ESSAY XIII.

THE RIBALDS. No. III.

If it should have appeared to any reader of the preceding Essay, that the Act of Six Articles was almost inoperative, he may be inclined to inquire how that came to pass. The Act did not drop from the clouds, or spring out of the earth, but issued from a government composed of various, and even jarring elements, and in which every enactment relating to this class of subjects, indicated at least the temporary predominance of a certain party-that is, in fact, of a certain and very small number of individuals.

Whatever degree of influence the Commons might have then attained, nobody supposes that the statute was extorted from the Crown by the people.

Neither does anybody think that it was the work of the Reformers; or, in other words, a trick of Cromwell and Cranmer.

But many persons do suppose, and naturally enough if they adopt the statements and suggestions of Fox and his transcribers, that it was the work of the popish party, and that its object was to exterminate the Reformers, root and branch. Take, for instance, the flourish with which Fox begins his account of the martyrdom of Doctor Barnes and his companions, which, as has been already stated, took place immediately after the fall of Cromwell :

"Like as in foreign battles the chief point of victory consisteth in the safety of the general or captain, even so, when the valiant standard-bearer and stay of the church of England, Thomas Cromwell I mean, was made away, pity it is to behold what miserable slaughter of good men and good women ensued thereupon, whereof we have now (Christ willing) to entreat. For Winchester, having now gotten his full purpose, and free swing to exercise his cruelty, wonder it was to see that 'aper Calydonius,' or, as the scripture speaketh, that 'ferus singularis,' what troubles he raised in the Lord's vineyard. And lest, by delays, he might lose the occasion presently offered, he straightways made his first assaults upon Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret and William Jerome, whom in the very same month, within two days after Cromwell's death, he caused to be put to execution."-Vol. v. p. 414.

But if Gardiner and a party with him had such a purpose, and were strong enough to procure a statute which gave them their "full swing," how are we to account for their doing so little with it? If, despite their opponents, they had power to carry the measure, and keep it unrepealed for eight years, surely when the measure was carried they must have had power to make use of it. Surely, if things had really been such as would justify Fox's language, the popish party must have done much-very much-more than he has thought of charging them with.

But there was another-and in the popular view, a distinct-power, which had, I apprehend, the most to do with it. I speak of this power as distinct in the popular view, rather than in reality, because I believe that, if ever two men with as much difference of nature, knowledge, aims, and circumstances, could be said to concur in anything, then were Gardiner and his Royal master of one mind in the business of the Six Articles. At the same time, whatever Gardiner might suggest, or agree to, or do, in the matter, there seems to be no doubt that it was truly and properly the king's own act and deed, performed by his own lusty will, without much anxiety as to what either papist or protestant or parliament thought about the matter.

Few things have had a greater tendency to involve the history of the English Reformation in obscurity than the loose way in which the king's own personal feelings, and opinions, and his proceedings with regard to religion, have been estimated and represented. With reference to the present case, even Lord Herbert says, "But that it may 'seem lesse strange why the King, who before was much disposed to favour the Reformers, did on a sudden so 'much vary from them, I have thought fit to set down 'some of the motives as I conceive them." But it seems hardly worth while to follow him into his ideas respecting the jealousy of the foreign Reformers, and the emperor, and other remote reasons which he suggests, while it is so apparent that he is only troubling himself to solve a difficulty which never existed. Undoubtedly Henry "was much disposed to favour the Reformers" who took his part

1 Life of Hen. VIII., p. 448.

in the divorce question-he "was much disposed to favour the Reformers" who maintained that he was the supreme head of the church, and sided with him against the unjust usurpations of the Bishop of Rome-he" Iwas much disposed to favour the Reformers" who carried through the suppression of the monasteries, and thereby not only humbled the pride of those who might be more strictly called the popish clergy, but filled his exchequer, or enabled him to be profuse with an empty one. For the same reason, and because the thing was somewhat scandalous, and sometimes supported by disgraceful trickery, he thought it right to stop the lavish offerings which were heaped on the shrines of some of the more popular saints, and to turn those treasures to more useful purposes-and we cannot wonder if, with these views and feelings, he did not altogether dislike or disrelish some things having a tendency to lower the papal power in his dominions, by rendering the pope and his adherents ridiculous. All this was certainly very antipapal; and if to be antipapal was to be protestant, this was very protestant, and the king was very protestant; and it might be very protestant to give his subjects the bible in the vulgar tongue-a circumstance very curious and much to be remarked in connexion with the matter now before us; because, that it was the work of Cromwell (or perhaps we may say of Cromwell and Cranmer) admits of no doubt. But how would Henry have stared if anybody had inferred from any or all these things that he had any heretical misgivings or doubts about transubstantiation, or purgatory, or the invocation of saints, or other doctrines which we justly consider as errors or heresies peculiarly characteristic of the Church of Rome, and which in the modern popular view of the Reformation in England are commonly mixed up with the doctrine of papal supremacy, in the general notion of "popery." This point is well stated by Hooper in a letter which he wrote to Bullinger, several years after the Act of Six Articles had passed, and it is highly worthy of our attention.

