it. To execute upon him after that the doom of heresy was murder. His case was complicated by his former condemnation for treason: which bespoke him for another kind of death.* It is less important to consider how he behaved under tyranny, than to observe that cruel tyranny was allowed to play her engines upon him who was a subject of the realm of England. But he betrayed himself extraordinarily and his fall will ever remain among the most interesting and perplexing studies of history. Both his fall and the astonishing inspiration by which he, at least in part, retrieved it, could only have occurred in a character of many sides with an essential simplicity. He was guileless in the one and in the other and the quality of mind that made him fall made him rise again. To think that he acted with calculation is to misunderstand him. He could calculate for others, but not for himself. When he said of himself that he ever loved plainness, he spoke the truth. But he was extremely susceptible of the influences that might be immediately about him: and hence he was liable to be upset before he had time to make the reflections that might be necessary to set him on his guard. He began to waver by desiring to prolong his life enough to finish his second answer to his great antagonist Gardiner: and some of his admirers have advanced this for the true reason of his recantation. But even Cranmer could * Collier, who observes that Cranmer was treated" with unprecedented severity," has some good remarks on his position in the eyes of the law. "Why," he exclaims, "did not the bishops petition for stopping the execution of the writ, since they could not call him a heretic relapsed? It is true they might have enjoined him penance, but which way they could bring him to the stake is hard to conjecture. Such rigour was straining against the canon law, contrary to customary practice, and particularly to the proceedings in the present reign: for those who were burnt had the offer of their lives upon condition of recanting their tenets." vi. 142. Robertson, or ii. 333, old edition. + Fox brings this forward, out of Cranmer's Letter to a Lawyer, as a scarcely have carried unconscious humour so far as to have signed a writing in favour of Transubstantiation in order to get time to finish a book against Transubstantiation. According to another account he gave as a reason why he signed the recantation, that it was for the public benefit, because he thought that he could be of service, if his life was spared.* This was a reason that would commend itself rather to the few than to the many. The melancholy law of things, that no sooner have we learned the use of our tools than we have to lay them down, becomes doubly hard if the time allotted by nature is to be shortened by human folly. Cranmer had acquired skill and learning: he may have held himself able to do work that none other could do. The temptation to evade a premature end would strike such a man with a force that could not be comprehended by the many who owed their only glory to the ready sacrifice of their lives. Cranmer was courageous in his timidity, and timid in his courage. His last actions were sublime, but in doing them he was homely. He had no design of majesty and show, when he used that gesture in which his countrymen will ever see him; and the moment before he stretched his hand into the flame he had been searching his breast in self-mistrust to find an humble answer to a Spanish friar. If his enemies had avoided the charge of murder, which lies against them, by sparing his life, it is probable that they would have given him the opportunity of earning a clear title to martyrdom. The conjecture of some historians that he would have lingered in remorse, tamely aching to death of a broken heart, is paradoxical. It is more likely that he would have dared the authorities in some open manner, and died in defence of his opinions. reason for his recantation and is followed, I believe, by one or two of the biographers. The letter was written some time before. * See the letter of Michiel, Venet. Cal. p. 386. The services which this prelate rendered to the Church of England might be measured by the praises of her sons no less than by the maledictions of her enemies, if her sons were unanimous in praises. But some of the keenest of the arrows that have sought him have been shot by some of those who are not low in the roll of Anglican worthies. The bitterness that has been manifested against him in late years has been in part a revolt from the unmeasured eulogies of a former school, who saw in him the chief architect of the edifice in which they dwelt and it may be that in time he will rise a little in the estimation of men like those who have decried him. His merits and services were greater than his faults. He had gravity, gentleness and innocency: boundless industry and carefulness: considerable power of forecast: and he lived in a high region. He preserved the continuity of the Church of England. He gave to the English Reformation largeness and capacity. In the weakness which he himself admitted he was servile to many influences: he turned himself many ways in the waters, and allowed himself to be carried very far: but this was not altogether to the hurt of posterity. He was a greater man than any of his contemporaries. His death completed the circle of five men of episcopal degree, who loosed the yoke of Rome from the neck of the Church of England by the sacrifice of their lives: a glorious crown of bishops, the like of which is set upon the brow of no other church in Christendom. CHAPTER XXVIII. 1556. ON the morning of the day on which Cranmer was burned at Oxford, in the chapel of Greenwich his first Mass was celebrated by Pole. On the day before that Pole had been ordained priest, having been raised to the rank of a priest cardinal or cardinal priest three months before his ordination to the priesthood.* The priest of a day was on the next day, Sunday, March 22, consecrated bishop.† The apostolic breve was read by David Pole Archdeacon of Derby in the parlour of Greenwich in the presence of the Queen: and in the adjoining chapel or conventual church, which was so variously linked with the fortunes of the Tudors, the Archbishop of York, assistants Bonner, Thirlby, Pate of Worcester, White of Lincoln, Griffin and Goldwell of Rochester and Asaph, raised to their rank and to their head the ambassador of the See of Rome. A plain ceremony was graced by the attendance of some of the * See the extract from the Consistorial Acts given above (p. 458) about Pole being made Administrator of Canterbury. It was on December 11, 1555. For such expedition, and even for ascending to the highest order at once, without the interstitial orders, there is precedent in Christian antiquity, the theory being that the greater included the less, in case of necessity. The eminent examples of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose will occur to the reader. highest functionaries of the Court: and the decency which may have rejected a fuller display of magnificence while the air was still thick with the ashes of his predecessor, was admired in the new Archbishop of Canterbury. The entreaties of the Queen, the consent of consulted theologians stayed him, permitted him to stay, from proceeding in state, according to his first design, to his provincial capital: it was agreed that it was better for him to remain with the Court, not to be separated from his allies in the heat of the struggle with heresy, not to deprive her Majesty of the solace of his counsels and conversation. At Canterbury he was therefore installed But * Wharton (Specimen of Errors, 144) is indignant with Burnet for reflecting on Pole for choosing the next day after Cranmer's death for his consecration, and adding "it was thought that Pole hastened Cranmer`s execution longing to be invested in that see." Collier follows Wharton in rebuking "our learned church historian" on the same score. Burnet invented not the charge or allegation: he merely repeated it. Heylin had said before him that Pole brought Cranmer to the stake that he might have the profits of Canterbury as sole proprietary instead of usufructuary. (ii. 167, Edn. Robertson.) Holinshed had said that Pole "during the life of the other would never be consecrated archbishop." Burnet indeed adds that "this is the only personal blemish that he finds laid on Pole." No one who has studied Pole's character would impute to him the motive of base gain, though he knew poverty. As for taking the see of Canterbury, he would have been glad for Cranmer to have lived for ever to keep him out of it, if that had been all. As for choosing to be consecrated the day after Cranmer's death, that is just the sort of thing that he would do from his love of wondrous coincidence. To scruple to occupy while Cranmer lived, was equally characteristic of Pole: and is to his credit personally and ecclesiastically: and that a creditable scruple of not succeeding his predecessor during life should be turned into hastening his death in order to succeed him, is a good specimen of vulgar perversion. Burnet scarcely needed to repeat it. Pole's behaviour to Cranmer was bad enough: but the moral of the whole persecution was not that base motives actuated it (of which there are too many imputations in history), but that corruptio optimi pessima. + La Regina mal non volle intendere che di Corte si partisse, dicendoli che più importava alla Fede Cattolica che residenza facesse oppresso de lei, che a Cantuaria, dalla quale non era pero lontano, et sopra ciò fecero in conformità consulta i Teologi, dicendo al Cardinale che con la conscienza secura non poteva abandonare la Regina in tanto besogno che se |