Sketch of the Reformation in England

by John J. Blunt

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

Isaac Walton exhorts his fisherman, when baiting with a frog, “to put his hook through the mouth and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk to sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of the hook, and in so doing to use him as though he loved him.” And in the like compassionate spirit was it required “in the bowels of the Lord Jesus Christ,” of those whose office it was to burn men alive, “that the execution and punishment might be so moderated that the rigour thereof might not be too extreme;”[431] besides which it was the Queen’s particular desire that, both in London and elsewhere, there should be “good sermons” preached at the time of carrying the sentence into effect; so that whatever might be said of the act itself, there was nothing to offend the most fastidious philanthropy in the ceremonial.

For a history of that noble army of martyrs of whom it now becomes our duty to speak, we are indebted to John Fox, himself an exile in Mary’s reign, and like most of those who then lived abroad, a friend of the Puritan principles at home. He had access to the archives and registers of the bishops; Grindal, who was himself a great collector of such materials, amongst others supplying him with what he knew; and in many instances to the letters of the martyrs themselves;[432] of all which documents, says Strype, he has been found, by those who have compared his books with his authorities, to have made a faithful use. He lived many years after his first edition was published, which was in 1563, and in the interval laboured to render it still more perfect; suppressing where he found reason to doubt, as in the story of Cranmer’s heart remaining unconsumed when the rest of his body was reduced to ashes;[433] enlarging where he was furnished with fresh matter which he thought trustworthy, as in the story of Gardiner’s being stricken with sickness on the day of Cranmer’s martyrdom;[434] and taking journeys in order to confront witnesses and sift evidence when his facts chanced to be called in question;[435] such was his industry. But, independently of all knowledge of this, his pains-taking, the internal evidence of the book is enough to establish its general good faith. There is a simplicity in the narrative, particularly in many of its minute details, which is beyond all fiction; a homely pathos in the stories which art could not reach. Sometimes an expression casually drops out which suffices to prove the testimony to be that of an eye-witness; thus where the terrible death of Ridley is described, the martyrologist speaks in general in his own person; yet we read, that “after the legs of the sufferer were consumed by reason of his struggling through the pain, he showed that side toward us clean, shirt and all untouched with flame,” as though the informant (whose words the historian had here neglected to accommodate) had been himself the spectator. Sometimes there is a frank confession of ignorance, where a less scrupulous writer would have been under a great temptation to supply the defect of information by conjecture; thus, in the details of the same execution of Ridley and Latimer, it is observed, that after they rose from their knees the one talked with the other a little while, but what they said, adds Fox, “I can learn of no man.” Above all, there is such candour in the development even of his most favourite characters, their failings as well as their virtues so fairly told, that it is plain they have not been packed. Thus it is by him we are taught that Cranmer moved the king to the execution of Joan of Kent, though Cranmer’s general disposition would seem repugnant to such an office, and though no mention is made in Edward’s Journal of any such interference, or, indeed, of any reluctance on his own part which should render it needful: thus of Latimer he does not conceal that he probably subscribed on one occasion certain articles which the bishops presented to him, of fear rather than of conscience;[436] and of Hooper, his favourite, if he had one among the martyrs, that he disputed too pertinaciously and to the breach of mutual charity, with his opponents on the subject of the episcopal habits, and that the prospect of their approaching death for the common cause, and nothing less, could