1556. AN. REG. 4, founded in that house by her grandfather, King Henry the Seventh, for the relief of such pilgrims as either went on their devotions to the shrine of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury, or any other eminent shrine or saint in those parts of the kingdom1. On a suggestion made to King Edward the Sixth, that it served only for a receptacle of vagrant persons, it was surrendered to him in the last year of his reign by the master and brethren of the same; out of the lands whereof he assigned the yearly rent of seven hundred marks for the maintenance of his new working-house of Bridewell, which he had given for ever to the Lord Mayor and City of London, (as hath been signified before in the life of that King) together with all the beds, bedding, and other furniture which were found in this hospital. And though this grant bare date on the 26th of June, in the last year of his reign, anno 1553, yet the Lord Mayor and Aldermen entered not on the possession of it till the month of February now last past, anno 1555. But having took possession of it, and so much of the land of this hospital being settled on it, the hospital in the Savoy could not be restored to its first condition but by a new endowment from such other lands belonging to religious houses which were remaining in the Crown. But the Queen was so resolved upon it, that she might add some works of charity unto those of piety, or else in honour of her grandfather, whose foundation she restored at Greenwich also,—the hospital was again refounded on the third of November, and a convenient yearly rent allotted to the master and and brethren for the entertainment of the poor, according to the tenor and effect of the first institution. Which prince-like act so wrought upon the maids of honour and other ladies of the Court, that, for the better attaining of the Queen's good grace, they furnished the same at their own costs with new beds, bedding, and other necessary furniture, in a very ample manner3. In which condition it continueth to this very day, the mastership of the hospital being looked on as a good preferment for any well deserving well deserving man about the Court; but for This statement as to the object of Henry VII.'s foundation appears to be erroneous. Stow, Survey, 491, Tanner, Notit. Monast. 327, and Maitland, Hist. of London, 1338, state that he endowed it as an hospital for a hundred poor persons. 2 Sup. i. 275. 3 3 Fuller,. iv. 248. 1556. the most part given to some of their Majesties' chaplains, for AN. REG. 4, the encouragement of learning and the reward of their service. resigns his dominions to 7. How far the Queen's example, seconded by the ladies Charles V. about the court, countenanced by the King, and earnestly hereditary insisted on by the Pope then being, might have prevailed on the Philip. nobility and gentry for doing the like, either in restoring their church-lands, or assigning some part of them to the like foundations, it is hard to say; most probable it is that if the Queen had lived some few years longer, either for love to her, or for fear of gaining the King's displeasure, (who was now grown too great to be disputed with, if the point were questioned) or otherwise out of an unwillingness to incur the Pope's curse and the Church's censures, there might have been very much done that way, though not all at once. For so it was, that Philip having passed over to Calais in the month of September, anno 15551, and the next day departing to the Emperor's court, which was then at Brussels, there he found his father in a resolution of resigning to him all his dominions and estates, except the empire, (or the bare title, rather, of it) which was to be surrendered to his brother Ferdinand: not that he had not a design to settle the imperial dignity on his successors in the realm of Spain, for the better attaining of the universal monarchy which he was said to have aspired to over all the West', but that he had been crossed in it by Maximilian, the eldest son of his brother Ferdinand, who succeeded to his father in it, and left the same hereditary in a manner to the princes of the house of Austria of the German race. For Charles, grown weary of the world, broken with wars, and desirous to apply himself to divine meditations, resolved to discharge himself of all civil employments, and spend the remainder of his life in the Monastery of St Justus, situate among the mountains of Extremadura, a province of the realm of Castile. In pursuance whereof, having called before him the principal of the nobility and great men of his several kingdoms and estates, he made a resignation of all his hereditary dominions to King 1 Philip remained abroad a year and a half at this time. Speed, 854. 2 Edd. "where." • Robertson, Hist. of Charles V., iii. 99, ed. Oxf. 1825. 1556. AN. REG.4, Philip his son, on the 25th of October, anno 1555', having then scarce attained to the fifty-fifth year of his life, to the great admiration of all the world. After which act, he found himself so abandoned by all his followers, that, sitting up late at night in conference with Seldius, his brother's Embassador, he had not a servant within call to light the gentleman down stairs. Which being observed by the Emperor, he took the candle into his hands, and would needs in his own person perform that office; and having brought him to the top of the stairs, he said unto him, "Remember, Seldius, that thou hast known the Emperor Charles, whom thou hast seen in the head of so many armies, reduced to such a low estate as to perform the office of an ordinary servant to his brother's minister." Such was the greatness to which Philip had attained at the present time, when the Queen was most intent on these new foundations. Acts of the ment. 8. As for the Pope, he had published a Bull in print at the same time also, in which he threatened excommunication to all manner of persons without exception as kept any churchlands unto themselves; as also to all princes, noblemen and magistrates, as did not forthwith put the same in execution2. Which, though it did not much edify at the present in the realm of England, yet it found more obedience and conformity in that of Ireland; in which a Parliament being called toward the end of this year, (that is to say in the month of June, anno 1557,) there passed a Statute for repealing all Acts, Articles, and Provisions made against the See Apostolic, since the 20th year of King Henry the Eighth, and for abolishing of several ecclesiastical possessions conveyed to the laity, as also for the extinguishment of first-fruits and twentieth parts (no more than the yearly payment of the twentieth part having been laid by Act of Parliament on the Irish Clergy'): in the first and last clause whereof as they followed the example of the realm of England, so possibly they might have given a dangerous example to it in the other point, if, by the Queen's death following shortly 1 On the strange discrepancies as to the dates of the Emperor's resignations, see Robertson, Charles V., iii. 86. 