Footnote 103: Renard to Queen Mary: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 65.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 104: Renard to Charles V., September 9: Rolls House MSS.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 105: Some of the Protestant bishops (Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, and Ferrars were admirable exceptions) had taken care of themselves in the seven years of plenty. At the time of the deposition of the Archbishop of York an inventory was taken of the personal property which was then in his possession. He had five houses, three very well provided, two meetly well. At his house at Battersea he had, of coined gold, £300; plate gilt and parcel gilt, 1600 oz. Mitre, gold, with two pendants set with very fine diamonds, sapphires, and balists, and other stones and pearls, weight 125 oz.; six great gold rings, with very fine sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, turquoises. "At Cawood he had of money £900; mitres, 2. Plate gilt and parcel gilt, 770 oz; broken cross of silver gilt, 46 oz.; two thousand five hundred sheep; two Turkey carpets, as big and as good as any subject had; a chest full of copes and vestments. Household stores: wheat, 200 quarters; malt, 500 quarters; oats, 60 quarters; wine, five or six tuns; fish and ling, six or seven hundred; horses at Cawood, four or five score; harness and artillery sufficient for seven score men."—Strype's Crammer, vol. i. p. 440.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 106: Privy Council Register, MS. Mary.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 107: Foxe.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 108: Strype's Cranmer.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 109: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. In these late times, when men whose temper has not been tried by danger, feel themselves entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the passing weakness has been accepted as the key to his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and a sycophant. Considering the position of the writer, and the circumstances under which it was issued, I regard the publication of this letter as one of the bravest actions ever deliberately ventured by man.
Let it be read, and speak for itself.
"As the devil, Christ's antient adversary, is a liar and the father of lying, even so hath he stirred his servants and members to persecute Christ and his true word and religion, which he ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this present. For whereas the most noble prince, of famous memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses of the Latin masses, reformed some things therein in his time, and also our late sovereign lord King Edward VI. took the same wholly away, for the manifold errours and abuses thereof, and restored in the place thereof Christ's holy supper, according to Christ's own institution, and as the Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in the beginning, the devil goeth about by lying to overthrow the Lord's holy supper, and to restore the Latin satisfactory masses, a thing of his own invention and device. And to bring the same more clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been well exercised these twenty years, to suffer and to bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much grieved thereat, and have borne all things quietly; yet where untrue reports and lies turn to the hindrance of God's truth, they be in no ways to be tolerated and suffered. Wherefore these be to signify to the world that it was not I that did set up the mass at Canterbury, but a false, flattering, lying, and dissembling monk, which caused the mass to be set up there without my advice and counsel: and as for offering myself to say mass before the Queen's Highness, or in any other place, I never did, as her Grace knoweth well. But if her Grace will give me leave, I shall be ready to prove against all that will say the contrary, that the Communion-book, set forth by the most innocent and godly prince King Edward VI., in his High Court of Parliament, is conformable to the order which our Saviour Christ did both observe and command to be observed, which his Apostles and primitive Church used many years; whereas the mass in many things not only hath no foundation of Christ, his Apostles, nor the primitive Church, but also is contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible blasphemies."[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 110: Renard to Charles V., September 9: Rolls House MSS.[(Back to Main Text)]