effect the cordial union of the parties. Neither does he suppress any instance of kindness by which the sufferings of the martyrs were mitigated; and as St. Luke tells us of the centurion entreating Paul courteously, so does Fox relate of Saunders, that when his wife came to the prison gate, with her young child in her arms to visit her husband, the keeper, though he durst not suffer her to enter the prison, yet took the little babe out of her arms and brought him to his father, to his exceeding great joy: and of Hooper’s guard, that they interceded with the sheriffs of Gloucester on behalf of their charge, that he might not be sent to the common gaol, they declaring at large how quietly, mildly, and patiently he had behaved himself in the way, and adding, that they would rather themselves be at the pains to watch with him than that he should be so handled: and of Rowland Taylor, that his wife and son Thomas were permitted to sup with him in the Counter, “by the gentleness of his keepers,” and afterwards, that of his guard three out of the four used him friendly. It was to be expected that a work which, had it been published a few years sooner, (supposing this possible,) would probably have added its author to the catalogue of his own martyrs, should excite no small stir among the Catholics, and so it came to pass. But they weakened the force of their attack by betraying prematurely the spirit which animated them, sarcastically inquiring, even before its publication, when the “Golden Legend” was to appear, and denouncing the “Calendar of Saints,” which they had heard was to be prefixed to it, as blasphemy against their own. But Fox went on, as he says, without fear and without favour; and no sooner was Elizabeth to whom he dedicated, out of the way, than an examination of the book appeared, by Parsons the Jesuit, in his “Three Conversions of England,” which has furnished more modern objectors with most of the weapons of their warfare. But Parsons writes in a temper which defeats itself. He deals in vague vituperation rather than in specific accusations of error; or where he ventures upon the latter, he often either wilfully or ignorantly misreads Fox, as in the vapid pleasantry wasted upon Joan Lashford, a married maid, as he is pleased to call her;[437] or he triumphs over him by exposing a flaw in the character of a martyr with an eureka, which the honest martyrologist himself did not affect to conceal, and for the knowledge indeed of which Parsons is altogether indebted to him, as where he makes himself merry with the discordant sentiments of nine martyrs executed together, though their want of uniformity is a fact which he learns from Fox himself, who at the same time asserts that their disagreement was in smaller things only;[438] or he prefers charges against him at random without troubling himself to ascertain whether there is a foundation for them or not, as where he accuses him of defacing or destroying the records of cathedrals, which he had been permitted to use, lest they should convict him of negligence or fraud, and this not upon investigation of the fact, but simply, “he presuming it,” as though a charge so serious was to be an affair of presumption only;[439] or lastly, he comments upon his author in so fiendish a temper of mind, as would be in itself enough to satisfy every calm and dispassionate judge that he spoke not of truth or a love for it, but of mere malice; as where, after debasing the circumstances of Rowland Taylor’s story throughout, he concludes with a repetition of his joke about the worms in Hadley church-yard, as given in Fox, and subjoins, “this noteth Fox in the margin for a goodly apophthegm of Dr. Taylor, martyr; and with this, he saith he went to the fire; where we must leave him eternally, as I fear;”[440] and in a similar vein he has the heart to write of Latimer and Ridley, “they were burned together, each of them taking gunpowder to despatch himself quickly, as by Fox is seen, which yet is not read to have been practised by old martyrs, and it seemeth that these men would have the fame of martyrdom without the pain, and now they have incurred the everlasting pain, if by their end we may judge.”[441] The man who could write thus can scarcely lay claim to our credence; for his prejudice has evidently stifled in him every sense by which a regard for truth can be guaranteed.

