History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Volume V Part 33

[596] His grace should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of.

Foxe, Acts, iv, p. 658.

[597] Ibid.

The book was written for the king, and every body read it but the king himself. At the appointed day, Moddis appeared with Elyot and Robinson, who were not entirely without fear, as they might be accused of proselytism even in the royal palace. The king received them in his private apartments.[598] "What do you want," he said to them. "Sir,"

replied one of the merchants, "we are come about an extraordinary book that is addressed to you." "Can one of you read it to me?"--"Yes, if it so please your grace," replied Elyot. "You may repeat the contents from memory," rejoined the king ... "but, no, read it all; that will be better. I am ready." Elyot began,

"THE SUPPLICATION OF THE BEGGARS."

[Sidenote: HOW A STATE IS RUINED.]

"To the king our sovereign lord,--

"Most lamentably complaineth of their woeful misery, unto your highness, your poor daily bedesmen, the wretched hideous monsters, on whom scarcely, for horror, any eye dare look; the foul unhappy sort of lepers and other sore people, needy, impotent, blind, lame, and sick, that live only by alms; how that their number is daily sore increased, that all the alms of all the well-disposed people of this your realm are not half enough to sustain them, but that for very constraint they die for hunger.

"And this most pestilent mischief is come upon your said poor bedesmen, by the reason that there hath, in the time of your n.o.ble predecessors, craftily crept into this your realm, another sort, not of impotent, but of strong, puissant, and counterfeit, holy and idle beggars and vagabonds, who by all the craft and wiliness of Satan are now increased not only into a great number, but also into a kingdom."

[598] Ibid.

Henry was very attentive: Elyot continued:

"These are not the shepherds, but the ravenous wolves going in shepherds' clothing, devouring the flock: bishops, abbots, priors, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks, canons, friars, pardoners, and sumners.... The goodliest lordships, manors, lands, and territories are theirs. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the corn, meadow, pasture, gra.s.s, wood, colts, calves, lambs, pigs, geese, and chickens. Over and besides, the tenth part of every servant's wages, the tenth part of wool, milk, honey, wax, cheese, and b.u.t.ter. The poor wives must be accountable to them for every tenth egg, or else she getteth not her rights [_i. e._ absolution] at Easter.... Finally what get they in a year? Summa totalis: 430,333, 6s. 8d. sterling, whereof not four hundred years past they had not a penny....

"What subjects shall be able to help their prince, that be after this fashion yearly polled? What good Christian people can be able to succour us poor lepers, blind, sore and lame, that be thus yearly oppressed?... The ancient Romans had never been able to have put all the whole world under their obeisance, if they had had at home such an idle sort of cormorants."

No subject could have been found more likely to captivate the king's attention. "And what doth all this greedy sort of st.u.r.dy idle holy thieves with their yearly exactions that they take of the people?

Truly nothing, but translate all rule, power, lordship, authority, obedience, and dignity from your grace unto them. Nothing, but that all your subjects should fall into disobedience and rebellion....

Priests and doves make foul houses; and if you will ruin a state, set up in it the pope with his monks and clergy.... Send these st.u.r.dy loobies abroad in the world to take them wives of their own, and to get their living with their labour in the sweat of their faces....

Then shall your commons increase in riches; then shall matrimony be much better kept; then shall not your sword, power, crown, dignity, and obedience of your people be translated from you."

When Elyot had finished reading, the king was silent, sunk in thought.

The true cause of the ruin of the state had been laid before him; but Henry's mind was not ripe for these important truths. At last he said, with an uneasy manner: "If a man who desires to pull down an old wall, begins at the bottom, I fear the upper part may chance to fall on his head."[599] Thus then, in the king's eyes, Fish by attacking the priests was disturbing the foundations of religion and society. After this royal verdict, Henry rose, took the book, locked it up in his desk, and forbade the two merchants to reveal to any one the fact of their having read it to him.

[599] The upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head. Foxe, Acts, iv, p. 658.

Shortly after the king had received this copy, on Wednesday the 2nd of February, the feast of Candlemas, a number of persons, including the king himself, were to take part in the procession, bearing wax tapers in their hands. During the night this famous invective was scattered about all the streets through which the procession had to pa.s.s. The cardinal ordered the pamphlet to be seized, and immediately waited upon the king. The latter put his hand under his robe, and with a smile took out the so much dreaded work, and then, as if satisfied with this proof of independence, he gave it up to the cardinal.

