had prized. The pageant proceeded into the unmannerly details, which are an unfailing sign when religion is degenerated into superstition, down to the scrapings which were scraped by Bonner: and at last the Archbishop stood in his jacket only: over which was presently thrown the threadbare gown of a yeoman bedyl, the mitre on his head being replaced by a townsman's cap. "Now," said Bonner, "you are no longer a lord": and to the bystanders, "See here this gentleman." As the prisoner was led off to Bocardo, a compassionate stranger restored him his own gown, and entered into conversation with him, remarking on the friendship that Thirlby had shown. Cranmer replied somewhat coldly, "He might have shown a great deal more, and been never the worse thought of, for I have well deserved it." The Bishop of Ely had been always familiar with Cranmer, and had received many benefits at his hands.*

The appellation, which Cranmer made from Pope to Council, deserves attention; for it was a weighty document, framed by legal skill, but written in the free and noble style proper to the Archbishop. "A priest named James, cardinal of the pit, deputy of the pope, cited me to appear in Rome within eighty days: whereas I was kept strait in prison, and could not bear the cost and charges of a proctor. Of that priest a bishop was appointed deputy, and underdeputy of the pope: who cited me at Oxford. Him I refused to accept for my judge: nevertheless he went on with his process, contrary to the rules of appealing, which say that a judge that is refused ought

There is in the Harleian Library, vol. 116, No. 117, a letter from Morrice, Cranmer's Secretary, to Day, Fox's printer, describing the familiarity between Cranmer and Thirlby and the kindness of the one to the other. This letter is not in Nicholl's Narratives of the Reformation, who published Morrice's anecdotes of Cranmer out of the next Harleian volume, 417. Todd refers to it, ii. 468.

To the

not to proceed in the cause, but leave off. deputies of the King and Queen, on the other hand, I refused not to return answers at that time: but the answers that I made were extrajudicial. And yet, as I hear, that bishop who was deputy of a priest has enacted them! I therefore, Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, or in time past ruler of the metropolitical church of Canterbury, appeal from the pope to a general council called together in the Holy Ghost, and representing the Holy Catholic Church. Such a council is above the pope, especially in matters of faith. The pope cannot make decrees from which men shall not appeal to a general council. The Bishop of Rome, whom they call the pope, beareth the room of Christ on earth, and hath authority of God: yet by that authority he is not become unsinnable; neither hath he received that authority to destroy, but to edify. He may be resisted if he command anything against the precepts of God. If he be aided by the power of princes, so that he cannot be withstood, yet no prince can take away the remedy of appealing, which is a defence meet for everybody by the laws of God, of nature and of man. I could not consent to the Bishop of Rome's usurped authority within this realm; for it is against my solemn oath it is against the laws and customs of the realm, insomuch that neither can the king be crowned without perjury, nor may bishops enjoy their bishoprics, nor judgments be used, except the whole realm be accursed by the Bishop of Rome's authority; moreover that heinous and usurped authority would again, as aforetime, spoil and consume the riches of the realm by reservations, provisions, annates, dispensations, pardons, and other cursed merchandise. Finally by that usurped authority not only the English crown and laws, but also the holy decrees of Councils, and the precepts of the

Gospel and of God would be trodden underfoot. In times past the Church of Rome, as it were lady of the world, was the mother of other churches, and worthily so accounted. She bore them to Christ, she nourished them with pure doctrine, helped them by her riches, succoured the oppressed, and was a sanctuary for the miserable. Then by the example of the bishops of Rome worldly pomp and pleasure was nothing regarded: then this frail and uncertain life was laughed to scorn, and men pressed forward to the life to come by the example of Romish martyrs. But afterwards damnable ambition, avarice, and the deformity of vices corrupted the see of Rome, and the deformity of all churches followed, growing of kind into the manners of their mother. Reformation is not to be looked for from the Bishop of Rome; neither can I have him an equal judge in his own cause. I therefore appeal from him and his judges: from their citations, processes, punishments and censures: from their pretensed denouncings of schism, heresy, and adultery; from their deprivation and degradation, to a free general council. As touching my doctrine, it was never in my mind to teach contrary to the word of God and the Catholic Church of Christ according to the exposition of the most holy and learned fathers and martyrs. I only mean and judge as they have meant and judged. I may err, but heretic I cannot be, inasmuch as I am ready to follow the judgment of the word of God and of the Holy Catholic Church, using the words that they used, and none other, and keeping their interpretation. I am accused of heresy because I allow not the doctrine lately brought in of the Sacrament, and because I consent not to words not used in the Scriptures, and unknown to the fathers, overthrowing the old and pure religion."* He went on to

