The Reign of Henry the Eighth Part 36

[440] BURNET. vol. iii. p. 115.

[441] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 398.

[442] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._

[443] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 43.

[444] _Cotton M.S._ Otho X, p. 199. _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 397.

[445] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 403.

[446] Cromwell had endeavoured to save Frith, or at least had been interested for him. Sir Edmund Walsingham, writing to him about the prisoners in the Tower, says:--"Two of them wear irons, and Frith weareth none. Although he lacketh irons, he lacketh not wit nor pleasant tongue.

His learning pa.s.seth my judgment. Sir, as ye said, it were great pity to lose him if he may be reconciled."--Walsingham to Cromwell: _M.S. State Paper Office_, second series, vol. xlvi.

[447] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 40.

[448] "The natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one." The argument and the words in which it is expressed were Frith's.--See FOXE, vol. v. p. 6.

[449] The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question.

I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of Catholicism.

[450] 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of Carlisle, cap. 1-4.

[451] Ibid.

[452] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A clause in the preamble of this act bears a significantly Erastian complexion: _come seinte Eglise estoit founde en estat de prelacie deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses progenitours, et countes, barons, et n.o.bles de ce Royaulme et lours ancestres, pour eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu._ If the Church of England was held to have been, founded not by the successors of the Apostles, but by the king and the n.o.bles, the claim of Henry VIII. to the supremacy was precisely in the spirit of the const.i.tution.

[453] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric.

II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee. I had regarded this pa.s.sage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.

[454] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on the Rolls. _Rot. Parl._ iii. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.

[455] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2.

[456] See 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[457] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment of first-fruits.

[458] Lingard says, that "there were rumours that if the prelates executed the decree of the king's courts, they would be excommunicated."--Vol. iii.

p. 172. The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is explicit that the sentence was p.r.o.nounced.

[459] 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[460] Ibid.

[461] Ibid.

[462] LEWIS, _Life of Wycliffe_.

[463] If such _scientia media_ might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in Durham.--FULLER'S _Worthies_, vol. i. p. 479.

[464] _The Last Age of the Church_ was written in 1356. See LEWIS, p. 3.

[465] LELAND.

[466] LEWIS, p. 287.

[467] 1 Ric. II. cap. 13.

[468] WALSINGHAM, 206-7, apud LINGARD. It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy. See MILMAN'S _History of Latin Christianity_, vol. v. p. 508.

[469] WALSINGHAM, p. 275, apud LINGARD.

[470] 5 Ric. II. cap. 5.

[471] WILKINS, _Concilia_, iii. 160-167.

[472] _De Heretico comburendo._ 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.

[473] STOW, 330, 338.

[474] _Rot. Parl._ iv. 24, 108, apud LINGARD; RYMER, ix. 89, 119, 129, 170, 193; MILMAN, Vol. v. p. 520-535.

[475] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1, cap. 7.

[476] There is no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character a.s.signed to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so a.s.signed to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars, served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though not intending Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was designing the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London public Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose that such an expression as "my old lad of the castle," should be accidental; and in the epilogue to the Second Part of _Henry the Fourth_, when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where for anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to _be the man_, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the character of the Lollard hero. I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has examined the records which remain to throw light on the character of this remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically in his favour.

[477] Two curious letters of Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in 1431, are printed in the _Archaeologia_, vol. xxiii. p. 339, etc. "As G.o.d knoweth," he says of them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor to man's, but would be loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay and destroy all men of thrift and worship, as they proposed to have done in our father's days; and of lads and lurdains would make lords."

[478] Proceedings of an organised Society in London called the Christian Brethren, supported by voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of tracts against the doctrines of the Church: _Rolls House MS._

[479] HALE'S _Precedents_. The London and Lincoln Registers, in FOXE, vol.

iv.; and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at Lambeth.

[480] KNOX'S _History of the Reformation in Scotland_.

[481] Also we object to you that divers times, and specially in Robert Durdant's house, of Iver Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and d.a.m.nably read in a great book of heresy, all [one] night, certain chapters of the Evangelists, in English, containing in them divers erroneous and d.a.m.nable opinions and conclusions of heresy, in the presence of divers suspected persons.--Articles objected against Richard Butler--London Register: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 178.

[482] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 176.

[483] MICHELET, _Life of Luther_, p. 71.

[484] Ibid.

[485] Ibid. p. 41.

[486] WOOD'S _Athenae Oxonienses_.

[487] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 618.