"You have heard my confession," proceeded Cheke, "and now shall I adjoin the beginning of my fall, the gladlier if I have been the occasion of ruin and slander to any through my error. Pride was my fall, making myself a master and judge of the doctrine of the Church: hearing other men put a doubt in the article of the Sacrament and then doubting myself whether this were a figurative speaking, as others in Scripture, or a literal sense, seeing the doctrine hereon so far beyond all reason and sense, seeing that other doctors favoured a figurative speaking, and that this was less abhorred commonly of men. It confirmed me that this opinion was accepted in the whole realm. I took the Primitive Church to be utterly of my opinion: and that the other opinion was brought in when man began to fall from studies of Scriptures and give themselves to their own inventions. I thought that God had blinded them because they relented from the life and doctrine of the Primitive Church, and that with the study of the Scriptures light had returned. So I fell. And yet I counted it no fall, but that all other fell who held the contrary opinion. I thought that Lanfrancus of Canterbury, who was one of the first writers that set forth the opinion of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, defended his own opinion, and not that of the Church: and that the opinion which he defended began with him, when all true knowledge was much obscured, and the life of the clergy more deformed.* Thus far was I gone. I sat

I suppose that Cheke was right in saying that the book of Lanfrancus against Berengarius, in the eleventh century, first gave authority and permanence to the opinion of the Real Presence in the carnal and local But that opinion had been formally stated in the ninth century by the misdirected intelligence of Pascasius Radbertus. The opinion was widely prevalent at the time: he first announced it as the doctrine of the Church and was forthwith opposed by men who were as good Churchmen as he was.

sense.

in the seat of pestilence, and was so fixed in that chair, that only one power could subvert me. Miraculous power has done this of high mercy. I acknowledge it both for my own self and, as I trust, for the edification of many, whom I had ruinated, sitting in my seat of pestilence. In that hope now stands all the joy of my life."*

After this Cheke was set at liberty, and had his lands restored by the Queen, on condition of exchanging them with her for others. He was paraded among the Romanensians, invited to table, seen in assemblies: but it was of the nature of penitential drudgery, it was enjoined by the Legate, that he should sit on the bench with the commissioners, with Bonner, when prisoners for religion were examined. As soon as he could, he made his escape from the public gaze, and retired to the house of a friend to die. Within a year, at the early age of forty-three, he expired of shame and anguish, and a broken heart: and a man of honour and spirit, the first English scholar of his day, has left little behind him, prevented by cruelty from raising into the trophies of maturity the learned collections of his studious youth.

The revival of the monastic life was resumed with increased magnitude when, soon after Cheke's recantation, the kindly and pious Feckenham, relinquishing the

* See this recantation at large in Strype's Life of Cheke. The reader will understand that I have condensed, shortened, and to some little extent translated it.

+ Priuli gives a wonderful account of poor Cheke's persuasive power: that he brought over twenty-eight at one time, who were in danger of burning through their obstinacy, and how, when one taunted him that he had changed for fear of the fire, he answered that it was true, and not of temporal but eternal fire. Epist. to Beccatello, ap. Poli Epist. v. 346.

It may be worth repeating that Hallam, no incompetent judge of Latinity, selects " our countryman Sir John Cheke as distinguished from most Cisalpine writers by the merit of what is properly called style." Literature of Europe, i. 333.

deanery of St. Paul's, entered Westminster as abbot of a convent of Benedictine monks. The refounding of the place as a religious establishment had been delayed for more than a year by the stout, the unexpected resistance of Weston the secular dean: until, the death of Aldrich opening to Oglethorpe the see of Carlisle, Weston was transferred to the deanery of Windsor: reluctant: considering that for the patrimony which he resigned to Feckenham, he accepted a poor compensation.* However the way was now clear for this great resuscitation, which had been awaited with eagerness by the Queen. "She rejoices to see the monks return," exclaimed the Venetian ambassador, "and to-morrow they will make their entry in God's name: for the canons have been removed. This will be the third monastery and order of regulars which has been restored, besides one of nuns. And very soon there will be a fourth, the Carthusians of Shene, who have already made their appearance to return to their old home, now occupied by the Duchess of Somerset, who will be recompensed with something else." Two months after this (not on the morrow), in the middle of November Feckenham and fourteen Black monks marched into the ancient capital of their order.

