statute. But the Treason Statute touched the life, and enacted the fearful penalties of high treason against all those who would not admit and assent, in words, to the royal supremacy. "Malicious silence," which was assumed to imply evil imaginings against the supremacy, was to be interpreted as treason, and punished by death.

§ 9. The first to suffer under this atrocious law were the monks of the Charterhouse in London-men distinguished by their sanctity and austere piety. They were visited by the commissioners, and examined as to the supremacy. Their answers not being held satisfactory, they were committed for trial. It was hoped that by dealing with them in small batches the constancy of the survivors might be weakened. But this did not prove to be the case. As many as ten appear to have suffered the extreme penalties of the law. The rest either died in prison from fever, or were dispersed into other houses.1

§ 10. In May 1535 the appointment of Bishop Fisher as cardinal furiously exasperated the king, and he determined to destroy both him and Sir Thomas More. A deputation from the

council waited on them in prison, and examined them as to the king's supremacy. They were silent. This plan had been adopted on the advice of More, who thought it would be impossible to indict them if no word were spoken. But unfortunately the bishop, though silent when questioned by the commissioners, had not been equally guarded in his intercourse with others. Divers persons

were able to aver that they had heard him say things in derogation of the supremacy. Among others, Dr. Leighton, soon so well known in the matter of the suppression of the monasteries, bore witness against him. As to Sir Thomas More, he was entrapped into a conversation with Rich, the Attorney-General, in which he was led on to say that Parliament could not create the supremacy.3

§ 11. On this evidence indictments were framed against the bishop and Sir Thomas, and a commission of Oyer and Terminer was issued to try them at Westminster, the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, and some other lords, being associated with the judges. The bishop was tried first. He had lain more than a year in prison, suffering from the want of even common necessaries -ill-fed and ragged. But his spirit was high as ever. As regards the cardinal's hat, which had been sent to him, he declared he would not stoop to pick it up if it lay at his feet, but he had as

1 Historia Martyrum Anglorum, by Chauncey; quoted in Strype, Memorials Henry VIII., p. 194. Dodd's Church History, vol. i., Ap. pendix ii.

State Papers of Henry VIII., i. 436; Roper's Life of More, p. 99. 3 Ib. 103. 4 Burnet, Hist. Ref. i. 258.

little intention as ever of yielding to the king. He pleaded not guilty, but was convicted and condemned to die (June 12).

§ 12. The king extended his mercy towards him so far as to allow him to be beheaded, instead of being hung, drawn, and quartered, and on June 22 the aged bishop, now in his eightieth year, walked out on Tower Hill for execution. He had dressed himself with great care, for he said that this was the day of his nuptials. In his hand he carried a copy of the New Testament, and ever and again repeated the verse to which his attention had been specially drawn: "This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." This, said the bishop, is learning enough for me. Arriving at the scaffold, he repeated the Te Deum, and laying his head on the block, he passed away to his rest. Thus died the most learned, the most devout, the most conscientious of the bishops of that day-the real founder of St. John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, and of the Divinity Professorships at the two Universities -the man who studied Greek in his old age, that he might benefit his university-the man who would not yield a hair's-breadth, for either fear or favour, in a matter which touched his conscience.

§ 13. On the 1st July Sir Thomas More was brought to his trial. The indictment charged him with "malicious silence," 2 inasmuch as he had both refused to answer himself touching the supremacy, and had also encouraged the bishop to refuse. But the words which he was said to have spoken to Rich were the chief evidence against him.3 He pleaded strongly in his own defence, but was condemned. The sentence he received joyfully, and at once set himself to prepare for that which he had long desired, and even courted. The touching details of his last days on earth, and his execution, are told by his son-in-law, Roper, who had married his favourite daughter, Margaret—a lady in every way worthy of her father. More kept his jocose and witty vein until the last, and was executed July 6 (1535).1

§ 14. The execution of two such men as Bishop Fisher and Sir T. More, and on such manifestly inadequate grounds, could not fail to arouse the public feeling of Christendom.

§ 15. To Clement VII. had now succeeded in the papal chair Paul III- -a rash and violent man-who was transported to fury by the news of the King of England's proceedings. He had him

1 He had been confessor to the Lady Margaret, grandmother of the king, and he directed her munificence into this channel.

2 Herbert's Henry VIII., Kennett, ii. 163.

3 Sir Thomas entirely denied the truth of Rich's statement.-Roper's Life, p. 103.

4

Burnet, i. 259.

self been greatly instrumental in causing them, by his inconsiderate gift of a cardinal's hat to Bishop Fisher, but this only served to exasperate him the more. He at once drew up a bull, in which, declaring that Henry had already incurred the censure threatened by Clement, he pronounced against him excommunication and deposition, and laid the land under an interdict until his sentence was carried out. He absolved the king's subjects from their allegiance, and called upon all Christian kings to unite in deposing this monster of iniquity. On receiving a brief to this effect, the King of France remonstrated strongly with the pope, and induced him to restrain the publication of his anathema,1 which did not finally appear until after the rifling of the tomb of Thomas Becket. But though all might not be ready to commend such measures of extreme violence as the pope contemplated, yet a strong and general feeling of indignation against the king prevailed throughout Europe.

