... Cranmer sent for to the Star Chamber ... Postscript to his Letter ... NOTE TO THE SIXTH CHAPTER. THE FAMILY OF THOMAS CROMWELL. SINCE the sheets of the present edition have passed through the press I have discovered that I have been in error in describing the second husband of the mother of Cromwell as named 'Williams.' My mistake was caused by a number of letters in the State Paper Office, written by a certain John Williams or Williamson, in which the writer speaks of himself by implication as the Minister's brother, and, addressing Cromwell, describes a lady residing in his family alternately as 'my mother' and as 'your mother.' A copy of Cromwell's will has been recently discovered, however, from which it appears that Williams' was the maiden name of his wifethat the lady in question was not his mother, but his motherin-law. The will itself is of great historical value. It is dated July 12, 1529, three months before the disgrace of Wolsey, and its complicated bequests prove that Cromwell, although in the service of the Cardinal, was in possession of a large private fortune and at the head of a considerable household. CHAPTER VI. THE PROTESTANTS. WHERE changes are about to take place of Cп. 6. great and enduring moment, a kind of pro logue, on a small scale, is seen sometimes to anticipate the true opening of the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the coming storm, or as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards into the future, and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real actors in the story. the Refor teenth cen Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation Prelude to was witnessed at the close of the fourteenth cen- mation in tury, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to out- the fourward appearance barren of results; yet contain- tury. ing a representative of each one of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately effected, and foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to run. There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges; there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,-accompanied, as if involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the catholic faith,-and innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency which characterized the extreme development of the later protestants-to VOL. II. B The Lollards fore fathers of the Reformation. CH. 6. wards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and community of goods. Some account of this movement must be given in this place, although it can be but a sketch only. 'Lollardry'* has a runners not history of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into their language; and in the word miscreant, misbeliever, as the synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe. The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and Changes in exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been conceded by a special clause to the clergy. the mode of presentation to bishopricks. *The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question. I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the 'tares' in the corn of catholicism. |