"Accept, my very dear master, in few words, the news from England. As far as true religion is concerned, idolatry is nowhere in greater vigour. Our king has destroyed the Pope, but not popery; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down their monasteries; he has caused all their possessions to be transferred

into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail female sex, by the king's command, to perpetual chastity. England has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is allowed to marry. The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment."2

Again, nearly a year afterwards he says;—

"The bearer will inform your excellence.of the good news we received yesterday from Strasburgh. There will be a change of religion in England, and the King will take up the gospel of Christ, in case the Emperor should be defeated in this most destructive war: should the gospel sustain a loss, he will then retain his impious mass, for which he has this last summer committed four respectable and godly persons to the flames."3

Very pregnant was the exclamation of Latimer before Edward the VI., "The bloud of Hales, woe worth it; what 'a doe was it to bring it out of the King's head! This 'great abomination of the bloud of Hales could not be 'taken for a great while out of his minde." But without multiplying illustrations where they are unnecessary, I will just add one, not only because it is curious and characteristic in itself, but because it may be well to refer to it on another account hereafter. It is from a work intitled, "The Lamentacyon of a Christen againste the Citye of London, for some certaine greate vyces vsed therin." After speaking of the sums given to priests "to synge in a chauntrie to robbe the lyuynge God of hys honoure," the author proceeds;-

"Ye wyll saye vnto me, what arte thou, that callest these thinges vncommaunded tradycyons and popyshe ceremonyes, seyinge the Kynges Grace forbyddeth them not, and vseth parte of them hym

2 Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, First portion, lately published by the Parker Society, p. 36, where the Editor gives the date as "probably 1546."

3 Orig. Lett. ubi supra, p. 41. These persons the Editor states to have been Anne Askew, and those who suffered with her.

Sermons, fol. 84. b. edit. 1584, quoted in Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog., 2nd edit., vol. ii. p. 281.

The copy from which I extract is said on the title-page to have been printed in 1548. I do not see that Herbert mentions the edition; but he specifies two others, one said to be "printed at Jericho in the land of Promise," 1542, the other, at Nuremberg, 1545.-Herbert's Ames, III. 1553, 1558. (xxx. 8. 14.)

selfe? I answere that ye vse manye thynges contrary to the kyngs iniunccyons. And yf it be that God through the kynge hath caste out the deuell out of this realme, and yet both he and we suppe of the broth in which the deuell was soden, and that God hath yet not opened the eyes of the kynge to set all thynges in right frame, and vtterly to breake downe the serpent, as Ezechias the kynge dyd .iiii. Reg. ix. and as kynge Asa dyd .ii. Chro. xiiii take it thus, that euen your iniquytye wyth callynge vpon vayne Goddes, and sekynge saluacion by a wronge waye, is the veri cause that God closeth vp the eies of the kynge, as of one that heareth and vnderstandeth not, and seeth and perceyueth not."-Sig. b. iiii. b.

It seems plain that though the king was persuaded to consent to the abolition of some things clearly superstitious, yet it was done with difficulty; and it evidently required all the power and address of those who wished him to go much farther, to get him to go as far as he did. But Cromwell might have tried in vain to get him to join in railing at the mass, and Cranmer as vainly to get his approbation of a married clergy. I believe that he was roused by an idea that the church, of which he was resolved to be the supreme head, was likely to be overthrown by a torrent of what he considered infidelity and blasphemy, and that he devised, and insisted on, and would have, and carried, such a measure as he thought was suited to check the frightful evil.

Such, I believe, to have been the origin of the Act. Subsequent events show that it was meant to frighten rather than to hurt, to intimidate and quiet the people rather than to destroy and slaughter them by wholesale. Nothing but the spirit of party and passion, the withering blight of all truth in history, can represent it as a statute seriously intended to be executed according to the letter. But it did much without proceeding to such extremities as it threatened. It was meant to frighten the people, and it did frighten them; and by that means it did two things which, whether right or wrong, good or bad, were undoubtedly of very great importance at that time, and in their consequences. In the first place, it caused many of the more violent partizans of the Reformation to quit the country; and secondly, it made those who stayed at home more quiet and peaceable. Fox has given us "A brief table of the Troubles at London in the time of the Six Articles," which he prefaces by saying;