*See it in full in Fox, or Cranmer's Remains, 224. I have, as the

demand "instantly, more instantly, most instantly that he might have messengers," that is, letters of protection and defence, "if there were any man that would give him them." But who could take an appellation to an authority that existed not, but was to be called into being by the appellation itself? Who could suppose that such an appellation would avail to put in abeyance proceedings which had gone so far, with such a party as that which had driven them on? The appellation was lodged with Thirlby: perhaps it never reached Philip or Mary: but it remains a valuable exposition of the author's mind. It was composed, no doubt, before the two Submissions which we have been considering: but as he exhibited it after writing them, he may have thought that they might be reconciled with it.

Nothing could have been greater hitherto than the conduct of Cranmer in disgrace, save those Submissions, from the beginning of the reign. His Dudleian treason, pardonable as it was, he had acknowledged with the plea of guilty. His challenge to the Romanensians had been the first event that raised the spirit of the reforming or Anglican party, and indicated the line which they pursued with eventual success. His own examinations, pleas, letters, writings, were models of controversy: they were firm, adroit, and learned. His calmness in disputation had touched antagonists and drawn tears from bystanders. Even these last documents, the Submissions which allowed the Pope to be chief or supreme head of the Church of England, and the Appellation which said that "the pope beareth the room of Christ on earth," however incompatible they might seem with Cranmer's past career, were not irreconcilable with the denial of the

reader will perceive, not kept to it verbatim. For instance, I have made emphatic that about a bishop being deputy of a priest, because it illustrates the Roman tendency to depress the episcopal order.

usurped jurisdiction of the Holy See. Perhaps even now he may be described as still maintaining his position, while indicating by the acceptance of the primacy of Rome the utmost length that he was prepared to go in the way of reconciliation. He may have persuaded himself that the primacy was not in its own. nature contrary to Catholic antiquity, or the Holy See incapable of reducing itself by going back upon its own originals.

If this were so, he proceeded next, with revived resolution, to let it be known that he had not surrendered. Two days after his degradation he was visited, February 16, in the prison of Bocardo by the prelate, who is said to have added so much of his own insolence to the fantastic rite and to Bonner he exhibited, written in his own hand, two more brief declarations in English, the third and fourth of the documents connected with his fall. These were far less papistic than the two former submissions. In one of them he said no more of the Pope than that he submitted himself to all the Queen's laws, as well those concerning the Pope's supremacy as others as to his book on the Eucharist, he said that he would submit himself to the judgment of the Catholic Church, and of the next general council. In the other he made no submission at all, but affirmed that he believed the Catholic faith, as the Catholic Church had taught it from the beginning,* in terms that might have

*Bishop Cranmer's Recantacyons gives a literal Latin rendering of these two writings. 1. "Contentus sum submittere me majestati regis et reginæ et illorum legibus institutisque, tam iis quæ ad Papæ primatum spectant, quam aliis: perpetuoque commonebo et incitabo alios, quod in me est, ut idem faciant, tranquilleque atque in obsequio eorum majestatis vivant, non obstrepens neque ægre ferens eorum pia instituta: et quod ad librum attinet quem edidi, contentus sum me catholicæ ecclesiæ et generalis concilii proxime futuri judicio submittere." It adds that Cranmer wrote the latter because that about a general council in the former was not pleasing. 2. "Notum sit per presentes, quod ego Thomas