“The night before Ridley suffered, his beard was washed, and his legs; as he sat at supper the same night at master Irish’s (who was his keeper), he bade his hostess, and the rest at the board, to his marriage: ‘For,’ saith he, ‘to-morrow I must be married;’ and so showed himself to be as merry as ever he was at any time before; and wishing his sister at his marriage, he asked his brother, sitting at the table, whether she should find in her heart to be there or no; and he answered, ‘Yea, I dare say, with all her heart;’ at which word he said he was glad to hear of her so much therein. So at this talk mistress Irish wept; but master Ridley comforted her, and said, ‘O, mistress Irish, you love me not now, I see well enough; for in that you weep it doth appear you will not be at my marriage, neither are content therewith. Indeed, you be not so much my friend as I thought you had been: but quiet yourself; though my breakfast shall be somewhat sharp and painful, yet I am sure my supper shall be more pleasant and sweet.’ When they arose from the table, his brother offered him to watch all night with him; but he said, ‘No, no, that you shall not; for I mind, God willing, to go to bed, and to sleep as quietly to night as ever I did in my life.’ So his brother departed, exhorting him to be of good cheer, and to take his cross quietly, for the reward was great.”
The place appointed for the execution was the ditch on the north side of the town, over against Baliol College, and the Lord Williams was instructed by the Queen’s letters to marshal the householders, and to see that no tumult was made. Then came out Ridley in his black furred gown and velvet cap, walking between the mayor and an alderman. As he passed Bocardo he looked up, hoping to see Cranmer, but he, says Fox, was then engaged in dispute with one Friar Soto; others, however, whom Heylyn and Burnet follow, assert that he beheld the whole sorrowful spectacle from the roof of his prison, and upon his knees begged God to strengthen his companions in their agony, and to prepare him for his own. When Latimer came up, (for the poor old man made what speed he could, but by reason of his years was slow,) Ridley ran to him and kissed him, saying, “Be of good heart, brother; for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.” Then they kneeled down both of them, and prayed very earnestly; and when they had risen and talked together awhile, Dr. Smith, one of those who had recanted in Edward’s time, and was now, therefore, the more zealous, preached before them, having the feeling to choose for his text, “Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” After a while being commanded to make ready, Ridley gave away his apparel, a new groat, some nutmegs, rases of ginger, a dial, and such other things as he had about him, the bystanders but too happy to get “any rag of him;” and Latimer, who had left it to his keeper to strip him, now stood in his shroud no longer the withered and decrepit old man he seemed, but bolt upright, “as comely a father as one might lightly behold.” Then did Ridley move the Lord Williams to intercede that the leases which he had made as Bishop of London might be confirmed; and when he had relieved his conscience of this his only worldly care, a kindled faggot was laid at his feet; Latimer, who was fastened to the same stake, exclaiming at the instant, in words that have become memorable, “Be of good comfort, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Latimer’s sufferings were short: he received the flame as if he were embracing it; and after he had stroked his face with his hands and bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died as it appeared, without pain. Not so Ridley; the faggots were piled up about him so that there was no vent for the flame, which, burning underneath, consumed all his lower extremities, he piteously desiring of the people, for Christ’s sake, to let the fire come unto him. His brother-in-law, who meant it in mercy, heaped upon him still more fuel, till nothing could be seen of him, only he was perceived to be leaping up and down under the faggots, often crying out, “I cannot burn;” at last one of the spectators, pulling off the wood from above, made a way for the flame to escape, towards which Ridley leaned himself as towards a welcome executioner, when the gunpowder with which he was furnished, exploded, and he fell down dead at Latimer’s feet.
