Chapter XVIII

The Reformation. Edward VI. (1547-1553).

The oppressive tyranny of Henry VIII. had ceased, and the child who succeeded him was destined to reign without attaining manhood. The ambitions and animosities of the great, as well as the sincere passions and intrigues of the theologians were about to occupy the scene, to divide and agitate all minds; but the work which was to make England Protestant and free had begun, and was continuing silently, and in obscurity; Henry VIII. had thought to regulate the religious movement in England as he had shaken off the supremacy of the Pope, but all his despotism could not arrest the effects of the new convictions, powerful especially among the lower clergy and the inhabitants of the towns. It was there that the Reformation numbered every day more numerous and more zealous adherents; it was there that the changes soon brought about by Cranmer in the organization of the Church met with the most ardent sympathy, and it was there that the persecution set on foot by the fanatic zeal of Queen Mary was to find the firmest resistance and the most heroic martyrs. Henry VIII. had accomplished the royal reform in order to satisfy his passions and his personal animosities; the English people, under the reign of his son, accomplished noiselessly and without proclamation a reform in a far different way, solid and profound. {269} The country districts were still Catholic and long remained so; a portion of the bishops and the high clergy refused to admit the new doctrines, but the religious reform progressed none the less; it was no longer in the power of man to arrest the work begun in the heart and conscience of a mass of people as obscure as they were sincere. The young king, moreover, never had a desire to do so. During the short reign of Edward VI., through the weaknesses and vacillations natural to childhood, the prince was seen to pass from one to the other of the great noblemen who were contending together for power; never did he change in opinion or in religious tendency, and his influence always weighed on the side of the Reformation. Edward VI. was destined for a long while yet, to remain the most Protestant of English sovereigns.

Henry VIII. had scarcely been dead four days, his obsequies had not yet been celebrated, and already all that he had wished and ordained for the government of England during the minority of his son was destroyed. Formerly the House of Lords possessed the privilege of designating the regent and the members of the council of regency; Parliament had granted this power to the king by the Act which had allowed him to dispose at his pleasure of the succession to the throne. Henry had accordingly made use of this right in designating in his will sixteen persons to constitute the privy council, and to be entrusted with the executive power. A second commission of twelve members was to be consulted in grave cases; the two bodies united composed the council of regency. {270} Among the more important members of the privy council were the names of Cranmer, Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord Hertford, Lord Lisle; but the Earl of Hertford did not limit his ambition to his seat in a council. He had taken his steps and secured partisans among the testamentary executors of the king; at the first meeting, he contrived to accomplish his project. It was proposed to select a president. Wriothesley violently opposed this, saying that the will placed all the councillors in the same rank; he counted, no doubt, upon taking possession of the principal part of the power; he found himself alone upon his side, and finally gave way. When the Lords reassembled, on the 1st of February, the young king heard the list of the members of the two councils read, Wriothesley added that the executors had resolved to place at their head the Earl of Hertford as Protector of the kingdom and governor of the royal person; on condition, however, that he would take no steps in any matter without the assent of a majority of the members of the council. All the peers spiritual and temporal applauded this amendment and the last wishes of Henry VIII. were violated with no more ado.

