stretched forth his right hand, thrust it into the flame, saying with a loud voice, "This hand hath offended,” and held it there, so that all men could see it sensibly burning before the flame reached any other part of his body. He only once withdrew it from the blaze, that he might wipe his forehead. In a while the pile was fully kindled the flames rushed upon his body, but he, in perfect silence, looked the agony down, as it were, standing without stirring in the greatness of the fire, till life departed. He died with extraordinary fortitude.*

Harpsfield, who "Away with your How can such a

"His patience in the torment, his courage in dying, if it had been taken either for the glory of God, the wealth of his country, or the testimony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error and perversion of true religion, I could worthily have commended the example, and matched it with the fame of any father of ancient time." So says the Romenensian eyewitness, J. A. (Strype's Cran. Bk. III. ch. xvi.) A less generous judgment was pronounced ten years later by Nicolas also insinuated a doubt of the fact of the burning hand. Cranmer and his perfidious right hand (if it be true). shifter be called a martyr? What intrepidity was there in burning his hand first, when his whole body was to be consumed so shortly after? Hand and body alike were on the point of being burned in everlasting fire. Agesilaus the Athenian, Scævola the Roman, our own Barlaam, beyond measure excelled him." [Ne mihi Cranmeri tui perfidam dexteram (si tamen sit verum) proponas. Quid enim ad aliquod constantiæ et fortitudinis exemplum trahis, quod in eo facto, si modo factum est, nullum tamen est. Primum enim qua illum fronte martyrem jactas, aut constantem qui ex Catholico Lutheranus, mox ex Lutherano Zuinglianus factus est: cujusque fidem et constantiam, quasi levissimus quidam ventus, quælibet vitæ spes excussit: quique propter modicam senectutis jam ingravescentis usuram centies Luthero, Calvino, et reliquis suis idolis maledixisset, eosque conspuisset? Sed fortiter, ais, et intrepide dexteram ignibus objecit. Id autem quantulum est, quantula ista fortitudinis laus, quum totum mox corpus ambientibus flammis, vellet, nollet, exedendum esset, temporarii ignis primitias per dexteram gustasse, quæ olim propter salutaris facti pœnitentiam cum reliquo corpore sempiternas in perpetuo igne poenas luitura est! Ego vero tibi potius Agesilaum illum Atheniensem, et propter idem stratagema Mutium illum Romanum, Scævolam dictum, multoque magis, qui illos constantia et causa vicit, martyrem illum nostrum Barlaam, et invictam ab igne dexteram propono.] Dialogi Sex, p. 743. Antw. 1566. To Voltaire, if not to Harpsfield, the fortitude of Cranmer seemed comparable to Scævola. I may add here that I have hesitated to insert in my narrative

Very soon after the death of Cranmer a tract was published by the Queen's printer Cawood, which consisted of all the submissions, writings, recantations, prayers, and exhortations that had been either written or signed by the Archbishop from the time that he began to waver to the time when he perished at the stake.* As this tract bore on the title-page the authentication or license of the Bishop of London, and had in it the two writings that Cranmer exhibited to Bonner in Bocardo, it has been concluded by the guardians of

of Cranmer's burning the curious thing said in the letter written by Michiel the Venetian ambassador three days later, March 24, that Cranmer burnt a paper at the stake: which was evidently his former recantation from the description. "At the moment when he was taken to the stake, he drew from his bosom the identical writing, throwing it, in the presence of the multitude, with his own hands into the flames, asking pardon of God and of the people for having consented to such an act, which he excused by saying that he did it for the public benefit, as had his life, which he sought to save, been spared him, he might at some time have still been of use to them, praying them all to persist in the doctrine believed by him, and absolutely denying the Sacrament and the supremacy of the Church. And finally, stretching forth his arm and right hand, he said, This, which has sinned having signed the writing, must be first to suffer punishment: and thus did he place it in the fire, and burned it himself." Ven. Cal. p. 386. If this be so, I am wrong in intimating that he may never have had but one paper with him, the one that he read. This Venetian account is partly supported by Bishop Cranmer's Recantacyons, which says that Lord Williams took from him at the stake a copy of the recantation. "D. Williamus palinodiæ exemplum aufert, quod in sinu habebat. suo chirographo signatum, uti publice aperteque recitaret." p. 107. If it were not for the words suo chirographo signatum," this paper might be taken to have been the one that Cranmer read. But that has no signature, as printed in All the Submissions.

66

*This is the publication entitled All the Submissions, &c. If the Venetian ambassador's words (above, p. 515, note) are understood as of a thing done, not meditated, this tract was published before March 24: and as Cranmer was burned March 21, this gives so little space for the publication after his death, that it might be thought to have been before. Such an opinion is preposterous on all other accounts, save those very words of the Venetian: and yet it was hazarded fifty years ago, long before the Venetian Calendar appeared, by Churton: who wrote, “It is scarcely possible to suppose but that it was published before Cranmer's execution." Brit. Mag. 1840.

