Footnote 534: Foxe, vol. viii. p. 73.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 535: Cranmer to a Lawyer: Jenkins, vol. i. p. 384.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 536: Epist. Reg. Pol., vol. v. p. 248. I am obliged to abridge and epitomise.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 537: Car se je n'écourtois que les mouvemens de la nature, se je ne vous parlois qu'en mon nom, je vous tiendrois un autre langage au plutôt je ne vous dirois rien; je m'entretiendrois avec Dieu seul at je lui demanderois de faire tomber le feu du ciel pour vous consumer avec cette maison où vous avez passé en abandonnant l'Église. The letter was only known to the editor of Pole's remains in a French translation. I do not know whether the original exists, or whether it was in Latin or in English.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 538: The innumerable modern writers who agree with Pole on the iniquity of the divorce of Catherine forget that, according to the rule which most of us now acknowledge, the marriage of Henry with his brother's wife really was incestuous—really was forbidden by the laws of God and nature; that the pope had no more authority to dispense with those laws then than he has now; and that if modern law is right, Cranmer did no more than his duty.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 539: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 129.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 540: Forasmuch as the king's and queen's majesties, by consent of parliament, have received the pope's authority within this realm, I am content to submit myself to their laws herein, and to take the pope for chief head of this Church of England so far as God's laws and the customs of this realm will permit.—Thomas Cranmer.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 541: Of this fifth submission there is a contemporary copy among the MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was the only one known to Foxe; and this, with the fact of its being found in a separate form, gives a colour of probability to Mr. Southey's suspicion that the rest were forgeries. The whole collection was published by Bonner, who injured his claims to credit by printing with the others a seventh recantation, which was never made, and by concealing the real truth. But the balance of evidence I still think is in favour of the genuineness of the first six. The first four lead up to the fifth, and the invention of them after the fifth had been made would have been needless. The sixth I agree with Strype in considering to have been composed by Pole, and signed by Cranmer.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 542: Recantations of Thomas Cranmer: Jenkins, vol. iv. p. 393.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 543: Death of Cranmer, related by a Bystander: Harleian MSS., 442. Printed, with some inaccuracies, by Strype.[(Back to Main Text)]