Some intentions were attributed to the late king, however, which met with more respect; a clause of the will commanded the executors to accomplish all the promises which he might have made; it was even asserted that he had repeated this injunction to those who surrounded his deathbed. {271} The royal promises might be of great extent and entail grave consequences; inquiries were promptly made; according to the statement of Sir William Paget secretary of state, Sir Anthony Denny and Sir Fulke Herbert, gentlemen of the bedchamber, to whom the king had spoken on the subject, it was a question of a promotion to the peerage and a distribution of legacies in money among the testamentary executors. Lord Hertford was to be made Duke of Somerset; the Earl of Essex to become Marquis of Northampton; Lord Lisle, Earl of Warwick; Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of Lord Hertford, Baron Seymour and Lord High Admiral; all were to receive from the ecclesiastical property still at the disposition of the crown, revenues proportioned to their new dignities. The servants of the new king rewarded themselves in advance, and with their own hands, for the services which they were to render him. Public opinion was shocked at this; people went as far as to call in question the alleged intentions of the late king as they had been reported by Sir John Paget. The elevation of Somerset was received with great joy among the Protestants, to whom he was favourable; the Catholics counted upon Wriothesley, who had become Lord Southampton, but he committed the imprudence of charging four delegates, under the great seal, to attend in his absence to the affairs of the chancellorship, without having previously consulted his colleagues; this act was declared illegal, and the omission being grave enough to deprive the chancellor of his office and his seat in the privy council, he gave in his resignation and was kept a prisoner in his house, until the council had decided the amount of the fine which he was to pay. {272} Henceforth Somerset found himself without a rival; none protested when he caused all the executive powers to be conferred upon himself, abolishing the two councils, and confounding all the testamentary executors under the common title of councillors of the king. Matters were arranged; an amnesty had been proclaimed for all state offenders, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk and Cardinal Pole, and the Protector was preparing to sign the treaty of alliance between France and England, renewed in London on the occasion of the accession of Edward VI., when he learnt the death of Francis I. That monarch had been painfully affected by the decease of the King of England; he was convinced, it was said, that he would survive him a short time. In effect, he had died at Rambouillet, on the 31st of March; the Protestant interests received a fatal blow in Germany and in Scotland; in Germany, because the Emperor Charles V., delivered of his rival, was becoming master of the country; in Scotland, because the Guises, the brothers of the dowager queen, were all-powerful with the new King of France, and because the latter immediately concluded a close alliance with the Earl of Arran, now placed at the head of the Catholic party. At the same time, Henry II. refused to sign the treaty of London, and sent ships to Scotland to assist the regent in the siege of the Castle of St. Andrew, which the assassins of Cardinal Beaton had contrived to retain. The latter had demanded help in England, promising to support the marriage of the little Queen Mary with the young King of England; but before the Protector had been able to assemble his forces, the castle had been captured, razed to the ground, and all its defenders conveyed to France. {273} Five weeks elapsed before the English troops were able to cross the frontier. It was on the 10th of September that the two armies met, not far from Musselburgh. Arran was there encamped behind the river Esk, with considerable forces; nearly all the great Scottish noblemen had joined him, notwithstanding party rivalries. The first challenge which the English received was that of Lord Huntley, who proposed to the Protector to fight him man to man, or with the assistance of ten knights on each side, after the fashion of Horatii and Curiatii. Somerset smiled. "Tell your master," he replied to the herald, "that it is a want of judgment on his part to make such a proposal to me, who, by the grace of God, am entrusted with so precious a jewel as the person of a king and the protection of his kingdom." Warwick wished to accept the challenge of Huntley, but the duke did not permit it. "Let them come to us upon the field of battle," he said, "and they shall have blows enough."

The Scots, eager to come to close quarters, committed the imprudence of quitting the advantageous position which they occupied, to advance and meet the enemy. The combat began by a charge of Scottish cavalry, taken in flank as they were crossing the bridge of the Esk, by a broadside from the English vessels drawn up along the coast. The English had found time to take possession of the hill upon which was situated St. Michael's church; the fray soon became general. The English wavered at first before the long lances of the Scots; but the ardour of the latter led them so far forward in the pursuit that, in reforming, they found themselves involved in the hostile ranks; the arrows of the English archers who were drawn up on an eminence, thinned the ranks of the Scottish men-at-arms; the firing from the vessels was incessant; the knights at length moved and took to flight. {274} The pursuit was vigorous and the massacre horrible; quarter was given only to the great noblemen capable of paying a heavy ransom; the Esk rolled down a shoal of corpses; eight thousand Scots, it is said, remained upon the battle-field of Pinkey, as it was called, from the name of a neighbouring mansion belonging to the Douglases. The Earl of Huntley, Lord Yester, Lord Wemyss, and several other persons of distinction were made prisoners.

