EDWARD VI. (1537–1553)
From a portrait by Holbein at Windsor Castle.
There can be no doubt whatever that just as in the reign of Richard II. the City was saturated with Lollardry, so in the last years of Henry VIII. it was filled with the new ideas. The connection with the Pope severed; the religious Orders clean swept away; the reading of the Bible rapidly spreading; the teaching and example of men like Cranmer, Latimer, Rogers, Ridley, Hooper, and others; the derision poured upon the old things such as pilgrimages, image worship, repeated services and monasticism; the popular attack on the Religious by such writers as Fish in the Supplicacyon of Beggars and Barnabe Googe in his Popish Kingdom; the lectures and sermons carefully composed with the design of overthrowing and casting contempt upon the old Faith; the natural instinct of men to see in new ideas a certain remedy for old ills;—these things made it inevitable that the new thoughts should spread and take root. We hear no more, for instance, of the Mayor disarming men who had been monks and friars.
The new ideas, again, appealed to the nobler and more generous part of humanity. To stand erect before the Creator without the intervention of a priest; no longer to be called upon to believe that which the Bible would not allow to be believed; the introduction of Reason into the domain of Doctrine; the abandonment of childish pilgrimages to the tombs of fallible and sinful mortals; the abolition of the doctrine that pardons, indulgences, Heaven itself, can be bought with money; no longer to believe that fasting and the observance of days may avail to salvation;—these things caught hold of men’s minds and ran rapidly from class to class. And then there was the reading of the Bible for themselves by the folk who could do no more than read. There are no means of deciding how far the old English Version had been read and passed from hand to hand.
In the reign of Edward VI. we see the first-fruits of the new ideas. Already, however, there were signs of change other than those ordered and authorised by the most autocratic of sovereigns. The Mayor abolished the service of the Boy Bishop at St. Paul’s; sober citizens were haled before the courts charged with blaspheming the mass; men rose in their places and made a noise in church during celebration; one, a boy, threw his cap at the Host during the time of elevation: “at this tyme” (Grey Friars Chron.) “was moche spekyng agayn the Sacrament of the Auter, that some called it Jack of the boxe, with divers other shameful names.”
Thus the new reign began.
It was a time of great uncertainty and trouble in religious matters. We see the citizens, ignorant of Greek, disputing over the interpretation of a text; over the conditions of salvation; over matters too high for them—one grows hot and says things that ought not to be said. The informer in the crowd—there is always an informer—steals away and lays information. Then the hasty citizen is lucky if he gets off with a fine. They whisper thus and thus concerning the intentions of the Protector and the opinions of the Archbishop. It is rumoured that the new Bishop of this or that will not be consecrated in his robes; it is rumoured that there will be more changes in the Articles of Religion; it is rumoured that there will be a vast rising of the ejected priests and the starving friars; it is rumoured that they have already risen in the East and in the West. The air is full of rumours. Trade is very bad. There is no money anywhere; the coinage is debased: a shilling is worth no more than sixpence; a groat is twopence; a penny is a half-penny; and the price of provisions is certainly double what it was! It is a strange, perplexed time.
EDWARD VI. (1537–1553)
From a portrait by Holbein at Windsor Castle.
There were other events connected with the City besides these constant alarms about the change of Faith. Traitors were executed, notably the two Seymours; rebels were drawn, hanged and quartered, notably the four Captains of the Cornish Rising; the sweating sickness appeared again in 1550 and lasted for six months, carrying off men only and sparing women and children. The cloister of St. Paul’s, commonly called the Dance of Death, and the Charnel House of St. Paul’s, were destroyed and carried away; there were risings in Cornwall, Norfolk, and Yorkshire; a woman named Joan of Kent was burned at Smithfield for heresy; then happened the famous murder of Arden of Faversham, for which his wife, his maid, and one of the murderers were all burned; three men and one woman hanged; a Dutchman named George of Paris was burned for heresy in Smithfield.
An important acquisition, however, was gained by the City in 1550. The Borough of Southwark consisted of three manors, the Guildable Manor, the King’s Manor, and the Great Liberty Manor. Edward III. had granted the first of these to the City. Edward IV. had confirmed and amplified this grant, giving the City the right of holding a yearly Fair in the month of September together with a Court of Pie Powder. The City next claimed the right of holding a market twice a week in Southwark. On this claim there were disputes. Finally the City bought all the rights of the Crown in Southwark for the sum of £647:2:1. They thus obtained a recognised right to hold four weekly markets, and to administer the whole borough excepting the two prisons of the Marshalsea and the King’s Bench, and the Duke of Suffolk’s House.