ANNE DE TSERCLAS, WIFE OF BISHOP HOOPER. LEARNED friend, visiting Dr. Thomas Fuller, author of British Church History and of the Worthies of England, who was then residing at Cambridge, asked him the subject of his studies. "I am collecting," said Fuller, "the witnesses of the truth of the Protestant religion through all ages, even in the depth of Popery, conceiving it feasible, though difficult, to evidence them." "It is needless pains," said his friend; "for I know that I am descended from Adam, though I cannot prove my pedigree from him." The excellent lady of whom we now write was a witness to the truth of the Protestant religion, and under the reign of the bloody Mary suffered severely for it in her dearest earthly relative. Her maiden name was Anne de Tserclas; but in regard to her parentage, we are in Fuller's predicament as to some of his Protestant witnesses-this we find it dificult to evidence. Our historians and biographers are conflicting as to her native country, and they give us no information as to her parents. Were the observation of Fuller's friend a sound one, we might dismiss all such inquiries as superfluous, and simply remind the reader once for all, that our heroines sprung from the same original stock with the rest of mankind. But the observation was made Anecdotes and Traditions illustrative of Early English History and Literature, printed for Camden Society, p. 6. more in jest than in sober earnest; for Fuller's friend was "an excellent scholar, who could be humorous, and would be serious, as he was himself disposed." No reflecting person would seriously maintain that the pains taken to ascertain the parentage of such as are entitled to the remembrance of posterity is useless labour. The knowledge of their parentage often throws light on the formation of their minds, and helps to explain how their talents and characters were developed and matured. Foxe, the martyrologist, who knew that Mrs. Hooper was a lady of worth, desired to trace her descent; and, in a letter to Henry Bullinger, dated Basle, June 17, 1559, he says, "I wish to know whether Hooper married a wife from among you yonder, or here at Basle." In his Acts and Monuments he makes her a native of Burgundy, a province of France; but whether he derived this informa tion from Bullinger, who, no doubt, could inform him correctly, is uncertain. Strype, in one part of his Ecclesiastical Memorials, states that she was “a Helvetian woman," or a native of Switzerland.3 In another place he calls her "a discreet woman of the Low Countries." From one of Hooper's letters to Bullinger, in 1549, afterwards quoted, we learn that her parents lived about fifteen miles from Antwerp, in the Netherlands; but whether that was their original place of residence or not, we are unable to determine. Whoever were her parents, and whatever was the country of their nativity, they were evidently in respectable circumstances. This may be concluded with certainty from her having received a liberal education, of which her beautiful handwriting and her knowledge of the Latin tongue, in which such of her letters as have been preserved are written, afford undoubted proofs. On the continent she had met with John Hooper, afterwards Dr., Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, "a great scholar and linguist," who, upon the passing of the bloody act as to the six ar 5 1 Zurich Letters, second series, p. 36. 2 Ibid., vol. vi., p. 637. ticles, in the reign of Henry VIII., being exposed to peril for his Protestant principles, had left England and travelled in France, Ireland, Holland, and Switzerland, in which latter country he lived partly at Basle and partly at Zurich, where he formed a lasting friendship with the excellent and learned Henry Bullinger. The precise date of her marriage with Hooper is uncertain. It must have taken place at least more than a year before they left Zurich for England, which was in the spring of 1549; as at that time they had a little daughter, named Rachel, who was "cutting her teeth." On their parting with Bullinger and his family, all were deeply affected, such was the endearing friendship that subsisted between them; and, what is remarkable, Hooper, on that occasion, though the throne of England was now filled by Edward VI., a reforming prince of high promise, and everything augured well for the Reformation in that country, anticipated and spoke in language prophetic of his future martyrdom. "In all probability," said Bullinger, "King Edward will raise you to a bishopric. If so, don't suffer your elevation to make you forgetful of your old friend in Switzerland. Let us, from time to time, have the satisfaction of hearing from you." Hooper answered, "No change of place nor of station, no accession of new friends, shall ever render me unmindful of yourself and my other benefactors here. You may depend on my carefully corresponding with you. But it will not be in my power to write you an account of the last news of all; for (taking Bullinger by the hand) others will inform you of my being burned to ashes in that very place where, in the meanwhile, I shall labour most for God and the gospel." 1 A narrative of Mrs. Hooper's journey from Zurich to London, in company with Mr. Hooper, their infant daughter, and one or two attendants, is given in Hooper's letters to Bullinger. On the 29th of March, 1549, they arrived at Strasburg, where they remained till the 2d of April, when they proceeded to Mayence, and 1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. iii., p. 119. 2 See Zurich Letters, first portion. entered that city on the 5th, after encountering no small danger on sea, and finding from experience that the innkeepers between these two cities were "barbarous Scythians and harsh uncivilized Getæ." Leaving Mayence, they landed at Cologne, on the 11th of April; and on the 14th, starting from that city, they directed their course through the barren and sandy plains of Brabant to Antwerp, which they reached on the 18th of the same month. At Antwerp they rested for some days, in order to recruit Mrs. Hooper and the child, who were greatly exhausted by the fatigue of the journey. During their stay in that city, Mrs. Hooper wrote to her mother, who lived at the distance of about fifteen miles from it, sending the letter by a messenger. Her father had recently died; but, communication being much slower then than it is in our day, she knew nothing of that event till the messenger brought her the afflicting tidings. The manner in which her brother treated her letter affords an example of the power of false religion in extinguishing the tenderest feelings of the human heart. "Her mother," says Mr. Hooper, "received the letter, and gave it my wife's brother to read, who immediately threw it into the fire without reading it. You see the words of Christ are true, that the brother shall persecute the brother for the sake of the word of God." This brother, in the depth of his fanatical blindness, was enraged that his sister had become a heretic, and the mistress of a heretical priest; for, according to the doctrines of his church, he would not allow that she could be the wife of a priest. He would probably have been much better contented had she retired to a convent, though a clerical seraglio, or, if it was better regulated, in which she would have led a useless life, manufacturing Agnus Deis, woollen palls for the shoulders of bishops, and other Popish trumpery; or practising self-imposed austerities, counting her beads, marking herself with numerous crossings, bowing to images, and worshipping Popish relics; while the proper duties of woman—her duties as a daughter, a wife, or a mother—were all set at nought. Mrs. Hooper and the child having tolerably recovered 1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 63. their strength, the small company proceeded to London, whither they arrived in health and safety before the close of May. On his return to England, becoming chaplain to the Duke of Somerset, Hooper laboured with indefatigable diligence as a Christian minister, expounding the Scriptures to crowded and attentive auditories in and about London, once every day, often two or three times, and frequently preaching at court before the king and council, whom he exhorted with great freedom, in his Lent sermons on Jonal, to effect a more thorough reformation of the church. In a letter to Bullinger, dated London, June 25 [1549], he says, "There are some persons here who read and expound the Holy Scriptures at a public lecture, two of whom read in St. Paul's cathedral four times a-week. I myself, too, as my slender abilities will allow me, having compassion upon the ignorance of my brethren, read a public 1 These have been printed by the Parker Society. |