For four days the victors continued their work of pillage at Leith and in the environs. People expected to see them march upon Edinburgh, but Somerset suddenly ordered a retreat, without any one being able to explain, in Scotland, this unexpected deliverance. Grave interests recalled him to the court of the young king.

Lord Seymour, brother of the Protector, and Lord High Admiral of England, was as ambitious as his elder brother, and more courageous and enterprising; he had been deeply offended by the unequal partition of the power, and during the absence of Somerset he had laboured to establish his influence with the little king. He married, in the month of June, 1547, Catherine Parr, the widow of the king, who had always loved him, it was said, notwithstanding the two other unions which she had contracted, and finding himself thus brought nearer to the person of the king, who often saw his step-mother, and being enriched by the fortune which Catherine had amassed as queen of England, he took care to win the good graces of Edward VI. by supplying him with the funds which he wanted for pocket-money and charities, liberalities which the Protector did not encourage.

[Image] Death Of Anne Askew.

{275}

Seymour had also gained the favour of the household of the king, by distributing many gifts among them. In the month of November, 1547, the admiral persuaded the young king to address a letter to Parliament, demanding that the office of guardian of the royal person should be conferred upon his uncle, Lord Seymour. The project became known and steps were taken; the admiral was threatened with the Tower, and a reconciliation was effected between the two brothers; Seymour shortly afterwards received a fresh dotation.

The ambition of the admiral could not be satisfied with money; Catherine Parr had recently died in childbed, and the rumour was circulated that she had been poisoned. Her husband had already turned his views higher; he was paying his addresses to the Princess Elizabeth, whose guardian he had completely gained over; he did not aspire to a secret marriage, which, according to the will of Henry VIII., would have impaired the right of succession, but he patronized all the members of the council, endeavouring to arouse among them sufficient disaffection to secure the approval of his union with the princess. The Protector resolved to rid himself of so dangerous a rival. The opportunity was propitious; Sharington, the director of the mint at Bristol, was accused of having enriched himself by means of numerous malversations. {276} The admiral defended him vigorously, but Sharington, to save his life, suddenly betrayed his advocate; he stated that he had promised to coin money for Lord Seymour, and that the latter could count upon an army of ten thousand men, with whom he hoped to change the aspect of the State. Less than this was needed to send the Lord High Admiral to the Tower. His courage was not cast down, and he demanded to be confronted with his accusers. Somerset had been brought up in the school of Henry VIII.; he knew how to use bills of attainder: the little king, terrified, had abandoned his uncle Seymour; when the House of Commons made some opposition, demanding that the accused should be heard, a royal message silenced the objectors, and the bill was voted without further difficulty; Lord Seymour was executed on the 20th of March, 1549, protesting his innocence to the last. Two letters had been seized, it was said, written from the Tower to the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to incite them to jealousy towards their brother. The Protector had given to the young king a terrible example of cold barbarity, by being the first to sign the death-warrant of his brother.

