But while "the congress of kings," as Erasmus called it, was disporting itself at Guines and Calais, the tide of a new movement was swiftly and steadily rising, no more obeying them than had the ocean obeyed Canute. More in England than in most countries the Reformation was an imported product. Its "dawn came up like thunder" from across the North Sea.
Luther's Theses on Indulgences were sent by Erasmus to his English friends Thomas More and John Colet little more than four months after their promulgation. [Sidenote: March 5, 1518] By February, 1519, Froben had exported to England a number of volumes of Luther's works. One of them fell into the hands of Henry VIII or his sister Mary, quondam Queen of France, as is shown by the royal arms stamped on it. Many others were sold by a bookseller at Oxford throughout 1520, in which year a government official in London wrote to his son in the country, [Sidenote: March 3, 1520] "there be heretics here which take Luther's opinions." The universities were both infected at the same time. At Cambridge, especially, a number of young men, many of them later prominent reformers, met at the White Horse Tavern regularly to discuss the new ideas. The tavern was nicknamed "Germany" [Sidenote: 1521] and the young enthusiasts "Germans" in consequence. But surprisingly numerous as are the evidences of the spread of Lutheranism in these early years, naturally it as yet had few prominent adherents. When Erasmus wrote Luther that he had well-wishers {282} [Sidenote: May, 1519] in England, and those of the greatest, he was exaggerating or misinformed. At most he may have been thinking of John Colet, whose death in September, 1519, came before he could take any part in the religious controversy.
At an early date the government took its stand against the heresy. Luther's books were examined by a committee of the University of Cambridge, [Sidenote: 1520] condemned and burnt by them, and soon afterwards by the government. At St. Paul's in London, [Sidenote: May 12, 1521] in the presence of many high dignitaries and a crowd of thirty thousand spectators Luther's books were burnt and his doctrine "reprobated" in addresses by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Cardinal Wolsey. A little later it was forbidden to read, import or keep such works, and measures were taken to enforce this law. Commissions searched for the said pamphlets; stationers and merchants were put under bond not to trade in them; and the German merchants of the Steelyard were examined. When it was discovered [Sidenote: 1526] that these foreigners had stopped "the mass of the body of Christ," commonly celebrated by them in All Hallows' Church the Great, at London, they were haled before Wolsey's legatine court, forced to acknowledge its jurisdiction, and dealt with.
With one accord the leading Englishmen declared against Luther. Cuthbert Tunstall, a mathematician and diplomatist, and later Bishop of London, wrote Wolsey from Worms of the devotion of the Germans to their leader, and sent to him The Babylonian Captivity with the comment, "there is much strange opinion in it near to the opinions of Boheme; I pray God keep that book out of England." [Sidenote: January 21, 1521] Wolsey himself, biassed perhaps by his ambition for the tiara, labored to suppress the heresy. Most important of all, Sir Thomas More was promptly and decisively alienated. {283} It was More, according to Henry VIII, who "by subtle, sinister slights unnaturally procured and provoked him" to write against the heretic. His Defence of the Seven Sacraments, in reply to the Babylonian Captivity, though an extremely poor work, was greeted, on its appearance, as a masterpiece. [Sidenote: July, 1521] The handsome copy bound in gold, sent to Leo X, was read to the pope and declared by him the best antidote to heresy yet produced. In recognition of so valuable an arm, or of so valiant a champion, the pope granted an indulgence of ten years and ten periods of forty days to the readers of the book, and to its author the long coveted title Defender of the Faith. Luther answered the king with ridicule and the controversy was continued by Henry's henchmen More, Fisher, and others. Stung to the quick, Henry, who had already urged the emperor to crush the heretic, now wrote with the same purpose to the elector and dukes of Saxony and to other German princes.
[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism]
But while the chief priests and rulers were not slow to reject the new "gospel," the common people heard it gladly. The rapid diffusion of Lutheranism is proved by many a side light and by the very proclamations issued from time to time to "resist the damnable heresies" or to suppress tainted books. John Heywood's The Four P's: a merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary and a Pedlar, written about 1528 though not published until some years later, is full of Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time, Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars. John Skelton's Colyn Clout, [Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment of the clergy, mentions that
Some have smacke
Of Luther's sacke,
And a brennyng sparke
Of Luther's warke.
{284} [Sidenote: William Tyndale's Bible]
But the acceptance of the Reformation, as apart from mere grumbling at the church, could not come until a Protestant literature was built up. In England as elsewhere the most powerful Protestant tract was the vernacular Bible. Owing to the disfavor in which Wyclif's doctrines were held, no English versions had been printed until the Protestant divine William Tyndale highly resolved to make the holy book more familiar to the ploughboy than to the bishop.
Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale imbibed the doctrines first of Erasmus, then of Luther, and finally of Zwingli. Applying for help in his project to the bishop of London and finding none, [Sidenote: 1524] he sailed for Germany where he completed a translation of the New Testament, and started printing it at Cologne. Driven hence by the intervention of Cochlaeus and the magistrates, he went to Worms and got another printer to finish the job. [Sidenote: 1526] Of the six thousand copies in the first edition many were smuggled to England, where Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, tried to buy them all up, "thinking," as the chronicler Hall phrased it, "that he had God by the toe when he indeed had the devil by the fist." The money went to Tyndale and was used to issue further editions, of which no less than seven appeared in the next ten years.