If he was both deprived of office and put in prison because he would not act illegally as judge, nothing could be more infamous than the conduct of Gardiner and of the Government. But there seems to be some reason for thinking that as Hales was released on recanting his opinion on the Sacrament, so he was imprisoned for it (wrongfully enough), and perhaps for something that he had said or done with regard thereto. Long before he saw Portman and Day, he seems to have wavered and his eminent position and character made his fellow Gospellers anxious to strengthen him against weakness. The remembrance of the encouragements of Bradford to stand fast and fail not, and the stern pity of Hooper after he was fallen, must have equally tended to depress and urge him to his sad and painful end.*

There is some inconsistency between Fox's Lamentable Story of Sir James Hales, Judge, and two previous passages in his work. He gives October 6 for the interview with Gardiner in Westminster Hall: and says that "not many days after" he was committed to King's Bench. Elsewhere he says that he was committed to the Marshalsea on January 26 (1554). Unless then we suppose that he was first committed to King's Bench and then transferred to the Marshalsea, there elapsed four months, instead of a few days, between his interview with Gardiner and his committal. In that time he may have done or said something of a religious nature that caused him to be imprisoned. Hooper, in his Treatise on the case, says nothing of the Marshalsea, but expressly "he was first imprisoned in the King's Bench": and then sent to the Counter in Bread Street where he remained all the Lent of 1554: and then came to the Fleet, where he was for three weeks, till on April 13, 1554, he tried to kill himself with a knife; after making a retractation to Portman and Day. It is observable that Hooper, moreover, says not a word of Gardiner causing Hales's imprisonment for his conduct as judge, nor indeed for any other cause, though he inveighs most fiercely against Gardiner. On the contrary he says, "Mr. Hales, as all men know, is imprisoned for the testimony of Jesus Christ, and persecuted because he will not conform himself to the false and most untrue religion set forth at this time by the bishops." Fox on the other hand says not a word of this sort, but labours hard to fix on Gardiner a charge of illegal violence. "What right or order of law did Steven Gardiner follow," asks he, “in troubling and imprisoning Judge Hales, when he had done nothing against God's law or man's law in proceeding by order of law against

The troubles of Thomas Mountain, which fell at this time also, and of Laurence Saunders the martyr, which were now begun, exhibited the same features; for in them is found that curious questionableness which hangs over so many cases of alleged persecution only for religion in the first part of the reign of Mary. Both were clergymen of London: both are alleged to have been persecuted and committed for ministering and preaching in their own churches according to the service book of Edward the Sixth, which had not yet been forbidden by law. On Sunday, October 6, Mountain, the parson of St. Michael in Tower royal, celebrated the Holy Communion according to the Second Book of Common Prayer to a large congregation. As he spoke to the communicants the words of reception, Take and eat this, and the rest, and Drink this, and the rest,* he was interrupted by some serving-men belonging to the Bishop of Winchester with the threat that within a few days he should be made to sing another song. The next Wednesday he was called before Gardiner in the great chamber of St. Mary Overy and to his narrative we owe the well-known

certain presumptuous persons which both before the law and against the law then in force took upon them to say their Mass?" As to Hales's retractation, Fox almost ignores it. "What it was that he granted unto the bishops, I have not to say." And yet Hooper's Treatise was among his papers, being one of the Foxian MSS. : and from that he might have learned that Hales "by persuasion waxed weary of the truth, denying Christ that was made man of the substance of the blessed Virgin Mary, and crediting a false Christ that was and is made, after the papistical opinion, of bread." Bradford, it may be added, wrote him, when he was in the Counter, before he got to the Fleet, a letter of exhortation to stand fast in which he says not a word of Gardiner, nor of any cause of imprisonment but religion. (See it in Fox, or in Bradford's Writings.) On the whole I conclude that Hales was not imprisoned until a considerable time after his conversation with Gardiner, and that it was not in consequence of his conduct as a judge, and not through Gardiner's intervention.