The war continued in Scotland, with alternations of successes and reverses, but its principal aim, the marriage of King Edward VI. with the little queen, had been thwarted by Henry II., king of France, who destined her for the Dauphin. Parliament even consented to send the child to France, there to receive her education in safety. Mary of Guise remained in Scotland; but the little queen, Mary Stuart, arrived at Brest in French vessels, and was conducted to St. Germain-en-Laye, to be solemnly betrothed to the Dauphin. {277} The warfare continued upon the frontiers, but the thoughts of the government were elsewhere; a great popular insurrection, which had taken its rise in the south, had gained the eastern counties; a portion of England was in flames. Various causes had contributed towards the insurrection; the alteration of the currency under the reign of Henry VIII. had brought about an excessive rise in the nominal price of commodities, but labour was not remunerated in proportion; workmen were, on the contrary, less employed and less paid than in the past. A great quantity of arable land had been transformed into pasture-ground, in consequence of a considerable increase in the price of wools. The monasteries no longer took in intelligent peasants to make monks of them; the monastic charities no longer relieved the misery of the poor; the vast spaces belonging to the parishes, where the villagers were wont to let their cattle graze, had been, by degrees, swallowed up by the neighbouring proprietors, who had enclosed all the waste lands, thus depriving the poor, at a time of great distress, of a resource to which they were accustomed. Vagrancy had increased in such a manner, that in the first year of the reign of Edward VI. a barbarous law had been voted by Parliament, delivering up to the first comer, in the capacity of a slave, any individual without a fixed residence, sojourning for three days in any place. Being declared a vagabond, he was to be branded upon the chest with a red-hot iron; his master had the right to compel him to work by every possible punishment; he could chain him up, let him out to hire, or sell him; a veritable slave-market being thus suddenly instituted for a few years in that free England, which, three centuries later, was to be the first to put its hand to work to destroy slavery in the whole world. {278} These rigours did not suffice; the vagabonds were not the only unhappy or exasperated persons; the religious feelings of the Catholic populations were galled by the rapid progress of the Reformation; the insurrection was so grave that the Protector, always greedy of popularity, vainly endeavoured to appease it by a hurried measure, forbidding the enclosure of all waste lands accessable to the peasants, and ordering that they should everywhere be restored to their former uses. This concession only served to put arms in the hands of the peasantry, some to beat down the fences, others to defend them; the government was everywhere obliged to send troops. But for the auxiliaries raised in Italy, Spain, and Germany, for the war with Scotland, the Protector might have found himself much embarrassed.

The demands of the insurgents and the aim of the insurrection were of a very different nature, according to the various parts of the country in which they were found. The south almost everywhere claimed the re-establishment of the old religion; the men of Devonshire, at the head of whom marched Humphrey Arundel, were secretly urged by the priests; they laid siege to Exeter, and Lord Russell, badly provided with men and supplies, could not effectually succour the town. The proclamations of the young king in vain succeeded each other in answer to the inquisitions of the insurgents. {279} Exeter was closely pressed for five weeks, and famine was already in the city, when Lord Russell, having received troops and money, at length defeated the rebels and caused the siege to be raised; the insurrection was drowned in blood, and the soldiers ravaged the country. Arundel and some of the chiefs were taken to London, where they were executed.

The insurrection in Norfolk had a more political character; it had begun in like manner by the question of the enclosures; a tanner of Norwich, named Ket, had placed himself at the head of the insurgents, and had established his camp upon a little elevation called Moushold Hill, at the gates of Norwich. There, surrounded by malcontents from the environs, to the number of twenty thousand, it is said, he declaimed against the oppression of the commoners by the nobles, and against the new religious service, asserting that he had only taken arms with the object of placing around the king honest councillors, favourable to the wishes of the people. A first attack upon the rebels, directed by the Marquis of Northampton, completely failed; they had been allowed time to assemble: they pillaged at their ease in the environs; then they gathered together again under the _Reformation Tree_, as they called an oak in the centre of their camp, bringing with them the noblemen whom they had made prisoners. It was only on the 25th of August, when the disorder had already lasted for nearly two months, that the Earl of Warwick, detained several days in Norwich for want of men and supplies, was able, on the arrival of some reinforcements, to attack the camp of Ket. The rebels were completely defeated, and the massacre was terrible. {280} Ket and his brother, being sent to London, to be tried, were hanged, one from the belfry of Wymondham, the other in the citadel of Norwich, and nine of the principal leaders were suspended from the nine branches of the _Reformation Tree_. The revolt in Norfolk was at an end, and the insurrection which manifested itself shortly afterwards in Yorkshire having been stifled, tranquillity was restored in the country; it was not so at the court.

