London and the Kingdom Volume I Part 30

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Edward on his part presented the mayor and aldermen with 104 gowns of black livery, according to the precedent followed at the decease of Henry VII. These gowns were distributed among the mayor and aldermen, the high officers and certain clerks in the service of the Corporation. Ten aldermen accompanied the remains of the late king on their way to Windsor, riding forth in black coats with the rest of the mourners, the harness and bridles of their horses being covered with black cloth. Two of the aldermen, Sir William Laxton and Sir Martin Bowes, had each four servants in their suite, whilst the rest of the aldermen had three, all in black coats.(1265)

CHAPTER XV.

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Provision had been made for the succession to the crown on Henry's death by an Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in 1544, and the princesses Mary and Elizabeth were thereby re-instated in their rights of inheritance as if no question of their legitimacy had ever been raised. As Edward, who was next in succession to the crown, was but a boy, Henry had taken pains to select a council of regency in which no one party should predominate. This council was soon set aside, and Hertford, the king's uncle, got himself appointed Protector of the realm and took the t.i.tle of Duke of Somerset.

At the time of his father's death Edward was residing at Hertford Castle.

He was soon afterwards carried thence by his uncle to London and lodged in the Tower, where the mayor, Henry Hoberthorne, went to pay his respects and received the honour of knighthood.(1266)

On the 19th the young king pa.s.sed through the city to Westminster, the mayor riding before him bareheaded with the mace of crystal(1267) in his hand. The streets were lined with members of the livery companies. The conduits, the standard and cross in Chepe, the Ludgate and the Temple Bar had been freshly painted and trimmed with goodly hangings of Arras and cloth of gold for the occasion. At three of the conduits, namely, the conduit in Cornhill, the great conduit in Chepe, and the conduit in Fleet Street, wine was made by artificial means to flow as if from the "festrons" of the conduits themselves. At the little conduit in Chepe were stationed the aldermen of the city, in their scarlet gowns, and the Recorder, who, in the name of the whole city, presented his majesty with 1,000 marks in "hole new sufferaynes" of gold in a purse of purple cloth of gold, which his majesty deigned to accept with his own hand. The next day Edward was crowned. The lord mayor, according to custom, attended with his crystal mace as the king pa.s.sed from his palace to church, and thence, after ma.s.s, to Westminster Hall, and received for his services the customary gold cup, which on this occasion weighed twenty ounces, with its cover and a "leyer" (or laver) silver-gilt weighing six ounces.(1268)

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The work of reformation was now about to be taken seriously in hand.

Something, it is true, had been done in this direction under Henry, but in _dilettante_ fashion. The ceremony connected with the boy-bishop, which even Colet had thought worthy to be perpetuated in his school,(1269) had been abolished by order of the mayor in 1538.(1270) The ruthless destruction of the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and the erasure of his name from service-books, had been followed in the city by an order (1539) for a new common seal on which the arms of the city were subst.i.tuted for the original effigy of the saint.(1271) Henry himself only coquetted with Protestantism; his chief object, if not the only one, was to get rid of the papal supremacy; but among the bourgeois cla.s.s of the city there was an earnest desire to see an improvement made in the doctrine and discipline of the Church.(1272)

Whilst the statute of the Six Articles was still unrepealed, the sacrament of the ma.s.s frequently provoked open hostility in the city. Thus, in August, 1538, Robert Reynold, a stationer, was declared upon the oath of five independent witnesses to have been heard to say "that the ma.s.se was nawght, and the memento was Bawdrye, and after the consecracioun of the ma.s.se yt was idolatrye." He was further charged with having said that it were better for him to confess and be houseled by a temporal rather than a spiritual man.(1273) Again, in February, 1543, Hugh Eton, a hosier of London, was convicted of disguising himself "in fonde fa.s.syon," and of irreverently walking up and down in St. Bride's Church before the sacrament, disturbing the priests at ma.s.s and creating a tumult. By way of punishment for his offence he was set in the cage in Fleet Street, "disguised" as he was, with a paper on his head setting forth his offence.

