you, as men of honesty and zeal for the faith, to examine the suspected, the detected, the denounced, the accused, in any way that you will, summarily, de plano, without form of trial and give them up to the secular arm, if the badness of the case so require: but, Collins, thy former commission remains unimpaired by this."* And if this commission lacked Thornden, it was because Thornden was no more. The commissioners went to work, and in three months had examined, found incorrigible, and condemned of heretical pravity five persons, three men and two women: whom Pole therefore in the month of July, by letter significatory to the Queen, delivered to the secular arm. These five persons were kept in prison to November, when they were burned alive in Canterbury, what time Pole lay on his deathbed, a week before his death. According to their own unselfish prayer, they were the last martyrs of the long series of the persecution of Mary's reign. The stupid. ferocity of Harpsfield, to whom he ascribes their cruel doom, has been put in contrast not unjustly by the historian of martyrs with the leniency of Bonner, who kept some prisoners, whom he had ready for the fire, until the expected end of the terror and the reign, and then let them go. The voice of history has acquitted * Wilkins, iv. 173: Strype, vi. 120. The date is March 28. + Thornden died in 1557. Card. Poli significatio regiæ Majestati contra quosdam hereticos. July. Wilkins, iv. 174. See also Strype, vi. 123. § Burned alive in Canterbury, Nov. 10, 1558. John Cornford of Wrotham Christ. Brown of Maidstone Alice South of Beddenden 7 "The tyranny of this Archdeacon seemeth to exceed the cruelty of Bonner, who notwithstanding he had certain the same time under his custody yet he was not so importune in haling them to the fire: as appear eth by father Lining and his wife and divers other, who being the same time under the custody and danger of Bonner, were delivered by the death of Queen Mary, and remain yet some of them alive." Fox, iii. 751. Pole of their death, on the account that it is improbable that he could have known of it. But history has neglected to notify that it was he who gave them over to death four months before.* If Pole thought, as it has been ungenerously supposed, to revive his credit at Rome by showing this vigour against heretics, he deceived himself: it made no impression, even if it were known: and the contest, such as it was, between him and the Pope went on. In the first part of March the Queen went to Greenwich to pass the Easter he followed her: and there composed a new protestation against a new and grievous blow that he had received. For his defacing adversary had hit him in Priuli, the dearest of his friends, his intimate of twenty years, who was even then at his side: calling Priuli a heretic, procuring Priuli to be denounced before the Inquisition, denying to Priuli the bishopric of Brescia, lately vacant, of which the right of succession belonged to him by the request of the Venetian Senate. A righteous indig * Lingard gives indeed the date of their condemnation, in July, but not that it was Pole who issued it. + "The 10th day of March the Queen's grace removed unto Greenwich in Lent, for to keep Easter." Machyn, 168. "As Parliament is over, though from the nature of the times there can be no lack of vexations, the Queen will be able with greater mental quiet to enjoy the residence and monastery of Greenwich." Pole to Philip, Lond. March 9. Ven. Cal. p. 1466. This attack on Priuli had been going on for some time. In June 1557 Navagero wrote to Venice that a process was being drawn up against him, and that the Pope had said that there were many in Pole's house infected with heresy and talking heresy, but none more than Priuli and Pole's agent (Ormaneto). Ven. Cal. p. 1173. When the same ambassador, in October, urged Priuli's claim to the accesso or next succession to the see of Brescia, the Pope said that the accesso was a diabolical invention: and went on to say more of Pole's disgrace than he often did: "We speak not without certain knowledge: we tell you that such is the fact there are many in the College who know it; we have witnesses: we touch it with the hand he is of that accursed school, and of that apostate household of the Cardinal of England. Why do you suppose we deprived him of the Legation? You will indeed see the end of it: we mean to proceed, nation fired the lips of the former legate, as he exclaimed, "You have taken away, most blessed Father, the rights of my beloved companion! If I were selfish, I should not repine if you persisted in so doing, for I should not then be deprived of one, illustrious by birth, who has resigned his prospects at home to follow me in exile, to share the toils and dangers that I have undergone in the service of the Church of one in whom is nought of avarice or ambition, but every virtue that could grace a bishop. And who art thou, perchance you will say, to dare to plead for a person who has been delated to me as a heretic by the heads of the Inquisition? I am he who ought to hate heretics, if any have hated them; for all the calamities that have befallen me in life have been caused by heretics and schismatics. What is thy testimony