It is not thought out of place to introduce here this brief vindication of a book, which, so far as it is a contemporary history, has been, both of old, and of late an object of unfair depreciation, but from which no right-hearted Protestant can rise, without being at once a sadder and better man;—a book, out of which we shall now fearlessly draw our information, whilst we offer to our readers a few examples of those terrible sufferings which it is at once humiliating to think that man could inflict, and animating to think that man could so nobly bear.

The first called to take up his cross was John Rogers. He had been brought up in Cambridge, and afterwards became chaplain of the factory at Antwerp, where he fell into the company of Tindall and Coverdale, and helped them to produce that translation of the Bible, which goes by the name of Matthew’s translation. He thence removed to Wittenberg, where he had the charge of a congregation for many years, till Edward’s accession having rendered it safe for those who held his opinions to return to their native land, he repaired thither with his wife and children (for he was married), and was soon preferred by Ridley to a prebend of St. Paul’s and to the divinity lectureship in that cathedral. Thus was he in a situation to attract the attention of Mary, and to be smitten by her evil eye. Accordingly, he was soon brought before the council to answer for his doctrine; and having been first confined to his house, where he remained half a year, and from which he took no pains to escape, he was afterwards, by the tender mercies of Bonner committed to Newgate, and lodged amongst the common desperadoes of a gaol for twelve months more. In his examinations before Gardiner and the council he played his part with the intrepidity of one who felt strong in the righteousness of his cause, and with a force of reasoning which it required the scoffs and brutal laughter of his judges to smother, for answer it they could not. Kneeling on his knees, he reminded them of their own acquiescence in the laws of Henry and Edward; one amongst them, and he, the chief, having been the open advocate of the King’s supremacy as opposed to that of the Pope. He defended his own marriage, as being originally contracted in a country where marriage was permitted to priests; and said that neither did he bring his wife into England till the laws of England permitted it too. With regard to service in an unknown tongue, and the doctrine of the mass, he stayed himself upon Scripture. Gardiner exclaiming against him, that “he could prove nothing by the Scripture, for that Scripture was dead, and must needs have a lively expositor.” But all was in vain, for they were bent to have his life, and having been on several successive days brought before his judges, that some semblance of justice might not be wanting, he was at last condemned; and on the 4th of February, in the year 1555, being Monday, in the morning, he was warned suddenly by the keeper’s wife of Newgate to prepare himself for the fire. He had been sound asleep; but being at length awakened, and bid to make haste—“then,” said he, “if it be so I need not to tye my points;” and so was he had down to Bonner to be degraded, of whom he craved one petition, that he might talk a few words with his wife before his burning; but this poor consolation was denied him; and being led to Smithfield by the sheriffs, singing the Miserere as he went, his wife, and eleven children, one at the breast, meeting him by the way, his pardon still offered him at the stake, on condition of his recantation, he bore himself through this most cruel temptation of all with a stout heart, and bravely washing his hands in the flame as he was burning, gave up his spirit to God. Notwithstanding the care which had been taken to remove his writings, during his confinement in prison, he had contrived to evade the vigilance of his keepers; and it was supposed, that when he wished to have a word with his wife before he was put to death it was to tell her where they were secreted. If so, however, it proved needless; for when she and her son afterwards visited his cell, and were on the point of going away, the latter chanced to cast his eye toward a dark corner under a pair of stairs, and there perceived a black packet of papers, which on examination turned out to be an account of his trial, written in his own hand, wherein was contained, as well many of the details already given, as a very touching prayer, begging of God to sustain him, and all others, in the like case, through their great need, and importuning all “to be good to his poor and most honest wife, being a poor stranger; and all his little souls, hers and his children; whom (he adds,) with all the whole faithful and true catholic congregation of Christ, the Lord of life and death save, keep, and defend, in all the troubles and assaults of this vain world, and bring at the last to everlasting salvation, the true and sure inheritance of all crossed Christians. Amen, Amen.” So perished the first champion of the reformed church; and it has been observed, in reference to their leader, that of those who underwent the same fiery trial, married men, and the parents of many children, met their deaths the most courageously.

