then with great pomp he describes their death in all its parts, as if it had been a new-devised cruelty, it being the death which the law appoints for traitors. He tells, that Cromwell lamented that others of them had died in their cells, and so prevented his cruelty. He also adds a long story of the severities against the Franciscans.

All this he drew from his learning in the legend. The English nation knows none of these cruelties, in which the Spanish inquisitors are very expert. I find, by some original letters, that the Carthusians, who were shut up in their cells, lived about a year after this; so if Cromwell had designed to take away their lives, he wanted not opportunities; but it appears from what More writ in his imprisonment, that Cromwell was not a cruel man, but, on the contrary, merciful and gentle. And for the Franciscans, though they had offended the King highly, two of them railing spitefully at him to his face, in his chapel at Greenwich: yet that was passed over with a reproof, from which it appears that he was not easily provoked against them. So all that relation which he gives, being without any authority, must pass for a part of the poem.

82. He says; "The Bishop of Rochester was condemned, Page 91. "because he would not acknowledge the King's supremacy in "ecclesiastical matters."

He was never pressed to acknowledge it, but was condemned for denying it, and speaking against it: for had he kept his opinion to himself, he could not have been questioned. But the denying the King's titles, of which his being Supreme Head was one, was by the law treason; so he was tried for speaking against it, and not for his not acknowledging it.

83. "He runs out in an high commendation of Fisher, and, Page 93. "among other things, mentions his episcopal and apostolical "charity."

His charity was burning indeed. He was a merciless persecutor of heretics, so that the rigour of the law, under which he fell, was the same measure that he had measured out to others.

84. Sanders will let the world see how carefully he had read Page 100, the legend, and how skilfully he could write after that copy, in a pretty fabulous story concerning More's death; to whom I

Page 105.

will deny none of the praises due to his memory, for his great learning, and singular probity: nor had he any blemish but what flowed from the leaven of that cruel religion, which carried him to great severities against those that preached for a reformation. His daughter Roper was a woman of great virtue, and worthy of such a father, who needed none of Sanders's art to represent her well to the world. His story is; "That the "morning her father died, she went about distributing all the money she had, in alms to the poor: and at last was at her 66 prayers in a church, when of a sudden she remembered that "she had forgot to provide a winding-sheet for his body; but "having no more money left, and not being well known in that

66

place, she appehended they would not give her credit: yet "she went to a linen-draper's shop, and calling for so much. “cloth, she put her hand in her pocket, knowing she had no"thing in it, but intending to make an excuse, and try if "they would trust her. But by a miracle she found the price "of the sheet, and neither more nor less was conveyed into her "pocket."

This is such a lively essay of the man's spirit that invented it, that I leave it without any further commentary.

85. He says; "Lee, that was not in orders, was sent to visit "the monasteries, who solicited the chastity of the nuns." He does not mention Leighton and London, the two chief visitors, for Leighton brought in Lee: but they were of the Popish party, and Lee was Cranmer's friend, therefore all must be laid on him. He was in orders, and soon after was made Dean of York. I have seen complaints of Dr. London's soliciting the nuns, yet I do not find Lee complained of. But since London was a persecutor of heretics, such a small kindness, as the concealing his name, and the turning the blame over on Lee, was not to be stood on among friends, especially by a man of Sanders's ingenuity.

Page 107. 86. For the correspondence between Queen Katherine and father Forest, and the letters that past, since Sanders tells us not a word how he came by them, we are to look on them as a piece of the Romance.

Page 114.

87. He says;

"Anne Boleyn bore a monstrous and a mis

"shaped lump of flesh, when the time of her bearing another "child came."

She bore a dead child before the time, says Hall; but there was no great reproach in that, unless made up by Sanders's wit.

88. He lays out the business of Anne Boleyn with so much Page 115. spite and malice, that we may easily see against whom he chiefly designed this part of his work. He says; "She was found "guilty of adultery and incest."

There was no evidence against her, but only a hear-say from the Lady Wingfield: we neither know the credit of that lady, nor of the person who related it in her name. It is true Mark Smeton did confess his adultery with the Queen, but it was generally thought he was drawn into it by some promises that were made to him, and so cheated out of his life; but for the Queen, and the other four, they attested their innocency to the last: nor would any of those unfortunate persons redeem their lives at so ignominious a rate, as to charge the Queen, whom they declared they knew to be innocent; so that all the evidence against her was an hear-say of a woman that was dead, the confession of a poor musician, and some idle words herself spake of the discourses that had passed between her and some of those gentlemen.

