between Henry and Queen Catherine, he was again called on to prostitute his clerical functions, by divorcing his brutal master from Anne Boleyn. On Henry's decease, as one of the Regents of the kingdom, and godfather both of Edward VI., and the Lady Elizabeth, he had the power to persecute the Church he had abandoned, and to instil his principles into the minds of his god-children. In 1549, he was appointed a Commissioner, and found a congenial employment in the proceedings against Bishop Bonner. On Mary's accession, he was put on his trial for high treason, in setting his hand to the instrument of Lady Jane Grey's succession, and for the spiritual offence of openly justifying the religious proceedings of the late king. He was convicted of treason, and pardoned, and anew proceeded against for heresy. In 1554, he was brought before the Commissioners at Oxford, and having refused to subscribe to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, was barbarously condemned. A new trial was instituted in 1555, which terminated also in his condemnation. He then signed a formal recantation, wherein he renounced the Protestant religion, and re-embraced the Roman Catholic one. But this proceeding had no effect on the inexorable Mary, his execution was determined on, and her obduracy can never be sufficiently abhorred and lamented by all enlightened Catholics, worthless as the man was whose doom depended on her decision. At his execution his behaviour commenced with weakness and confusion, and ended in a heroic endurance of his sufferings worthy of a nobler character. On the scaffold on which he was placed previously to fixing him to the stake, he made a profession of faith, in which he renounced his recent recantation, and declared all he had written against the reformation was in the hope of saving his life, and in token of his sincerity he thrust the hand which signed that recantation into the flames. The contrast is striking between the conduct, the character, and the constancy displayed in the life and death of Sir Thomas More, and Archbishop Cranmer. When More was called on by the British Tarquin to renounce the authority of the supreme head of his church, and to subscribe the act of abjuration with an oath, he refused to comply with the king's mandate; and when his friends. represented to him that "he could not entertain a different opinion from that of the great council of the nation:" "I have for my opinion," replied More, "all the Church, which is the great Council of Christians.' His wife even pressed him to obey the king, in order to save his life. How many years, said he to her, "do you think I might still live?" She said, "perhaps more than twenty." "Ah, my wife," replied this great man, "would you have me exchange eternity for so few years?" His enemies render unwilling homage to the noble courage he displayed in his martyrdom; they confess that he lived at court without pride, and died on the scaffold without weakness; and well has he been called by Protestants, the Socrates of Christianity in a barbarous age ;" and by Macintosh, "the best of men. Cranmer's judicial murder is a very different sort of martyrdom from that of Sir Thomas More. The latter, it is confessed by the enemies of his faith, did honour to his creed by his death, and his life was a testimony to its truth. Cranmer's career was a reproach to the character of a religion professing to have justice and mercy for the great landmarks of its christianity, and his death left it doubtful whether he loved best his religion or his life. In More's case the offer of a pardon produced the rejection of the proffered terms, and this rejection caused his martyrdom. In Cranmer's case the hope of pardon produced a recantation of his opinions, and then the failure of that hope occasioned a new recantation of the recent abjuration of his old belief, and rendered the honours of martyrdom preferable to the obloquy of an unavailing submission to the fiat of sanguinary power. Cranmer died for his character, and More for his church; the former lived for his king, the latter for his God: both were scholars, but the learning of the high churchman went to pander to the passions of a tyrant who was a slave to his sensuality, while the wisdom of the Catholic layman had no other scope but to serve religion and save his king from his own vices. Cardinal Pole, it is admitted by the historians who are advocates of the Reformation, fruitlessly endeavoured to check the persecuting spirit of Mary's mischievous advisers, and frequently protested against the inefficacy and impo licy of such means of maintaining truth or vanquishing error. There is a detailed account given of the arguments he adduced on one occasion, and amongst these it is worthy of notice, that the grounds on which he recommended moderation were, that all the causes of the reformation were not to be sought out of the religion that was attacked by the reformers, but that many of them were attributable to the relaxation of discipline on the part of the clergy, and the scandal that their conduct brought on the church. This is worthy of notice, as throwing some additional light on the subject of the authenticity of a representation on the state of religion in the pontificate of Paul III., bearing his signature, which has been noticed elsewhere. The only blot on the character of this great and good man, is that which attaches to his conduct when he stooped to become the agent of Henry VIII., and attempted, by unworthy means, to obtain answers from the universities on the subject of the divorce favourable to that project. He acknowledges in one of his letters to Henry, that having found "it more difficult to obtain subscriptions at home than abroad, he overcame the difficulty with the aid of menacing letters."* The total number of persons who suffered on account of religion, and of matters connected with religion, in the reign of Mary, as stated by historians who are desirous of making her crimes equal those of her more sanguinary sister, is estimated at 300, including five bishops and twenty-one clergymen; 277 of the whole number are said to have suffered by fire. This estimate is probably exaggerated, but the number of these barbarous executions is more than sufficient to load the memory of queen Mary with obloquy and disgrace. "After every allowance," says Lingard, "it will be found that, in the space of four years, almost 200 persons perished in the flames for religious opinion, a number at the contemplation of which the mind is struck with horror." Of those barbarities committed in the name of the law, and on the plea of promoting religious interests, it can only be said they are such detestable proceedings that no *Lingard, Vol. iv. p. 484. language can be found strong enough to express the horror they inspire."Hæc sanè tam sunt fœda, tam turpia, tam detestanda, ut quis color iis obduci possit non videam.”* CHAPTER VII. PENAL ENACTMENTS OF ELIZABETH, AND MEASURES TAKEN IN HER REIGN IN RELATION TO RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND. FROM 1558 TO 1603. THE daughter of Anne Boleyn was educated in the principles of the Reformation," which her mother had patronized, and these were confirmed by feelings of personal animosity to her half sister Mary, and also by the machinations of the party opposed to the religion of the latter, who treated Elizabeth with all the deference due to one, destined, as they hoped, to make the opinions they entertained predominate in the nation. Elizabeth was a woman of a vigorous, masculine understanding, with the education of a man; without the feelings of her own sex, but with some of the most odious of its failings; she was sagacious, shrewd, skilled in some branches of scholastic learning, headstrong, heartless, vain, and jealous. She was crowned according to the order of the Roman Pontifical, by the Bishop of Carlisle, after having caused the solemn obsequies of her sister, the late queen, to be performed in Westminster Abbey, with a mass and all the Catholic ceremonies of a state funeral. But even then a change of religion was determined on. Dr. Heylin imagines that this determination was the consequence of her persecution, that her legitimacy and the pope's supremacy could not stand together. There was some little apparent wavering in her conduct with respect to religion, at the beginning of her reign, though she had openly declared to her confidential friends her preference for the reformed religion. She soon recalled the exiled Protestants, released all who were confined on account of religion, ordered the Lord's prayer, creed, and gospels to be read, and the litany recited in English in * Episcopius. the churches, and forbade the host to be elevated in her presence. Bossuet says, *"the step she had taken with regard to Rome, immediately upon her coming to the throne, countenanced the opinion that has obtained publicity, that she would not have departed from the Catholic religion had she found the pope more conformable to her interests. But Paul IV. would give no favourable reception to the civilities she had caused to be tendered to him, as to another prince, without a further knowledge of her dispositions, from the resident of the late queen, her sister." It is said at this time, on the subject of the invocation of saints, the real presence, the use of external ceremonies, and even the spiritual supremacy of the pope, her opinions were rather in favour of the Catholic religion than against it. Dr. Heylin states, that Elizabeth had appointed Sir Edward Karne, her agent at Rome, to inform the Pope of Mary's death, and her wish to live on amicable terms with his Holiness. The Pope (Paul IV.) at first, it is said, showed indignation at Elizabeth's assumption of the regal power without his sanction, and altogether seemed ill-disposed towards the queen; but at length, judging a course of mildness the best he could pursue towards a headstrong woman, he sounded the agent, with respect to her intentions towards her religion.† Karne declined to give any assurance of her not changing its forms, till his Holiness had first pronounced her mother's marriage with Henry VIII. valid. "The Pope," says McGeoghegan, "saw clearly the best plan he could adopt would be to come to no decision, rather than do what could be productive of no good." Was this plan of procrastination the best he could adopt? Was the plan successful in the case of Henry, when he sought a divorce from Catherine of Arragon, in order to marry Elizabeth's mother? Did not the state of suspense in which Henry was kept, tend more to his breach with Rome than an immediate decision might have done, even though it were adverse to his demands? Did not the suspense in which both sovereigns were left, afford the enemies *Histoire de Var. |