On the 9th of February, five days after Rogers, died one who had been with him in prison, and stood beside him at the same judgment-seat—Hooper. He had escaped from the Six Acts in Henry’s time, to the Continent, and returning when Edward reigned in the room of his father, was promoted to the see of Gloucester. Of his scruples respecting the habits and oath mention has been made already; scruples, which his residence abroad had strengthened, and which his own uncompromising temperament made him slow to abandon. He would have found little difficulty in securing his safety by flight a second time, but having now put his hand fairly to the plough, having been the zealous preacher of the new doctrines, and a bishop under the new establishment, he felt, that to withdraw from the trial, severe as it was likely to prove, would be a dereliction of duty, and he determined to brave the danger, come what might. He ran the gauntlet of the inquisitional council, as Rogers had done before him, being tried by the same questions, and taunted by the same scoffs, only, it is remarkable, that Tonstall, Bishop of Durham, is said to have called him “beast,” in consideration of his marriage; a reproach which, as it was scarcely consistent with Tonstall’s general deportment to cast in his teeth, he being a good man, and a foe to persecution, scarcely allowing it to enter his own diocese, may be probably assigned to the humane motive, which Fuller suggests, that he wished to bark the more, in order that he might be at liberty to bite the less;[442] and by affecting rudeness of speech, qualify himself for being merciful without suspicion. Hooper, however, was not to be saved. He was married—he would not separate himself from his wife; and he did not believe in the corporal presence in the sacrament; for these heresies he was deprived and condemned. It was necessary to remove him from the Clink, a prison not far from the church of St. Mary Overies, where sentence was passed upon him, to Newgate, one of the worst of the bad prisons of those times; and the precautions observed show the extreme unpopularity of these sanguinary measures, and the blindness of a government which could adopt them. He was kept till dark, and then led by a sheriff, attended by bills and weapons, through the city, the sergeants going forward to put out the candles of the costermongers, who in those days sat in the streets; the people, nevertheless came in spite of these precautions to their doors with lights to salute him as he passed, and to strengthen his resolution by their cordial prayers. On the night after Rogers’ martyrdom in Smithfield, he was informed by his keeper that he was himself shortly about to die, not in Smithfield, however, but at Gloucester, amongst the people over whom he had been pastor. At this he rejoiced greatly; and sending for his boots, spurs, and cloak, that he might be in readiness for the morrow, prepared himself to set out with his guard before break of day for the scene of his sufferings. There he arrived on the third evening after his departure from London, amidst the tears and salutations of a multitude of persons, who came out to meet him by the way. The evening before his execution he retired early to rest, and having slept one sleep soundly, passed the remainder of the night in prayer. The morrow was market-day—the country people flocked in; the boughs of an elm tree, near which the stake was fixed, were loaded with spectators; and over the college gate, which commanded a view of the spot, stood a company of priests. He had scarcely kneeled down to recommend his soul to God, for the last time on earth, when, by a refinement of cruelty common in those bloody days, a box was brought and laid before him on a stool, containing his pardon if he would still turn in the eleventh hour. But, he crying out again and again, “If you love my soul, away with it,” there remained, it was said, no remedy but to despatch him quickly. Then did he strip himself to the shirt; and a pound of gunpowder being placed between his legs, and another under either arm, he mounted upon a high bench, himself tall, and being bound to the stake by an iron hoop round his middle, he awaited his end. But the faggots were green, and kindled slowly; and the wind, which was high, drove the flame from him, so that he was scorched only, till dry wood was brought, but still in small quantities; and for a long while nothing but the lower extremities was consumed; and he cried out in his protracted agony, “For God’s sake, good people, let me have more fire!” It was not till a third fire had been lighted that the gunpowder exploded: but neither did this end his suffering; for he still continued to pray in a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me!” At length his tongue became swollen so that he could not articulate; and one of his arms dropped off; and after he had thus lingered three quarters of an hour, in all the bitterness of the bitterest of deaths, he bowed forwards and yielded up his life.

None of all the martyrs appear to have died so hardly as Hooper; none, perhaps, to have left a stronger impression upon the minds of their hearers; to which the austerity of his doctrines and severity of his death alike contributed. His scruples and his tenets seem to have been scattered far and wide over the dioceses of Gloucester and Bristol, to come again after many days; for when Cheny some years afterwards was appointed to these sees, he being, as was supposed, a Lutheran, and being certainly a lover of ceremonial, found it impossible to reconcile the sentiments of his clergy with his own; and, fretted by constant conflict, became desirous to resign a charge, of which, indeed, he was eventually deprived by the archbishop, and to return to a life of more privacy and peace.[443]

