England, he pretended to elect Ireland into a kingdom. This MARY. island, as hath been observed, was made a kingdom by king Pope Henry VIII., after his rupture with the see of Rome. The Paul 4. pretends to same title was continued in the late reign, and now assumed give Ireland the title of a by the present king and queen; but this pope had resolved, kingdom. immediately upon his election, that the king and queen should not claim the dominion of Ireland under so sovereign a style. But, on the other side, it was thought a hardship to oblige the crown of England to quit a title which had been carried by three princes successively. The pope therefore found a method to make his pretended prerogative pass the better: he seemed not to know Henry VIII. had raised Ireland to a kingdom without his leave, that so the world might believe the queen had used the title as a gift from his holiness, and not as a right descended on her. the queen. Book. The pope has been Church. 381. The queen gratified the pope to the length of his fancy; for His bull at the return of the ambassadors, the bishop of Ely exhibited allowed by the bull for making Ireland a kingdom in the council chamber. This instrument was delivered by the council to the archbishop of Dublin, to be published in that island. The ambassadors Council had several private audiences of the pope, at which he blamed the kingdom for not making full restitution of what had been demands a full restitutaken from the Church. He told them the detaining any thing tion of what of this kind was not to be endured; that consecrated revenues alienated can never be applied to secular uses; and that those who refuse from the to return them the last farthing are in a state of damnation. That if he had power to indulge upon this head, and confirm the alienations, he would do it with all the inclination imaginable; but his authority did not reach so far, as to give him the liberty to profane holy things, and transfer property from God Almighty; that the English nation might be assured, the keeping back these estates would prove a cursed thing that the Divine vengeance would pursue such injustice, and make the kingdom perpetually unhappy; and therefore he charged the ambassadors to write immediately for redress. He insisted likewise upon the payment of the Peter-pence; and that he intended to send a collector for that customary duty; that himself had formerly executed that office in England for three years, and was extremely pleased with the forwardness of the people in their contributions. And lastly, he told them they had no reason to hope St. Peter would open heaven gates to them as long MER, CRAN- as they disseized him of his patrimony. This demand being Abp. Cant. not only made to the ambassadors, but repeated in several negotiations at the English court, the queen made her utmost effort to give his holiness satisfaction; and how far she sucFather Paul, ceeded in the affair will be seen afterwards. Hist. Council of Trent. Flower wounds a altar. To proceed to a farther account of the prosecution upon the score of religion. One William Flower, alias Branch, first a monk, afterwards a secular priest, and at last brought over to the Reformation: this man, being of an over-warm enthusiastic temper, coming into St. Margaret's church, Westminster, wounded a priest upon the head and arm, as he was priest at the administering the sacrament. For this outrage he was committed to the gate-house, and afterwards convented before bishop Bonner. Fox, in reporting this fact, confesses Flower did not do well, or evangelically, as he phrases it as if such distraction was defensible by any other standard of justice. This martyrologist adds, Flower owns this assaulting the priest a fault, and that he was willing to suffer for his misbehaviour: but whether this is not misrepresenting the case, and palliating in some measure, will appear by his own narrative: for when Flower was asked by Bonner, whether he intended to kill the priest or not, or whether he did well or ill in assaulting him, he refused to make any answer to either of those Fox, vol. 3. questions. The reason of this silence may be easily conjecp. 241. 243. tured. Besides, he explains himself clearly in his discourse with one Robert Smith, another prisoner on the account of religion. This Smith asked him whether he had any quarrel or particular disaffection to that priest? He told him no: but that if any other of the same order, and doing the same business, had come in his way, he should have treated him in the same manner. Smith desired to know, whether he thought the fact warrantable by the precepts or permissions of the Gospel? To this Flower makes no direct answer at first, but endeavours to justify the outrage by the examples of Moses, Aaron, Phineas, Joshua, Zimri, Jehu, Judith, and Mattathias, with several other precedents in the Old Testament. Upon this, Smith puts a farther question, whether Flower would advise him, or any other person, to take the same liberty? Flower tells him no; because such things are not to be ventured on without particular encouragement from the Spirit. Id. p. 242. But as for himself, he found his conscience much at ease, and MARY. did not repent that sally. And if Smith had the same encouragement from the Spirit, he ought not to be condemned for his imitation. Thus Flower goes upon the principle of the Jewish zealots. He makes inward impulse, and supernatural direction, his warrant for wounding the priest. These are desperate grounds: thus private persons invade the magistrate's office, and punish without commission or forms of law. Thus a man may be hurried by the heat of his temper, by the force of his revenge, by the suggestions of the devil, into the most savage barbarities. And then, to cover his frenzy, and lay his conscience asleep, he recurs to inspiration, and vouches a divine authority. It is true, at last he owns his dislike of his striking the priest, and, to use his own words, he believes his Id. p. 244. "act was evil and naught." But then, for the matter and cause wherefore he so struck the said priest, he neither did nor does mislike himself therein. This looks like a mysterious recantation for if he believed he had a justifiable cause or reason for striking the priest, it is hard to imagine why he should condemn the action. In short, the expressing himself in this manner, looks somewhat like a reserve for the zealot's principle. It is to be hoped he explained himself better upon farther recollection. He was declared an heretic for denying transubstantiation, and suffered at the stake in Smithfield with great fortitude. 