Serles, a

Cranmer to get subscription of some articles. bachelor of theology, had not been present at the disputation, but was certain that Thomas Cranmer had defended heresy, for that such was the universal rumour. He believed him to be a schismatic and heretic. He had been vicar of a place in Canterbury at the time when the Church of England began to withdraw herself from the authority of the Pope, and Cranmer had compelled him to renounce the authority of the Pope, and take oath against it. He had been fifteen years ago one of the King's preachers in the diocese of Canterbury, and had been ignominiously deprived of his office by Cranmer for preaching the Real Presence and for refusing to subscribe to some Articles, which seemed to him absolutely heretical: and Cranmer had put him in gaol on that account.* After the public renunciation of the Apostolic See in England, the greatest matters of spiritual jurisdiction had been performed by Cranmer under the shadow of the royal authority. He knew nothing of compulsion in subscribing Articles. The famous Tresham of Christ Church deposed, as himself a disputant, that Cranmer had defended his books and heresies with all his power in the schools, but had been confuted. He knew of no compulsion exercised by Cranmer upon any one. Dean Curthop of Peterborough had seen her whom Cranmer called his wife sitting at his table. He knew of no compulsion. George London, of Worcester College, was certain that Cranmer was a schismatic, and that he had given Henry the Eighth the counsel of receding from the authority of Rome. He knew of no compulsion. Doctor Smith, Cranmer's old antagonist, once again professor of theology in Oxford, knew full well that Cranmer had written a book on the Sacrament, for that

* This must have been something in Henry's time: very likely Supreme Head.

he himself had answered it. He knew He knew nothing of compulsion. Marshall, the Dean of Christ Church, had heard of compulsion, and it was commonly affirmed by some who had subscribed Articles that Cranmer had made them do it.

The Process against Cranmer, drawn up in Latin at great length, containing the commissions, the proxies, and the depositions, was sent to Rome.* The judgment, the sentence upon Cranmer was to proceed from the Pope. It was true that the Pope had allowed a subdelegate to perquisite in England, although Cranmer had been cited to Rome. But Brooks was a trier, not a judge.

From the prison to which he was remanded the Archbishop wrote without delay a memorial to the authority which he acknowledged: and his letter to the Queen was an apology for his life. "I hoped," said he, "for meaner adversaries than a king and queen. It grieves me more than death to have the King and Queen seek justice against their own subject at a stranger's hand in a strange land, as if they could neither have nor do justice within their realm: against a subject moreover who is already condemned to death by their own laws. The imperial crown and jurisdiction of this realm is taken immediately from God, to be used under God. The pope's claim is that all power, spiritual and temporal, is given to him: that he gives to emperors and kings the power temporal. The pope makes void all laws repugnant to his own laws: to his own laws he gives course by his curses. These things were not fully

* "The Chancellor is this day sending one of his gentlemen express to Rome with the process drawn up afresh against the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Queen strongly urging his Holiness to despatch the trial, that they may forthwith appoint a new primate." Michiel to the Doge, Oct. I. Ven. Cal. 199.

opened in parliament when the pope's authority was received again within this realm: or the King, the Queen, the nobles and the commons would never have consented to receive such an authority, so hurtful, so prejudicial. The clergy know this: and some of them, if they had done their duties, would have spoken and declared the truth. But they want to have a kingdom and laws within themselves, distinct from the laws of the Crown, and with which the laws of the Crown may not meddle: so to be without fear of any, so long as they please their high supreme head of Rome."* So Cranmer: and he wrote of many other things in this letter, which are worthy of attention: the last outpourings of the mind that had travailed so long with the Reformation. For example, it is worth attention that he draws a distinction by means of the constant subject of the Eucharist between the old Church of Rome and the new or later: that the old Church taught true doctrine before Transubstantiation. As to the ecclesiastical laws, the author of the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum wrote now as if he meant to banish them altogether: but probably his words were stronger than his meaning. He certainly exaggerated the inconveniences which had arisen out of them in past times, when indeed they were the greatest mercy, the refuge of the oppressed from the cruelties and injuries of other jurisdictions. Soon after, he wrote again, respectfully referring to the oath of obedience to the Pope which Mary was said to have taken at her coronation: † and making mention of his own citation, which he had received to appear in Rome. Of this he said that he would go thither if her Majesty gave him leave, not doubting to be able to defend the truth there as well as at home, referring himself wholly to her pleasure. In so saying he is not to be understood to *Remains, Park. Soc. 447.

