that matter, as if it had been without notice given, that the abbot was seized on, tried, and executed, all of a sudden. But to return to Cromwell.

In another note, he mentions the determinations made by Day, Heath, and Thirleby, of the ten commandments, of justification, and of purgatory. Another is about Fisher and More. The judges' opinion was asked concerning More and the Nun. Another is, whether the bishop of Rochester, and the monk who wrote the letter as from heaven, should be sent for? In another, that Bocking printed the Nun's book, and took away five hundred copies, but left two hundred with the printer. In another, he proposed to send Barnes for Melancthon. In another, he asks who shall be prolocutor in the convocation. In another, he proposes the making Lady Mary a considerable match for some foreign prince, the duke of Orleans, or some other. This is all that I could gather, out of a vast number of those notes, which he took of matters to move the king in.

Upon Cromwell's imprisonment, the comptroller was sent to him, and he ordered him to write to the king, what he thought meet to be written concerning his present condition : and, it seems, with some intimations of hope. Upon that, Cromwell wrote a long letter to the king, which will be found in the Collection (No. lxvii). "He begins it with great thanks to the king, for what the comptroller had said to him. He was accused of treason; but he protests, he never once thought to do that which should displease him, much less to commit so high an offence. The king knew his accusers: he prayed God to forgive them. He had ever loved the king and all his proceedings: he prays God to confound him, if he had ever a thought to the contrary. He had laboured much to make the king a great and a happy prince, and acknowledges his great obligations to the king. So he writes, that if he had been capable to be a traitor, the greatest punishment was too little for him. He never spoke with the chancellor of the augmentations (Baker) and Throckmorton together but once but he is sure he never spoke of any such matter (as, it seems, was informed against him). "The king knew what a man Throckmorton was, with relation to all his proceedings; and what an enemy Baker was to him, God and he knew. The king knew what he had been towards him. It seems the king had advertised him of them; but God, who had delivered Susan when falsely accused, could deliver him. He trusted only in God and in the king. In all his service he had only considered the king; but did not know

that he had done injustice to any person: yet he had not done his duty in all things, therefore he asked mercy. If he had heard of conventicles, or other offences, he had for the most part revealed them, and made them to be punished, but not out of malice. He had meddled in so many things, that he could not answer them all; but of this he was sure, that he had never willingly offended: and wherein he had offended, he humbly begged pardon. The comptroller told him, that fourteen days ago the king had committed a great secret to him, which he had revealed: he remembered well the matter, but he had never revealed it. For, after the king had told him what it was that he misliked in the queen; he told the king, that she often desired to speak with him, but he durst not yet the king bade him go to her, and be plain with her in declaring his mind. Upon which, he spake privately with her lord chamberlain, desiring him, not naming the king, to deal with the queen to behave herself more pleasantly towards the king, hoping thereby to have had some faults amended. And when some of her council came to him, for licence to the stranger maids to depart, he did then require them to advise the queen to use all pleasantness with the king. Both these words were spoken, before the king had trusted the secret to him, on design that she might render herself more agreeable to the king: but after the king had trusted that secret to him (which it seems was his design to have the marriage dissolved), he never spoke of it but to the lord admiral, and that was by the king's order on Sunday last, who was very willing to seek remedy for the king's comfort. He protests he was ready to die to procure the king comfort. He wishes he were in hell if it were not true. This was all he had done (it seems the king thought the change in the queen's deportment towards him was the effect of his discovering the secret of the kings purpose, and in order to prevent it); but for this he humbly begs pardon. He understood that it was charged upon him, that he had more retainers about him than the laws allowed: he never retained any, except his household servants, but against his will. He had been pressed by many, who said they were his friends; he had retained their children and friends, not as retainers, for their fathers and friends promised to maintain them in this, God knows, he had no ill intent, but begs pardon if he has offended (for that was represented as the gathering a force about him to defend himself). He concludes, he had not behaved himself towards God and the king as he ought to have done and as he was continually calling on God for mercy, for offences committed against him, so he begs the king's pardon for his offences against him,

which were never wilful; and he assures him he had never a thought of treason against him, either in word or deed: and he continued to pray for him and the prince, ending, indeed, with too abject a meanness."

These were all the particulars that were charged on him upon his first imprisonment: other matters were afterwards added to throw the more load on him; but it seems they were not so much as thought on or mentioned at first. But now I return to the letter writ to Zurich. Hill adds, that they heard they once designed to burn Cromwell as a heretic, and that these considerations made him confess that he had offended the king. What he said that way at his execution was pronounced coldly by him: upon that the writer uns out very copiously, and acknowledges that their sins had provoked God to bring upon them that great change that they saw in affairs. They had wholly trusted to the learning of some, and to the conduct of others: but God, by the taking those away, was calling on them to turn sincerely to him, to trust entirely in him, and to repent with their whole heart. There was at that time a great want of sincere labourers, so that from east to west, and from south to north, there was scarce one faithful and sincere preacher of the gospel to be found.

