to the common prayer and to hear sermons, despising preachers, long time punished lightly by loss of commons, fines and academic tasks enjoined; at last expelled: how on Mary's accession he regained his fellowship; and how the first martyrdoms staggered him, who shared the general expectation that not one of the gospellers would be found to stand to the death for their opinions: how at his own charges he sent a bachelor and a pupil of the house to Gloucester to gather the minutes of the death of Hooper, and how himself witnessing the burning of Ridley and Latimer, came away exclaiming, "O raging cruelty, O tyranny tragical!" He tells how the man, thus revolted, grew troublesome: how he evaded the civilities of Friar John Garcia, and quitted the church where he preached: how he became suspect: lost his fellowship a second time: and underwent various fortunes, in the course of which his own mother, of whom he sought succour, cursed him for a heretic. At length this remarkable young man was betrayed by some false gospellers at Reading into the hands of the mayor, put in prison, and in the stocks after a cruel fashion, hands and feet both, body scarce touching the ground: and after ten : * The Bursar, as Fox relates, once invited him to dinner, where he met Dr. Smith, Tresham, and among the rest Garcia. When he saw his company, he would have departed, but was persuaded to remain. "Now as he came to the fireside, the Friar saluted him cheerfully in Latin, for he could not speak English. Palmer with an amiable countenance resaluted him gently but when the Friar offered him his hand, he casting his eye aside, as if he had not seen it, found matter of talk to another standing by, and so avoided it; which thing was well marked of them, not without great grudge of stomach. After they were set, and had well eaten, the Friar with a pleasant look offering him the cup said, Propino tibi, juvenis erudite. Palmer at that word blushing as red as scarlet answered, Non agnosco nomen domine: and therewith taking the cup in his hand he set it down by him, as though he would have pledged him anon after but in the end it was also well marked that he did it not. When dinner was done, being sharply rebuked by his friend for his so unwise, uncivil, and unseemly behaviour, as he termed it, he made answer for himself: Oleum eorum non demulcet sed frangit caput meum." days was presented at Newbury in the church before Jeffrey and his fellow-commissioners. His examination is imperfectly recorded, though the historian received the notes written by several eyewitnesses: but the tenets with which he was charged were Protestant Anglican : the Pope not to be supreme: two sacraments: the Mass idolatry : no purgatory to which was added the accusation of sedition in dividing the unity of the Queen's subjects. His answer upon the Eucharist, though not accepted by his examiners, might have saved his life in any former age: "If the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper be ministered as Christ did ordain it, the faithful receivers do indeed spiritually and truly eat and drink in it Christ's very natural Body and Blood.", Short of the horrible rigour that rejected such an answer, he was treated benevolently by his judges. He refused their entreaties to spare his youth, to think of his golden years, to accept livings, posts, maintenance, emoluments and led the way, accompanied by two others, who were burned with him, and a weeping throng, to a place called the Sand Pits out of the town, where he died in a grave and dauntless manner at the age of twenty-four. A bailiff's officer who dashed a faggot in his face, as he stood waiting for the fire, had his own head broken by his indignant master. They who suffered with him were two simple creatures named Gwin and Askin.* Add a shoemaker burned in Northampton in October in Peterborough, another of the dioceses where Pole ordained visitations: † and return to Canterbury itself. There, in the presence of Harpsfield and others, an Arian named Powling abjured: another Arian named Simms, who held among other things that it was against Scripture * Fox, iii. 615: Strype, v. 575. According to some of the letters quoted by them, Palmer marred his glory somewhat by the abusive language that he used of some of the ceremonies of the Church. + Fox, 637. * to burn heretics, and that those that had been burned were saved, abjured: King abjured, another Arian of the like opinions; and Fishcock, another, who differed from the rest in that he placed his conscience unreservedly in the Cardinal's hands, that he would think whatever Pole thought about the Sacrament. In the castle of Canterbury five persons, two uncondemned, the other three condemned on the usual matters, died in November, starved to death, it was alleged, before they could be tried or executed. Ten others lay with them in strait imprisonment. The gaols of the whole diocese of an incompetent prelate were crowded with prisoners for religion, brought in by such active justices as Sir Thomas Moyle and Sir John Giffard: ready, under the reaping of such underlings as Harpsfield and Thornden, to yield the plenteous harvest of the following year.‡ * Strype, v. 540. The Confessions of Powling, Simms and King are in the Harleian volume, 421, p. 94. + Strype, v. 540: Harleian volume, 421, p. 101. Fox, iii. 637. It is difficult to understand how Lingard could say that when Pole became Archbishop, "from that moment the persecution ceased in the diocese of Canterbury." v. 98. But beneath wide boughs lie barren spaces; in great trees the glory of the growth is seen at a distance, while the earth that nourishes languishes: and Pole, towering over the ashes of the diocese, whose honours he added to his own, but which received not his care, was saluted by the learned from afar, when at this noment Vida, immortal Vida, dedicated to him his concinnate speculation of civil society, or the republic. In that colloquy the scene is laid in a villa near Trent: the time is of the Council ten years before, the season of Pole's brighter promise: among the interlocutors are Monte, Cervini, Priuli, Flaminio, the friends or intimates of Pole. The discourse ranges over politics, literature, and art: the Cardinal himself is present in the circle; and his character is painted by eloquence and friendship. He accepted the dedication: that he expected to feel himself conversing again with the author in reading the work: that he longed to hear of other poems in continuation of the incomparable Christiad. At the same time, for Vida was a bishop, he breathed a prayer for him that all impediments might be removed that prevented him from tending his flock in person.* Pole evidently considered. that he himself was not liable to the reproach of non residence. In parts also where Pole had no concernment there was persecution. Chichester, the seat of the eloquent and in many respects the exemplary Day, saw the death of two men and a woman, Dungate, Freeman, and Mother Tree,† who were burned alive in Grinstead in July, a few days before the death of Day, which fell in August. In the following month, September 24, in * Pole to Vida, May 31, 1556. Ven. Cal. p. 471. The treatise was entitled De Dignitate Reipublicæ seu Civilis Societatis. It was written long before, but published now. Vida laid himself open to Pole's admonition, as he tells him in the beginning of the treatise that he had left Alba his bishopric in the horrors of war, "non tam capiti meo aut vitæ metuens quam consulens et cavens publicæ dignitati," lest a pontiff should be exposed to insult in his person. Vida was with Pole in the monastery on lake Garda down to the day before Pole's departure for England. The apostrophe of "immortal Vida" in Pope's Essay on Criticism will be remembered by the student of English poetry. The prediction that Cremona, Vida's birthplace, would be "As next in place to Mantua, next in fame," has not been fulfilled: and yet who has the right to say “Mantua, væ, miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ”? + Fox, iv. 632. The Sententia of Brisley, Day's official, against Anna Tree is in the Harleian MS. volume 421: p. 109. Day died on August 2: and on the Bishop of Worcester. Machyn, III, 112: same day died Bell sometime Strype, v. 500. |