held it his duty, therefore, to remind the king of the censures passed upon his marriage "by the mouths of the rude and ignorant common people of the realm, few of them fearing to report and say, that thereof is likelihood hereafter to: ensué great inconvenience, and danger, and peril to the realm, and much uncertainty of succession;" that consequently he required of his majesty a commission to form a judicial court, at once to settle the matter which had so long been artfully delayed by the pope, who yet had before granted a similar commission that ended only without the delivery or determination of any judgment. Cranmer therefore now observed, that "after the convocation had agreed, and determined this matter in the king's behalf, according to the former consent of the universities, it was thought convenient by the king and his learned council, that I should repair unto Dunstable, and there call queen Catherine before me to hear the final sentence made." Cranmer indeed was now following the steps of his predecessor Warham in the present business; for that primate assured the king of his entire assent to the divorce, t * Cranmer's Letter to the king. See my Vindic. 8vo. ed. p. xlvi. 12mo. ed. p. 50. 'Cranmer's Letter to Hawkins, Ellis's Orig. Lett. vol. ii. Cavendish, ed. Singer, vol. i. p. 157. Burnet, Hist. Ref. vol. i. p. 73. ed. 1681. when before Wolsey, Campeggio, the bishops, and the counsellors, assembled by the papal commission, his majesty delivered his sentiments. Gardiner could even applaud this measure of the king, and the fulfilment of it by Cranmer. "There is a commandment," said this shrewd prelate, who had been one of the counsel for his majesty, (and it is to him I consider the application of learned council as specially pointing in the words of the archbishop just cited,) "there is a commandment, that a man shall not marry his brother's wife, What ought, or could the king of England have done otherwise than by the whole consent of the people and judgment of his church, he hath done? that is, that he should be divorced. He was content to have the assisting consents of men of notable gravity, and the censures of the most famous universities of the world: and all to the intent, that men should think he did that which he both might do, and ought to do, uprightly well, seeing the best-learned and worthy good men have subscribed unto it." Would not this man, would not Warham, if either of them had been appointed to the task, have then determined the cause as Cranmer did? But the circumstance furnishes Dr. Lingard - "Gardiner's De Vera Obedientia, translated by Michael Wood, 1553, fol. 16.. with an opportunity of leaning to Sanders, in saying that the archbishop so determined it for no other reason, than because he knew it was expected from him! * Porrò Thomas Cranmerus ex domo Annæ Bolenæ ad solius actoris arbitrium ex lege delectus judex, ut sententiam pro divortio ferret," but not willing that the promotion of the Archbishop should be untouched, the second impression of this infamous book improves the passage into "ex lege delectus archiepiscopus et judex, ut sententiam pro divortio ferret !" 2. Dr. Lingard is, in this division of the charge, dissatisfied at my placing Cranmer at the head of the commissioners in the process at Dunstable, when he was the sole judge; and at my introducing the remark of Gilpin, (one of the archbishop's biographers,) upon the oc casion, who says, that the circumstance "z gave great offence to the queen, and shocked the archbishop himself." Gilpin, I admit, may be mistaken in the latter part of his supposition, but is not in the former. The queen denied the authority of Cranmer, contemptuously affirming "that she was not bound to stand to that • Lord Herbert, Hist. Hen. VIII. p. 374. divorce made by my lord of Canterbury, whom she called a shadow!" Nor is it of any consequence, that the archbishop is termed sole judge, instead of the principal person in a commission. It is well known that with him, and for what purpose, came the bishops of London, Winchester, Bath, Lincoln, and many other great clerks, to the process; and, as Strype expresses it," though he pronounced the sentence, he was but the mouth of the rest; and they were all in as deep as he." C 3. The last division of the present charge contains a facetious illustration, by Dr. Lingard, of the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn in a garret at the western end of Whitehall. It consists of a polite offer to substitute "a a room in the attic story," as being "a more attic phrase, and, therefore, more befitting the dignity of the subject." But to the solitary unknown manuscript, said to have been presented to Mary thirty years before Sanders's book was printed, not the slightest corroboration is added. The reference is merely to b Cranmer says, "I came unto Dunstable, my lord of Lincoln being assistant unto me, and my lord of Winchester, Dr. Bell, Dr. Claybrook, &c. with divers other learned in the law; and so there at our coming kept a court, &c." Lett. to Hawkins, ut supr. p. 35. Le Grand, whom no Romanist of succeeding times, till Dr. Lingard, has thought fit to trust as to the narrative. Davanzati would have gladly availed himself of the information, as a choice addition to the trash he has collected from Sanders, (who now, however, stands him in no stead,) in his Scisma d'Inghilterra; Phillips would not have overpassed, in his Life of Pole, the opportunity of exhibiting what throws a light so ludicrous upon the secret marriage: but they have disregarded the reference in question, which will never be considered of any other value, than as the parent of a very witty observation won by the pretended local circumstance from the pen of Dr. Lingard. "The king's object," Dr. Lingard adds, "was certainly to conceal the ceremony from the prying eyes of his household." And yet he tells us, that Norris and Heneage, two of the king's household, and Anne Savage, the train-bearer of Anne Boleyn, were then present in the garret. Lord Herbert relates, (from Bellay, as it should seem in the margin of his history,) that "the duke of Norfolk, and her father, mother, and brothers, &c." were also witnesses of the ceremony, "which yet (he adds) was not published till the Easter f |