The act of dissolving the king's marriage did set forth, that some doubts were raised concerning the king's marriage, which, as he writes, was manifestly false, for nobody thought of any doubtfulness in it: nor did they pray, as is in the act, that it might be inquired into for nobody spake of it till the king was resolved to part with the queen, that he might be married to Mrs. Howard, whom in his bad Latin he calls parvissima puella, a very little girl. The archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the bishops judged she was yet a virgin, which none that knew the man could believe. Here again I must leave my letter.

There had been no convocation for two years, for the Institution of a Christian Man was prepared by a commission, given to some bishops of both provinces, and to some archdeacons, but no deans were summoned with them: a convocation sat in both provinces in May, in the year 1539, to which abbots and priors were summoned; but though there were eight abbots and nine priors in Exeter diocess, yet the return from thence says, there were none in the diocess. I do not know how to reconcile that with the abbot of Tavistock's sitting in the house of lords, as appears by the Journals of that parliament.

Upon this occasion there was a particular summons for

both provinces to meet in a national synod, to judge of the king's marriage. When I wrote of this in my History, I did not at all reflect on the doctrine of the church of Rome, that makes marriage a sacrament, in which the two parties are ministers, who transfer their persons to one another : and according to the doctrine of the necessity of the intention in him that ministers the sacrament, how vile soever this decision in the matter of the king's marriage may seem to be, yet it was a just consequence from that doctrine; for without a true, free, and inward intention, which the king affirmed he had not, the marriage could be no sacrament: so that the heaviest part of the shame of that decision falls indeed on that doctrine. When the news came to France of the king's dissolving his marriage with Anne of Cleve, King Francis himself asked the ambassadors upon what grounds it went the cardinal of Ferrara did also send one to ask what was alleged for it by divines and lawyers. Wallop and others were then the ambassadors from England at the court: they sent to the council an account of this; and Wallop wrote over to know what he should say upon the subject. The answer which the council wrote to him was, that the queen herself affirmed, her person had not been touched by King Henry: that a learned convocation had judged the matter that the bishops of Duresme, Winchester, and Bath, were known to be great and learned clerks, who would do nothing but upon just and good grounds; so that all persons ought to be satisfied with these proceedings, as she herself was. And here this matter ended, to the great reproach of that body, that went so hastily and so unanimously into that scandalous decision.

But to return to my Zurich letter. After he had related the manner of that judgment of those called spiritual, who indeed were very carnal, he mentions the exceptions in the act of pardon; for, besides particular exception, all anabaptists and sacramentaries were excepted, and all those that affirmed there was a fate upon men, by which the day of their death was unalterably determined.

There was at this time a great design against Dr. Crome, whom Cranmer had recommended to be dean of Canterbury, in these words: "I know no man more meet for the dean's room in England than Dr. Crome, who, by his sincere learning, godly conversation, and good example of living, with his great soberness, hath done unto the king's majesty as good service, I dare say, as any priest in England; and yet his grace daily remembereth all others that do him service,

* Paper-office.

this man only excepted, who never had yet, besides his gracious favour, any promotion at his hands. Wherefore, if it please his majesty to put him in the dean's room, I do not doubt but that he should be a light to all the deans and ministers of colleges in this realm: for I know that when he was but a president of a college in Cambridge, his house was better ordered than all the houses in Cambridge besides." Certainly this good opinion that Cranmer had of him, made him, in the state in which things were at this time, to be the worse thought of, and the more watched : so, when he heard that he was to be searched for, he went to the king, and on his knees begged he would put a stop to the severities then on foot, and that he would set many then in prison, on the account of religion, at liberty: the king had such a regard for him, that, upon this, he ordered a stop to be put to further prosecutions: and he set those at liberty who were then in prison, they giving bail to appear when they should be called for. The king seemed to think, that, by this small favour, after some severities, people would be more quiet and more obedient. But after the parliament was dissolved, six persons suffered. Three of these were popish priests, who suffered as traitors for denying the king's supremacy and Barnes, Gerrard, and Jerom, were the other three. They were tied to one stake, and suffered without crying out, but were quiet and patient as if they had felt no pain. He could never hear any reason given for this their suffering, unless it was to please the clergy: they were not condemned by any form of law. They had been so cautious ever since the act of the Six Articles passed, that they had not opened their mouths in opposition to them in public: and by the act all offences done before it had passed were pardoned. Barnes himself said, at the place of execution, that he did not know for what cause he was brought thither to be burnt; for they were attainted by act of parliament, without being brought to make their

answers.

The bishop of Chichester, Sampson, though a man compliant in all things, and Dr. Wilson, were exempted out of the general pardon, for no other crime, as he heard, but that Abel, who suffered for denying the king's supremacy, being in the greatest extremity of want and misery in prison, where, it was said, he was almost eat up by vermin, they had sent him some alms. From this Hill goes on to give an account of Crome, whose constant way had been, when he saw a storm rising, to preach with more zeal than ordinary against the prevailing corruption so on Christmas-day, his enemies, that were watching to find matter to accuse him,