He there remained until four o'clock in the afternoon, when he was removed to the compter and condemned to stay there a prisoner until he found sureties for good behaviour.(1274)

After the repeal of the statute by Edward's first parliament, the opposition to the "sacrament of the altar," as the ma.s.s was called, became greater than ever.(1275) A boy was ordered to be whipt naked in the church of St. Mary Woolnoth for throwing his cap at the host at the time of elevation.(1276) In February, 1548, information was given to the Court of Aldermen of preachers having used "certain words" touching the ma.s.s in the churches of St. Dunstan in the east and St. Martin Orgar.(1277) On the 5th May, 1548, the mayor and aldermen resolved to appear the next day before the Lord Protector Somerset and the council, and explain the nature of the misdemeanours of certain preachers, concerning which the mayor had already had some communication with the Archbishop of Canterbury.(1278)

In the following month (5 June) the Court of Aldermen investigated a charge made against a city curate that, about a month before, after reciting the common prayers at the choir door at high ma.s.s, he had prayed among other things that Almighty G.o.d might send the king's council grace and bring them out of the erroneous opinions that they were then in. The informer went on to say that Sir Clement Smith and the Recorder, who were present, laughed at the prayer. But inasmuch as the informer had not been present himself, and that what he had laid before the court was mere hearsay evidence, little attention was paid to it.(1279)

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The abolition of chantries initiated by Henry VIII was carried out to a fuller extent by his successor. The statute (1 Edward VI, cap 14) by which this was effected not only deprived a large number of priests of a means of livelihood, but laid them open to insult from those they met in the street. They complained that they could not walk abroad nor attend the court at Westminster without being reviled and having their tippets and caps violently pulled.(1280)

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The same statute-by declaring all chantries, obits, lights and lamps to be objects of superst.i.tious use, and all goods, chattels, jewels, plate, ornaments and other moveables. .h.i.therto devoted to their maintenance to be thenceforth escheated to the Crown-dealt a heavy blow to the Corporation of the City of London, as well as to the civic companies and other bodies who owned property subject to certain payments under one or other of these heads. Three years after the pa.s.sing of the Act the Corporation and the companies redeemed certain charges of this character on their respective properties to the amount of 939 2_s._ 5-1/2_d._ by payment to the Crown of no less a sum than 18,744 11_s._ 2_d._(1281)

The redemption of these and other charges of a similar character, whilst very convenient to the Crown, saving the trouble and expense of collecting small sums of money, worked a hardship upon the Corporation and the companies. In order to raise funds for redeeming the charges they were obliged to sell property. This property was often held under conditions of reverter and remainders over, unless what was now declared to be illegal was religiously carried out. It was manifestly unfair that they should be made to forfeit property because the conditions under which it was held could no longer be legally complied with. A pet.i.tion therefore was presented to the king in order to obviate this difficulty, and to enable them to part with the necessary property and at the same time to give a clear t.i.tle.(1282)

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In the meantime (Aug., 1547) an order had gone forth for the demolition of all images and removal of pictures and stained gla.s.s from churches. The instructions sent to the lord mayor were very precise. "Stories made in gla.s.se wyndows" relative to Thomas Becket were to be altered at as little expense as possible. Images and pictures to which no offerings and no prayers were made might remain for "garnisshement" of the churches; and if any such had been taken down the mayor was at liberty to set them up again, unless they had been taken down by order of the king's commissioners or the parson of the church. If there existed in any church a "storye in gla.s.se" of the Bishop of Rome, otherwise the Pope, the mayor might paint out the papal tiara and alter the "storye."(1283) These instructions, contained in a letter from the king's council, were duly considered at a Court of Aldermen held on the 22nd September, with the result that every alderman was ordered, in the most secret, discreet and quiet manner he could devise, to visit each parish church in his ward, and to take with him the parson or curate and two or three honest parishioners, churchwardens or others who had had anything to do with the removal of the images that had already been taken down, and, having shut the church door for the sake of privacy, to take a note in writing of what images had formerly been in the several churches, what images had offerings and were prayed to, and what not; who had removed those taken down, and what had been done with them. A report was to be made on these points by every alderman at the next court, so that the lords of the council might be informed thereon and their will ascertained before any further steps were taken.(1284)

The havoc worked by the king's commissioners in the city and throughout the country by the reckless destruction of works of art was terrible. The churches were stripped of every ornament, their walls whitewashed, and only relieved by the tables of the commandments. Early in September the commissioners visited St. Paul's and pulled down all the images. In November the rood was taken down with its images of the Virgin and St.