§ 16. To meet and if possible to remove this, Crumwell set himself to give explanations to the princes of Europe through the English ambassadors. Gardiner was sent on a special mission to France; Fox, Bishop of Hereford, to the Duke of Saxony.2 The feeling at home, which, if not so freely expressed, was probably as deep, was met by another circular to the justices of the peace, in which they are bid to see that the clergy publish, four times a year," the treasons traitorously committed against us and our laws by the late Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More; who by divers secret practices of their malicious mind against us intended to seminate, engender, and breed, among our people and subjects, a most mischievous and seditious opinion, not only to their own confusion, but also of divers others who lately have condignly suffered execution according to their demerits."3

§ 17. There was one among his subjects whom King Henry had especial reason to dread as a leader of public opinion against him, and all the more because he was not in his power. This was Reginald Pole-of the royal blood both by father and mother1___ a man of high spirit and considerable talents, who had been regarded with much affection by the king, and had been loaded with preferment, a canonry and two deaneries being given him before

1 In his letter to the pope Francis designated the brief sent him as impudentissimum quoddam Breve.-State Papers of Henry VIII., vii. 628; Dodd's Ch. Hist., vol. i., Appendix, xxxvii.

* Crumwell to Cassalis, State Papers, vii. 633. Dodd's Church History, vol. i., Appendix, Nos. xxxvii. -xlvi.

3 Strype, Memorials of Henry VIII., Appendix. liv.

His father was Lord Montacute, cousin to King Henry VII. His mother, Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV.

1

he was nineteen years of age. He had been sent by the king to study at Paris, and was there when the opinion of the university was required as to the divorce. He had declined to help forward the king's cause, and soon afterwards, returning to England, he composed a pamphlet against the divorce. Cranmer, who had seen this, declared that it was of such eloquence and wit that if it was known to the common people it would be impossible to persuade them to the contrary. Henry now testified his displeasure against his cousin, and Pole retired to Italy, where he resided principally at Padua. Dr. Sampson, Dean of the Chapel Royal, had printed a Latin oration in defence of the supremacy, and this was sent to Pole by way of influencing him. The effect it had on him was just the contrary. It set him to write a Latin treatise on Ecclesiastical Unity, in which he comments with unsparing bitterness on the king's proceedings, and brings a tremendous indictment against him.3 In some passages of fine eloquence he lauds Fisher and More, and stigmatises their execution as an atrocious crime. This treatise was well calculated to provoke Henry to fury. Pole himself was somewhat fearful as to its reception, for he wrote to a friend in England, suggesting that it would not be well that the king should read it for himself, on "account of its prolixity," but that his Grace should commit it to some "learned and sad man" to read it for him, suggesting Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, as the fittest. Henry, however, had read the book, and his first idea was to try to get Pole into his hands, in which case he would probably have soon followed More and Fisher. Pole knew the danger, and preferred to risk his English preferment to accepting the king's invitation to come home.5 Tonstal wrote a letter to him replying to the charges he had made against the king. "You presuppose," he writes, "for a ground, the king's grace to be swerved from the unity of Christ's church and that in taking upon him the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England he intendeth to separate the Church of England from the unity of the whole body of Christendom; taking upon him the office belonging to spiritual men, grounded in the Scriptures, of immediate care of souls, and attributing to himself that which belongeth to priesthood, wherein

4

1 Cranmer's Remains (Park. Soc.), p. 229.

2 Pro ecclesiastica unitatis defensione libri quatuor.

3 Especially he charges him with criminal intimacy with Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne. At the same time he states that Anne would not yield to his advances, because of the way in which he had repudiated her sister. Mr. Froude shows some reason for doubting whether this passage were in the original MS. Dr. Hook, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Pocock accept the charge as true. Burnet, Records, p. iii. b. ii. No. 51.

5 Strype, Memorials of Henry VIII., Appendix, 82.

you do err too far. His full purpose is to see the laws of Almighty God purely preached and taught, and Christ's faith without blot kept and observed within the realm, and not to separate himself any wise from the unity of Christ's holy Catholic church, but inviolably at all times to keep and observe the same; and to 'reduce the Church of England out of all captivity to foreign powers, and to abolish such usurpations as heretofore in this realm the Bishops of Rome have increased, reducing all things to that estate that is conformable to those ancient decrees of the church which the Bishop of Rome at his consecration solemnly doth profess to observe, which be the eight universal councils."1 Pole replied to this letter, defending his treatise and not showing any inclination to yield. The pope quickly made him a cardinal, while Henry caused him to be attainted as a traitor.

§ 18. As the position of the king was so rudely assailed, it became necessary to establish it by every means possible. Some time in the year 1535, Gardiner, who had already reaped a substantial harvest of royal favour in the rich See of Winchester, published a book On true Obedience. Like Sampson in the oration which had so much moved the wrath of Pole, he maintained in this work that the king was just as much the supreme head of the nation in spiritual as in temporal things. According to him the distinction between the two is utterly dark and misleading. "For if a Christian prince is to be king and govern his people, in what way is he to govern them? In the way of truth or of falsehood? If in the way of truth, the Scripture says he is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Spiritual things are a more important part of his care than temporal. . . . He is a prince of his whole people, not of a part of it, and he governs them in all things, not in some only; and as the people constitute the Church in England, so he must needs be the supreme head of the Church as he is the supreme head of the people."2 Such were the views of the famous bishop of Winchester at this period. And another man not less remarkable in the after history of the Church zealously seconded them. This treatise was republished in the following year with a preface by Bonner, then Archdeacon of Leicester. In this preface the supreme power of the king is exaggerated in the same way as it is in the treatise.3 Similar views

810.

1 Burnet, Records, p. iii. b. ii. No. 52. 2 Gardinerus de verd obedientiâ.

Brown, Fasciculus, vol. ii. pp. 808,

3 Dr. Maitland (Essays on the Reformation) endeavours to throw doubt on this preface having been written by Bonner. He does not, however, appear to prove his point.