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men; but both were gone off from their first estate; so, since the one is put down, it were no great matter if both should perish together. For, to say the truth, it is an estate which St. Paul did not find in the church of Christ; and he thought it would stand better with the maintenance of the Christian religion, that there were in their stead twenty divines, at 101. a-piece, and as many students of the tongues, and of French, at ten marks a-piece. And indeed, if there was not such a number there resident, he did not see for what use there were so many lectures to be read; for the prebendaries could not attend, for the making of good cheer; and the children in grammar were to be otherwise employed. He, in particular, recommends Doctor Crome to be dean."

But I leave this invidious subject to turn now to a very melancholy strain. The king had thrown off all commerce with the Lutherans in Germany; and seemed now to think himself secure in the emperor's friendship: yet he did not break with France; though on many occasions he complained, both of the ingratitude and inconstancy of that king. The duchy of Milan seemed to be the object of all his designs; and he was always turned, as the prospect of that seemed to come in view, or to go out of sight. All the king's old ministers still kept up his zeal for his admired book of the sacraments, most particularly for that article of transubstantiation; so that the popish party prevailed with him to resolve on setting up the Six Articles, which (they said) would quiet all men's minds, when they saw him maintain that, and the other articles, with learning and zeal. It is certain he had read a great deal, and heard and talked a great deal more of those subjects; so that he seems to have made himself a master of the whole body of divinity. I have seen many chapters of the Necessary Erudition of a Christian much altered by him, and in many places so interlined with his hand, that it is not without some difficulty that they can be read; for he wrote very ill.

Upon the carrying the Six Articles, the popish party were much exalted. This appears by the end of a letter, written to the ambassadors abroad; which will be found in the Collection (No. lxv). It sets forth," how the king had showed himself in that parliament so wise, learned, and catholic, that no prince ever did the like: so it was no more doubted but the act would pass. The bishops of Canterbury, Ely, Salisbury, Worcester, Rochester, and St. David's, defended the contrary side: yet, in the end, the king confounded them. The bishops of York, Duresme, Winchester, London, Chichester, Norwich, and Carlisle, showed themselves

honest and learned men: he writes as one of the peers, for he adds, We of the temporalty have been all of one opinion. The lord chancellor and the lord privy-seal had been of their side. Cranmer and all the bishops came over; only he adds, that Shaxton continued a lewd fool. For this victory, he writes that all England had reason to bless God."

Cromwell, though he complied with the king's humour, yet he studied to gain upon him, and to fix him in an alliance that should certainly separate him from the emperor, and engage him again into a closer correspondence with France, on design to support the princes of Germany against the emperor, whose uneasiness under the laws and liberties of the empire began to be suspected and all the popish party depended wholly on him. I did in my second volume publish a commission to Cromwell *, thinking it was that which constituted him the king's vicegerent, which I, upon reading the beginning of it, took to be so, but that was one of the effects of the haste in which I wrote that work: it

does indeed in the preamble set forth, "that the king was then in some sort to exercise that supreme authority he had over the church of England, under Christ; since they who pretended that that authority ought to be lodged with them, did pursue their own private gains more than the public good; and had brought matters, by the negligence of their officers, and their own ill example, to such a state, that it might be feared, that Christ would not now own his own spouse. Therefore, since the supreme authority over all persons, without any difference, was given him from Heaven, he was bound (as much as he could) to cleanse the church from all briars, and to sow the seeds of virtue in it. Those who before exercised this authority, thinking themselves above all censure, had (by their own bad examples) laid stumbling blocks before the people. He therefore, designing a general reformation of his kingdom and church, resolved to begin with the fountains; for they being cleansed, the streams would run clear: but since he could not be personally present everywhere, he had deputed Thomas Cromwell, his principal secretary, and master of the rolls, to be in all ecclesiastical causes his vicegerent and vicar-general; with a power to name others, to be authorized under the great seal. But he being so employed in the public affairs of the kingdom, that he could not personally discharge that trust; therefore he deputed A, B, C, D, to execute that trust. The king being pleased with this deputation, did likewise empower them to visit all churches, both metropolitical, cathe

* Vol. II, Coll. Rec. Book II, No. xxix, p. 303.

dral, and collegiate churches, hospitals, and monasteries, and all other places, exempt or not exempt, to correct and punish what was amiss in them, by censures of suspension and deprivation, to give them statutes and injunctions in the king's name, and to hold synods, chapters, or convocations, summoning all persons concerned to appear before them, and presiding in them, giving them such rules as they shall judge convenient. calling such causes as they shall think fit from the ecclesiastical courts, to be judged by them; and to force obedience, both by ecclesiastical censures and fines, and other temporal punishments:" with several other clauses, of a very extended and comprehensive nature. How far this was put in practice, does not fully appear to me. It certainly struck so deep into the whole ecclesiastical constitution, that it could not be easily borne. But the clergy had lost their reputation and credit; so that every invasion that was made on them, and on their courts, seemed to be at this time acceptable to the nation; one extreme very naturally producing another for all did acquiesce tamely, in submitting to a power that was now in high exaltation, and that treated those that stood in its way, not only with the utmost indignation, but with the most rigorous severity.

