CHAPTER XV.
Accession and coronation of Edward VI, 1547.
Provision had been made for the succession to the crown on Henry's death by an Act of Parliament passed in 1544, and the princesses Mary and Elizabeth were thereby re-instated in their rights of inheritance as if no question of their legitimacy had ever been raised. As Edward, who was next in succession to the crown, was but a boy, Henry had taken pains to select a council of regency in which no one party should predominate. This council was soon set aside, and Hertford, the king's uncle, got himself appointed Protector of the realm and took the title of Duke of Somerset. At the time of his father's death Edward was residing at Hertford Castle. He was soon afterwards carried thence by his uncle to London and lodged in the Tower, where the mayor, Henry Hoberthorne, went to pay his respects and received the honour of knighthood.[1266]
On the 19th the young king passed through the city to Westminster, the mayor riding before him bareheaded with the mace of crystal[1267] in his hand.[pg 421] The streets were lined with members of the livery companies. The conduits, the standard and cross in Chepe, the Ludgate and the Temple Bar had been freshly painted and trimmed with goodly hangings of Arras and cloth of gold for the occasion. At three of the conduits, namely, the conduit in Cornhill, the great conduit in Chepe, and the conduit in Fleet Street, wine was made by artificial means to flow as if from the "festrons" of the conduits themselves. At the little conduit in Chepe were stationed the aldermen of the city, in their scarlet gowns, and the Recorder, who, in the name of the whole city, presented his majesty with 1,000 marks in "hole new sufferaynes" of gold in a purse of purple cloth of gold, which his majesty deigned to accept with his own hand. The next day Edward was crowned. The lord mayor, according to custom, attended with his crystal mace as the king passed from his palace to church, and thence, after mass, to Westminster Hall, and received for his services the customary gold cup, which on this occasion weighed twenty ounces, with its cover and a "leyer" (or laver) silver-gilt weighing six ounces.[1268]
Opposition in the city to the sacrament of the mass, 1547-1548.
The work of reformation was now about to be taken seriously in hand. Something, it is true, had been done in this direction under Henry, but in dilettante fashion. The ceremony connected with the boy-bishop, which even Colet had thought worthy to be perpetuated in his school,[1269] had been[pg 422] abolished by order of the mayor in 1538.[1270] The ruthless destruction of the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and the erasure of his name from service-books, had been followed in the city by an order (1539) for a new common seal on which the arms of the city were substituted for the original effigy of the saint.[1271] Henry himself only coquetted with Protestantism; his chief object, if not the only one, was to get rid of the papal supremacy; but among the bourgeois class of the city there was an earnest desire to see an improvement made in the doctrine and discipline of the Church.[1272]
Whilst the statute of the Six Articles was still unrepealed, the sacrament of the mass frequently provoked open hostility in the city. Thus, in August, 1538, Robert Reynold, a stationer, was declared upon the oath of five independent witnesses to have been heard to say "that the masse was nawght, and the memento was Bawdrye, and after the consecracioun of the masse yt was idolatrye." He was further charged with having said that it were better for him to confess and be houseled by a temporal rather than a spiritual man.[1273] Again, in February, 1543, Hugh Eton, a hosier of London, was convicted of disguising himself "in fonde fassyon," and of irreverently walking up and down in St. Bride's Church before the sacrament, disturbing the priests at mass and creating a tumult. By way of punishment for his offence he was set in the cage in Fleet Street, "disguised" as he was,[pg 423] with a paper on his head setting forth his offence. He there remained until four o'clock in the afternoon, when he was removed to the compter and condemned to stay there a prisoner until he found sureties for good behaviour.[1274]
After the repeal of the statute by Edward's first parliament, the opposition to the "sacrament of the altar," as the mass was called, became greater than ever.[1275] A boy was ordered to be whipt naked in the church of St. Mary Woolnoth for throwing his cap at the host at the time of elevation.[1276] In February, 1548, information was given to the Court of Aldermen of preachers having used "certain words" touching the mass in the churches of St. Dunstan in the east and St. Martin Orgar.[1277] On the 5th May, 1548, the mayor and aldermen resolved to appear the next day before the Lord Protector Somerset and the council, and explain the nature of the misdemeanours of certain preachers, concerning which the mayor had already had some communication with the Archbishop of Canterbury.[1278]
In the following month (5 June) the Court of Aldermen investigated a charge made against a city[pg 424] curate that, about a month before, after reciting the common prayers at the choir door at high mass, he had prayed among other things that Almighty God might send the king's council grace and bring them out of the erroneous opinions that they were then in. The informer went on to say that Sir Clement Smith and the Recorder, who were present, laughed at the prayer. But inasmuch as the informer had not been present himself, and that what he had laid before the court was mere hearsay evidence, little attention was paid to it.[1279]