The checks which the policy as well as the arms of England had suffered in Scotland, the progress of King Henry II. in all the territory surrounding Calais and Boulogne, the proposals of Somerset to the Emperor to deliver the latter town to him, had slowly undermined the influence of the Protector, although he still remained popular with the lower classes, who called him the _good duke_; but the nobility were discontented, incensed at the arrogant tone of the Duke of "Somerset by the grace of God," as he styled himself. Indignation was aroused at the palace which he had raised in the Strand, at the cost of a church and three episcopal dwellings, and public opinion began to award him a rival, who, owing to the animosity of the former chancellor, Wriothesley, had for a long time been destined to accomplish the ruin of his enemy. Lord Warwick, equally ambitious, equally vain, but more bold and enterprising than Somerset, had already acquired a great military reputation, which was increased by his recent services in Norfolk. The two rivals had nearly come to blows in the month of October, 1549. Twenty members of the council joined Warwick in London, and the Protector, who remained at Hampton Court with the young king, began to assemble forces.

[Image] Edward VI. Writing His Journal.

{281}

Edward VI. has related in his journal the negotiations between the Protector and the malcontents, the alternations of resolution and weakness of Somerset, the decision of the noblemen congregated around Warwick. The overtures of the Protector, though more and more moderate, were all rejected; the trouble of answering him was no longer taken, when he at length convoked the counsel at Windsor. All the nobility repaired thither, and decreed without hesitation the arrest of Somerset; on the 14th of October he was conducted to the Tower, accused of high treason, and the young king was taken back to Hampton Court. Warwick was henceforth master. Southampton had in vain hoped to share the power with him; he was not even re-established in the office of chancellor, and the earl, who had hitherto appeared to be in favour of the Roman Catholic party, abandoned it completely to turn towards the Reformers. The wind blew from this quarter, and the principles of Warwick never impeded in anything the pursuit of his interests.

The Duke of Somerset was, at first, treated gently; he had shrunk from no humiliation in order to secure the mercy of the king, and had confessed all that had been desired, upon his knees, before the council. Deprived of all his offices, and smitten with a heavy fine, he appeared to accept his downfall meekly, remaining at court and behaving so modestly that he was again admitted into the privy council. The eldest son of Warwick, Lord Lisle, even married, on the 3rd of June, 1550, Lady Anne Seymour, the daughter of the Duke of Somerset. {282} But secret intrigues increased every day; notwithstanding solemn reconciliations, the hostility of the two rivals remained unaltered. Warwick had taken the precaution of causing himself to be nominated Warden of the Scottish frontiers, in order to cut off the retreat towards the north of the Duke of Somerset, and the latter contemplated raising a civil war; he was at the same time ambitious of equalling him in rank, and caused himself to be styled the Duke of Northumberland; his friend, the Marquis of Dorset, became the Duke of Suffolk, and a few days after this promotion it suddenly became known that the Duke of Somerset had been arrested and conducted to the Tower, as guilty of conspiracy and high treason; the duchess was also arrested as well as a certain number of the friends of the duke.

The charges against Somerset were grave and numerous; he had plotted, it was said, the assassination of the principal noblemen of the council, Northumberland, Northampton, Pembroke, and others; a revolt was at the same time to be fomented in London, and the duke was to take possession of the person of the king. This time the prisoner was publicly conducted to Westminster Hall, to be tried by his peers, that is to say, by the councillors of the king, whom he was accused of having intended to assassinate; but he was not confronted with the witnesses against him. The prosecutors contented themselves with reading their depositions. He confessed the scheme of assassination with regard to his powerful enemies, but he had abandoned it, he said, and he absolutely denied any intention of rebellion or insurrection. He was accordingly acquitted upon the count of treason, but the count of felony was proved, and this sufficed to ruin him. {283} The people, who thronged in the hall and the streets, did not understand the sentence; the axe, which had been borne before him as long as he was accused of high treason, had disappeared from the retinue; they cried out that the _good duke_ had been acquitted, and the favour of the population of London did not incline Northumberland to show mercy. On the 22nd of January, 1552, six weeks after his condemnation, less than five years after the day on which he had taken possession of the supreme power, the former Protector of England was conducted to that scaffold so often bathed in the most illustrious blood. He died with more resolution than he had shown during his life; his young nephew, convinced, it is said, of his crime, having made no effort to show mercy. Somerset, no doubt, called to mind on Tower Hill the brother whom he formerly condemned to the same fate. Four of his friends were executed in like manner, protesting their innocence. "Every time the Duke of Northumberland places his head upon his pillow, he will find it wet with our blood," exclaimed Sir Ralph Vane, addressing the people. They listened in silence, without much emotion; the nation was growing accustomed to see the high nobility fall beneath the axe of the executioner instead of perishing, as formerly, bravely, sword in hand, upon the field of battle.

