A few who chose to remain, with two of their ministers, were allowed to follow their consciences in private in matters of religion without molestation. Those who went were long before they found so kind a harbour as they left. Embarking in two vessels with one hundred and seventy-five persons, his own immediate followers, and accompanied by the faithful Utenhovius, the Superintendent Laski, or Alasco, sailed for the Lutheran shores of Denmark. A long and hard voyage led to an ill reception: their Sacramentarian opinions, and perhaps the former reputation of their leader, were no recommendation to the exiles: and they were met by the stern. command to begone in two days, and not to think to be allowed to deposit their wives and children there, till they should have found a more hospitable refuge, whither they might convey them.* Laski turned southward, ambassador, if he do signify any such; for seeing that they do not carry with them anything forbidden by the law of the land." Council Book ap. Haynes. Cf. Fox. Burnet seems to have curiously read this entry in the opposite sense unless indeed he saw some other, which is not now extant. He says that a great number of Englishmen fled with the "Frenchmen," as their servants, or otherwise, to the number of more than a thousand: and that thereupon an order was sent to the ports "that none should be suffered to go over as Frenchmen but those who brought certificates from the French ambassador" (Pt. II. Bk. ii.). The word Frenchmen seems generic in this order, to cover all the Alascans, whether German, French, or Italian. Heylin, however, makes a distinction between Alasco and his congregation, and "the French Protestants": that the former went with difficulty, the latter were sent away. It may have been that only one set went with Alasco, and the rest otherwise : but the French as well as the Germans or Walloons were under Alasco's superintendence. Heylin speaks of no more than three hundred English escaping with them. * Utenhovius wrote a "Simplex et fidelis narratio de instituta et demum dissipata Belgarum aliorumque peregrinorum in Anglia Ecclesia," which was printed at Basle, 1560. There is a copy of it in the British Museum. Burnet has used it: see also Harmer, Specimen. p. 123. See also Peter Martyr's Letter to Bullinger, Orig. Lett. 513. The Lutherans seem to have entirely revived, whether from recollection or new exasperation, their former animosity against Laski. For Noviomagus got the Danish king to say he would rather have papists: Westphalus called his and passed through Holsatia to Emden, December 4; whence he sent to the King of Denmark a bitter expostulation on the treatment that he had met. Some of his company, or perhaps other parts of his late congregations sailed to the towns of Lubeck, Wismar, and Hamburg; but from all the places where they sought to settle they were presently expelled: "martyrs of the devil" was the salutation that greeted the profession of their faith and the exhibition of their sufferings: they found no rest till they gained the more congenial soil of Friesland. The long languishing colony of Flemings which Somerset had planted amid the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey was now in like wise broken up and despatched. Early in September the agents of the Council appeared there, and delivered them a passport for their quiet dismission, receiving from them the Queen's stuff that they had, and looking to it that they made no spoil of their houses before their departure.* By these proceedings the realm was cleared of many of the outlandish sectaries who had crowded to the sunshine of the former reign. But unhappily at the same time it was laid open to the invasion of other strangers of another complexion. To receive the appeals of the deprived bishops wandering church the devil's martyrs: Bugenhugius said that they were no Christians: Swenckfeldtus, though differing from Luther, seems also to have differed from them: Brentius called their leader "studium impostura"; and Melanchthon said of him, "Ille vero Sarmaticus, qui nihil moderate spirans, dominari ubivis voluit, ejusque reformatis fatentibus, per imprudentiam et contentiosum ingenium, non solum in Dania, sed ubivis rebus suorum officit." Krasinski's Reform. in Poland, i. 269. * 5 Sept. "Letter to Sir Jn. Sydnam Kt. and Jn. Wadham Esq. to repair to Glastonbury, and seeing the chaldrons and other the Queen's stuff there in safety, to permit the strangers there quietly to depart, delivering them the passport in the letter enclosed, for-seeing that they make no spoil of their houses before their departure." Council Bk. ap. Haynes' State Papers. against those who had superseded them in the late reign, and, as it came to pass, to give sentence for their restoration, several commissions appear about this time to have been issued simultaneously.* Tunstall was ordered back to Durham,† Voysey to Exeter, Heath to Worcester, to London Bonner. Nor seems it unlikely that similar proceedings marked the return of Gardiner and of Day to their respective sees. These Commissions appear to have consisted of the same persons, with necessary variations: and to have sat, all of them, in St. Paul's. They had the power to bring before them the acts, processes, and sentences of former Commissions * "Item the xxix day of August sat the queen's commissioners for the new bishops that was put in for them that was put out and into prison at the commandment of the bishop of Canterbury, as is above said, and as it shall follow." Grey Friars Chron. 