearing no sound, again grew alarmed, went up to the garret, and seeing her master hanging, was struck with terror. She ran crying to the church to fetch her mistress home;[[219]] but it was too late: the wretched man could not be recalled to life.