Boulogne had been definitively restored to France by a treaty of peace in which Scotland was included; the seal of the new alliance was to be the marriage of Edward VI.; but the health of the young monarch had been declining for some months past, and the ambitious Northumberland had already entered upon the manœuvres which were destined to bring about his ruin. {284} He had married his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and grand-daughter, by her mother's side, of Mary, formerly Queen of France, and sister of Henry VIII.; he thus united his family to the royal blood, while he caused his other children to contract powerful alliances. His aim was no other than to exclude from the succession to the throne the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who had never been reinstated in their birthright, for the benefit of the Duchess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Jane Grey, who was disposed to renounce her rights in favour of her eldest daughter. The duke counted upon being supported in his undertaking by the Protestant party, uneasy, with just cause, at the probable accession to the throne of Princess Mary. He urged the same argument upon the young King Edward: it was, in truth, the only one which could operate upon him. The dying youth had, naturally, never played a political part; he even appears not to have taken much interest in public life, but he was sincerely pious and attached to the Protestant faith. The work of the Reformation had been the great preoccupation of a mind of a precocious gravity, and he had it in heart to protect the new religion after his death; he knew himself to be in most precarious health, and he consented without difficulty to the proposals which Northumberland made to him upon this subject. Perhaps he thought, moreover, that he had the right of using the same privilege as his father had claimed of designating his successor to the throne. {285} The poor lad did not perceive into what new troubles and dangers he was about to plunge his kingdom by exposing it once more to the misfortunes of a contested succession and the rivalries of a powerful nobility.

Three social forces, meanwhile, had made immense progress in England--regard for public order, the idea of the royal legitimacy, and the spirit of the Reformation. This last power which Northumberland thought to enroll in his service, had taught men to govern themselves, to judge their own affairs freely and rationally, and all the terrors of an ardently Roman Catholic reign were unable to turn them aside from the path of justice. United, the three motives frustrated the ambitious designs,--the plots of the great nobles. Subsequently, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the same influences were destined to place Protestantism in England on a settled basis. The reformed faith had made rapid strides since the death of Henry VIII. The silent struggle between the progressive and the retrogressive parties had continued; Cranmer and Gardiner had continued to confront each other, but Cranmer now had the upper hand. Gardiner had at first been placed by Henry VIII. in the list of the privy council, then his name had been effaced from it from motives of prudence; the Archbishop of Canterbury had all the members of the council at his disposal, with the exception of the Chancellor Wriothesley and the Bishop of Durham, Tunstall. It has been seen how Wriothesley was driven from power. Tunstall was relegated to his diocese. Cranmer, therefore, found the coast clear, but he was determined to proceed with more moderation, for fear of arousing a fresh _pilgrimage of grace;_ he did not completely succeed in averting the discontent which his innovations caused among the populations remaining Catholic.

{286}

The first care of the archbishop was to establish in each diocese _royal visitors_, half lay, half ecclesiastical. Wherever they presented themselves, their authority was supreme; they established in all churches the use of a selection of homilies intended to be read every week, and composed, in great part, by Cranmer; none could preach without the authorization of the Protector or the Metropolitan. This prudent prohibition, intended to favour the extension of the new doctrines, did not escape attention; Gardiner immediately protested against the homilies and the paraphrase of the New Testament by Erasmus, introduced into the Church service in each parish. The reactionary bishop demanded that neither the doctrine nor the practice established by the late king should be interfered with until the majority of the young Edward VI. The intervention of Gardiner was not successful; he was arrested and held in prison during the continuance of the Parliamentary session.

