2

Burnet, however, only says, that on the 18th of June a letter was written from London to P. Martyr, telling him that it was given out that the queen had said, she could not be happily delivered till all the heretics then in prison were burned. Hence perhaps the communication of Martyr to his friend Alexander, as repeatedly cited by Strype. We might hope, that this was rumour only, if the whole tenor of Mary's conduct did not countenance the truth of it. Her deep malignity towards those who differed from her religious profession, brought indeed two hundred and eighty-eight fellow-creatures to the stake, while in various prisons it left to the destroying hand of famine many others. Rogers, the protomartyr, supposed her to have been misled in her eagerness for persecution by Gardiner. No, said that prelate, in answer to the supposition, "The queen went before me, and it was her own motion."

3

But the queen well knew the temper and the proceedings of her chancellor. Him, who had

1 Burnet, Hist. Ref. iii. under the year 1555, where he refers to Martyr's Loci Com. 1626, fol. 769.

' Pet. Martyr ad Alexand. Strype Life of Cranm. B. iii. ch. 17. Again, B. iii. ch. 26. Alexander had been Cranmer's secretary, and was at this time a prebendary of Canterbury.

3

Lord Burghley's Account. Strype, Ecc. Mem. iii. 474, and Rec. p. 291.

1

with so much zeal 1 contributed to the enactment of the sanguinary Six Articles in her father's reign, she could direct without fear of remonstrance, and with the belief of entire co-operation in the cruelties of her own. The reprinting of his book at Strasburg, De vera obedientia, which he had first published in 1534, and to which Bonner had prefixed a laudatory preface; the translation of it also by Michael Wood into English, which, in 1553 was printed at Rouen, and sent over into England; now tended not a little to augment his harshness. The books exposed his fellow-tyrant and himself to just ridicule and censure. The first reformed preachers that were brought before him, scrupled not to remind him of that which, in the time of Henry, both he and Bonner had there taught with such pretended loyalty, but now disclaimed with such consummate impudence. "You wrote truly against the pope, and were sworn against him," said Dr. Rowland Taylor to Gardiner examining him. "I tell thee," was the reply, "it was Herod's oath, unlawful; and, therefore, ought to be broken and not kept; and our holy father the pope hath discharged me of it." So, when Bradford reminded him of his inconsistency, again he resorted to his former plea, "Tush, Herod's oaths a man should make no conscience at."-" But, my lord,

1 See before, vol. i. p. 272, seq.

2 Foxe.

2

these are no Herod's oaths, no unlawful oaths," said Bradford, "but oaths according to God's Word, as you yourself have well affirmed in your book, De vera obedientia." He was now intent upon urging capital punishments; and, notwithstanding he was so notoriously known to be the great instrument of burning and destroying so many Protestants, a' Jesuit has represented him "as mild and merciful." Of a Jesuit alone this is the assertion. And yet there was hardly an arrest, an examination, or a punishment, in which Gardiner was not active. "Mark the marvellous confidence of his panegyrist," says Strype, "in endeavouring to face out a thing, the contrary to which was most notoriously known, and severely felt." It was upon heretics of distinction, who were said to have misled their inferiors, that Gardiner advised those punishments first to be inflicted. Against the reformed prelates, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper, this advice was evidently levelled. Hooper soon suffered in con

1 Father Parsons, or Persons, a convert from the Church of England to that of Rome, and a traitor to his country. Vindic. of Cranmer by the present writer, 8vo. xcii. 12mo. 105. By a writer of his own communion, his mind has been described, as his numerous writings were, " dark, imposing, problematical, seditious." Mein. of Panzani, by the Rev. J. Berrington, Introd. p. 28.

2 See Turner's Reign of Mary, 282.

3 Collier.

420 THE LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.

sequence of it; Latimer and Ridley ere long followed; and Cranmer was awhile reserved, only first to be brutally insulted and then to be insidiously soothed for martyrdom at the same stake where those two friends expired.

CHAPTER IV.

1555.

Cranmer's and other books prohibited-The reunion of the Church of England with that of Rome-Proceedings against Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, renewed-Cranmer first brought before the papal commissioners-His condemnation deferred-Ridley and Latimer condemned and burnt-The conduct of Cranmer upon that occasion.

THE Convocation in the preceding year had petitioned the king and queen, that Cranmer's treatise of the sacrament, the late service-books, and others which they named heretical, should be burnt; that all who possessed them should be required to bring them in, or else be treated as the favourers of heresy; and that upon books henceforward printed, or to be sold, a vigilant eye should be kept. Accordingly the royal proclamation did prohibit, though it consigned not to the flames, all the writings not only of Cranmer, and of our countrymen, Tindal, Hooper,

1 Burnet. Strype.

2

Ames, 518.