[Sidenote: SUPPLICATIONS OF THE SOULS IN PURGATORY.]

While Wolsey replied to Fish by confiscation, Sir Thomas More with greater liberality, desiring that press should reply to press, published _The Supplications of the Souls in Purgatory_. "Suppress,"

said they, "the pious stipends paid to the monks, and then Luther's gospel will come in, Tyndale's testament will be read, heresy will preach, fasts will be neglected, the saints will be blasphemed, G.o.d will be offended, virtue will be mocked of, vice will run riot, and England will be peopled with beggars and thieves."[600] The Souls in Purgatory then call the author of the Beggars' Supplication "a goose, an a.s.s, a mad dog." Thus did superst.i.tion degrade More's n.o.ble genius.

Notwithstanding the abuse of the souls in purgatory, the New Testament was daily read more and more in England.

[600] Supplication of the Souls in Purgatory. More's Works.

CHAPTER II.

The two Authorities--Commencement of the Search--Garret at Oxford--His flight--His Return and Imprisonment--Escapes and takes Refuge with Dalaber--Garret and Dalaber at Prayer--The _Magnificat_--Surprise among the Doctors--Clark's advice--Fraternal Love at Oxford--Alarm of Dalaber--His Arrest and Examination--He is Tortured--Garret and Twenty Fellows imprisoned--The Cellar--Condemnation and Humiliation.

[Sidenote: COUNCIL OF BISHOPS.]

Wolsey did not stop with Fish's book. It was not that "miserable pamphlet" only that it was necessary to hunt down; the New Testament in English had entered the kingdom by surprise; there was the danger.

The gospellers, who presumed to emanc.i.p.ate man from the priests, and put him in absolute dependence on G.o.d, did precisely the reverse of what Rome demands.[601] The cardinal hastened to a.s.semble the bishops, and these (particularly Warham and Tonstall, who had long enjoyed the jests launched against superst.i.tion) took the matter seriously when they were shown that the New Testament was circulating throughout England. These priests believed with Wolsey, that the authority of the pope and of the clergy was a dogma to which all others were subordinate. They saw in the reform an uprising of the human mind, a desire of thinking for themselves, of judging freely the doctrines and inst.i.tutions, which the nations had hitherto received humbly from the hands of the priests. The new doctors justified their attempt at enfranchis.e.m.e.nt by subst.i.tuting a new authority for the old. It was the New Testament that compromised the absolute power of Rome. It must be seized and destroyed, said the bishops. London, Oxford, and above all Cambridge, those three haunts of heresy, must be carefully searched. Definitive orders were issued on Sat.u.r.day, 3rd February, 1526, and the work began immediately.

[601] Actus meritorius est in potestate hominis. (Duns Scotus in Sentent. lib. i. diss. 17.) A man is able to do a meritorious action.

[Sidenote: GARRET'S FLIGHT.]

The first visit of the inquisitors was to Honey Lane, to the house of the curate of All Hallows. They did not find Garret; they sought after him at Monmouth's, and throughout the city, but he could not be met with.[602] "He is gone to Oxford to sell his detestable wares," the inquisitors were informed, and they set off after him immediately, determined to burn the evangelist and his books; "so burning hot,"

says an historian, "was the charity of these holy fathers."[603]

[602] He was searched for through all London. Foxe, Acts, v, p. 421.

[603] Foxe, Acts, v. p. 421.

On Tuesday, the 6th of February, Garret was quietly selling his books at Oxford, and carefully noting down his sales in his register, when two of his friends ran to him exclaiming, "Fly! or else you will be taken before the cardinal, and thence ... to the Tower." The poor curate was greatly agitated. "From whom did you learn that?"--"From Master Cole, the clerk of the a.s.sembly, who is deep in the cardinal's favour." Garret, who saw at once that the affair was serious, hastened to Anthony Dalaber, who held the stock of the Holy Scriptures at Oxford; others followed him; the news had spread rapidly, and those who had bought the book were seized with alarm, for they knew by the history of the Lollards what the Romish clergy could do. They took counsel together. The brethren, "for so did we not only call one another, but were indeed one to another," says Dalaber,[604] decided that Garret should change his name; that Dalaber should give him a letter for his brother, the rector of Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, who was in want of a curate; and that, once in this parish, he should seek the first opportunity of crossing the sea. The rector was in truth a "mad papist" (it is Dalaber's expression), but that did not alter their resolution. They knew of no other resource. Anthony wrote to him hurriedly; and, on the morning of the 7th of February, Garret left Oxford without being observed.