The property which the religious communities, churches and colleges, yet possessed, had been placed at the disposal of the king by Parliament, as a trust-fund for the endowment of schools and livings. Cranmer opposed this fresh spoliation without success, foreseeing that it would turn to the profit of the courtiers; but the measures voted by the two Houses were of a consoling nature; the law against the Lollards, the prohibition against reading the Scriptures and the statutes of the six articles of faith were revoked; marriage was allowed to the clergy; communion of two kinds was granted to the faithful, and soon the order was given for celebrating the service in the English language, without any modification of the mass being yet made in the text itself.

[Image] The Corpse Passed Under Her Windows.

{287}

Such were the changes already accomplished a year after the death of Henry VIII. The royal power had at the same time extended itself and gathered strength; the election of the bishops had been withdrawn from the deans and chapters, and made to depend solely upon the king, and it was by a simple royal decree that the bishops were invited to suppress in their dioceses certain Catholic observances, while taking care to destroy all images that might be extant. In the month of January, 1549, appeared the great work which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been preparing for some time, the catechism and the prayer book of the Church of England. This latter production, skilfully composed by a commission of bishops and theologians, had for a basis the Catholic missals and breviaries which had been both deprived of all that might clash with the Protestant faith, and carefully adapted to the convictions and sentiments of the Catholics. It was a work of conciliation effected with skill and with the most praiseworthy intentions; but the archbishop did not deceive himself regarding the repugnance which it encountered among the population, and he took care to surround it with an efficatious protection; from Whitsuntide, the use of any other book was prohibited, for Divine service, under severe penalties. The insurrections which shortly afterwards supervened, proved that Cranmer had not been mistaken; the new service was especially the object of the complaints of the rebels of Devonshire. {288} Cranmer soon perceived that it was necessary to attack those prelates who were hostile to the innovations; they were numerous, but the majority were timid and contented themselves with proceeding slowly to adopt the reforms ordained by government; some few were bolder; it was towards these that the efforts of Cranmer were directed.

For two years past already, Gardiner had been confined in the Tower, in consequence of a sermon declared to be seditious, and had not been brought to trial. The Bishop of London, Bonner, reprimanded for his want of zeal, was commissioned by the council to preach at St. Paul's Cross; his text had been chosen, and all the divisions of his discourse settled beforehand, when he appeared before the crowd; he was to overwhelm with ecclesiastical thunders the rebels of Devonshire and Norfolk, to refer to the king and his religious authority, and to point out that, the rights and power of the sovereign not depending upon his age, King Edward VI. was as competent to decide questions of faith as he could be in later years. Bonner completely omitted this last point of the sermon, and was immediately summoned before the council. He excused himself upon the ground of the weakness of his memory, affirmed that he had lost his notes, declaring at the same time that he was prosecuted not for a trifling act of forgetfulness, but because he had firmly maintained the Roman Catholic doctrine of the real presence. Bonner was condemned, deprived of his see and sent to prison. {289} Ridley, bishop of Rochester, was summoned to London in his place; but the bishopric was despoiled of a portion of its possessions, as well as those which soon became vacant by successive deprivations. The court profited by the conscientious obstinacy of the bishops.

Gardiner was more skilful than Bonner, and quite as resolute; he embarrassed his enemies by his self-possession and his intellectual resources, and he refused to sign the formula of submission which was presented to him, so long as he should continue to be unjustly detained. He accumulated so many evidences and called so many witnesses to prove the plot that had long been hatching against him, that Cranmer cut short the proceedings. Gardiner was deprived of his episcopal see, and, like Bonner, he was detained in prison, as well as two other prelates Heath and Day, Bishops of Worcester and Chichester. It was at this period that the great Scottish reformer, John Knox, being in London, preached before the king with so much talent and vigour, that the primate was instrumental in offering him the bishopric of Rochester, which had become vacant by the translation of Poynet to Winchester, where he replaced Gardiner. Knox declined, but the proposal shows upon what path the Church of England, formerly so violent against the friends and partisans of Knox had entered. Some ardent and reforming prelates, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, replaced the revoked bishops; the latter was so profoundly imbued with Calvinistic principles, that much difficulty was experienced in inducing him to accept the consecration of the primate, and to clothe him in the sacerdotal ornaments.