But of the many beautiful histories in which Fox abounds, none is more beautiful than that of Rowland Taylor, rector of Hadley. Though a mere country parson, (for he had quitted the household of Cranmer, to whom he was chaplain; in order to reside upon his benefice,)—possessed, however, of a high spirit and popular talents—he seems to have taken a lead in his own country; and following in the wake of Bilney, who had preached in the same quarters, contributed to render Suffolk what we have already described it—the soil in which the Reformation took the kindliest root. The collateral effect of his influence and example may be thought, perhaps, to be discovered in a circumstance which comes out quite incidentally in the annals of that period; that one Dr. Drakes, who was afterwards burnt at Smithfield, and one Yeomans at Norwich, had both, we find, been connected with Rowland Taylor; the former having been made deacon through his means,[444] the latter having been his curate at Hadley.[445] We will not enter into all the details of this thrice-told tale of sorrow—his pastoral faithfulness—his successful teaching, so that his parish was remarkable for its knowledge of the Word of God—his efforts to introduce to each other rich and poor, by taking with him in his visits to the latter some of the more wealthy cloth-makers, that they might become acquainted with their neighbours’ wants, and thus be led to minister to their relief—his bold defiance of the Catholic priest whom he found in possession of his church, surrounded by armed men, and saying mass—his reply to John Hull, the old servant who accompanied him to London when he was summoned there before Gardiner, and who would fain have persuaded him to fly—his frank and fearless carriage before his judges—his mirth at the ludicrous apprehensions he inspired into Bonner’s chaplain, who cautioned the bishop, when performing the ceremony of his degradation, not to strike him on the breast with his crosier staff, seeing that he would sure strike again—his charge to his little boy, when he supped with him in prison before his removal to Hadley, not to forsake his mother when she waxed old, but to see that she lacked nothing; for which God would bless him, and give him long life on earth and prosperity—his coming forth by night to set out upon his last journey; his wife, daughter, and an orphan foster-child watching all night in St. Botolph’s church-porch, to catch a sight of him as he passed—their cries when they heard his company approach, it being very dark; his touching farewell to them, and his wife’s promise to meet him again at Hadley—his taking his boy before him on the horse on which he rode, John Hull lifting him up in his arms—his blessing the child; and delivering him again to John Hull, saying, “Farewell! John Hull, the faithfullest servant that man ever had;”—the pleasantries, partaking, indeed, of the homely simplicity of the times, with which he occasionally beguiled the way—the joy he expressed at hearing that he was to pass through Hadley, and see yet once before he died the flock whom, God knew, he had most heartily loved and truly taught—his encounter with the poor man who waited for him at the foot of the bridge with five small children, crying “God help and succour thee! as thou hast many a time succoured me and mine;”—his inquiry, when he came to the last of the alms-houses, after the blind man and woman that dwelt there; and his throwing his glove through the window for them with what money in it he had left—his calling one Soyce to him out of the crowd on Aldham Common, to pull off his boots and take them for his labour, seeing that “he had long looked for them;”—his exclaiming last of all with a loud voice, as though the moral of his life was conveyed in those parting words, “Good people, I have taught you nothing but God’s Holy Word, and those lessons that I have taken out of God’s blessed book, the Holy Bible; and I am come hither this day to seal it with my blood;”—these, and other incidents of the same story, combine so many touches of tenderness with so much firmness of purpose—so many domestic charities with so much heroism—such cheerfulness with such disaster, that if there is any character calculated to call forth all the sympathies of our nature, it is that of Rowland Taylor. God’s blessing is still generally seen on the third and fourth generation of them that love him; and if Rowland could have beheld the illustrious descendant which Providence was preparing for him in Jeremy Taylor, the antagonist of the Church of Rome, able after his own heart’s content—the first and best advocate of toleration—the greatest promoter of practical piety that has ever, perhaps, lived amongst us—he might have humbly imagined that God had not forgotten this his gracious dispensation in his own case; and had approved his martyrdom, by raising from his ashes a spirit more than worthy of his name.

