Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

burned, June 6, after long imprisonment in King's Bench, on Bonner's condemnation, four handicraftsmen, Harland, Oswald, Avington, Read: who had been presented for not coming to church. "I cannot understand the Mass," said Harland, “it is in Latin."-" Fire and faggot cannot frighten me," said Oswald, "good preachers that used to be in King Edward's time are gone before; I am ready to suffer and come after."* To them were added in the same town in the same month two more, Wood and Miller of whom the former was a priest. His singular manner, for it must be confessed to have been a singular manner, of seeking no man's blood was illustrated further

and religion set forth in King Edward's days, in which she would ever continue. To Art. 6 they said that the Mass had no goodness in it: that, as to the Sacrament of the Altar, Christ's Body was not in it, but in heaven : and they denied the supremacy of the See of Rome, &c. Joan Horns said to Bonner of the Pope, "I forsake all his abominations; and from them Good Lord deliver us."—" From this her stable and constant assertion," says Fox, "when the Bishop was too weak to remove her, and too ignorant to convince her, he knocked her down with the butcherly ax of his sentence. And so the holy virgin and martyr, committed to the shambles of the secular sword, was offered up with her other fellows, a burnt sacrifice to the Lord." iii. 589.

*Fox, iii. 592, refers them to Bonner's Register.

Fox says a minister. It may be observed that Fox's avoidance of the word priest, for which he generally uses minister, is one of the causes why the martyrs have so much less of an Anglican look to modern eyes than they should have. I may as well add here that Fox prefixed to his work, rather stupidly, a calendar of martyrs, regularly drawn out, month after month: and that this has been treated by Roman controversialists as a most momentous thing, as if Fox had drawn out an authoritative calendar for the Church of England. To say nothing of Harpsfield's six Dialogues, Parsons the Jesuit elaborately bases his Examen of Fox upon this Calendar, treating it in the most solemn manner in the world. One way in which he shows contempt for it is not quite fair; he omits Fox's commas. Thus, where Fox has March 20 (or whatever it may be) John Lawrence, minister, martyr-John Philpot, preacher, martyr-and so on; Parsons writes "minister martyr," "preacher martyr," and so on, invariably. Fox's Calendar is absurdly arranged there is little of an attempt to keep to the days on which martyrs suffered. If you want those who died under Mary, you must look towards the end of any month, for he always puts the Lollards and other earlier martyrs first.

by Bonner, and a year of vigorous activity reached an early but awful term so far as London was concerned, when, on June 27, thirteen persons, Adlington, Pernam, Wye, Hallywell, Bowyer, Searles, Hurst, Couch, Jackson, Derifall, Routh, Elizabeth Pepper, Agnes George, all of Essex, were burned alive at Stratford-le-Bow. The story of most of these poor people was the same: their trouble began with some layman, whether justice, commissioner, or constable, Lord Rich or the Earl of Oxford; by whom they had been committed to gaol, and then sent up to Bonner. Their case was marked by several curious incidents. There were at first sixteen of them. They were examined by Bonner upon the same Articles that had been so serviceable already: and after their condemnation, while they still awaited execution, Feckenham, the Dean of St. Paul's, preached at Paul's Cross that they had as many opinions as they were persons: whereupon they drew out a confession of their faith, arranged according to the Articles in which they had been examined: set their hands thereto: and addressed it to "the holy Congregation of Jesus Christ." It was good on baptism: it held two Sacraments: it defined the visible church to be that "wherein the word of God is preached and the holy Sacraments duly administered": but it too vigorously declared that "the See of Rome is the see of Antichrist, the congregation of the wicked, whereof the pope is head under the devil": it called the Mass a profanation, and a blasphemous idol: and it made the curious discrimination between the Mass and the Sacrament of the Altar, to which it was invited by the phraseology of Bonner.* After they had all signed this,

* Look at Bonner's seventh article. It had been curiously answered before by others. Tyms had said that the Mass was blasphemy, and that in the Sacrament of the altar Christ was not present either spiritually or corporally, though in the same paper he had written that "in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood Christ is present as it pleaseth Him."

[CH. XXVIII. three of them yielded to the arguments and entreaties with which they were urged, and sent to the Legate a petition for pardon: with which he complied, absolving them, and enjoining penance." Upon this the rest of

them drew their faith into a second Confession, a Confession mostly taken from the great Anglican formulary, the Forty-two Articles of Edward the Sixth: † to which

Adlington had answered that "he misliked the Mass and also the Sacrament of the altar." So these martyrs say "the Mass is a profanation of the Lord's Supper," and also "God is neither spiritually nor corporally in the Sacrament of the altar." Fox, iii. 594.

* This dispensation or absolution was printed by Fox in his first edition; he afterwards omitted it, saying that he could not tell by what occasion Pole issued it. This was because he was unwilling to admit that the three recanted, and begged for their lives; which appears in the dispensation. However Strype has printed it. Originals, No. LXII. vol. vi. 467. Burnet says that Pole heard that the three were hopeful; and so an order of Council put them in his hands: and that Pole brought round two of them who were pardoned, but that the fate of the third was not known to him. He seems not to know of Pole's absolution of all three and his account is puzzling. Part III. Bk. v.: vol. iii. 450. Pocock's Edn. There was a clash between Pole and Bonner in this matter.