{290}

It was not enough to establish effectually the new system, or to secure convinced and faithful ministers; it was necessary also to firmly establish its doctrines. Towards the end of the year 1551, the prelates had finished drawing up the articles of the national faith; forty-two propositions contained the same principles as the thirty-nine articles subsequently voted under Queen Elizabeth, which still remain the rule of faith of the Church of England. In the main, and under different forms, they come very near to the doctrines of the reformation on the Continent, inclining, sometimes towards Calvinism, sometimes towards Lutheranism, but always resting firmly upon the Bible.

The resource of removing the bishops, had always been open to the government when it had been found impossible to triumph over their resistance, but it was more difficult to compel the Princess Mary to practice the new worship. She had been warned, by an order of the council on the occasion of the institution of the prayer book, that the celebration of the mass would no longer be permitted even in her private chapel; and for two years the intercession of the Emperor in her favour remained ineffectual; the chaplains of the princess were arrested, she was at length summoned before the council, and the young king himself vainly endeavoured to convince her. The Emperor at length declared that he would wage war with England, rather than suffer his relative to be constrained in her conscience; Cranmer counselled the young king to temporise; but Edward VI. wept, lamented the obstinacy of his sister and the obligation which he was under of allowing mass to exist in any place in his kingdom. {291} The attempts were renewed with Mary several times; she remained inflexible in her resolution. "If the chaplains cannot repeat mass, I shall not hear it," she said; "but the new service shall not be established in my house; if it were introduced there by force, I would leave the place." "Matters remained thus," says Burnet, "and I think that Lady Mary continued to have her priests and to have masses said, so secretly that it could not be complained of."

In truth, and notwithstanding the removal of the bishops and some deplorable executions of poor heretics who attacked the very foundations of Christianity, persecution was at a standstill under the reign of Edward VI. In the new stage of the Reformation, no Catholic suffered seriously for his attachment to his faith.

The obstinacy of the Princess Mary had left a profound impression upon the mind of the young king, and thus contributed, no doubt, to the effect of the insinuations of Northumberland in favour of a Protestant succession. Edward did not wish, however, to compromise any of his councillors, and he drew up with his own hand the project for a law which was to regulate the succession to the throne; he then caused the judges to be summoned, with the attorney and solicitor-general, to commission them to prepare the act. They hesitated; the king peremptorily commanded them to obey, and only reluctantly granted them time to examine the precedents, in order to satisfy the desires of his Majesty.

{292}

When these officers returned they were still undecided, or rather they had convinced themselves that the law required of them by the sovereign would involve an act of treason both on the side of the framers of the act and on that of the council. The king insisted; the Duke of Northumberland, who was present, flew into a passion; the lords of the council, to whom the judges expounded their scruples, had been won over by the intrigues of the duke. Cranmer, who had at first been opposed to the proceedings, yielded to the solicitations of the young monarch; the measure was resolved upon, and the act, prepared by the lawyers, was sanctioned by the great seal as well as by the signatures of all the members of the council. Northumberland had made an attempt to take possession of the person of Mary; but she had been warned in time, and far from responding to the summons in the name of the king, her brother, she retired precipitately to her castle of Kenninghall, in Norfolk. It was there that she soon learnt the news of the death of Edward VI., who expired at Greenwich on the 6th of July, 1553, at the age of fifteen years and a half. The time had come for a trial of the new basis upon which Cranmer had sought to found the religion of the kingdom. The question whether England was to be Catholic or Protestant was about to be decided.

{293}