learning with good intention, was baffled and perplexed, lost his temper, and did the prisoner no good. White took Christopherson's place, and carried the trial to the fatal end, affirming that the Lord Cardinal might put into the place of a bishop not yet consecrated whomsoever he would: and yet White pointed to the Archdeacon of Canterbury, who spoke scarce a word throughout, as having been designated by the Cardinal to be Woodman's ordinary.* As to the matter of the examinations, it was spread over many topics. The prisoner rejected the term Sacrament of the altar, as several others did about this time: he remained unmoved by the usual exhortations not to think himself wiser than the whole realm, not to condemn his own honest forefathers denied that he was against infant baptism; denied that he denied Original Sin and Freewill: denied that he was a heretic. He showed great acuteness without much learning: and if his account be taken without reserve, reduced all his examiners to great straits. Gage's invocation, a layman, who exclaimed, "Woodman, leave that pride! That pride will come to naught," was well meant. He was burned alive in Lewes, June 22, a week after his condemnation. With him suffered nine * White. Tell me, or I will excommunicate thee. Woodman. I have said as much as I will say. Excommunicate me, if you will, I am none of your diocese. The Bishop of Chichester is mine ordinary. Let him do it, if you will needs have my blood, that it may be required of your hands. Chichester. I am not consecrated yet, I told you when you were with me. .. White. Make an end: answer to me. Here is your ordinary, the Archdeacon of Canterbury. He is made your ordinary by the Lord Cardinal: and he hath authority to examine you of your faith upon a book, to answer to such articles as he will lay to you. And I pray you refuse it not, for the danger is great, if you do. . . . Then spake they all, and said, Lo, my lord desireth you gently to answer to him, and so do we all. For if you refuse to take an oath, he may excommunicate you: for my Lord Cardinal may put whom he will in the bishop's office, until he is consecrated. Sixth Exam. Fox, 651, 2. He seems not to have been examined on articles. others, men and women, of whom nothing particular is recorded but that they had been taken only two or three days before they were sentenced:* from which it may perhaps be conjectured that they were not of the number that heard White's sermon at St. Mary's Overy. White's convicts had a shorter time allowed between condemnation and death than the victims of the furious Bonner.† The contribution of the diocese of Norwich to the *Burned in Lewes, Chichester Diocese, June 22, 1557. Rich. Woodman Geo. Stevens Margery Morris Denis Burgess W. Mainard Alex. Hosman, his servant Thomasina Wood Mainard's maid Ashdon's Wife Grove's Wife "Of the which number the eight last were apprehended (as is said) either the same day, or the second or third day before: and so with the said Woodman and Stevens were together committed to the fire, in which space no writ could come down from London to the justices for their burning." Fox, 694. By "as is said" he means not to indicate doubt or mere rumour, but simply as is aforesaid: that he had said the same thing a sentence before. With regard to Chichester diocese it may be remarked that Fox in another place of his work has a list of seventeen martyrs, which is like no other list in him. It seems to have been furnished to him, and inserted by him without further thought (p. 717): for most of the persons in it had been already despatched by him, and as the reader will see from the italics by me in two cases the wives had been given for the husbands who figure now. John Foreman John Warner of Berne Christian Groves or Grover (wife before) Thos. Athothe, priest Thos. Avington Dennis Burgiss John Milles of Hellingleigh Nic. Holden of Withiam John Hart John Oseward Thos. Dungate Jn. Ashton (wife before) Of the other four, two may be the anonymous martyrs whose names Fox could not formerly recover and of two, Athothe and Milles, the sentences, pronounced by Bishop Day, are in the Harleian Library, MSS. vol. 421, pp. 105, 107. They must have been long in prison. martyrs of the year was not inconsiderable. A man and a woman were burned there in July: the man, among other deeds had demanded of a congregation coming out of church after service where he might go to have the Communion: the woman, who had formerly recanted, screamed when she saw the fire come, but endured it without a murmur. In August a man was burned there, Crashfield, who has left a brief narrative of his examinations in September a man and a woman, at Laxfield he, she at Norwich: a man in November at Bury. Some touching incidents are told of their last sufferings: a bystander, who expressed his horror at the agonies of one of them, was put in the stocks and whipped round the market with a dog-whip. Their troubles began at the hands of laymen and justices. They all seem to have been examined on the same articles, three only in number, concerning the ceremonies of the church, the papal supremacy, and the Sacrament: on which the answers of Spurdance might perhaps be thought more notable than of the rest. None of them seem to have been heretics.