*It is from these words that we may gather that Mountain used the Second Book of Edward, not the First.

description of the fiery prelate, his manner of putting off his cap and rubbing the fore part of his head, "where a lock of hair was always standing up, and that, as some said, was his grace." In the course of a violent interview Gardiner called the English service schismatical, and Mountain a heretic; and he sent him to the Marshalsea: nevertheless this was not a clear case of religious persecution, for Mountain had been out with Northumberland, and was excepted even by name from the General Pardon.* Laurence Saunders had a country living, and had been recently preferred to All Hallows in Bread Street. He kept both rather than resign either to any successor holding the opposite opinions: and continued preaching in his country cure even after the Proclamation that forbad preaching without the Queen's license, until the tumults that he roused compelled him to desist. He then turned his steps toward London. "I have a cure in London," reflected he, " and how shall I be discharged of it if any be sick and desire consolation, if any want good counsel and instruction, if any should slip into error and receive false doctrine"? A layman, to whom he communicated his intention of preaching in Bread Street, gave notice thereof to Bonner. On Sunday morning, October 15, he preached a sermon in which he exhibited the difference between the order of service set forth in the English tongue by King Edward and the Latin service that the one was good because it was according to God's Word and the Primitive Church, the other evil though good were mingled in it. In the afternoon, as he was about to deliver a second prelection, an officer appeared from the Bishop of London and summoned him before his master. Bonner charged him

* Mountain's Autobiography was first printed by Strype from the Foxii MSS. in several parcels in his Eccl. Mem. beginning vol. v. 103. It is reprinted in Nichol's Narratives. His conversation with Gardiner is very curious.

with treason, sedition, and heresy, for breaking the Queen's proclamation and for his sermon: but putting aside the treason and sedition, he argued with him on heresy. "All are heretics," said Bonner, "who teach and believe that the administration of the Sacraments and all orders of the Church are most pure that come nighest to the order of the Primitive Church. The Church was then in her infancy." Saunders confuted this curious position with the authority of St. Augustine: and Bonner then required him to write what he believed of Transubstantiation. Saunders wrote and left the paper with the bishop, saying to him, "Ye seek my blood, and ye shall have it: may you be so baptised in it that you may thereafter loathe bloodsucking, and become a better man." Bonner sent him to Gardiner, who after a brief examination committed him to the Marshalsea, not for heresy but for breaking the Proclamation.*

When the session was resumed, that we may return to Westminster, the Houses affirmed the legitimacy of the Queen in terms that inveighed heavily upon those who had aided the great cause of Henry against Katharine of Aragon, especially Cranmer. "The force and efficacy of truth breaks forth," said they, "with time. Great and blessed was the felicity of your Highness's parents, and of the realm: their state was approved by the most notable learned men in Christendom: it con

tinued twenty years. But the malice and perverse affection of some very few persons conceived sundry subtle and disloyal practices to insinuate a scruple into your Father's conscience that it was against the Word

* Fox. The observations of Maitland on this case, particularly the interview with Gardiner, and the manner in which Saunders "privily nipped" or taunted the Chancellor with his former defence of the Divorce of Henry the Eighth, are well worth reading. Essays on the Reformation, P. 349. On that matter see also the end of this chapter.

of God. And they kept on persuading your Father that his soul would be lost unless he were divorced from your Mother. And they got the seals of some of the Universities in Italy and France for a testimony, as it were having bribed with money a few light persons, scholars of those Universities. The seals also of the Universities of this realm they obtained by great travail, sinister working, secret threatening and entreating by men of authority sent thither for the purpose. Finally Thomas Cranmer, then newly made Archbishop of Canterbury, most ungodly and against all laws, equity, and conscience, presented the device of divorce; called before him ex officio the hearing of the matter; and partly on his own unadvised judgment of the Scriptures, joined with the pretended testimony of the Universities, partly upon base and untrue conjectures on matters of supposal, admitting nothing that might be said by your Mother, or any on her behalf, in her absence, pronounced sentence against her marriage, and divorced and separated your noble Father and Mother. This corrupt and unlawful sentence was afterwards confirmed by Acts of Parliament about the succession, containing the illegitimation of your most noble person, as if it were possible! But now we, with all the words that can by possibility be used, beseech your Highness to enact with us that all those decrees, processes and judgments, whether given by Thomas Cranmer or any other person, be declared unlawful and void: and we repeal those Acts; and declare your Mother's marriage to stand with God's law and Word."* So played the lambs and kids, a scapegoat having been found. To the Queen Cranmer was the man who had sat at Dunstable on the cause of her Mother: nothing could change her aversion toward him on him it was expedient to cast the whole burden 1 Mary, Sess. II. I.

*