I must be permitted to mention the evidence, the single evidence, on which it rests.
The first English witness is Harrison, the author of the Description of Britain prefixed to Hollinshed’s Chronicle. Harrison, speaking of the manner in which thieves had multiplied in England from laxity of discipline, looks back with a sigh to the golden days of King Hal, and adds, “It appeareth by Cardan, who writeth it upon report of the Bishop of Lexovia, in the geniture of King Edward the Sixth, that his father, executing his laws very severely against great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them.”
I am unable to discover “the Bishop of Lexovia;” but, referring to the Commentaries of Jerome Cardan, p. 412, I find a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., containing, of course, the marvellous legend of his birth, and after it this passage:—
“Having spoken of the son, we will add also the scheme of his father, wherein we chiefly observe three points. He married six wives; he divorced two; he put two to death. Venus being in conjunction with Cauda, Lampas partook of the nature of Mars; Luna in occiduo cardine was among the dependencies of Mars; and Mars himself was in the ill-starred constellation Virgo and in the quadrant of Jupiter Infelix. Moreover, he quarrelled with the Pope, owing to the position of Venus and to influences emanating from her. He was affected also by a constellation with schismatic properties, and by certain eclipses, and hence and from other causes, arose a fact related to me by the Bishop of Lexovia, namely, that two years before his death as many as seventy thousand persons were found to have perished by the hand of the executioner in that one island during his reign.”
The words of some unknown foreign ecclesiastic discovered imbedded in the midst of this abominable nonsense, and transmitted through a brain capable of conceiving and throwing it into form, have been considered authority sufficient to cast a stigma over one of the most remarkable periods in English history, while the contemporary English Records, the actual reports of the judges on assize, which would have disposed effectually of Cardan and his bishop, have been left unstudied in their dust.
[480] As we saw recently in the complaints of the Marquis of Exeter. But in this general sketch I am giving the result of a body of correspondence too considerable to quote.
[481] In healthier times the Pope had interfered. A bull of Innocent VIII. permitted felons repeating their crimes, or fraudulent creditors, to be taken forcibly out of sanctuary.—Wilkins’s Concilia, Vol. III. p. 621.
[482] The Magistrates of Frome to Sir Henry Long: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 102. Mr. Justice Fitzjames to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. XI. p. 43.
[483] The letter which I quote is addressed to Cromwell as “My Lord Privy Seal,” and dated July 17. Cromwell was created privy seal on the 2d of July, 1536, and Earl of Essex on the 17th of April, 1540. There is no other guide to the date.
[484] The Magistrates of Chichester to my Lord Privy Seal: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. X.