74 ARRIVAL OF PHILIP OF SPAIN. [1554. and Flemish nobles, came to anchor at Southampton. The queen had arrived at Winchester; and thither the prince proceeded with his retinue, after having rested three days. He was scrupulously careful to avoid exciting the English jealousy. The attendants of his court were not allowed to land; and he exhorted his nobles to forget the Spanish customs, and adopt those of England, even to the drinking of its beer. On the 23rd he set out on horseback to Winchester, in a drenching rain; accompanied by thousands who gathered round him in his progress. That evening he saw his expectant betrothed, who had sent him a ring to greet him on his journey. Philip at this interview, interpreted one of the English customs very liberally, by kissing not only the queen but all her attendant ladies. At a public meeting the next day, Mary saluted Philip with a loving kiss. They were married on the 25th, the festival of Saint James, the patron saint of Spain. Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, performed the ceremony. Cranmer, the archbishop, was in his prison at Oxford. Previous to the marriage an instrument was read by one of the Council of Charles V. declaring that the emperor had 1554.] MARRIAGE OF PHILIP AND MARY. 75 bestowed upon his son the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, so that queen Mary might marry a sovereign like herself. At the banquet, Gardiner was the only person permitted to sit upon the dais with the king and queen. After a few days of banqueting, Philip and Mary proceeded to Windsor, where the king was installed as a knight of the garter; "at which time," says Holinshed, "a herald took down the arms of England at Windsor, and in the place of them would have set the arms of Spain, but he was commanded to set them up again by certain lords." This was one sign of the times. Another, of a different complexion, was not less significant. At the solemn entry of the king and queen into London, on the 18th of August, amongst other decorations of the public places, the conduit in Gracechurch Street was painted with devices of the Nine Worthies, and of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Henry was represented with a Bible in his hand, on which was written Verbum Dei. "The bishop of Winchester, noting the book in Henry VIII.'s hand, shortly afterwards called the painter before him, and with vile words calling him traitor, asked why, and who bade him describe king Henry with a book in his hand, as is aforesaid, threatening him therefore to go to the Fleet." The painter humbly apologised, and said he thought he had done well. "Nay, said the bishop, it is against the queen's catholic proceedings. And so he painted him shortly after, in the stead of the book of Verbum Dei, to have in his hands a new pair of gloves." ." During this summer and autumn the streets of London were filled with Spaniards, much to the displeasure of the citizens. But they were consoled in the autumn by seeing some of the wealth of the New World poured into our island; for twenty cars paraded through the streets to the Tower, containing fourscore and seventeen chests of silver. But wedding-feasts, and pageants, and even twenty cars of silver to the Tower, could not divert serious men from looking with disgust and alarm at the change which was symbolised by the obliteration of the Bible from the painting of Henry VIII. Fox has a curious record of this unquiet time : About the fifth day of October, and within a fortnight following, were divers, as well householders as servants and prentices, apprehended and taken, and committed to sundry prisons, for the having and selling of certain books which were sent into England by the preachers that fled into Germany and other countries; which books nipped a great number so near, that within one fortnight there were little less than threescore imprisoned for this matter." These preachers that fled from persecution were certainly not nice in their language. Bale, a great master of epithets, reviled "gagling Gardiner, butcherly Bonner, and trifling Tunstall." The exiled bishop Ponet calls Gardiner "the great devil and cut-throat of England." The politics of these exiles, too, were somewhat of a revolutionary nature, in holding that power was derived from the people, and that Mary was disqualified from ruling, by reason of her sex. They set forth, moreover, various strong arguments against the Spaniards, besides the one great grievance of the change in religion.+ Knox, and Goodman, and Becon, and Aylmer, wanderers in foreign lands, (6 Queen Jane and Queen Mary," p. 79. + See Dr. Maitland's curious papers on "Puritan Style," and "Puritan Politics," in "Essays on the Reformation." 76 SEDITIOUS BOOKS-PROTESTANT EXILES. [1554. wrote with the violence that few who hold themselves oppressed have wisdom to restrain. We may lament over the bitter and reviling spirit of these earnest men ; but even if we should see with Dr. Maitland, “as a mere matter of fact, in how great a degree the persecution of the Protestants in England was caused by the conduct of their brethren who were in exile," we should not accept their coarseness and rashness as a justification of this persecution. Let us endeavour to relate this fearful story with a full sense of the severe, uncompromising, and even unchristian spirit that belonged to some of the leaders in the English and Scottish Reformation; but let us not compromise our hatred of ferocious bigotry by accepting as apology for it the provocations to be found in unique black-letter tracts. When we are asked, after carefully reading the copious extracts from these books, "What kindled and fanned the fires of Smithfield ?" we shall still answer, the bigotry of an arrogant church, carried to excess by cruel and crafty men. If the Gardiners and Bonners revenged the insults they had received from Protestants abroad by burning Protestants at home, the greater their guilt and their shame. Before the meeting of the parliament that refused to make heresy a capital crime, Renard wrote to the emperor: "Assuredly, sire, if the pensions had been given before this, and previous to the arrival of his highness, it would have been the way to bring them [the parliament] over to our wishes, being a people over whom