402. Smith, above-mentioned, was brought before Bonner, and had articles put to him. He treats the bishop very unceremoniously, and draws hard language upon himself, which he returns in the extremity it was given. He calls the oil, salt, &c. used in baptism, blasphemies, and denies the necessity of Id. p. 401, water baptism to children. Fox overlooks these failings and mistakes, and gives him commendation without abatement: which undistinguishing regard is by no means serviceable to every reader. The corporal presence was pressed closely upon him, according to the usual manner in this reign. "Do you Id. p. 396, believe," says Bonner, "that it is the very body of Christ, that was born of the Virgin Mary, naturally, substantially, and really, after the words of consecration ?" His disbelief of this article was enough to bring him to Smithfield, where he suffered this summer, in August. Thornton, suffragan of Dover, and Nicholas Harpsfield, Several archdeacon of Canterbury, were remarkably cruel in their religion. burnt for CRAN prosecutions: Bland, a clergyman, to mention no others, sufAbp. Cant. fered under them for denying the corporal presence. MER, Id. p. 373. And Cardmaker, prebendary of Wells, who should have been mentioned before, was burnt in Smithfield for disowning transubstantiation. To say something in general concerning this matter: it is persecution. granted those that suffered were not all of them without the common infirmities. Sallies of passion and vehemence of language broke out sometimes. To be stripped of their fortune, and see their families undone to be ruggedly used in prison, and then dragged to the stake: to be thus handled, was a great trial of patience. It is no wonder if people are thrown off their temper a little under such provocation: especially when there was no private injustice, no crime against the state, no charge of immorality, to bring on the rigour. To speak clearly, their judges seldom showed much inclination to preserve them. They were nice and particular in their inquiries: they put the test home, and pressed the corporal presence and transubstantiation in the most ensnaring terms: neither would they be satisfied with less than distinct and categorical answers. And which way men could safely avoid burning under such interrogatories, is farther than I can discover. Now he that submits to torture, and parts with his life rather than deny his disbelief of these very shocking and incredible things, may, I humbly conceive, deserve the title of a martyr. 382. As to their general behaviour, nothing could be more to their advantage. They disengaged from flesh and blood without regret they encouraged their friends to constancy: they appeared glad of the opportunity of going so honourably into the other world. And though some of them might be mistaken in matters of lesser moment, they were right in the main. To stand death under the most formidable appearance, is a noble proof of integrity. Men who are contented to resign their interest, to shorten their lives, and make themselves literally a burnt-offering, are most certainly in earnest. Their conscience and their piety, in such cases, are out of all question. Gardiner, who thought a few examples of severity would have struck terror into the rest, was disappointed in his expectation. He perceived the courage of the reformed increased with their sufferings, and that one execution made way for another. And thus finding his project of crushing the he- MARY. resy, as he called it, impracticable, he declined being farther Gardiner concerned. Thus he left the matter wholly to Bonner, who, refuses to at present, seemed not displeased with the employment, but sanguinary went on without mercy or remorse. proceed in methods. These severities, purely upon the score of conscience, were generally censured. For many of those who suffered, had acted nothing contrary to law: they were first seized upon slender pretences, and then kept in prison until the statutes against heresy were revived. Thus the prosecutions of this reign far exceeded those of the last. In king Edward's time, the papists only lost their preferments, or at the hardest their liberty: but now nothing would satisfy for the crime of a different belief, but capital punishment, and sending people into the other world, in the most tormenting manner. And since the queen had at first declared against forcing her religion upon her subjects, it was thought unreasonable to charge the persecution upon her. It was believed she was overruled since her marriage, and that these fires were kindled by king King Philip suspected for Philip. The inquisition in his country, his bigotry, and the these rigors. unacceptableness of his temper, made this presumption not improbable. However, the king it seems had no mind to lie under this imputation, as may be collected by a sermon preached before him by his confessor Alphonsus: for this King Philip's preacher, who was a Franciscan, declaimed strongly against confessor taking away people's lives for religion. He spent some satirical expressions upon the bishops for these severities: he said the persecution. Scriptures prescribed them quite different methods, taught them "to instruct those in meekness that opposed them," and not hale them to execution, and burn them, because they could believe no better. The bishops were surprised to find Heylin, their proceedings condemned by the Spaniards; and to do them justice, they did not seem to like it themselves: and that they might not be misreported, they openly declared against these sanguinary methods. As for the friar's sermon, (said to preaches against the Hist. Ref. be preached on the tenth of February,) it made no lasting Bp. Burnet, impression on the court: for on the twenty-sixth day of March pt. 2. p. 365. following, the king and queen sent an order to the justices of peace in Norfolk, to inquire after those who refused to conform and come to church: to bind them to their good behaviour, or commit them according as the quality of the person, VOL. VI. I |