"Most dread and royal sovereign: The promises your Highness hath made here, at your coronation, to forsake the devil and all his works, are not to be taken in the bishop of Rome's sense, when you commit any thing distasteful to that see, to hit your Majesty in the teeth, as Pope Paul the third, late bishop of Rome, sent to your royal father, saying, Didst thou not promise, at our permission of thy coronation, to forsake the devil and all his works, and dost thou run to heresy? For the breach of this thy promise knowest thou not, that 'tis in our power to dispose of thy sword and sceptre to whom we please? We, your Majesty's clergy, do humbly conceive, that this promise reacheth not at your Highness's sword, spiritual or temporal, or in the least at your Highness swaying the sceptre of this your dominion, as you and your predecessors have had them from God. Neither could your ancestors lawfully resign up their crowns to the bishop of Rome or his legates, according to their ancient oaths then taken upon that ceremony.

"The bishops of Canterbury for the most part have crowned your predecessors, and anointed them kings of this land. Yet it was not in their power to receive or reject them, neither did it

1

This speech is printed in Foxes and Firebrands, or, A Specimen of the Danger and Harmony of Popery and Separation, 1682, Part 2, p. 1. It was found among the inestimable collections of archbishop Usher. Strype.

give them authority to prescribe them conditions to take or to leave their crowns, although the bishops of Rome would encroach upon your predecessors by their act and oil, that in the end they might possess those bishops with an interest to dispose of their crowns at their pleasure. But the wiser sort will look to their claws and clip them.

"The solemn rites of coronation have their ends and utility; yet neither direct force or necessity. They be good admonitions to put kings in mind of their duty to God, but no increasement of their dignity: for they be God's anointed; not in respect of the oil which the bishop useth, but in consideration of their power, which is ordained; of the sword, which is authorized; of these persons, which are elected by God, and endued with the gifts of His Spirit for the better ruling and guiding of his people.

"The oil, if added, is but a ceremony. If it be wanting, that king is yet a perfect monarch notwithstanding, and God's anointed, as well as if he was inoiled. Now for the person or bishop that doth anoint a king, it is proper to be done by the chiefest. But if they cannot, or will not, any bishop may perform this ceremony.

"To condition with monarchs upon these ceremonies, the bishop of Rome (or other bishops owning his supremacy) hath no authority: but he may faithfully declare what God requires at

the hands of kings and rulers, that is, religion and virtue. Therefore not from the bishop of

Rome, but as a messenger from my Saviour Jesus Christ, I shall most humbly admonish your royal Majesty what things your Highness is to perform.

"Your Majesty is God's vicegerent, and Christ's vicar within your own dominions, and to see, with your predecessor Josiah, God truly worshipped, and idolatry destroyed; the tyranny of the bishops of Rome banished from your subjects; and images removed. These acts be signs of a second Josiah, who reformed the church of God in his days. You are to reward virtue, to revenge sin, to justify the innocent, to relieve the poor, to procure peace, to repress violence, and to execute justice throughout your realms. For precedents on those kings who performed not these things, the Old Law shews how the Lord revenged his quarrel; and on those kings who fulfilled these things, He poured forth his blessings in abundance. For example, it is written of Josiah, in the book of the Kings, thus: Like unto him there was no king, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, according to all the Law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him. This was to that prince a perpetual fame of dignity, to remain to the end of days.

66

Being bound by my function to lay these things before your royal Highness; the one as a reward, if you fulfil, the other as a judgment from

God, if you neglect them; yet I openly declare, before the living God, and before these nobles of the land, that I have no commission to denounce your Majesty deprived, if your Highness miss in part, or in whole, of these performances; much less to draw up indentures between God and your Majesty, or to say you forfeit your crown with a clause for the bishop of Rome, as have been done by your Majesty's predecessors, King John, and his son Henry, of this land. The Almighty God, of His mercy, let the light of his countenance shine upon your Majesty, grant you a prosperous and happy reign, defend you and save you and let your subjects say, Amen."

The fall of the lord chancellor Wriothesley, and the elevation of Lord Hertford as protector independent of the other regents, almost immediately followed the coronation. In the former the Romish party now lost a powerful champion; in the latter Cranmer found a steady friend. To the views of the archbishop the prelates of ' York and 2 Ely, were at this time also serviceable, as was he of Rochester also now on the eve of translation to Lincoln. But the greatest aid which, both now and henceforward, he obtained, was from the learning, zeal, and prudence of

Holgate.

* His intimate friend, Goodrich. Holbeach, promoted to the see of Lincoln in Aug. 1547. Le Neve's Fasti.

1

Ridley, his chaplain, not as yet however the bishop elect of Rochester, nor designed as such by Henry, as Burnet erroneously describes him. Ridley had now abandoned, more than a year, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and had communicated to Cranmer his reasons for so doing. Their conferences, and the researches occasioned by them, soon convinced the archbishop that this would be the great and important point of the Reformation in doctrine. But he proceeded with his usual caution. He did not as yet avow a complete concurrence in renouncing the belief of the Romish Church. His answers to queries, however, preparatory to converting the service of the mass into a form of communion, clearly shew that his mind was disencumbered of that belief. These will presently solicit our notice. His chaplain, in the Lent of 1547, was also employed in preaching against the idolatrous veneration of images, holy water, and other superstitious ceremonies. Of such abuses Cranmer, in

'Ridley succeeded Holbeach in the see of Rochester, and

was consecrated in Sept. 1547. Le Neve.

2

3

In 1545. Ridley's Life of Bishop Ridley, 173.

Archbishop Parker accordingly describes Cranmer as admonishing the clergy, at the opening of the convocation in this reign," how to root out the relics of popery, as plants which our Heavenly Father had not planted;" the very language which he afterwards applied to the rooting out of transubstantiation and the niass.

Ridley, ut supr.