[604] Ibid.

Having provided for Garret's safety, Dalaber next thought of his own.

He carefully concealed in a secret recess of his chamber, at St Alban's Hall, Tyndale's Testament, and the works of Luther, colampadius, and others, on the word of G.o.d. Then, disgusted with the scholastic sophisms which he heard in that college, he took with him the New Testament and the Commentary on the gospel of St. Luke, by Lambert of Avignon, the second edition of which had just been published at Strasburg,[605] and went to Gloucester college, where he intended to study the civil law, not caring to have any thing more to do with the church.

[605] In Lucae Evangelium Commentarii, nunc secundo recogniti et locupletati. (Argentorati, 1525.) Commentaries on the gospel of Luke, now for the second time revised and enriched.

[Sidenote: HIS RETURN AND IMPRISONMENT.]

During this time, poor Garret was making his way into Dorsetshire. His conscience could not bear the idea of being, although for a short time only, the curate of a bigoted priest,--of concealing his faith, his desires, and even his name. He felt more wretched, although at liberty, than he could have been in Wolsey's prisons. It is better, he said within himself, to confess Christ before the judgment seat, than to seem to approve of the superst.i.tious practices I detest. He went forward a little, then stopped--and then resumed his course. There was a fierce struggle between his fears and his conscience. At length, after a day and a half spent in doubt, his conscience prevailed; unable to endure any longer the anguish that he felt, he retraced his steps, returned to Oxford, which he entered on Friday evening, and lay down calmly in his bed. It was barely past midnight when Wolsey's agents, who had received information of his return, arrived, and dragged him from his bed,[606] and delivered him up to Dr. Cottisford, the commissary of the university. The latter locked him up in one of his rooms, while London and Higdon, dean of Frideswide, "two arch papists" (as the chronicler terms them), announced this important capture to the cardinal. They thought popery was saved, because a poor curate had been taken.

[606] Foxe, v. p.422.

[Sidenote: GARRET AND DALABER AT PRAYER.]

Dalaber, engaged in preparing his new room at Gloucester college, had not perceived all this commotion.[607] On Sat.u.r.day, at noon, having finished his arrangements, he double-locked his door, and began to read the Gospel according to St. Luke. All of a sudden he hears a knock. Dalaber made no reply; it is no doubt the commissary's officers. A louder knock was given; but he still remained silent.

Immediately after, there was a third knock, as if the door would be beaten in. "Perhaps somebody wants me," thought Dalaber. He laid his book aside, opened the door, and to his great surprise saw Garret, who, with alarm in every feature, exclaimed, "I am a lost man! They have caught me!" Dalaber, who thought his friend was with his brother at Stalbridge, could not conceal his astonishment, and at the same time he cast an uneasy glance on a stranger who accompanied Garret. He was one of the college servants who had led the fugitive curate to Dalaber's new room. As soon as this man had gone away, Garret told Anthony everything: "Observing that Dr. Cottisford and his household had gone to prayers, I put back the bolt of the lock with my finger ... and here I am."... "Alas! Master Garret," replied Dalaber, "the imprudence you committed in speaking to me before that young man has ruined us both!" At these words, Garret, who had resumed his fear of the priests, now that his conscience was satisfied, exclaimed with a voice interrupted by sighs and tears:[608] "For mercy's sake, help me!

Save me!" Without waiting for an answer, he threw off his frock and hood, begged Anthony to give him a sleeved coat, and thus disguised, he said: "I will escape into Wales, and from there, if possible, to Germany and Luther."

[607] Ibid.

[608] With deep sighs and plenty of tears. Foxe, v. p. 422.

Garret checked himself; there was something to be done before he left.

The two friends fell on their knees and prayed together; they called upon G.o.d to lead his servant to a secure retreat. That done, they embraced each other, their faces bathed with tears, and unable to utter a word.[609]

[609] That we all bewet both our faces. Ibid. 423.