Cranmer's fame that Bonner was the editor who was answerable for the appearance, or at least for the contents of this tract: and because the last of the documents of which it consists, "The Prayer and Saying of Thomas Cranmer a little before his death, all written with his own hand," ends not with the memorable words that Cranmer spoke, but with the words that he had written, the supposed editor has been charged with suppression of the truth, or even with the fabrication of falsehood: and the imputation of unscrupulous baseness has been piled upon a head already sore burdened with the charge of bloody cruelty. Now if it were dishonest in the Court to publish the written documents merely, without any account of the nulling of most of them by the words. of the man who had written some of them and signed others (an opinion which may perhaps be held), yet there is no reason to charge the dishonesty on Bonner. If Bonner had any share in the publication beyond that of licenser of the press,* and it may be that he had, he was under no obligation to supplement the written documents, which were all that he had to publish, by a narrative or by notes. There is no reason to believe that the documents were falsified. The last of them, which has caused the outcry, was professed to be not what Cranmer spoke but what he had written, "all written

* Lingard says that Bonner had nothing to do with the published Submissions of Cranmer beyond licensing them. "The tract bears on the title-page the license of Bonner. By most writers it has on that account been considered as his work and publication. But most certainly the ground of this opinion suggests the contrary. Had he been the author, it would not have stood in need of his license." Vindication, p. 95. Lond. 1826. Certainly it may be that the words about Bonner on the title-page are nothing but his license. Title-pages sometimes carried licenses. Books were licensed by the archbishop or by the bishop of London. But I think both that Bonner may have had more to do with this tract than licensing it, and that he acted in a perfectly honest manner in all that he may have done about it.

with his own hand": and there is no proof that it was altered by Bonner or any other in any way: much less that Cranmer had written the words that he spoke, and that another passage, which he neither wrote nor spoke, was substituted for that which he both had written and spoke. Indeed the assailants of Bonner have failed to observe that the publication only purported to be the writings of Cranmer, not the words. One of these assailants has printed in double columns first what Craniner had written, second what Cranmer said instead thereof, calling the one, "What Cranmer spoke according to Bishop Bonner's paper," and the other, "What he spoke indeed.” * Another repeatedly calls the publication "Bonner's tract," and cries shame upon him for concealing the truth.f And yet it cannot be shown to have been Bonner's business to publish an account of Cranmer's last sayings because he licensed or authenticated the publication of his last writings. It cannot be proved that to conceal the truth was the motive from which either Bonner or any others caused the last writings of Cranmer to be

* Strype, v. 398.

+ Todd says that Bonner "prints only what the martyr was to have spoken, but basely conceals the fact that he did not speak it." He exclaims, "So ends the tract, affirmed in the title-page to have been seen and examined by Bonner. Upon him therefore rests the responsibility of the compilation, even if by any other hand than his own it had been compiled: upon him the shame also which, if not to other parts of it, at least to the conclusion belongs, where what the sufferer really spoke is concealed, but what was prepared for him to have spoken is related, and by many of the compiler's party was afterwards reported, as if indeed he did speak it.” Cranmer, ii. 468, 9. Todd afterwards accounts for the fact that Cranmer's last words have not his signature at the end by saying, "Bonner dared not print as either signed by Cranmer himself or as attested by the Spanish friar or any other person" words that hundreds of persons knew that he never spoke (p. 507). One would think that the want of the signature was rather a proof that they were not tampered with: and proof positive that they were not fabricated. If Bonner, or any one besides, had not scrupled to falsify or fabricate the writing, he would not have scrupled to add the name.

published for the motive may have been to put in contrast what he had written with what all knew that he had said so that the world might be informed of what he had written no less than it was filled with the fame of what he had said, and might have in knowledge that he had actually written something contrary to what he said. And so far was Bonner from desiring to conceal what Cranmer said, that he inserted in his own Register a record that Cranmer immediately before his burning publicly revoked his former recantations, and died persisting in his errors: in his errors: so that one of the earliest independent testimonies that the famous history of Cranmer's end was not hearsay or a lie was furnished by Bonner.*

If Cranmer was not a martyr, he was a murdered man. It may be true that he was beyond the letter of the canon law. His recantation proper, the paper to which he set his hand in the presence of attesting witnesses, was posterior to his degradation, posterior to his tradition to the secular arm, posterior to the writ for burning him. By holding out till he was condemned and ordered for execution it may be that he had put himself in the position of an obstinate heretic, as the word was abused by his enemies. But he was not

beyond the equity of the law. By his recantation he declared himself a Catholic not only in the genuine sense of the word, but even in the Roman or debased sense of

* "Notandum est quod dictus Thomas Cranmerus fuit postea, viz. die Sabbati xxi die mensis Martii anno Domini secundum cursum et computationem ecclesiæ Anglicanæ millesimo quingentesimo quinquagesimo sexto, in quodam loco extra muros borealis partis civitatis Oxoniensis combustus et in cineres concrematus, &c. et quod idem Cranmer tempore ejusdem concremationis, et immediate ante illam suam concremationem, publice revocavit recantationes suas antea per eum factas, persistendo in erroribus et heresibus suis &c." Reg. Bonneri, fol. 423. Quoted in Cranmer's Remains, 567. The two "&c."s are in the Register.