+ This interesting monument consists of eight Articles: of which the first is composed almost entirely from the first of the Forty-two Articles : the second is partly from the second of the Forty-two, partly from the Athanasian Creed, the third declares that they heartily confessed and believed every Article of the Christian faith contained in the Apostles' Creed and the Creed of St. Athanasius. The fourth is on justification and good works, and is very anti-calvinistic: it is consistent with Articles X, XI, XII: and contains reminiscences of the Prayer of consecration in the Holy Communion. The fifth, on Baptism, is nearly verbatim the corresponding Article in the Forty-two. The sixth on the Eucharist was the same as the corresponding Article XXIX of the Forty-two (the XXXIII of our Thirty-nine), except that it omitted the declaration against Transubstantiation. "Also we believe that the supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have amongst themselves one to another, but also a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death: insomuch, as to them that rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which they break is the communion of the body of Christ; likewise the cup of blessing is the communion of the blood of Christ. Neither was it by Christ's ordinance commanded to be kept, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped." Here the clause, in the Fortytwo, beginning "Transubstantiation, or the change," is omitted. The seventh is on Predestination, and consists of the second paragraph of the

they appended their names and were consumed in Stratford-le-Bow, the men tied at three stakes, the women loose in the midst without any stake.

[ocr errors]

The dismission of twenty-two persons, who were sent up to London from Colchester by Lords Oxford and Darcy, Tyrrel, Brown, and other commissioners, as soon as the aforesaid Commission was proclaimed, was a more happy event. They walked up to London at the end of August, fourteen men and eight women, conducted in loose array by two or three guards, who gave them every opportunity of escape, if they would have taken any. Of their coming, before they came, Bonner was advised by a letter from Kingston, a priest, his commissary in Essex:* and when they arrived, he had them lodged in Aldgate, with order that they should be brought before him early next morning, before the city should be fully astir. They refused or delayed to come before midday, would go no other road than Cheapside, through which they went preaching all the way, and reached Bonner's house at Paul's with a rout of a thousand persons.† The Bishop XVII article of the Forty-two, beginning "Also we believe that as the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ," and ending "wretchlessness of most unclean living." It is thus less Calvinistic than the original. The eighth runs, "Also we believe that the offering of Christ once for ever, is the perfect redemption, the pacifying of God's wrath, and satisfaction for all the sins of the world both original and actual. And that there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of the mass, in which is said that the priest doth offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of sin and pain, is most devilish and dangerous deceit." Strype, Originals. No. LXIII. (Vol. v. 568: vi. 469). Such were they whom the Romanensian faction, spurred by the Church of Rome, gave to the flames of heresy !

* This letter is very interesting and full of particulars about the Commission in Colchester. Among other things, Kingston says that it took him two hours and a half to convey a religious prisoner from S. Katherine's chapel to the castle, with great danger, through the rage of the press of people. Fox, iii. 657.

+ Bonner's account is confirmed by the Grey Friars' Chronicle, which says, "Item, the 5 day of September was brought through Cheapside,

found them as entertaining as it might be expected: but paused before proceeding against them finally, and wrote to Pole for advice. "Perceiving that by my last doing your grace was offended,* I thought it my duty to advertise you, before taking these desperate and obstinate heretics to Fulham and giving sentence against them. I came to London on Thursday, expecting to have but one heretic and some customary matters, enough to weary a right strong body, and was told that I should have twenty-two heretics and so I had, and compelled to bear their charges (as I had of the other), which stood me in more than twenty nobles, a sum of money that I thought full evil bestowed. What am I to do?" It was arranged that the prisoners should be allowed to make an easy submission or confession, such as they would themselves: that they believed that in the Sacrament, as Christ's Church did minister the same, there was the Body and Blood of Christ: that they belonged to the Catholic Church of Christ: and that they would live as good Christians, submitting themselves to the King and Queen and to all their superiors spiritual and temporal, according to their bounden duties. Hereupon they were sent home: but some of them got into trouble again, and fed the flames next year.

xxiv tied in ropes, tied together as heretics, and so unto the Lollard's Tower." (p. 98. This is the last page of that interesting record.) As to the tying with ropes, it was more apparent than real. In Fox's woodcut they all look as if they were tied together: but Fox says that they carried the rope in their hands, and each wore a bit of rope tied round one of his arms, which would make him look as if he were pinioned: but they were not really pinioned till they entered London.

* Bonner's last doing was the burning of the thirteen at Stratford-leBow it may have added to the offence taken by Pole that a peculiar of Canterbury was chosen for such an exhibition. At any rate there were no more burnings there. Bonner's letter was dated "Postridie nativ. 1556." This would be the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, Sept. 8. Fox, 659.

+ Fox, 660. This was full of loopholes: they were not required to say, e. g., that they belonged to the Catholic Church of Rome.

« ÖncekiDevam »