* In Rochester two, a man, a woman, were burned together. In Lichfield a gentlewoman, Mistress Joyce Lewes, illustrated in her history the indifference of a husband who preferred to surrender her rather than forfeit the bail in which he stood for her appearance: the gentleness of a sheriff who kept her in prison after her condemnation nearly his whole year rather than put her to death: the laxity of the succeeding sheriff, who * Burned in the Diocese of Norwich, 1557. Simon Miller, July 13 at Norwich, Fox, 696. Rich. Crashfield, Aug. 5 at Norwich, Fox, 702. both presided at her burning and joined in her prayers, allowed her friends to be with her, and sent for drink for her from his own house on the road: the benevolence of the under-sheriff, who "provided such stuff, by the which she was suddenly despatched out of this miserable world" without a struggle: the geniality of the crowd, many women, who heartily pledged the martyr in that drink which was provided.* Such scenes were not without vulgarity: such officials were the sort that cost the Council so much trouble: and some of these were afterwards severely questioned for their conduct. But it was better than cruelty. In the diocese of Peterborough, in Northampton, in September, a shoemaker was burned, to whom a pardon was offered at the stake. In the see and city of Bristol in May were two men burned after examination before Dalby the Chancellor : and in August another man. To this time perhaps is to be assigned the cruel death of Richard Sewell, one of two brothers, the other of whom relented and heard Mass who in the town of Bedale in Yorkshire, but under a commission of the Bishop of Chester, and on examination by Dakin the Chancellor of Chester, was brought to the fire. Tar-barrels were hung round him, gunpowder, light pieces of wood, a little straw: fed on such matter a flame ran up and seized him first by the head: a cry for Christ's mercy broke from him thrice.† * Parsons condenses Fox in quoting him here, so as to make the matter seem worse than it does in Fox himself; and then exclaims, "With this drunkenness both in spirit and in body went these miserable people to their end." Three Conversions, Part iii. p. 161. + Burned in Rochester. A man named Friar and a woman. Aug. 5, Fox, 703. The The reader, offended by so many tragical conflagrations, would turn with disgust from the full minutes of the laborious pageants with which superstition disseized the inhabitants of the tombs: but a rapid glance cast upon the raising and burning of Bucer and Fagius, and the exposition on a dunghill of the reliques of Peter Martyr's wife, in the visitation of the Universities which fell at the beginning of the year, will show in the disturbance of the dead the agitation of the living: which is the most of that which history ever seeks.* cadaverous exploit belongs to Pole. His commissioners, armed with no authority but his commission, having among them his familiar the haughty Ormaneto, were received at Cambridge by the resident officers with reluctant submission and occasional protestations. The effort of the Vicechancellor Perne to maintain a position by censing the Visitors at the outset in the gatehouse of Trinity, after aspersing them with holy water, was commendable though Perne was an inconsistent man. The courage of Brassy, head of King's College, in saving his privileges at every turn drew on him again and again rebukes which he bore full well. The comparison of Pole with Moses, in the oration of the public orator Stokes, was worthy of Pole. The device by which the Visitors caused the exhumation to be made in answer to a petition of the University, not from their own motion, was ingenious. The argument of Scot, the head of * Exhumation seems a horrible outrage: but it must be remembered that the Calvinists were equally ready to do it as the Papists or the Romanensians were. We have seen an instance at Basle. See Vol. III. 472 of this work. |