Footnote 528: Among the surviving memorials of Mary, none is more affecting than a rough copy of an answer to one of these epistles, which is preserved in the Cotton Library. It is painfully scrawled, and covered with erasures and corrections, in which may be traced the dread in which she stood of offending Philip. Demander license de votre Haultesse, is crossed through and altered into Supplier très humblement. Where she had described herself as obeissante, she enlarged the word into très obeissante; and the tone throughout is most piteous. She entreats the king to appoint some person or persons to talk with her about the marriage. She says that the conscience which she has about it she has had for twenty-four years; that is to say, since Elizabeth's birth. Nevertheless, she will agree to Philip's wish, if the realm will agree. She is ready to discuss it; but she complains, so far as she dares complain, of the confessor. The priests trouble her, she says. "Alfonsez espécialement me proposoit questions si obscures que mon simple entendement ne les pouvoit comprehendre, comme pour exemple il me demandoit qui estoit roy au temps de Adam, et disoit comme j'estoy obligée de faire ceste marriage par ung article de mon Credo, mais il ne l'exposoit.... Aultres choses trop difficiles pour moy d'entendre ... ainsy qu'il estoit impossible en si peu de temps de changer ... conscience.... Votre Haultesse escript en ses dictes lettres que si le consent de ce royaulme iroyt au contraire, Votre Haultesse en imputeroit la coulpe en moy. Je supplie en toute humilité votre Haultesse de différer ceste affaire jusques à votre retour; et donques Votre Haultesse sera juge si je seray coulpable ou non. Car autrement je vinray en jalousie de Votre Haultesse la quelle sera pire à moy que mort; car j'en ay commencé déjà d'en taster trop à mon grand regret," etc.—Cotton MSS., Titus, B. 2: printed very incorrectly in Strype's Memorials, vol. vi. 418.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 529: Noailles.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 530: Cranmer to Queen Mary: Jenkins, vol. i. p. 369. This protest was committed to Pole to answer, who replied to it at length.
The authority of the pope in a secular kingdom, the legate said, was no more a foreign power than "the authority of the soul of man coming from heaven in the body generate on earth." "The pope's laws spiritual did no other but that the soul did in the body, giving life to the same, confirming and strengthening the same;" and that it was which the angel signified in Christ's conception, declaring what his authority should be, that he should sit super domum David, which was a temporal reign, ut confirmet illud et corroboret, as the spiritual laws did.
The quotation is inaccurate. The words in the Vulgate are, Dabit illi Dominus sedem David patris ejus: et regnabit in domo Jacob in æternum.
The letter contains another illustration of Pole's habit of mind. "There was never spiritual man," he says, "put to execution according to the order of the laws of the realm but he was first by the canon laws condemned and degraded; whereof there be as many examples afore the time of breaking the old order of the realm these last years, as hath been delinquents. Let the records be seen. And specially this is notable of the Bishop of ——, which, being imprisoned for high treason, the king would not proceed to his condemnation and punishment afore he had the pope's bull given him...."
The historical argument proceeded smoothly up to the name, which, however, was not and is not to be found. Pole was probably thinking of Archbishop Scrope, who, however, unfortunately for the argument, was put to death without the pope's sanction.—Draft of a Letter from Cardinal Pole to Cranmer: Harleian MSS. 417.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 531: Pole to Philip: Epistolæ Reg. Pol., vol. v. p. 47.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 532: Damnatæ memoriæ. Sentence Definitive against Thomas Cranmer: Foxe, vol. viii.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 533: An allusion to a scaffold in St. Paul's Church, on which Cranmer had sat as a commissioner; said to have been erected over an altar.[(Back to Main Text)]