Mary maintains the rights of the Crown.
But Mary, though zealous for orthodoxy, had no intention of yielding the rights of the Crown to the Pope, and this was no doubt well understood. One of St. Leger’s earliest duties was to go to Drogheda and place the government of Eastern Ulster in the hands of Eugene Magennis, who specially covenanted not to admit any provisor from Rome. An Irish-born priest named Connor MacCarthy asked Mary for a letter of licence to go to Rome, there to obtain certain benefices from the Pope, fearing lest some should be in the Queen’s gift, ‘and also considering the statute of Premunire.’ Nor was the fear an idle one, for when Tyrone afterwards obtained a Papal bull for the appointment of his chaplain to the restored priory of Down, the Queen sharply reminded him that she intended to maintain the prerogative in that behalf which she had received from her progenitors. MacCarthy was not the only Irish ecclesiastic of the reign who thought it necessary to petition for relief from the consequences of the dreaded statute.[393]
Catholicism restored. Bale refuses to give way.
Bale’s religious dramas.
In some places the old religion was restored without waiting for any formal order. As soon as Edward’s death was known Justice Howth and Lord Mountgarret, the Earl of Ormonde’s uncle, went to Kilkenny and desired to have the sacrament celebrated in honour of St. Anne. The priest said the Bishop had forbidden celebrations on week days; ‘as indeed I had,’ says Bale, ‘for the abominable idolatry that I had seen therein.’ The learned judge, who seems to have had no commission, then discharged the clergy from obedience to their Bishop, and commanded them to proceed in the old way. On August 20 Mary was proclaimed at Kilkenny with much solemnity. Bale strongly objected to wear cope or mitre, or to have the crozier borne before him; not from any opposition to the Queen’s title, but from dislike to vain ceremonies. Taking a New Testament in his hand, he went to the market-cross followed by a great crowd, to whom he preached from the 13th chapter of Romans, on the reverence due to magistrates. But the clergy of the cathedral, who had no sympathy with the Bishop’s doctrines, provided two disguised priests to carry mitre and crozier before him against his will. The people were amused, instructed, or scandalised, as the case might be, by the representation of a tragedy concerning God’s promises in the old law, and by a comedy of St. John the Baptist. The baptism and temptation of Christ were brought upon the stage, and the young men of the town acted both at the morning and evening performance. Both dramas were written by Bale himself, and in a literary point of view they are far from contemptible. They mark the transition between the mystery plays of the middle ages and the compositions of Shakespeare’s immediate precursors. Personified abstractions as well as historical characters appear on the stage; nor did Bale shrink from a representation which seems impossible to us, for he boldly introduces the first person in the Trinity under the name of Pater Cælestis. Justification by faith is the great doctrine inculcated, and where the author speaks in person he loses no opportunity of attacking the Church of Rome. In an epilogue he exhorts the people to
‘Hear neither Francis, Benedict, nor Bruno,
Albert nor Dominic, for they new rules invent,
Believe neither Pope nor Priest of his consent,
Follow Christ’s gospel,’ &c.
In another play on the instructive story of King John, ‘Ynglond vidua’ says:—
‘Such lubbers as hath disguised heads in their hoods,
Which in idleness do live by other men’s goods,
Monks, chanons, and nones.’
In his other works Bale throughout shows the same spirit. Thus he calls that very questionable hero, Sir John Oldcastle, ‘a blessed martyr not canonised by the Pope, but in the precious blood of his Lord Jesus Christ.’ St. Paul is the great object of Bale’s admiration, and he seems to have thought that he was like him. The points of resemblance are similar to those which Captain Fluelen discovered between himself and Alexander the Great. Thus, Paul was tossed up and down between Candia and Melita, Bale between Milford and Waterford. There was a river in Monmouth and a river in Macedon, and there were salmon in both.[394]