The scheme of refounding Westminster, and the resistance of dean Weston had been going on for a year and a half at least. In his conversation with the martyr Bradford, April 5, 1555, he excused himself for coming late, "partly for that I withstood certain monks, which would again have come into Westminster." Bradford's Writings, 550 Park. Soc. Heylin says that Weston was backward in conforming to the Queen's desires because he disliked monks and wished to be near the Court. p. 189. If he disliked monks, he was like one of his predecessors in his new preferment of Windsor: and the grievous end to which he came might further recall the remembrance of the great Doctor London.

+ Michiel to the Doge, Lond. Sept. 28. Ven. Cal. 651. The houses already restored, three in number, as he correctly says, were all of friars: to which he rightly adds one nunnery. See them given, above, p. 358 of

this volume.

November 21. Machyn, 119: Strype, v. 506: Heylin, ii. 190. Lingard doubles the number of the monks, making them twenty-eight,

On the morrow after that the monks perambulated the precincts in their habits, preceded by two vergers with silver staves in the evening the vergers passed through the cloisters to the abbot, whom they conducted to the high altar, where he found his convent in prayer: with them he knelt; and was thence brought into the choir to his place, and so began the Evensong. A week after, November 29, he was installed, and assumed the mitre in the presence of the Cardinal, many bishops, the Lord Treasurer, and a great company: when the Lord Chancellor Heath, Archbishop of York, sang the Mass, and the new abbot himself made the sermon. A week after this, December 6, the abbot and his convent went in procession before them walked the sanctuary men with cross keys upon their garments: after whom three homicides came; one of whom, and he the son of a lord, was whipped penitentially and so was the abbey restored to its pristine privileges.* The abbot was appointed not for life, but only for three years, according to the Italian custom and two Italians were to be invited to England to instruct the good monks in the institutes of the Italian Congregation of the Order. Of the "all of them beneficed clergymen who had quitted good livings to embrace the monastic institute." This is founded on Priuli's letter to Beccatello, to which Lingard refers: which gives twenty-eight excellent persons who had resigned "gradi onorevole ed entrate comode, alcuno d'essi più di millecinquecenti scudi, e nessuno manco di cenquecento." Poli Epist. v. 346. But Fuller says that they were sixteen, and were the prebendaries of the now dissolved foundation: who turned themselves into" sixteen black monks, being all that could be found having that order, and willing to wear that habit." Bk. vi. § 5. Thus they would regain the prebends which they seemed to resign. For the meantime the Queen had issued warrants, September 23, for pensions to be paid to the prebendaries till they were otherwise provided. Burnet, Part II. Bk. v. Vol. ii. 547Pocock. This is less sublime. Three of these monks had formerly signed to Supreme Head under Henry VIII. See below, p. 680.

* Machyn, 121: Strype, v. 507. It was Lord Dacre.

+ Priuli, ap. Poli Epist. ut supra. Whether these instructors came I

know not.

Carthusians also, the memorable Order that gave so many martyrs to the cause of the papal headship in the days of Henry, the remnant, or the representative successors, were restored to the greatest of their former houses, the magnificent monastery of Sheen, near to Richmond, in Surrey: but of the numbers or the circumstances of this plantation there are but few particulars. They "made their appearance," in the expressive phrase of the Venetian ambassador, some from various parts of the kingdom, where they had lingered beside the ruins of their old establishments, some from the asylum of Flanders, and were gathered together under Maurice Chauncy, formerly of the London house, the historian of their sufferings, now their prior: under whom they enjoyed a transient repose, receiving several benefactions from their generous patroness the Queen.* And so far proceeded hitherto the restoration of the monastic institute.

In the restoration of abrogated days, usages, and ceremonies no opportunity was lost. Processions were begun to be within every church.† Processions travelled the streets of London. The Clerks' Procession in May, with torches burning round the Sacrament and a goodly canopy over it, was splendid. In June the Spaniards had a procession in Whitehall, when a hundred young oaks were set in ground, four altars with canopies were erected within that grove, the procession issued from the chapel with the Sacrament borne, a hundred torches round it, and above it the richest canopy that the Queen could give: to every altar they marched, the King's guard following; at every altar they rang bells and burned sweet odours: they returned to

* Gasquet, ii. 485. Tanner (sub Shene) says that Sheen only lasted a year but he dates apparently from some gifts to the house that were subsequent to its restoration. + Grey Friars' Chronicle, 97.