89. He says; " Foreigners did generally rejoice at her fall: Page 116. "and to prove this, he cites Cochleus's words, that only shew "that author's ill opinion of her."

The Germans had so great a value of her, that all their correspondence with the King fell to the ground with her but he may well cite Cochleus, an author of the same honesty with himself, from whose writings we may with the like security make a judgment of foreign matters, as we may upon Sanders's testimony believe the account he gives of English affairs.

90. He tells us, among other things done by the King, and Page 117. picks it out as the only instance he mentions of the King's injunction, "That the people should be taught in churches the "Lord's Prayer, the Ave, the Creed, and the Ten Command"ments, in English."

It seems this Author thought the giving these elements of

Page 117.

Page 119.

Page 120.

Ibid.

religion to the people in the vulgar tongue a very heinous crime, when this is singled out from all the rest.

91. "That being done, he says, there was next a book pub“lished, called Articles, appointed by the King's Majesty, which "were the six Articles."

This shews that he either had no information of English affairs, or was sleeping when he wrote this: for the six Articles were not published soon after the injunctions, as he makes it, by the same parliament and convocation, but three years after, by another parliament: they were never put in a book, nor published in the King's name; they were enacted in parliament, and are neither more nor less than twenty-five lines in the first impression of that act; so far short come they of a book.

92. He reckons up very defectively the differences between the church of Rome, and the doctrine set forth by the King's authority but in one point he shews his ordinary wit; for in the sixth particular, he says, "He retained the sacrament of "order, but appointed a new form of consecrating of bishops."

This he put in out of malice, that he might annul the ordinations of that time; but the thing is false: for except that the bishops, instead of their oaths of obedience to the Pope, which they formerly swore, did now swear to the King, there was no other change made; and that to be sure is no part of the form of consecration.

93. He resolved once to speak what he thought was truth, though it be treasonable and impious: and says, "Upon these "changes, many in Lincolnshire, and the northern parts, did "rise for religion, and the faith of Christ."

This was indeed the motive by which their seditious priests misled them; yet he is mistaken in the time, for it was not after the six Articles were published, but almost three years before it. Nor was it for the faith of Christ, which teaches us to be humble, subject, and obedient; but because the King was removing some of the corruptions of that faith, which their false teachers did impiously call the faith of Christ.

94. He says; "The King did promise most faithfully, that all "these things of which they complained should be amended."

This is so evidently false, that it is plain Sanders resolved dexterously to avoid the speaking of any sort of truth: for the King did fully and formally tell them, he would not be directed nor counselled by them in these points they complained of, and did only offer them an amnesty for what was past.

95. "Then he reckons up thirty-two that died for the de- Page 121. "fence of the faith."

They were attainted of treason for being in actual rebellion against the King: and thus it appears that rebellion was the faith in his sense; and himself died for it, or rather in it, having been starved to death in a wood, to which he fled after one of his rebellious attempts on his Sovereign, in which he was the Pope's nuncio.

96. He says; "The King killed the Earl of Kildare, and five Page 122. "of his uncles."

By this strange way of expressing a legal attainder, and the execution of a sentence for manifest treason and rebellion, he would insinuate on the reader a fancy, that one of Bonner's cruel fits had taken the King, and that he had killed those with his own hand. The Lord Herbert has fully opened that part of the history, from the Records that he saw; and shews that a more resolved rebellion could not be than that was, of which the Earl of Kildare and his uncles were guilty. But because they sent to the Pope and Emperor for assistance, the Earl desiring to hold the kingdom of Ireland of the Pope, since the King by his heresy had fallen from his right to it, Sanders must needs have a great kindness for their memory, who thus suffered for his faith.

97. He says; " Queen Jane Seymour being in hard labour Ibid. "of Prince Edward, the King ordered her body to be so opened "by surgeons, that she died soon after."

All this is false, for she had a good delivery, as many original letters written by her council (that have been since printed) do shew; but she died two days after of a distemper incident to

her sex.

98. He sets down some passages of Cardinal Pole's heroical Page 124. constancy; which being proved by no evidence, and not being