John. The great cross of the rood fell down accidentally and killed one of the workmen, a circ.u.mstance which many ascribed to the special intervention of the Almighty. From St. Paul's the commissioners proceeded to the church of St. Bride, and so from parish church to parish church.(1285)

In the following year (1548) the chapel of St. Paul's charnel house was pulled down and the bones removed into the country and reburied. From a sanitary point of view their removal is to be commended. There is no such excuse, however, for the destruction of the cloister in Pardon churchyard (April, 1549), with its famous picture of the Dance of Death, painted at the expense of John Carpenter, the town clerk of the city, of whom mention has already been made. The fact was that the Protector Somerset required material for building his new palace in the Strand,(1286) to enlarge which he had already pulled down Strand Church, dedicated to Saint Mary and the Holy Innocents.(1287) The destruction of the cloister necessitated a new order of procession on the next Lord Mayor's Day (24 Oct.), when Sir Rowland Hill paid the customary visit to St. Paul's, made a circuit of the interior of the cathedral, and said a _De profundis_ at the bishop's tomb.(1288)

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Nor can the civic authorities themselves be altogether acquitted of vandalism. They destroyed the churches of St. Nicholas Shambles and St.

Ewin, and sold the plate and windows, but the proceeds were distributed among the poor.(1289) They went further than this. They removed the fine tombs and altars, as well as the choir stalls, from the church of the Grey Friars, where mingled the ashes of some of the n.o.blest and best in the land. There was some excuse, however, for these acts. The house and church of the Grey Friars had been granted to the City at the close of the last reign on the express condition that the churches of St. Nicholas and St.

Ewin should be abolished, and that the church of the Grey Friars should be established as a parish church in their place under the name of Christ Church. It was probably in order to render the old monastic church more convenient as a parish church that they removed much of what to the antiquary of to-day would have seemed of priceless value, and at the same time reduced the dimensions of the choir.(1290)

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At Easter, 1548, a new communion service in English took the place of the ma.s.s.(1291) At the election of the mayor on the following Michaelmas-day, on which occasion a ma.s.s had always been celebrated at the Guildhall Chapel since the time of Whitington, an endeavour appears to have been made by the Court of Aldermen to effect a compromise between ma.s.s and communion, for whilst it ordered that a ma.s.s of the Holy Ghost should be solemnly sung in English in the Guildhall Chapel (which had been confiscated by Henry VIII)(1292) as theretofore, it further ordered that the holy communion should be administered to two or three of the priests there at the same ma.s.s.(1293) Orders were issued by the king's council that candles should no longer be carried about on Candlemas-day, ashes on Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday. These practices were now considered superst.i.tious, as also was the "sensyng" which hitherto had taken place in St. Paul's at Whitsuntide, but which the Court of Aldermen now decreed to be abolished, and the preaching of sermons subst.i.tuted in its place.(1294)

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The people were at this time extremely distracted by the various and contradictory opinions of their preachers; and as they were totally incapable of judging of the force of arguments adduced on one side or the other, but conceived that everything spoken from the pulpit was of equal authority, great confusion and perplexity of mind ensued. In order to "tune the pulpits" and to effect uniformity of doctrine and service, the Lord Protector resorted to proclamations, which, although no longer having the authority of statutes as in the reign of Henry VIII, practically answered the same purpose. Preaching was thus restricted to those who had previously obtained a licence from the king, his visitors, the archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of the diocese.(1295) The same want of uniformity which appeared in the preachers appeared also in their congregations; some "kepte holy day and manny kepte none, but dyd worke opynly, and in some churches servys and some none, soche was the devysyon."(1296)

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In the meantime great discontent had been caused by the Protector's measures. The rich n.o.bleman and country gentleman said nothing, for their a.s.sent had been purchased by gifts of church property, but the tenants and bourgeois cla.s.s suffered from increased rents, from enclosures and evictions. Church lands had always been underlet; the monks were easy landlords. Not so the new proprietors of the confiscated abbey lands, they were determined to make the most out of their newly-acquired property.(1297) Insurrection broke out in various parts of the country.

Not only were enclosures thrown open and fences removed, but a cry was raised for the restoration of the old religion. Information of what was taking place was sent to Sir Henry Amcotes, the mayor, and steps were at once taken (2 July, 1549) for putting the city into a state of defence and for the preservation of the king's peace. A "false draw-brydge" was ordered (_inter alia_) to be made for London Bridge "in case nede should requyer by reason "of the sterrynge of the people (which G.o.d defende!) to caste downe thother."(1298) The city gates were constantly watched and the walls mounted with artillery.(1299)

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In the midst of these preparations there was a lull. On the 21st day of July, being the 6th Sunday after Trinity, came Archbishop Cranmer to St.