83. "Item, the same time (the middle of September) was all the new bishops discharged and put down." Ib. 84. These Commissions were directed to nearly the same persons. + This Commission was to the Earl of Arundel, Sir Jn. Baker, Sir Edw. Carne, Sir Ric. Southwell, Sir Thos. Moyle, Dr. Poole, Dr. Cole, Sergeant Morgan, and Wm. Armested, Canon of St. Paul's. It set out that whereas a commission in the late reign had proceeded against Tunstall as a conspirator, upon wrong information, he being a prisoner and having neither counsel nor time convenient for defence: they being all temporal men, and their sentence illegal; therefore his appeal should be heard and that the present commission, or any three of them, had every power to proceed: and might call before them all persons concerned on pain of imprisonment or other punishment. Rymer, xv. 334. The patent for Voysey's restitution was dated September 28: it referred to the "examinationem legitimam" which had been held, no doubt by one of these Commissions and declared that the bishop had been forced to resign in the late reign "propter justum tam animæ quam corporis metum." Rymer, xv. 340. § It seems certain that there was a commission in Heath's case: for Hooper, his successor or usurper, was summoned to London by a pursuivant "to answer to Dr. Heath, then appointed bishop of that diocese, who was before, in King Edward's days, deprived thereof for Papistry." Fox. But in Heath's Register at Worcester there is no note of the Commission, but simply the entry (before a mandate to Convocation dated 27 August, 1 Mary, and addressed to Heath), "Hic Nicholus Wigorn, Episc. fuit restitutus ad ejus Episcopatum.” concerning the deprived; and the judges, actuaries, and witnesses who had been engaged about them. The best known of these investigations is that which had to consider "the querimonious libel" that Bonner failed not to exhibit against the proceedings which in the late reign had led to his deposition and imprisonment: and it was a curious revolution when before the tribunal of Tregonwell and Roper, of Archdeacons Pole, Draycott, Griffith, Bourne, of Doctors Cook, Glyn, Cole and White, of Canon Ernested of St. Paul's, of the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury, of the Knights Carne, and Reade and the two Southwells: or of two of all of them, appeared by their proctors Cranmer and May, two of the judges who had deprived Bonner, and Ridley, the prelate who had succeeded him: while his bitter enemy Sir Thomas Smith, who had also sat in judgment upon him, and William Latimer and Hooper, who had laid the formal Denuntiation against him, were defendants who were absent by contumacy. On the fifth of September Doctor Tregonwell pronounced the restitution of the long-imprisoned bishop, allowing him to take his own course for his expenses and incommodities, and for the evil and unjust handling that he alleged in his libel.* Some natural mirth was expressed by Bonner over the * An account of this Commission is given by Strype, V. 34, from Bonner's Register, fol. 331. He remarks that in the process Cranmer retained his full style of archbishop and metropolitan: while Ridley was called late bishop of Rochester (nuper Roffensis), and W. Latimer and Hooper were denominated clerks; the latter being thus denied the rank of bishop. As to Ridley, it was in a manner uncertain whether he were at that moment bishop of London or of Durham (see Vol. III. p. 468, huj. oper.): whereas it was certain he had been bishop of Rochester but still not calling him London may have marked that he was regarded as an intruder into Bonner's see. As to Hooper, the word clerk was the less significant, in that he is called clerk and bishop indifferently in the Council Book: as see in following notes. humiliation of his adversaries: but the tribulation of most of them might have moved him to pity.* Ridley had been in the Tower since St. James' Day, in July: the system of things that he had established in his cathedral church was overthrown, and the altar that he had demolished was again set up.† Of Smith, though Smith was a layman and fared better than others, the preferments were forfeited, such as the provostship of Eton and the deanery of Carlisle; albeit there was to him the consolation of a pension of one hundred pounds a year granted on condition of not departing the realm: nor can it be denied that he lived safe enough through the reign in the diocese of his enemy of London. * "Yesterday I was by sentence restored again to my bishopric, and reposed in the same even as fully as I was at any time before I was deprived my usurper, Dr. Ridley, is utterly repulsed: so that I would ye did order all things at Kidmerley and Bushley at your pleasures, not suffering Sheeps-head, nor Shipside, to be any meddler there, or to sell or carry anything from thence: and I trust at your coming up now to the parliament, I shall so handle both the said Sheepsheads, and the other Calvesheads, that they shall perceive their sweet (suet) shall not be without sour sauce. This day is looked Mr. Canterbury (Cranmer) must be placed where is meet for him he is become very humble, and ready to submit himself to all things, but that will not serve: in the same predicament as Dr. Smith, my friend, and the Dean of Paul's, with others." Bonner to some friends, Sept. 6. Burnet, Coll. II. ii. No. vii. Shipside was Ridley's brother-in-law. Fox says that Bonner "currisbly and without all order of law and honesty, by extort power" wrested from him and his wife all the living that they had. He puts this in contrast with Ridley's kindness to Bonner's mother. And yet Shipside was able to provide Ridley with necessaries all through his imprisonment. Fox adds that Bonner tried to get Shipside put to death, but was prevented by Bishop Heath. Yes he called him Sheepshead. † Grey Friars' Chron. 81, 84. Strype says that he fell easy; and that he was "a spiritual person also," to account for the ecclesiastical preferments that he now lost. That is like Strype. He says nothing of these preferments under the time that Smith got them, in the reign of Edward: but now notices that he lost them, in a parenthetic manner. If they had been creditable to Smith he would have told us all about them in loco. If holding spiritual emoluments makes "a spiritual person also," Smith was a spiritual person also besides being Smith. The partial biographer confesses that bloody Bonner, who had a personal pique against him, let him alone, 66 |