+ Comp. p. 54 of this volume.

have acknowledged the Pope to have had any authority to summon him to Rome: but that he was as willing to answer to the Queen in Rome, if she bade him go, as in England. His letters, carried by the Queen's proctors, reached the Queen: † and at her request were answered by Pole, Cranmer remaining in prison exposed to the assiduous persuasions of the Spanish doctor Soto, and others of the foreigners who had invaded Oxford.

That the Legate himself should be employed to confute the fallen Archbishop was not unmeet: and Pole, as it happened, was already armed. Soon after Cranmer's former disputation in Oxford (it may have been before his own arrival in England) he had occupied himself in composing a long epistle, or rather treatise, on the Eucharist; in which he addressed "that wretched man," in terms as violent as those with which he had once assailed King Henry the Eighth. Indeed he seems to have designed this Epistle to Henry's chief instrument to have been a companion piece to his celebrated attack on Henry himself. But with him it answered another purpose also. It was to save him from a personal encounter with Cranmer: for many there were who looked that the Legate would take the Archbishop in hand himself. To avoid this it was a useful thing to have ready an eloquent epistle headed with a Scriptural pretext, and full of glittering denunciation. Now that the time seemed to have come, he hurled it full at Cranmer and a serious weapon it seemed, as it flashed through the air. "If any hold not the doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither salute him. So wrote the beloved Apostle. Why then should I break his precept

Remains, Park. Soc. 454.

The writer of "Bishop Cranmer's Recantacyons" admiringly says that when Martin gave the Queen Cranmer's letters, she asked, "Liceretne legere, aut omnino accipere quod hereticus misisset?" p. 35.

by writing to you, who are notoriously alienated from the doctrine of Christ, and opposed thereto? There are they who bid me not write to you, but rather receive you into my house not make myself your seeker by a letter, and so enter into a kind of civility toward you, which is least of all allowable in me, who am invested with the authority of a person to whom appertains the right of judging you. A judge, say they, may not write to him whom he may judge, unless to cite or to sentence him, any more than he may go and live with him. But for my part I, who represent a judge who is vicar on earth of the great King who came to save us, I hold that it is in my duty to avert from you the dire doom that awaits you. I come to snatch you from eternal flames, in the name of the Apostles, of the martyrs, of the confessors : in the name of all the saints I come to lead you back to the city of God, though you are the serpent of the garden of Eden": and he delineated the revolution of Henry and went through the controversy of the Eucharist. Following this first blow, he now wrote and

* This long Epistle is in the Harleian MS. volume 417, No. 6: among the Foxii MSS. The title of it was printed by Strype, at the end of Bk. III. ch. 20 of his Life of Cranmer, with the remark that it was written a little after the disputation at Oxford, and meant in answer to Cranmer's Book on the Sacrament. The title is, "Reg. Poli Card. Legati Apostolici Epistola ad T. Cranmer. qui archiepiscopalem sedem Cantuariensis ecclesiæ tenens novam de Sacramento Eucharistiæ Doctrinam contra perpetuum Catholicæ Ecclesiæ consensum professus est ac tradidit: qua epistola eum nec magistrum tanti mysterii neque discipulum idoneum esse posse; simulque unde hic ejus error manarit, ostendit : et ad pœnitentiam hortatur." The epistle was first printed in Italy, "opera Deodati Cremonensis, apud Christophorum Draconium, 1584." There is a copy in the Cambridge University Library. A French version of it was published by Le Grand (Histoire du Divorce) in 1688: which was transferred to Pole's Epistles, v. 238, by Quirinus. Mr. Froude (vi. 409) has made some use of this French version, and gives a tolerable account of the epistle: but he puts the time of its reception by Cranmer long after the real time, puts it after Cranmer's degradation and he seems to think that this was the only blow that Pole struck at Cranmer: