Henry the Eighth, on his accession, vainly thought to arrest the growth of “heresy” by a rigorous execution of penal statutes against the Lollards or Wycliffites, while he unconsciously surrendered the principle of infallibility, on which alone the attempt could be justified, by entering the arena of controversy with Luther. The pope declared that the royal pen had been guided by inspiration, and rewarded Henry’s zeal with the title “Defender of the Faith.” So illustrious a controversy naturally attracted notice; and some were even presuming to compare the merits of the combatants, when the prince himself shook off the dominion of the Roman pontiff. But the privilege which, in so doing, he claimed for himself, he was not prepared to grant to others, though demanded by them on far worthier grounds. He declared himself “head of the church of England,” [15a] taking care to explain that office as including “full power to visit and correct all heresies and other abuses.” Seizing, with a tyrant’s grasp, the torch which was destined to enlighten the moral world, he employed it to guard his despotic sway and to kindle the fires of persecution. [15b] He dissolved the monasteries, whose existence was inconsistent with the line of policy he had adopted, and whose wealth furnished a powerful temptation. The reading of the English Bible in churches was prohibited, as well as its perusal by women, artificers, &c. Spiritual persons maintaining any thing contrary to the king’s instructions, were to recant or be burned. Nearly all the leading doctrines of the Romish faith were retained; and papists and protestants went together to the stake, the former for denying the supremacy, the latter for questioning the creed, of an arbitrary and vicious monarch. [16]
On the death of Henry, a brighter era seemed to be dawning. The Bible had already been published in English, and had become the intelligent study of many. Edward the Sixth, who succeeded to the throne, and those by whom his mind was chiefly influenced, were favourable to the Reformation. The right of private judgment, sanctioned alike by the example of the prince and the subject, might reasonably have been expected to receive encouragement, or at least protection. Hence numerous confessors who had fled to the continent, returned joyfully to their native land, looking for ameliorated institutions, and perhaps dreaming of entire liberty.
He who contemplates for the first time, this crisis of religious history, imagines, like some of the early maritime adventurers, that he is about to plant his foot upon the soil of truth and freedom; but he speedily discovers that he is chasing a beautiful illusion, and that many days of suffering and nights of darkness must intervene before the vision can be realized.
Edward’s advisers loosened the reins of ecclesiastical authority: they were unconscious that no mortal should have ever held them. Some statutes against the Lollards were repealed. An act of parliament was passed allowing the sacrament to be received by the laity in both kinds, of bread and wine, whereas the cup had previously been confined to the priests. Prescribing an improved form of worship, though retaining much of superstition in deference to the popish party, the legislature enjoined uniformity in the services and sacraments of religion. [17] Cranmer was directed to draw up articles, with the delusive expectation of “rooting out the discord of opinions.” This led to the imprisonment of many, and even to the burning of some. But Edward’s better judgment and his tender heart revolted from the infliction of such a punishment. He is said on one occasion, to have bedewed with tears the warrant which he reluctantly signed for the execution of the law, and to have told the archbishop “that if he did wrong, since it was in submission to his authority, he should answer for it to God.” [18] Among those who dared to differ from the established faith, were Bonner and Gardiner; and Mary, the king’s sister. They were incited by protestant persecution, as well as by their own intolerant principles, to the cruel course by which the succeeding reign is proverbially distinguished. The princess pronounced in reply to Edward’s injunctions, at once her own apology and that of her victims: “Her soul,” she said, “was God’s.”