If it was not Gardiner’s jealousy of Pole, who was to succeed Cranmer in the primacy, which was the occasion of the archbishop’s respite,[449] the plan of the persecution was arranged with consummate sagacity. Ridley and Latimer were men of greater animal courage than Cranmer; and would probably have sustained the insidious temptations under which he sunk, or at any rate would have imparted their own constancy to him, had they all suffered together. They, therefore were taken, and he was left; for though the same legal form which served for the despatch of the two former would not have sufficed for the archbishop—it being reserved for the pope himself to take cognizance of a metropolitan—yet inasmuch as all the parties had been prisoners so long; ample time had been allowed for making the two processes run together, and thereby bringing the three bishops together to the stake. Cranmer, however, was assailed by a separate commission which issued from the pope, as the other issued from the legate, and since a part of the form consisted of a citation to appear at Rome within eighty days, the final sentence was suspended till that period should have expired. The citation itself was an affair of mere mockery, compliance with it being impossible, for Cranmer was still detained a close prisoner. The eighty days at an end, and he “having taken no care to appear at Rome” (as the papal instrument had the modesty to word it), the pope pronounces him guilty of heresy; and appoints Bonner Bishop of London, and Thirlby Bishop of Ely, commissioners to see the same executed. His degradation having been effected, attended by every aggravation of insult which the ruthless Bonner could devise, he was delivered over to the secular power, (the church, forsooth, shrinking from the office of shedding blood,) to be put to death. One attempt more, however, was yet to be made to shake the resolution of the martyr; and Cranmer became the guest of the Dean of Christ Church, and delicate fare was provided for him; and he played at bowls; and walked at his pleasure; and wily men distilled their venom into his ear, that the King and Queen desired his conversion above all things; that the council bore him good will; that it was but a small thing to set his name to a few words on a little leaf of paper; that he was not so old but that many years yet remained of lusty age; that his notable learning, which might profit so many, should not be extinguished before its time; that if desire of life were nothing, yet that death is grievous, and especially such a death; till Cranmer, who had stoutly withstood the judgment-hall and prison-house, the scoffs and gibes of merciless men, and all the terrible artillery of persecution in its most angry shape, was not proof against these crafts and subtleties which the devil or man wrought against him, and so signed his recantation. “To conceal this fault,” may we say as Fuller does on the subscription of Jewel, “had been partiality; to excuse it, flattery; to defend it, impiety; to insult over him, cruelty; to pity him, charity; to be wary of ourselves in any like occasion, Christian discretion.” His enemies now had him in the toils; and, to add to his humiliation, a series of recantations is exacted of him, each rising above the other in its demands; some perhaps, of his own dictating; the longest and most abject, apparently, the wordy composition of Cole; and whilst these very instruments were in preparation, with a duplicity which is a fit consummation of the whole, secret orders were given by the Queen to Dr. Cole, provost of Eton College, to prepare the sermon; and it was not till the day before his execution, or even, perhaps, the very morning of it, when Cole visited him in prison, and furnished him with fifteen crowns to give to the poor—a dole not unfrequent at funerals in those times—that the eyes of Cranmer were quite opened to the situation in which he stood, and he found himself, after all the delusive hopes which had been held out to him, within a few hours of a dreadful end. Better faith might have been kept with him, and still a thirst for his blood been gratified; for, had he been spared, Cranmer was not the man to have borne for any long time the upbraidings of his own conscience, and, like Bilney, he would have been soon driven to find relief from sufferings worse than death, by a voluntary surrender of himself to the flames; as it was, the wisdom of the serpent, for which the church of Rome was so famous, forsook his persecutors, and by drawing their bow once too much, they snapped it in their hands;—“Qui nimis emungit elecit sanguinem.” Cranmer was now brought to St. Mary’s church, preceded by the mayor and aldermen, and with a friar on either side, who alternately repeated certain Psalms as the procession advanced; and being placed on a stage over against the pulpit, he was there made to listen to Cole’s address. This ended, all the congregation joined with him in prayer, and “never,” says a spectator, “was there such a number so earnestly praying together; Cranmer himself an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out at his eyes in plenty of tears,” but in other respects retaining “the quiet and grave behaviour which was natural to him.”
Being exhorted to make a public confession, that all suspicion of heresy might be removed from him, “I will do it,” said the Archbishop, “and that with a good will;” whereupon he rose up and addressed to the people some words of exhortaion, and then a summary of his faith. “And now,” he continued, “I come to the great thing that so much troubleth my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life:” then he revoked his former recantation: “and forasmuch,” he added, “as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefor; for may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” So saying, he was soon plucked down from the platform on which he stood, and was led away to punishment. He did not tarry long at his prayers; but putting off his garments, all but his shirt, which reached to the ground, his feet bare, his head bald, so that not one hair could be seen upon it, his beard, long and thick, covering his face with marvellous gravity, he presented a spectacle to move the heart both of friend and foe; at once the martyr and the penitent. As soon as the fire began to burn, he stretched forth his right arm, and thrust his hand into the flame, as he had said, holding it there till it was consumed, and oftentimes repeating, “This unworthy right hand;” and as if ashamed of his weakness, and resolved to atone for it now by an heroic contempt of pain, he took his death with singular courage, seeming to move no more than the stake to which he was bound.
