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increased from ten pounds to a hundred marks, for the first offence; and for the second, from twenty pounds to four hundred marks: the imprisonment, in case of failure of payment, being in both cases doubled. To these increased penalties, there is newly added a fine of one shilling for every offence, to be levied, for the good of the poor, on those who do not resort to church.

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The statute of 5 Eliz. c. 1, by which all persons maintaining the Pope's authority are, for the first offence, made liable to the pains of premunire, and for the second declared guilty of treason. In addition, also, to those persons already required* to take the oath of supremacy, schoolmasters and private teachers of children, barristers, sheriffs, and all persons taking office in the law, or its courts, are commanded to take the oath in open court, or in some public assembly. And, further, the lord chancellor is empowered to issue commissions, authorizing the tender of the oath to any person whatever; which, if they refuse to take, they also are for the first offence guilty of premunire, and for the second of high treason.

"By 13 Eliz. c. 2, whoever shall bring into England, or publish there any bull, absolution, or reconciliation from Rome, together with their abettors, are subjected to the penalties of high treason, and those who aid them, to the pains of a premunire; though, if they do not disclose their knowledge within six weeks, they also are guilty of misprision of treason. The bringing into the realm any Agnus Dei, crosses, or beads, consecrated by the bishop of Rome, or by his authority, and the receiving the same with intent to use them, unless the party discover the bringer within three days, incurs the pains of premunire: a punishment which is likewise inflicted on those justices, to whom such offences are discovered, who do not within fourteen days certify them to the privy council.

"By the statute of the 23 Eliz. c. 1, the committing any overt act in order to reconcile any of her majesty's subjects to the Church of Rome, and the being reconciled thereto, is declared high treason: and the knowing of such offences, and not revealing them within twenty days to some justice of the peace, misprision of treason. Persons, also, saying mass incur the forfeiture of two hundred marks, with im

* By 1 Eliz. c. 1.

prisonment for one year, and until the fine be paid; and those who willingly hear it, suffer the same imprisonment and half the forfeiture.

"Persons who, being above sixteen years of age, do not resort to some place of common prayer, forfeit twenty pounds for every month, and if they forbear for twelve months, must be bound with sufficient sureties in the sum of two hundred pounds at least for their good behaviour, and so continue till they comply with the provisions of the law; and if any person keeps or maintains a schoolmaster thus abstaining, he shall forfeit ten pounds per month, and a schoolmaster not having a license from the bishop or ordinary, shall be disabled to teach, and shall suffer imprisonment for one year. If fines are not paid within three months, the offender shall be imprisoned until it be discharged, or till he himself shall conform.

"The statute of 27 Eliz. c. 2, provided that all Jesuits and other priests, ordained by the authority of the See of Rome, should depart the realm within forty days after the close of the then session of parliament; and that no such person should hereafter be suffered to come into or remain in any of the dominions of the crown of Great Britain, under the penalties of high treason. Those likewise who receive, relieve, or maintain any such ecclesiastical person, are adjudged felons, and shall suffer death without benefit of clergy. And those who know of such priests being in the realm, and who do not discover it to some justice of the peace within twelve days, shall be fined and imprisoned at the queen's pleasure. Any other of her majesty's subjects, likewise, who hereafter shall be brought up in any foreign popish seminary, who within six months after proclamation does not return into the realm, and within two days submit himself to the laws and take the oath of the first of the queen, shall be adjudged a traitor. Persons, directly or indirectly, contributing to the maintenance of Romish ecclesiastics or popish seminaries beyond sea, incur the penalties of premunire. And still further this statute enacts, that no one during her majesty's life shall send his child or ward beyond sea, without special licence, under forfeiture of one hundred pounds for every offence.

"The 29 Eliz. c. 6, inflicts still farther penalties on the Catholic religion, by providing that all lands and tenements granted since the beginning of the queen's reign, or here

after to be granted by a popish recusant, whereby he and his family are maintained, shall be utterly void as against the queen's majesty. And every such offender shall pay into the exchequer twenty pounds for every month since his conviction, or in default thereof the queen may take all his goods, and two-thirds of his lands.

"In a succeeding session of parliament, the rigour of the laws against non-conformity was carried to the ne plus ultra of persecution; all persons who, for the space of a month, refused conforming to the established religion, or who oppugned, or persuaded others to oppugn, the queen's authority in ecclesiastical causes, being condemned to banish themselves from their homes and from all that was near and dear to them, or to suffer the ignominious death which the law has justly denounced on felons and murderers. The statute which authorized these severities was the 35 El. c. 1, which enacts, that persons above sixteen years of age, obstinately refusing to repair to Church, or being present at unlawful conventicles, shall be committed to prison till they make declaration of their conformity; or if they do not so conform within three months must solemnly abjure the realm, or refusing to do so, not repairing to the place appointed for their embarkation, or returning without special leave of her majesty, shall suffer as felons without benefit of clergy. To these penalties is added a fine of ten pounds on those, who, after notice, relieve or keep in their houses any person refusing to come to church for a month, except nearest relatives not having any other place of habitation. By the second chapter of the same statute,* popish recusants convict are ordered to repair to their dwellings, and within twenty days to transmit the place of their residence to the authorities. They are likewise prohibited from going more than five miles from their houses, under forfeiture of goods and chattels, and of all their lands for life. Those persons who do not possess lands to the clear yearly value of twenty marks, or goods and chattels worth above forty pounds, unless they conform within three months after conviction, must abjure the realm, or refusing so to do, or returning without leave, suffer death without benefit of clergy.

"Such," says Brown, in his History of the Penal Laws,'

* 35 Eliz. c. 2

"were the successive provisions of Elizabeth for the suppression of the Catholic religion."

CHAPTER XI.

THE FATE OF THE PERSECUTORS IN THE REIGNS OF HENRY VIII., EDWARD VI., AND ELIZABETH.

WHEN the fate of the principal persecutors of the 16th century in England is recalled, it would seem as if the book of Lactantius, 'De Mortibus Persecutorum,' furnished the examples, "magna et mirabilia," of the divine retribution. The three sovereigns in whose reigns this persecution raged most furiously, were Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. The chief agents of it in the former reigns were Cromwell, the vicar-general; Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury; Anne Boleyn, the lord protector Somerset, and Dudley, duke of Northumberland: all of whom perished on the scaffold.

Their sovereigns, Henry VIII. and his daughter, Elizabeth, did not die there, but in their deaths the hand is to be seen of that Providence which sooner or later overtakes oppression.

Cromwell, the vicar-general of Henry VIII., was a persecutor of the stamp of that sordid Decius whom Lactantius denominates, "execrabile animal qui vexaret Ecclesiam." Like all upstarts suddenly elevated, he played the tyrant when he was placed in power. His office of visitor of religious houses immediately preceding the reformation, afforded him an opportunity of gratifying the instincts of a base nature, of trampling on the fallen, of browbeating the unfortunate, of terrifying the defenceless and the timid. The son of the blacksmith of Putney lorded it over not only the doomed monks, but over the prelates of the Church; and, lo and behold! in the midst of his insolent triumph over the Church, its prelates and its pastors, the hand that raised him was made by God the instrument of his destruction. Henry delivered over his vicar-general to the tender mercies of his laws; and the bold persecutor, after impor tuning his merciless master in the abject terms of a crouch

ing slave for his life, died by the hands of the executioner he had provided so largely with employment.

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Lactantius thus describes the persecutor Nero :* Execrabilis ac nocens tyrannus (qui) prosilivit ad excindendum cœleste templum, delendamque justitiam, ac primis omnium persecutus Dei servos"-He persecuted the Church, he put a multitude of persons to death-some eminent philosophers; he killed his own mother; and eventually he was regarded as a wild beast, treated as one, and torn to pieces by the rabble.

Henry persecuted, prosecuted, and killed judicially a great many of his people, several men of learning and sanctity, one great philosopher, and two of his own wives. He was regarded by his people as a ferocious monster; but their spirit was so broken by oppression, there was not strength enough left in their desperation for an attempt at the wild justice of a crime like an act of national

revenge.

Our Nero died in his bed, but the wrath of God was on him and his race; root and branch it was swept away-his children were childless-his son did not reach the years of puberty-his daughters were barren-and though only one of them was married, the other was but in name a virgin queen." "Hoc modo Deus universus persecutores nominis sui debellavit ut eorum nec stirps nec radix ulla remanerit."+

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The indulgence of brutal passions broke down the constitution of Henry VIII.,-those passions to which the torrent of evils is attributable that the Reformation poured in on the British dominions. "Ille dies primus leti, primusque malorum causa fuit.”

A voluptuary, gross, sordid, and sensual in his appetites, he gave himself up wholly in his latter years to the pleasures of guzzling and gormandizing, and he indulged in them without restraint.

"At last," says Lingard, "he grew so enormously corpulent, that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of the palace."

We find the leviathan of luxury depicted to the life

*De Mort Persec. Lactan. de Mort. Pers.

History of England, Vol. iv. p. 346.

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