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But to return to Cromwell. He, in concurrence with the court of France, carried matters so, that the marriage with Anne of Cleve was made up this occasioned one of the most unjustifiable steps in all that reign. Among the papers that were sent me from Zurick, there is a long and particular account of many passages in this matter, with some other important transactions of this year, writ by one Richard Hill, who writes very sensibly, and very piously; and he, being zealous for a further reformation, went out of England as a man concerned in trade, which he pursued only as a just excuse to get out of the way: but before he went over, he wrote a long account to Bullinger of the affairs in England: he tells him, "that before Whitsunday three persons were burned in Southwark, because they had not received the sacrament at Easter, and had denied transubstantiation. There was after that one Collins, a crazed man, likewise burned, all by Gardiner's procurement." A little before Midsummer it began to be whispered about, that the king intended a divorce with Anne, who had been married to him above five months. It was observed that the king was much taken with a young person, a niece of the duke of Norfolk's (whom he afterwards married); Gardiner took care to bring them together to his palace, where they dined once, and had some meetings and entertainments there.

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This went on some time before there was any talk of the divorce it was indeed believed that there was an ill commerce between them. Cromwell was newly made earl of Essex Bourchier, in whom that line was extinct, who had been a severe persecutor, falling from his horse, and breaking his neck, died without being able to speak one word. The king gave Cromwell not only his title, but all that fell to the crown, by his dying without heirs: yet he enjoyed not this long; for in the beginning of June he was sent to the Tower. He did not know the secret cause of his fall; it was generally believed it was because he did not flatter the king enough; and that he was against the divorce, as thinking it would neither be for the king's honour, nor the good of the kingdom. Some suspected that his late advancement, and great grants the king had given him, was an artifice to make people conclude, when they saw him disgraced after such high favour, that certainly some very black thing was discovered: and it was also thought, that the king restored to his son (who was so weak, that he was thought almost a fool) much of his father's estate and goods (as he made him a baron in December, after his father's death), on design to make the father more silent, for fear of provoking the king to take from him what he had then given him. Here I stop the prosecuting the rest of the letter, till I have added somewhat more concerning Cromwell.

He had many offices in his person; for besides that he was lord vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, and lord privy-seal, he was lord chamberlain, and chancellor of the exchequer. Rymer (t. xiv) has published the grants that the king made of those offices, in which it is said that they were void upon his attainder; but, which was more, he was the chief minister, and had the king's confidence for ten years together, almost as entirely as Cardinal Wolsey had it formerly. Mount had been sent to Germany to press a closer league defensive against the pope, and any council that he might summon: when the princes did object the act of the Six Articles, and the severities upon it, he confessed to one of the elector's ministers, that the king was not sincere in the point of religion: he had therefore proposed a double marriage of the king with Anne of Cleve, and of the duke of Cleve with the Lady Mary; for he said, the king was much governed by his wives. The elector of Saxony, who had married the other sister of Cleve, had `conceived so bad an opinion of the king, that he expressed no heartiness, neither in the marriage, nor in any alliance with England: but he yielded to the importunities of others,

who thought the prospect of the advantage from such an alliance was great.

There are great remains that show how exact a minister Cromwell was *; there are laid together many remembrances of things that he was to lay before the king: they are too short to give any great light into affairs; yet I will mention some of them. In one, he mentions the abbots of Glastonbury and Reading, who were then prisoners, and were examined. The witnesses, with the council, were ordered to be sent to Berkshire and Somersetshire. Mention is made of their accomplices, who were to be tried, and to suffer with them. To this I must add, that in one of the Zurick letters it is written to Bullinger, that three of the richest abbots in England had suffered for a conspiracy, into which they had entered, for restoring the pope's authority in England.

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The learned Dr. Tanner has sent me the copy of a letter, that three visitors wrote to Cromwell from Glassenbury, concerning that abbot, on the 22d of September, but they do not add the year. It will be found in the Collection (No. lxvi), signed by Richard Pollard, Thomas Moyle, and Richard Layton. "They give him an account of their examining the abbot upon certain articles. He did not seem to answer them clearly, so they desired him to call to his memory the things which he then seemed to have forgot. They searched his study, and found in it a written book against the king's divorce. They found also pardons, copies of bulls, and a printed Life of Thomas Becket; but found no letter that was material. They examined him a second time upon the articles that Cromwell had given them; and sent up his answer, signed by him, to court: in which they write, that his cankered and traiterous heart against the king and his succession did appear; so with very fair words they sent him to the Tower. They found he was but a weak man, and sickly. Having sent him away, they examined the state of that monastery: they found in it above 300l. in cash, but had not the certainty of the rest of their plate; only they found a fair gold chalice, with other plate, hid by the abbot, that had not been seen by the former visitors; of which, they think, the abbot intended to have made his own advantage. They write, that the house was the noblest they had ever seen of that sort they thought it fit for the king, and for none else." This I set down the more particularly, to demonstrate the falsity of the extravagant account that Sanders gives of

* Cott. Libr. Titus, B. 1.

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