2 The Bull "Injunctum nobis desuper," mentioned p. 141, note 3. Comp. Fox, vii. 35, where it is maintained that "in very deed the meaning of that bull was only for England, and no country else." 3 3 and 4 Phil. and Mar. c. 8. (Irel.) 4 c. 10. 1556. after, as well King Philip as the Pope had not lost all their AN.REG. 4, power and influence on the English nation; by means whereof there was no farther progress in the restitution of the abbeylands, no more re-edifying of the old religious houses, and no intention for the founding of any new. Such as most cordially were affected to the interest of the Pope of Rome, and otherwise were very perfect at their Ave Maria, might love their Pater noster well, but their penny better. of the Car bishop. 9. Thus have we seen how zealously the Queen proceeded Proceedings in her way towards the re-establishing of the Papal greatness. dinal ArchLet us next look on the proceedings of the Cardinal Legate, not as a legate à latere from the Pope of Rome, but as legatus natus, a Metropolitan or Archbishop of the Church of England. As Cardinal Legate he had been never forward in the shedding of blood, declaring many ways his averseness from the severity which he saw divers of the English Bishops, but especially the Butcher of London, were so bent upon. And when he came to act as Metropolitan, he was very sparing in that kind, as far as his own person was concerned therein; though not to be excused from suffering the under officers of his diocese to be too prodigal of the blood of their Christian brethren. He had been formerly suspected for a favourer of the Lutheran doctrines, when he lived at Rome, and acted for the Pope as one of his Legates in the Council of Trent1. Gardiner and Bonner, and the rest of the sons of thunder, who called for nothing less than fire (though not from heaven), were willing to give out that he brought the same affections into England also; and therefore somewhat must be done to keep up his 39 authority and reputation both at home and abroad. To which 39 end, he inserteth some particulars amongst the printed Articles of his Visitation, to witness for him to the world that he had as great a care for suppressing the growth of heresy as any Prelate in the kingdom, who would be thought more zealous, because more tyrannical2; of which sort are the 14th and 15th3 1 Sleidan, b. xxi. p. 490, Eng.; Speed, 852. His orthodoxy on the subject of Justification was questioned. Caraffa (now pope) had maintained opinions opposed to his in the early sessions of the Council of Trent. Ranke, Hist. of Popes, i. 204. 2 * Holinshed, iv. 141. Wilkins, iv. 169. * The old editions read "14, 15, and 17th ;" which is certainly wrong, as appears from the subsequent mention of the seventeenth article. AN. REG.4, Articles which concerned the Clergy, that is to say, 1556. "Whether any of them do teach or preach erroneous doctrine, contrary to the Catholic faith, and the unity of the Church; and whether any of them do say the divine Service, or do minister the Sacraments, in the English tongue, contrary to the usual order of the Church?" Of which sort also were the first of those touching the Laity, viz. "Whether any manner of persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever they be, do hold, maintain, or1 affirm any heresies, errors, and erroneous opinions, contrary to the Laws Ecclesiastical, and the unity of the Catholic Church?" Which general Article was after branched into such particulars as concerned the carnal presence of Christ in the Sacrament, the reverent esteem thereof, the despising of any of the Sacramentals, and the decrying of auricular confession by word or practice. And somewhat also of this sort was the 17th Article, by which it was inquired, "Whether any of the Priests or Clergy, that had been married under the pretence of lawful matrimony, and since reconciled, do privily resort to their pretended wives, or that the said women do privily resort to them?" Nothing material or considerable in all the rest, but what hath been in use and practice by all the Archbishops, Bishops, and other ecclesiastical judges in the Church of England, since the first and best times of Queen Elizabeth; all of them seeming to have took their pattern from this reverend prelate's, and to have precedented themselves by the articles of his Visitation. In two points only he appeared to be somewhat singular, and therefore found no followers in the times succeeding; the first whereof was, the registering of the names of the Godfathers and Godmothers, as well as of the child baptized3; which why it should be laid aside I can see 3 The names of Godfathers and Godmothers are to be found in some registers of this period, as in that of Staplehurst, mentioned by Burn (Hist. of Parish Registers, p. 85), and in that of Barham, near Canterbury. Such entries are, however, rare: possibly because the order may have been disregarded; or (more probably) because the registers now extant are commonly copies, made in the last years of Elizabeth, under a Canon which directed that the entries of the paper books from the beginning of the reign should be transcribed on parchment (A.D. 1597. Cardw. Synod. i. 160); and clergymen who were at the pains of copying earlier entries may have retained only so much of them as was agreeable to the |