XI CHAP of heresy) more dreadful and terrible laws may be made; this we think is undoubtedly a more charitable request than as we trust necessary, considering that by the aid of your Highness, and the pains of your Grace's statutes freely executed, your realm may be in short time clean purged from the few small dregs that do remain, if any do remain." Bilney burned for heresy It is not unlikely that Sir Thomas More had some hand in this memorial, and his severity towards heretics is evident not only from doubtful records of his acts but from his words that he had been "troublesome to heretics," and from the inscription composed with his own hand for his tomb at Chelsea, "furibus autem et homicidis, hereticisque1 molestus." "He so hated this kind of men," his son records, "that he would be the sorest enemy that they could have, if they would not repent." The first of those who suffered under the aroused energy of the law was Bilney, who had been in conA.D. 1531 troversy with Sir Thomas More, and had recanted under Wolsey's wise guidance in 1527. He was an eccentric, melancholy man, and it is specially recorded of him that he had an unconquerable aversion to music. Latimer says respecting him and his recantation, "I knew a man myself, Bilney, little Bilney, that blessed martyr of God, who, what time he had borne his faggot, and was come again to Cambridge, had such conflicts within himself (beholding this image of death) that his friends were afraid to let him be alone. They were fain to be with him day and night, and comfort him as they could, but no comfort would serve. And as for the comfortable places of Scripture, to bring them unto him, it was as though a man should run him through with a sword." More's Life of More, p. 211. This word was not engraved on the stone, a blank space being left for it. 2 Latimer's Sermons, i. 200. He mentions other cases of despondency which seem like Bilney's to have been caused by ill-balanced minds XI This depression so worked upon his mind that at CHAP the end of two years he went into Norfolk (profanely comparing himself to our Lord "setting His face to go up to Jerusalem "), and by ostentatious preaching against the Church and equally ostentatious circulation of books forbidden by law, he brought down upon himself the necessary consequences of such acts. He was apprehended, and being condemned as a relapsed heretic, suffered the penalty of the law at Norwich, on August 31, 1531.8 It is a pleasing feature in the otherwise painful scene of his death that the monks and clergy came around him, and that they exchanged affectionate words with him to the last, Bilney telling the crowd that they were not the cause of his death. They had, in fact, no differences of opinion, Bilney bringing about his condemnation and death by a kind of recklessness in sowing religious discontent and sedition, which came within the then current definition of heresy. Bayfield He had heresy A.D. 1531 The same cause led to the same fate Bayfield, a The monk monk of Bury St. Edmund's, who was burned in burned for Smithfield at the end of November 1531. been a very busy disseminator of such ribald books as Tyndale's; and although it is convenient for party historians to class all such books with "Tyn dwelling too much upon the points of Calvinistic controversy now getting into popular notice. Foxe mentions a similar case of religious suicidal mania, that of his own relative John Randall, a scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge, who hanged himself in his chamber, and when found had his dead finger still pointing, and his face turned, towards a passage on Pre destination in a Bible lying open 8 This is the date given by CHAP dale's New Testament," they were works which ΧΙ deserved to be forbidden in the then state of religious opinion, leading as much to sedition as to novelty in religion. Bainham burned for heresy Frith and heresy A third instance of the same kind was that of James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple, whose association with the extreme members of the anti-Church party is shown by the fact of his marriage to the widow of Simon Fish, who had written and published the vile and slanderous libel which is known as the "Supplication of the Beggars." He also was burnt as a relapsed heretic in Smithfield, on April 30, 1532. Another notorious case is that of John Frith, a burned for young priest who had been brought from Cambridge A.D. 1533 to Oxford by Wolsey on account of his promise as a scholar. He was involved in the affair of Garrett and Delaber, but was released from confinement on condition of not going ten miles from Oxford. Frith, however, broke this condition, and went abroad, where he remained for two years. He was in some way connected with the Prior of Reading, having been imprisoned with him in the Tower in 1527. On his return from abroad Frith is first heard of as being put in the stocks at Reading under the hard vagrant laws described in a former page. Eventually he was again apprehended and sent to the Tower: and after much controversy between him and Sir Thomas More, he was required to justify his opinions before Archbishop Cranmer, and afterwards before a commission appointed by the King. Archbishop Cranmer writes about him in the following cold-blooded style in a gossipping letter to Archdeacon Hawkins,— XI "Other news have we none notable, but that one Frith, CHAP which was in the Tower in prison, was appointed by the King's Grace to be examined before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of Suffolk, my Lord Chancellor" [Audley], "and my Lord of Wiltshire, whose opinion was so notably erroneous that we could not despatch him, but was fain to leave him to the determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said opinion is of such a nature, that he thought it not necessary to be believed as an article of our faith, that there is the very corporal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar; and holdeth of this point most after the opinion of Ecolampadius. And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him to leave that his imagination; but for all that we could do therein, he would not apply to any counsel. Notwithstanding, now he is at a final end with all examinations, for my Lord of London hath given sentence, and delivered him to the secular power, where he looketh every day to go unto the fire. And there is also condemned with him one Andrew" [Hewett] "a tailor" ['s apprentice]" of London, for the self-same opinion." Both Frith and Hewett were burned a few days afterwards, on July 4, 1533, in Smithfield. Two other such victims of the cruel Statute de hæreticis comburendis in this reign will be mentioned, though they suffered at a later date, as they add further illustration with respect to the character of the anti-Church party. burned The first is John Lambert, alias Nicholson, who Lambert was burned in Smithfield in the year 1538. This for heresy Lambert was a friend of Bilney, being a young A.D. 1538 priest of Cambridge. He had been in prison under Archbishop Warham, and had shown a wonderfully contentious and self-conceited spirit in the contro 4 Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. 32. Frith himself was the son of a tavernkeeper at Sevenoaks. CHAP versy which had arisen out of that imprisonment. ΧΙ Being set free he voluntarily gave up all clergy Anne Askew burned A.D. 1546 man's work and wandered about on the Continent. Returning to England he took pupils, but could not keep them, and thus they not keeping him he turned grocer. In 1538 his old odium theologicum was revived by a sermon which he heard preached by Dr. Rowland Taylor, who, with Dr. Barnes, informed the Archbishop of Lambert's heretical opinions. Cranmer tried to reclaim Lambert, but the young priest was far too self-opinionated to yield to argument. He wrote a book on the subject of the Eucharist, which he sent to the King, and this led to the public trial before Henry in person. His opinions were simply those held by modern anti-Sacramentarians, and were, of course, intolerable to the King. Lambert was sentenced to death by Cromwell in the presence of the King, Cranmer, and the court, and suffered shortly afterwards. The other victim to be mentioned is the lady known as Anne Askew, who was burned in the year 1546, at the close of Henry's reign. She was the daughter of Sir William Askew or Ayscough of South Kelsey, in Lincolnshire. Although always spoken of by her maiden name she was, in reality, the wife of a country squire named Kyme, whom and her two children she deserted, and whose name she dropped. Her sister had previously been married to him, so that the whole business was one of a disgraceful character, which no party apologies can make respectable. When brought before the Council this was the Taylor, Barnes, and Cranmer were all afterwards put to death in the same manner as Lambert. |