The fate and fortunes of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were so closely united that their history is a common one. Of Cranmer’s rise and advancement mention has been made already. Ridley was well born coming of a good stock in Northumberland; his reputation was great in Cambridge, where he was first a student and then the Master of Pembroke College. Henry promoted him to the see of Rochester; and Edward translated him to that of London. He was a man of vast reading, ready memory, wise of counsel, deep of wit, and very politic in all his proceedings. Though abundantly kind to his kinsfolks, he declared even to his brother and sister, that doing evil they should look for nothing at his hand; such was his integrity; and when the mother of Bonner was his near neighbour at Fulham, he gave her a welcome to his table (an attention which was afterwards but ill returned by her son), assigning to her a chair of her own; so that even when the king’s council dined with him, he did not suffer her to be removed, saying, “By your Lordships’ favour, this place, by right of custom, is for my mother Bonner;” such was his tenderness. His life, which is probably a picture of that of the higher ecclesiastics of his time, was conducted with great regularity. Every morning, as soon as he had put on his clothes, he prayed in his chamber for half an hour; thence to business or to study till ten; after which he assembled his household for family prayers; dinner came next, which, with chess, engaged him for an hour; when, if there were no suitors, or matters to be transacted abroad, he returned to his study till five; evening prayers followed, then supper and his favourite chess; again his books till eleven o’clock, and so his private devotions performed as in the morning, he ended his peaceful day. Of the chapters which he selected for the instruction of his own people (of whom, says Fox, he was marvellous careful), the 13th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the 101st Psalm, were the most often in his mouth. In his public character Ridley was, doubtless, one of the brightest lights of the Reformation, yet not such as to extinguish Cranmer,[446] though some have so accounted him, contrary to his own modest testimony to the superior knowledge of the Archbishop, “who passed him,” said he, “no less than the learned master the young scholar,” and in spite of the numerous acknowledged productions of Cranmer, and the little we know of Ridley beyond his Examinations, Treatises, and Letters (all most able indeed), preserved in the pages of Fox.

Latimer was a man of more humble birth than the two former, being a small farmer’s son at Thurcaston, in Leicestershire, a condition in life which qualified him, perhaps, so eminently for spreading the doctrines of the Reformation amongst the people, whose tastes and phraseology, as well as their failings and faults, he, of all the leading Reformers, seems to have best understood; and he was accordingly honoured by the title of the Apostle of England. Fastidious hearers would indeed find much to shock them in the homely speech and extravagant jokes of Latimer, though probably in this he did but follow an example which the friars had set him; but the earnest sincerity of the man overcame all obstacles, and recommended him to the court, as well as to the country, for an engine of the Reformation powerful beyond most others. The see of Worcester, to which he was elected by Henry, he took the first opportunity of resigning; an opportunity given him by the Act of the Six Articles, and when he might have resumed it he held back, living with Cranmer at Lambeth, as a private individual, accessible to suitors, whose cases he forwarded to the primate; greeted by the people still with the title of Lord, for they rejoiced to pay him honour; and the favourite even of the boys in the streets, who cheered him as he approached his ever popular pulpit with some hearty word of encouragement to say on. Still there was something in Latimer (even in those times, when it was not much the practice of the preacher to go bridle in hand,) which seems to have stamped him as a humourist amongst his unrefined contemporaries; and a few words of advice which Cranmer gives him in a letter written when he was about to make his first essay as a preacher at court—a situation to which the archbishop had himself introduced him—indicate that he looked upon the experiment not without some little apprehension for the result. “Overpass or omit,” says the discreet adviser, “all manner of speech either apertly or suspiciously sounding against any special man’s facts, manners, or sayings, to the intent your audience have none occasion thereby, namely, to slander your adversaries, which would seem to many that you were void of charity, and so much the more unworthy to occupy that room. Nevertheless, if such occasion be given by the word of God, let none offence or suspicion be unreprehended, especially if it be generally spoken, without affection. Furthermore, I would that you should so study to comprehend your matter, that in any condition you stand no longer in the pulpit than an hour or an hour and half at the most, for by long expense of time, the King and the Queen (Anne Bullen) shall peradventure wax so weary at the beginning that they shall have small delight to continue throughout with you to the end.”[447]