we should obtain influence by liberality and gifts." When his highness was king of England he showed his policy in remedying this omission. The fourscore and seventeen chests of silver were not conveyed to the Tower to lie idle in its vaults. With a transparent simplicity, Micheli, the Venetian ambassador, says of Philip, "He allows pensions, amounting to upwards of fifty-four thousand scudi in gold, to some Englishmen who remained faithful to the queen in the conspiracy of Wyat, without receiving any farther service from them." It was a common exclamation with Philip, "Better not reign at all than reign over heretics." He had great projects in view. The heretical island was to be reconciled to Rome. The papal legate was again to hold a divided sway with the temporal sovereign. Cardinal Pole was coming to threaten or to absolve. parliament was to meet in November. Pole, a far nobler spirit than the rapacious courtiers and the apostate bishops who were waiting to lick the dust off his shoes, came up the Thames on the 14th of November, in a gorgeous barge, with a silver cross at its prow. Parliament had met two days before, well prepared now for unlimited obedience. On the 27th the great legate met that parliament at Whitehall, where he sat under a canopy with Philip and Mary. He returned thanks to the king and queen, who had restored him, a banished man, to be a member of the commonwealth; he went over the history of the connection of this island with the apostolic see, from the earliest times; he pointed out the miseries which the realm had suffered by swerving from that unity; they were now under a queen whom God had raised up, to reign for the restitution of true religion, and the extirpation of all errors and sects, and had joined in marriage with a prince of like religion; he had himself come, having full and ample commission, to *See Dr. Maitland's "Essays on the Reformation,"p. 41. The 1554.1 CARDINAL POLE AND THE PARLIAMENT. 77 reconcile and to forgive, provided all laws and statutes which interfered with the exercise of his commission should be revoked and repealed. After this oration, the Lords and Commons went before the king and queen and humbly desired that their majesties would intercede with the cardinal for absolution, and that the whole people of the realm should be received into the bosom of the Church as children repentant. And then all the parliament went on their knees, and the legate absolved. How utterly the Lords and Commons of England were abased before the power of Rome, may be seen in the preamble to the Act "repealing all statutes, articles, and provisions made against the See Apostolic of Rome, since the twentieth year of king Henry VIII." "We the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons assembled in this present parliament, representing the whole body of the realm of England and the dominions of the same. In the name of ourselves particularly, and also of the said body universally, in this our supplication directed to your majesties with the most humble suit, that it may by your grace's intercession and means be exhibited to the most reverend father in God, the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate, sent especially hither from our most Holy Father the Pope, Julius the third, and the See Apostolic of Rome, Do declare ourselves very sorry and repentant of the schism and disobedience committed in this realm and dominions aforesaid, against the said See Apostolic, either by making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments against the supremacy of the said see, or otherwise doing or speaking that might impugn the same; offering ourselves, and promising by this our supplication that for a token and knowledge of our said repentance we be, and shall be always ready, under and with the authority of your majesties, to the utmost of our powers, to do that shall lie in us, for the abrogation and repealing of the said laws and ordinances in this present parliament, as well for ourselves as for the whole body whom we represent." That Statute of submission explains, in its second title, how the great difficulty had been smoothed over-not of a change of religion, for that was a trifling matter-the difficulty of dealing with the plunder of the church. The Act is "also for the establishment of all spiritual and ecclesiastical possessions and hereditaments conveyed to the laity." From this degraded parliament thirty-seven members of the House of Commons voluntarily seceded; for which demonstration of independence they were indicted. All was now easy. A new statute of treason was passed against those who preached or openly spoke against the title of the king and queen and their issue. The existence of "profane and schismatical conventicles" was recognised, in a law which declared it treason to pray for the queen's death, as there said to be practised. But the crowning glory of this parliament was the revival of all the statutes against heretics. Without this, the great work of Mary's reign could not have been accomplished. The Statute is a short one; but it was thoroughly efficient. "An Act for the renewing of three Statutes made for the punishment of Heresies: For the eschewing and avoiding of errors and heresies which of late years have risen, grown, and much increased within this realm, for that the 1 & 2 Philip and Mary, c. 8. 78 ALL THE STATUTES AGAINST HERETICS REVIVED. [1555. ordinaries have wanted authority to proceed against those that were infected therewith: Be it therefore ordained and enacted by the authority of this present parliament, that the Statute made in the fifth year of the reign of king Richard the Second, concerning the arresting and apprehension of erroneous and heretical preachers, and one other Statute made in the second year of the reign of king Henry the Fourth concerning the repressing of heresies and punishment of heretics, and also one other Statute made in the second year of king Henry the Fifth, concerning the suppression of heresy and Lollardy, and every article, branch, and sentence contained in the same three several Acts, and every of them, shall from the 20th day of January next coming be revived and be in full force, strength, and effect, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, for ever." * |