VII CHAP charge of Hunn during his temporary imprisonment. One of these officers or constables considering his own life to be in danger made a "confession," in which he supported the accusation against the chancellor, Dr. Horsey: but there was clear evidence that Hunn had expressed a determination to kill himself, and that the confession of the officer in question was extorted after repeated assertions to the contrary, as well as under the influence of fear and (apparently) torture, for the bishop writes that it was "made by pain and durance." The chancellor being committed for trial, an appeal was made by the bishop to Wolsey, for his interest towards obtaining the removal of the trial from London to some more imUnfairness partial place; "for assured am I," he adds, “if any of juries chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, the clergy they be so maliciously set, 'in favorem hæreticæ towards Strange excitability doners pravitatis,' that they will condemn any clerk though he were as innocent as Abel." The matter came before Parliament and before the King, and the entire innocence of Dr. Horsey was so clearly made out that the attorney-general was directed to withdraw the indictment, and to make a public acknowledgment when Dr. Horsey was called on to plead to it in the court of King's Bench, that there was no true ground for the charge laid against him.3 No doubt the spirit shown towards the clergy by of Lon- the citizens may be accounted for in a great degree by that singular excitability for which Londoners as a body have always been so conspicuous. It seems as if the mere cry of a foolish apprentice was enough "Otherwise called William Heresie," says this atrocious ver dict, apparently joking over matter of life and death. More's Works, p. 297. a VII attack on A.D. 1517 to arouse the whole city to a state of rebellion against CHAP order and authority, notwithstanding the bitter experiences which such irritability had brought. A short time after the agitation against the clergy, on account of Hunn's death, the same restless spirit which had stimulated the proceedings against Dr. Their Horsey, and the bad feeling by which it was accom- foreigners panied towards the clergy in general, was excited against the foreign residents in the city. The Venetian ambassador Giustiniani gives a graphic account of the attack made on the foreigners on "Evil May Day," 1517, and none seem to have considered themselves safe. It was led on by a tradesman named Lincoln, and a mendicant friar of St. Mary Spital, named Beale, both of whom were afterwards hung for the crime, with eleven other citizens. Yet there seems to have been no real cause for the ill-feeling against the foreign residents in the metropolis, and no justification whatever for the lawlessness of the citizens in this case more than for their disregard of reason and justice in the case of Dr. Horsey. sermons at St. Paul's Cross A.D. 1515 This excitability seems to have been much stimu- Agitation lated by the sermons at Paul's Cross, as will often son be observed in the history of the period. A very important controversy, indeed, arose out of one of these sermons about the very time that Dr. Horsey was liberated from his imprisonment, and considerable influence was exercised by it on the subsequent course of the Reformation. Some time while Parliament was sitting, in the year 1515, the Abbot of Winchelcombe preached a political sermon at the 3204. Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., ii. named Winchelcombe, Twynyng, The Abbot of combe's extrava gance CHAP Cross against an Act of Parliament recently expired VII (after being law for about a year) by which the secular courts had been enabled to pass judgment upon all persons in orders, except those in the three Winchel holy orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, without the intervention of any ecclesiastical court. Although the Act had expired, the Abbot thought proper to declare that it had been contrary to the laws of the Church, for that the minor orders were holy orders as well as the three higher grades of the ministry, and that all alike were exempted by decree of the Church from the cognizance of temporal courts in criminal causes. He further added that all who had assented to that Act had incurred the censures of the Church, a reckless condemnation of the three estates of the realm. This sermon was published, and naturally gave great offence in Parliament, and the secular members of both Houses petitioned the King to repudiate the principle contended for by the Abbot. Henry accordingly held a special council at the Palace of Blackfriars, that the subject might be argued before him and his advisers. Some doctor brought (not named in the only contemporary report handed King by down to us, but said by later writers to have been Parliament the abbot himself) defended the position taken up before the 6 by the extreme party, whose principles were repre- "Afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and one of the three bishops by whom Cranmer was consecrated. Erasmus ridicules him with great bitterness, having had some theological discussion with him about the Greek of the New Testament. Knight's Erasmus, 267-285. 8 VII ciliar decree on his side, and also quoted from Holy CHAP Scripture the words "Touch not mine anointed" [Ps. cv. 15] as a Divine sanction of the principle he was defending. Standish maintained that all such decrees were not practically observed, nor morally binding when they went against the general good of the whole nation, and dismissed the argument from "Nolite tangere Christos meos," by saying that they were not the words of Christ, and referred to God's people at large in the midst of a wicked and persecuting world. When the discussion was brought to a conclusion, the Lords present desired certain bishops to compel the abbot to recant his opinions publicly, which they declined to do, declaring themselves unconvinced by the arguments of Dr. Standish, and fearing to go against a conciliar decree. tion with re Some time afterwards it was alleged that Convo- Convocacation had called Standish to account for what he charged had said before the King, which was of course buking privileged. Their official reply to this serious accusa- Standish tion-a reply made to the King himself at Baynard's Castle-is of sufficient importance to be given in detail, as it was the foreshadowing of that discussion respecting the royal prerogative which ended in the "Act of Submission :". of their "1. They deny the charge, but say they summoned Stan- Substance dish for that 'long since the time of his said counsel given to defence the King's Grace, as well in open lectures as in other open A.D. 1516 places, he read, taught, affirmed, and published divers matters which were thought not to stand with the laws of God and the determination of Holy Church,' by which it was thought he had fallen into the suspicion of heresy. 8 Precisely the same application of this text is found in Dean Colet's Sermon before the Convocation, in 1511. See page 17 of this CHAP VII "2. To the charge of having ministered in the Convocation to Dr. Standish certain articles contrary to the King's prerogative, they answer that they neither said, nor did, nor intended to do any prejudice to the Crown, and they trust the King will not punish them on any such sinister information. "3. They affirm that no articles were delivered to Standish in writing, although they were conceived in writing. "4. As to the charge that articles were ministered to him in the Convocation House, specially that clerks should not be convented before lay judges, they never held any such communication with him, 'for if it were the thing that needed any reformation, yet the said prelates well perceive that it could neither be holpen nor hurted by the said friar; and so they should have but lost their time in ministering any such article or matter to him. And they say that they think the said friar, examined upon his oath, will not say that there was any such matter moved unto him in the said Convocation House. And if he would so say, yet the said prelates trust that the King's Grace will give more and better credence to all their sayings, in serbo sacerdotii, than to the only saying of one friar. And if the said prelates had said in the Convocation House that the conventing or punition of clerks should not appertain to secular judges (as they said not, nor in any wise intended to treat of that matter), yet they think themselves, though they had so done, not to have fallen thereby into any penalty of any law, statute, or act, forasmuch as at sundry times, divers of the parliament speak divers and many things not only against men of the Church, and against the laws of the Church, but also sometimes against the King's laws, for the which neither the King nor the prelates of the Church have punished them, nor yet desire any punishment for their so speaking.' "Wherefore the said prelates think that it may be as lawful to them in the Convocation House to common and treat of things concerning both laymen, and also the laws of the land (though they so do not), without falling into any penalty of any statute or act, or yet any other punishment in that behalf, as it is for them of the parliament to common or treat of any causes against the clergy and laws of the Church, |