and other justices to Gardiner in March, 1555, on the complaint of the parson of Bocking that they came not to church: they had been committed to the King's Bench and the Marshalsea, and had lain there to Gardiner's death, when they petitioned Gardiner's legal successor Heath, representing their hard and long imprisonment without trial and the utter undoing of their wives and families. Heath sent an officer of the Court of Chancery to examine them: when one of them said that he had ceased to go to church from the time that the English service was banished, another that the word of God was not truly taught, nor the Sacraments duly administered then in the church, another that he thought less of Gardiner and Bonner after reading the book of the one with the preface by the other upon True Obedience,* and the fourth that when he heard the parson of Bocking preach at the time of the Queen's accession on believing the Gospel, and preach, when the Queen had been on the throne some little time, that the New Testament was false in forty places, it struck a scruple into him, and he could come to church no longer. Thus these poor fellows were Anglican martyrs. Of the two clergymen, Drakes, who had been deacon with Taylor of Hadley, ordained priest by Cranmer and Ridley,† presented with the living of Thundersley by Lord Rich, had taken, in answer to Gardiner's questions, the proper position that * Bale's device was bearing fruit: see before. Parsons the Jesuit, from Fox's language, argues that Drakes was irregularly ordained: that he was "made deacon" by Taylor of Hadley without a bishop: and ordained priest by Cranmer and Ridley in the third year of Edward VI. "not after the order then in force, but after such order as was after established." Three Conversions, part iii. 432. As to "made deacon," it might possibly bear Parsons' interpretation: but more probably it means that he got licensed by Taylor. As to the order by which he was ordained priest, it was the First English Ordinal, which was not published till the beginning of the fourth year of Edward. See Vol. III. p. 159 of this work. he would stand by all laws that stood with the laws of God but Tims was the more remarkable martyr. Tims, who was only a deacon, and yet curate (that is, I suppose, incumbent) of Hockley, a married man having a child: who was conspicuous as to his coat and his hosen, and to Gardiner's sneer that he was dressed like a deacon answered that he was as much like a deacon as Gardiner was like an apostle; who to Bonner's wish that he had learning to his spirit answered that he wished that he had a good spirit to his learning: who for seven hours had wherewith to answer both Bonner and Bonner's assessor, Bourne the Bishop of Bath, insomuch that the constables who brought him had never heard the like, must have been in prison more than a year; for the early martyr Taylor of Hadley was in King's Bench when he was there.* He got into trouble by procuring two sermons to be preached in the woods belonging to the terrible Tyrrel, who was of his neighbourhood. To Tyrrel the report came that "his woods were polluted with sermons": and Tyrrel seized him, and sent him up to London. Bonner examined these prisoners in his own palace for the last time, March 21, on the day when Cranmer was burned at Oxford: a week afterwards he had them in open consistory at St. Paul's, and administered to them the same Articles that he had presented to Thomas Whittle, Bartlet Green, and others: articles which he used in many subsequent cases.† The answers that Tims *This appears from one of his letters. + As these Articles were so often used by Bonner, the reader may like to see them. "The within written Articles, and every of them, and every part and parcel of them, we Edmond by the permission of God Bishop of London do object and minister to the said T. W. of our mere office, for thy soul's health, and for the reformation of thine offences and misdemeanours, monishing thee in the virtue of obedience, and under pain of both censures of the Church and also of other pains of the Law, to answer fully, plainly, and truly to all the same. returned were founded on the Catechism of the Prayer Book, and would have been admirable but that he went 1. First, that thou hast firmly, stedfastly, and constantly believed in times past, and so dost now at this present believe that there is here in earth a Catholic Church in the which Catholic Church the Faith and Religion of Christ is truly possessed, allowed, received, kept, and retained of all faithful and true Christian people. 2. That thou in times past hast also believed and so dost believe at this present, that there are in the Catholic Church seven sacraments instituted and ordained by God, and by the consent of the holy Church allowed, approved, received, kept, and retained. 3. That thou wast in times past baptized in the Faith of the said Catholic Church, professing by thy Godfathers and Godmother the Faith and Religion of Christ, and the observation thereof, renouncing there the Devil and all his pomps and works, and wast by the said Sacrament of Baptism incorporate to the Catholic Church, and made a faithful Member thereof. 4. That coming to the age of 14 years, and so to the age of discretion, thou didst not depart from the said Profession and Faith, nor didst mislike any part of the same Faith or doings, but didst like a faithful Christian person abide and continue in all the same by the space of certain years, ratifying and confirming all the same. 5. That notwithstanding the premisses thou hast of late, that is to say within these two years last past, within the city and diocese of London swerved at the least way from some part of the said Catholic Faith and Religion, and amongst other things thou hast misliked and earnestly spoken against the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrament of the Altar, and the Unity of the Church, railing and maligning the Authority of the See of Rome and the faith observed in the same. 6. That thou hast heretofore refused and dost refuse at this present to be reconciled again to the Unity of the Church, not knowledging and confessing the authority of the said See of Rome to be lawful. 