Mary was at her manor of Keninghall in Norfolk, when consumption carried off the young and promising king. His regard for the cause of the reformation had induced him to nominate as his successor the Lady Jane Grey in preference to Mary, in whose mind the claims of the papacy had been long identified with the rights of her mother Catharine of Arragon. Finding her claim to the crown disputed by some of the leading nobles, Mary sought to engage the commons in her cause. With this view she “speedeth herself secretly away” (to use the quaint but expressive language of Fox) “into the North.” She soon learned that the council had sent out the Duke of Northumberland with an army in support of her rival, and “tossed with much travel up and down, to work the surest way for her best advantage, withdrew herself into the quarters of Northfolk and Suffolk, where she understood the Duke’s name to be had in much hatred for the service that had been done there of late, under King Edward, in subduing the rebels; and there gathering to her such aid of the commons on every side as she might, keeping [kept] herself close for a space within Fremingham Castle. [19] To whom, first of all, resorted the Suffolk men; who being always forward in promoting the proceedings of the gospel, promised her their aid and help, so that she would not attempt the alteration of the religion which her brother King Edward had before established, by laws and orders publicly enacted and received by the consent of the whole realm in that behalf. To make the matter short,” adds the historian, “unto this condition she eftsoons [20a] agreed, with such promise made unto them that no innovation should be made of religion, as that no man would or could have misdoubted her. [20b] Which promise if she had as constantly kept as they did willingly preserve her with their bodies and weapons, she had done a deed both worthy her blood, and had also made her reign more stable to herself through future tranquillity. For though a man be never so puissant of power, yet breach of promise is an evil upholder of quietness; fear is worse; but cruelty is the worst of all.” [21a]
Mary no sooner found herself, by “the power of the gospellers,” firmly seated on the throne, than she qualified the promises she had made them in the hour of need, declaring, that she would not compel her subjects to be of her religion, till public order should be taken in it by common consent. [21b] A parliament sufficiently obsequious was assembled; the laws passed in the preceding reign, in favour of the reformation, were repealed, the service and sacraments used at the close of the reign of Henry the Eighth, restored, [22a] and the crown and realm of England formally reconciled to the papal see. A series of barbarities ensued, under the alleged sanction of religion, at the recital of which humanity shudders. The persecutors had been taught in the school of their victims, and neither party understood the principles of religious liberty. All the people were required to come to church, where the mass was revived. [22b] To deny the supremacy of the pope, was once more become as heinous an offence as it had been to question that of Henry the Eighth during the latter years of his reign. The dungeon and the faggot [22c] were the arguments by which erring judgments and tender consciences were to be restored and comforted. When some members of the convocation declined subscribing to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the discussion was terminated with the following conclusive reasoning: “You,” said the prolocutor, “have the word, but we have the sword.” [23a] An argument which has not unfrequently been employed in behalf of a state religion in more enlightened times.
Rogers, the protomartyr of Mary’s short but frightfully sanguinary career, died because he would acknowledge no head but Christ, of his catholic church, and no authority above the word of God. [23b] Saunders, Hooper, Bradford, Latimer, Ridley, and the frail but afterwards repentant and magnanimous Cranmer, with a multitude of less eminent but equally honourable and worthy men, expired in the flames, to testify their attachment to a faith which, three years earlier, their rulers had taught them to admire and maintain.
Suffolk, and the adjacent maritime counties, had always been the stronghold of protestantism. Their geographical situation occasioned considerable intercourse with the continent, where the reformation still flourished, and whither many were self-exiled for conscience’ sake. At a much earlier period the Lollards appear to have been numerous in Norfolk; they had been multiplied by persecution, and by a comparatively extensive circulation of the writings of the reformers. [24a] Undeterred by the terrible examples of the queen’s severity, the protestants of Suffolk and Essex met privately for religious worship. [24b] Great numbers entirely forsook the public authorized service. At Stoke in Suffolk, there was a congregation of protestants, so considerable in number and so united in their views, that the bishops for some time hesitated to interfere. And at last, when the whole society was required to come to church, they contrived to escape, leaving their angry diocesan first to suspend, and then to excommunicate them. [24c]
Every where the protestants had to endure the anxiety attending an exposure to the vengeance of their enemies, or the privations and inconveniences of concealment. Indescribably dreadful as the pains of martyrdom must have been, they were brief in their duration, and their very bitterness kindled the pity of the spectator and the fortitude of the victim. Perhaps the total amount of misery which they occasioned, was overbalanced by the less agonizing, but more protracted and retired, sufferings of the multitudes who “wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth,” and “of whom” (with equal truth it might be affirmed) “the world was not worthy.” The following are, probably, neither rare nor extreme instances. In the parish of St. James, near Bungay, there resided a family named Fisk. Of six brothers, three were protestants. A pursuivant employed to apprehend one of them, gave him, from motives of personal friendship, a private notice of the intention to seize him. Whereupon, the good man first called his family to prayer, and then hastened away to hide himself in a ditch, with his godly wife and her helpless babe. Another of these brothers was, to avoid burning, hid many months in a pile of wood; and afterwards, for half a year, in a cellar, where he diligently employed himself in profitable manufactures by candlelight; but his many hardships brought on an excessive bleeding, which shortened his days, and added unto the cry of the “souls under the altar.” [26a]
Calling to mind their own efforts and the queen’s promise, the Suffolk protestants ventured to send a deputation to her to represent their grievances. But, “it was,” as Fox very justly remarks, “an heavy word that she answered them: ‘Forasmuch,’ saith she, ‘as you, being but members, desire to rule your head, you shall one day well perceive that members must obey their head, and not look to bear rule over the same.’” [26b] One of the deputation having referred to the particular ground on which they rested their claims, was put in the pillory three days, and had his ears cut off.