worth, perchance it is demanded, who liest under the same imputation of heresy? As much, I answer, as open deeds done for the Church and religion ought to outweigh secret machinations, which they who use against me dare never to promulge. And yet I hear now that they are making what is called a process of the charges against me. I first heard of that when my friend Morone was arrested: and that you gave the signal for it when recalled my Legation. What am I to say? The Pope's word ought to stand highest with me: you said repeatedly that you recalled my Legation among others because of your war with Philip, not from any offence with me, and yet you have restored legations, now that you are at peace with him, to other of his realms, but you and shall use our hands. Cardinal Pole was the master, and Cardinal Morone, whom we have in the Castle, is the disciple, although the disciple is become worse than the master. Priuli is on a par with them, and with Mark Antony Flaminio, who, were he not dead, must have been burned," &c. Ib. 1350. Flaminio, it may be added, was another of Pole's household, against whom the Pope had formerly instituted proceedings, but who died before they were carried out. not to me. You delayed restoring me, when it was asked by the Queen, the prelates, the estates of the realm : and now I hear of this process against me. How am I to interpret the Pope's mind? You told the English ambassador that you acted by Divine inspiration.* Is that the explanation? What then? Is it of Divine inspiration to bid the father slay the son? It was so once in the example of Abraham and Isaac: and indeed I am an Isaac who know better than Isaac the kind of death to which you destine me. He saw the fire and the sword in the hands of his father, he had the wood upon his shoulders, and he asked where might be the victim. I see fire and sword in your hands, I have wood upon my shoulders, but I need not ask where may be the victim. But God will not suffer you to carry out your purpose more than Abraham. I, when, still a lamb, I yielded myself like a victim to the high Pontiff who made me a Cardinal (as I remember, I said, when I lay prostrate at the altar before receiving the ensigns of the cardinalate), never thought to be slain a second time by my father, especially when I had left behind me here a ram caught in the thicket, who was actually immolated, I mean the Bishop of Rochester. Well then, if I being a lamb then, escaped death, am I, now that I am become a ram, to be exposed to death again, and to a death far more bitter? If that be God's will, God season the sacrifice! But no. I fear not for myself, nor Morone, nor Priuli, against all whom you have lifted your hand with a sword in it. I see not an angel sent to stay your hand, as in Isaac, but a host of angels: Philip and Mary, Catholic kings, defenders of the Faith. I see a legion of pious men coming to snatch that sword, the process of accusation, out of your hand." And he pursued his Biblical comparisons See last chapter for that expression, p. 670. still further.* This was the greatest defiance that Pole ever bade the Pope. A fortnight later he wrote to Caraffa, kissing his hand, and humbly begging him to kiss the Pope's feet in his name.† In Greenwich he may have had the mournful office of closing the eyes of his poor rival Friar Peto, who died in April. At this time Pole was engaged, not to his own advantage, in an intercourse of letters with a far more unfortunate victim of the modern papacy, Bartholemeo Carranza of Miranda, his former intimate and adviser, who had left England with King Philip, and had been advanced to the archsee of Toledo. To him he addressed a gratulatory epistle on his promotion: and the archbishop who was destined to expire in the dungeons of the Inquisition was welcomed to his mitre by the archbishop who was destined to die under the censure of the Pope. Carranza made answer in a letter in which he saw fit to exhibit to Pole, in all friendship, the opinion which the world held of his apparent supineness: that he was dispraised in common conversation for non-residence and lingering in the Court: that if the public good were the cause of his courtly life, and kept him out of Canterbury itself, yet in London there were thirteen parishes peculiar to his diocese, which were never visited by him, though the Court oft was held nigh them : that the Pope said of him Pole to the Pope, Greenwich, March 30, 1558. Poli Epist. v. 31. There is a translation of this important letter in the Venetian Calendar, p. 1480: from another original, which seems to differ in one or two points from the one published by Quirinus. In a footnote in that Calendar, which informs the reader that the letter may be found in Quirinus, there is, for once, a mistake. It is said that the letter is dated in Quirinus, London, May 30. It is dated as I have given it but the letter before it is dated London, May 25. Hence the mistake. Pole sent on the same day to the Cardinal of Trani, Scotto, a copy of this letter to the Pope, begging him, in another long letter, to intervene about the Legation. Poli Epist. v. 62. + Pole to Caraffa, Greenwich, April 14. Ven. Cal. 1483. Pole to Carranza, Sept. 1557, Epist. v. 67. |