7. That thou, misliking the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Sacrament of the Altar, hast refused to come to thy parish church to hear Mass and to receive the said Sacrament, and hast also expressly said that in the said Sacrament of the Altar there is not the very Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ really, substantially and truly, but hast affirmed expressly that the Mass is idolatry and abomination, and that in the Sacrament of the Mass there is none other substance, but only material bread and material wine, which are tokens of Christ's Body and Blood only, and that the substance of Christ's Body and Blood is in no wise in the said Sacrament of the Altar. 8. That thou being convented before certain judges or commissioners, for thy disorder herein, and being found obstinate, wilful and heady, wast by their commandment sent unto me and my prison, to be there examined by me, and process to be made against thee for thy offence herein. too far in insulting the Mass. In prison this martyr wrote letters to his sister, his parishioners, and “All God's faithful servants," bidding them "in no case consent to idolatry" by going to the Latin service, and lamenting the shrinking away of so many shepherds as were gone, making the flock to be scattered because they fled when they saw the wolf coming. In these letters, and other writings about this time, occur such phrases as "the congregation of God," to designate that part of the Church of England that was not Romanensian.* They who went to Colchester on the day that these to Smithfield, Lyster, More, Spenser, Joyne, Nichols, Hamond, tanners, weavers, husbandmen, had been seized by the Queen's commissioners and sent to Bonner, on the charge of absenting themselves from their parish churches by him examined in Whittle's Articles, they were returned by the Queen's writ to their county, wherein they were burned, April 28. Their answers were of the usual kind: fierce against Rome, one of them calling : 9. That all and singular the premisses have been and be true and manifest, and thyself not only infamed and suspected thereof, but also culpable therein and by reason of the same thou wast and art of the jurisdiction of me, Edmond, Bishop of London, and before me according to the order of the ecclesiastical laws are to be convented, and by me punished and reformed." Fox, 514. I may remark that Parsons the Jesuit, in the course of his attack on Fox, commits a pious fraud on the first of these Articles. He says that it was "Whether they all were not once of the Catholic Roman Church, and baptized therein." Three Conversions, pt. iii. 213. Edn. 1604. * This Tims, in his examination, brought up against Bonner the preface that he wrote, according to Wood's edition, or rather Bale's edition, to Gardiner's book De Vera Obedientia: and if the account of his examination which Fox had from one William Aylsbury be accepted in all things, Bonner was abashed and acknowledged that he had written the preface. Maitland puts this admission down as a specimen of Bonner's humour. Essays on the Reformation, 394. But Maitland has given such conclusive proofs that Bonner never wrote any such preface, that Aylsbury's account in Fox must be less leniently explained. Bonner could never have made any such admission. It must have been made for him by Fox's informant, Aylsbury. Rome the church malignant; affirming two Sacraments: denying that they had departed from the Catholic faith, which was the faith in which they had been baptized, one of them adding that he had learned the truth of his profession from the doctrine set forth in King Edward's day : denying the sacrifice of the Mass, and acknowledging with pride and gladness that they had spoken against it, but one of them owning the sacramental and spiritual Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ. The halt and the blind were added to Bonner's wreath in Laverock a lame cripple of Barking, and Aprice a man who had lost his sight, who were examined in the same Articles as the rest, condemned after the old order, and burned alive in Stratford-le-Bow, May 15. Their distinctive sayings were that it was not in the Scriptures that priests should hold over their heads a piece of bread, and that they were not of the Catholic Church who made laws to kill men, and made the Queen their hangman.* The gentler sex adorned his brow when on the following day, May 16, Katherine Hut, widow, and two young girls, Joan Horns and Elizabeth Tackwell, all of Essex, were burned alive in Smithfield. They had been sent up by Sir John Mordaunt and the terrible Tyrrel: they were examined in the same Articles as the rest: their answers were innocently ignorant, but contained reminiscences of the English service, their constancy could not be overcome, and their tragedy has drawn a peculiar groan from the historian of martyrs. In the town of Lewes were † * Fox, iii. 587: Strype, v. 489. Aprice may have been "the blind harper" who is said to have had his hand burned, above p. 346. + To Art. I they agreed: on Art. 2 they could not tell what a Sacrament was, but gave conjectural opinions: to Art. 3 they agreed, but Margaret Ellis (a fourth who was not burnt) said that her Godfather and Godmothers knew not so much as she knew then on Art. 4 they agreed: Katherine Hut adding that she was of the same faith in which she was baptized, but it was a dead faith in that age when she could not understand; Joan Horns that at eleven years she had begun to learn the faith |