Paul's. He wore no vestment save a cope over an alb, and bore neither mitre nor cross, but only a staff. He conducted the whole of the service as set out in the "king's book" recently published, which differed but slightly from the church service in use at the present day, and he administered the "Communion" to himself, the dean and others, according to Act of Parliament. The mayor and most of the aldermen occupied seats in the choir. Cranmer's object in coming to the city on that day was to exhort the citizens to obey the king as the supreme head of the realm, and to pray the Almighty to avert the trouble with which, for their sins, they were threatened.(1300)

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Two days later (23 July) the king himself left Greenwich and rode through the city to Westminster, accompanied by the Lord Protector and other n.o.bles. The mayor and aldermen rode out to Southwark, the former in a gown of crimson velvet, the latter in gowns of scarlet, to meet the royal party, and conducted it as far as Charing Cross, where the aldermen took their leave, the king saluting them and "putting of his capp to everie of them." The mayor rode on to Westminster, where the king and the Protector graciously bade him farewell.(1301)

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The aspect of affairs began to look black indeed. By the end of the month Exeter was being besieged by the rebels, and on the 8th August the French amba.s.sador, taking advantage of the general distraction, bade the Lord Protector open defiance at Whitehall.(1302) At midnight instructions were sent to the mayor to seize all Frenchmen in the city who were not denizens, together with their property. By this time, however, Exeter had been relieved and the insurrection in the west had been put down. The western insurgents had demanded the restoration of the ma.s.s and the abolition of the English liturgy. Contemporaneously with this religious movement another agitation was being made in the eastern counties, and more especially in Norfolk, which had for its object the destruction of enclosures. With the eastern rebels, who placed themselves under the leadership of Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham, the Protector himself sympathized at heart, and the council had to exercise no little pressure before he could be induced to send an efficient force to put them down. At length the rebels were met and defeated by a force under the command of the Earl of Warwick, the son of the extortionate Dudley who was a.s.sociated with Empson in oppressing the city towards the close of the reign of Henry VII. Ket galloped off the field, leaving his followers to be ridden down and killed by the earl's hors.e.m.e.n. He was shortly afterwards captured in a barn, and eventually brought up to London, together with his brother William, and committed to the Tower. Being arraigned and convicted of treason, they were handed over to the high sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Robert was hanged in chains on the top of Norwich Castle, whilst his brother William suffered a similar fate on the top of Wymondham Steeple.(1303)

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Somerset's fall was now imminent. The citizens hated him, not for his favouring the reformers, but for the injury he had caused to trade and for his having bebased the coinage still further than it had been debased by Henry VIII. His colleagues in the council, who had been pampered with gifts of church lands, were angry with him for the favour he had shown towards those who raised the outcry against enclosures, and they began to show their independence.

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On the afternoon of Sunday, the 6th October, 1549, a letter was sent to the mayor subscribed by Lord St. John, the president of the council, the earls of Warwick, Southampton and Arundel, and other members of the council, containing a long indictment of the Protector's policy and conduct. He was proud, covetous and ambitious. He had embezzled the pay of the soldiers, with which he was building sumptuous houses in four or five different places. Whilst sowing discord among the n.o.bles, he flattered the commons to the intent that, having got rid of the former, he might with the aid of the latter achieve his scarcely veiled design of supplanting the king himself. They had hoped, the letter continues, to have persuaded the duke by fair means to take order for the security of the king's person and the commonwealth; but no sooner was the matter broached to the duke than he showed himself determined to appeal to the arbitrament of the sword. Such being the case, they on their part were no less resolved, with G.o.d's help, to deliver the king and the realm from impending ruin, or perish in the attempt. They concluded by asking the civic authorities to see that good watch and ward were kept in the city and that no _materiel_ of war was supplied to the duke or his followers. Any letters or proclamations coming from the Protector were to be disregarded.(1304)

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Determined not to be forestalled by his enemies; the duke himself wrote the same day (6 Oct.) to the mayor desiring the City to furnish him forthwith with 1,000 trusty men fully armed for the protection of the king's person. The men were to be forwarded to him at Hampton by the following Monday mid-day at the latest, and in the meantime the citizens were to take steps to protect the king and his uncle, the duke, against conspiracy.(1305)

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Before these letters had been despatched the mayor and aldermen had been summoned by the Earl of Warwick, who now took the lead against Somerset, to meet him and other lords of the council at his house in Ely Place, Holborn. A meeting had accordingly taken place that Sunday morning, when the state of affairs was discussed. After the meeting separated Warwick came to the city and took up his residence in the house of Sir John York, one of the sheriffs, situate in Walbrook. Sir John Markham, lieutenant of the Tower, was removed, and Sir Leonard Chamberlain appointed in his place, whilst the Court of Aldermen took extraordinary precautions for safe-guarding the city.(1306)