From John Rogers, the first of the martyrs, who suffered on the 4th of February, 1555, to the five who were burned at Canterbury on the 10th of November, 1558, and were the last, two hundred and twenty-seven persons according to some computations, two hundred and eighty-four according to others, and two hundred and eighty-eight according to a third authority, perished in the flames.[450] How many more might have been added to the number of victims, had Mary’s life been spared, it is impossible to conjecture, but happily those days were shortened; and on the 17th of November she herself ended a reign of continued disaster; Calais, which had been in possession of the English since the battle of Creçy, and then reckoned the jewel of the crown, lost; and lost apparently because the government dared not call a parliament to provide means of defence, such was its unpopularity;[451] a heavy debt contracted, less for national objects than to minister to the wants of the Spaniards; an exchequer too much exhausted to right itself; the learned men in exile; the universities a prey to the same Spanish rapacity;[452] the kingdom at large corrupted by Spanish vices,[453] and by a return to the law of clerical celibacy;[454] capital offences greatly multiplied; fifty-two persons being executed at Oxford at one session;[455] a pestilence depopulating the country to such a degree as to excite fears of a French invasion by reason of the nation’s weakness; for the inhabitants of the villages ceased, might Elizabeth say on her accession; they ceased in Israel, until that I arose, that I arose a mother in Israel; so that at length it was discovered that the Roman Catholic cause, for which alone Mary had lived, and would have been content to die, had by her own measures or misfortunes been brought to nought; and above all, that the fires of Smithfield had shed upon it a baleful and disastrous light. Instead of any attempt being made to alter the succession, though the queen of Scots was at hand as a candidate for the crown—of such pretensions, too, as would have been likely to secure her some support at another time—Elizabeth, Protestant as she was known to be, was advanced to the throne by acclamation; bonfires lit in the streets before Mary was cold; tables spread for merry-making in honour of her successor; costly pageants prepared for her as she traversed the city, the children crying out, God save Queen Elizabeth![456] the moderate revolted from a religion which spake of peace, but had shed blood upon the earth like water; and all parties weary of a reign of terror under which every man’s safety, to whatever party he belonged, was only upon sufferance.
CHAPTER XIII.
ELIZABETH.—HER ACCESSION.—HER CAUTION.—REFORMATION AGAIN TRIUMPHANT.—RETURN OF THE EXILES.—JEWEL.—INJUNCTIONS OF ELIZABETH COMPARED WITH THOSE OF EDWARD.—PROGRESS OF THE PURITANS.—THE REFORMATION NOT COMPLETED. CONCLUSION.
Such was the great agony through which the Reformation was doomed to pass. But that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and so it proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the grave of the cause for a short season, and that of Elizabeth was now to be its triumphant resurrection. It will not, however, be necessary to pursue our subject much further, which, from a History of the Reformation, would soon run into a History of Puritanism, the extreme to which it degenerated for a while. Into this question it is not our intention to enter. For the present, little remained to be done, but to repeal the several laws by which Mary had superseded the acts of Henry and Edward, and to resume the use of those services and rituals which the martyrs had provided, and of which the nature and number have been already told. But Elizabeth proceeded warily. Well as her religious sentiments were understood, none but the most attentive observer could have at first detected them in her conduct. A figure of Truth greets her with a translation of the Bible in its hand; she takes the book and reverently kisses it. A court buffoon beseeches her to restore to freedom four prisoners long bound in fetters, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John; she answers that she must first endeavour to know the minds of the prisoners themselves. At her coronation in Westminster Abbey, she partakes of the mass;[457] on Christmas day, which was about a month later, she demurs to hear it.[458] The puritans make haste to pull down the images; she bids them hold their hand. Unlicensed preachers, be they of what denomination they may, Catholics or Protestants she silences alike. The marriage of the clergy, much as the measure was desired by the leaders of the Reformation, she refuses, connives at, at last reluctantly concedes. She offends the zealots of both parties, for she openly espouses the cause of neither;[459] but she makes that party her own, which represents the sober, the stable, the somewhat phlegmatic good sense of the English people; a party without which no government, however brilliant, can be safe; and with which none, however unattractive, can be long in danger. Such policy was natural to herself;—“My sweet sister Temperance,” was the name by which her brother loved to call her; and, moreover she had been nursed in the school of caution, and for years one word or deed of indiscretion might have cost her her head. Such policy, too, was after the heart of Cecil, perhaps the sagest of her counsellors, who now taught his mistress to thread her way, as he had hitherto threaded his own, through most dangerous and difficult times, with the sagacity of a wizard. The outset of Elizabeth’s reign, indeed, was perhaps the masterpiece of his tactics; and years afterwards, when the crisis was passed and the Reformation established, he appealed to that period, as well he might, in proof of his successful devotion to the cause of truth.[460] Still Elizabeth was working her way underground, and by measures which whilst they did not provoke notice, would not fail to produce fruits. Thus, though she would not exclude Roman Catholics from her privy council, she would yoke them with such colleagues as were friendly to the Reformation, and were at the same time of talents so extraordinary as would readily obtain the mastery in debate. Though she would not weed out of the commission of the peace Roman Catholic magistrates, she would regulate her new appointments with a view to serving the cause she had secretly at heart. She would not compel, or attempt to compel, a Roman Catholic parliament by force to make the laws she desired, but she would take care to influence the elections in such a manner as to secure the return of members who would do so. Her first object appears to have been to soothe the country: to maintain the authority of the law, be it as yet what it might; to establish her own position as monarch; and thus to possess herself of a basis on which she might proceed to build, at her leisure, the permanent prosperity of her realm.
Her parliament assembled, and never did a parliament meet under circumstances more imperative: to its wisdom it was left to order and settle all things upon the best and surest foundations; and accordingly it passed the two great acts by which the alliance between church and state was established, those of Supremacy and Uniformity; neither of them, indeed, now enacted for the first time, but both statutes of Henry or Edward, with certain amendments, revived.