whom he had appointed one of the executors of his will, and of the councillors to his son, till he came of age, was now left out: of which, when sir Anthony Brown put the king in mind, apprehending it was only an omission, he answered, "That he knew Gardiner's temper well enough, and though he could govern him, yet none of them would be able to do it; and that he would give them much trouble." And when Brown at another time repeated the motion to the king, he told him, if he spake more of that he would strike him out of his will too. The will was said to be signed the 30th of December. It is printed at large by Fuller; and the most material parts of it by Heylin. So I need say little of it, only the most signal clause in it was, that he excluded the line of Scotland out of the succession, and preferred the two daughters of the French queen by Charles Brandon to them: and this leads me to discover several things concerning this will, which have been hitherto unknown. I draw them from a letter written to sir William Cecil, then secretary of state to queen Elizabeth, (afterwards lord Burleigh,) by William Maitland of Leithingtoun, secretary of state to the queen of Scotland. This Maitland was accounted a man of the greatest parts of any in his nation at that time; though his treachery in turning over to the party that was against the queen very much blemished his other qualities: but he expiated his fault by a real repentance; which appeared in his returning to his duty, and losing all afterwards in her

Collect. Numb. 30. His latter

quarrel. His letter will be found in the collection. The substance and design of it is, to clear the right his mistress had to the crown of England, in case the queen should die without heirs of her body. Therein after he had answered other will a forgery. objections, he comes to this of the will. To it he says, "That according to the act of parliament, the king's will was to be signed with his own hand; but this will was only signed by the stamp. Then the king never ordered the stamp to be put to it: he had been oft desired to sign it, but had always put it off; but when they saw his death approaching, one William Clark servant to Thomas Hennage put the stamp to it, and some gentlemen that were waiting without, were called in to sign it as a witness. For this he appealed to the deposition of the lord Paget, and desired the marquis of Winchester, and Northampton, the earl of Pembroke, sir William Petre, sir Henry Nevil, sir Maurice Berkeley, sir Anthony Denny, doctor Rutts, and some others, might be examined; and that their depositions might be entered in the chancery. He also appealed to the original will, by which it would appear, that it was not signed but only stamped; and that not being according to the act of parliament, which in such extraordinary things must be taken, the will was of no force." Thus it appears what vulgar errors pass upon the world: and though for seventy-five years the Scottish race has enjoyed the crown of England, and after so long a possession it is very superfluous to clear a title which is universally acknowledged; yet the reader will not be ill pleased to see how ill-grounded that pretence was, which some managed very seditiously during the reign of queen Elizabeth, for excluding that line.

But if this will was not signed by the king, other grants were certainly made by him on his death-bed: one was to the city of London of 500 marks a year, for endowing an hospital which was called Christ's hospital; and he ordered the church of the Franciscans a little within Newgate to be opened, which he gave to the hospital. This was done on the 3d of January. Another was of Trinity College in Cambridge, one of the noblest foundations in Christendom. He continued in a decay till the 27th of the month; and then many signs of his approaching end appearing, few would adventure on so unwelcome a thing as to put him in mind of his change then imminent: but sir Anthony Denny had the honesty and courage to do it, and desired him to prepare for death, and remember his former life, and to call on God for mercy through Jesus Christ. Upon which the king expressed his grief for the sins of his past life, yet he said he trusted in the mercies of Christ, which were greater than they were. Then Denny asked him if any churchman should be sent for; and he said if any it should be archbishop Cranmer: and after he had rested a little, finding his spirits decay apace, he ordered him to be sent for to Croydon, where he was then. But before he could come the king was speechless: so Cranmer desired him to give some sign of his dying in the 'faith of Christ, upon which he squeezed his hand, and soon after died; after he had reigned thirty-seven years and nine months, in the six-and fiftieth year of his age. His death was kept up three days, for the journals of the house of lords show, that they continued reading

An account of the King's severities against the

bills and going on in business till the 31st, and no sooner did the lord chancellor signify to thom that the king was dead, and that the parliament was thereby dissolved. It is certain the parliament had no being after the king's breath was out; so their sitting till the 31st shows that the king's death was not generally known all those three days. The reasons of concealing it so long might either be, that they were considering what to do with the duke of Norfolk, or that the Seymours were laying their matters so as to be secure in the government before they published the king's death. I shall not adventure on adding any further character of him to that which is done with so much wit and judgment by the lord Herbert, but shall refer the reader wholly to him; only adding an account of the blackest part of it, the attainders that passed the last thirteen years of his life which are comprehended within this book, of which I have cast over the relation to the conclusion of it. In the latter part of his reign there were many things that seem great severities, especially as they are represented by the writers of the Roman party, whose relations are not a little strengthened by the faint excuses and the mistaken accounts that most of the Protestant historians have made. The king was naturally impetuous and could not bear provocation; the times were very ticklish; his subjects were Popish Party. generally addicted to the old superstition, especially in the northern parts; the monks and friars were both numerous and wealthy; the pope was his implacable enemy, the emperor was a formidable prince, and being then master of the Netherlands had many advantages for the war he designed against England. Cardinal Pole, his kinsman, was going over all the courts of Christendom, to persuade a league against England, as being a thing of greater necessity and merit than a war against the Turk. This boing without the least aggravation the state of affairs at that time, it must be confessed that he was sore put to it. A superstition that was so blind and headstrong, and enemies that were both so powerful, so spiteful, and so industrious, made rigour necessary; nor is any general of an army more concerned to deal severely with spies and intelligencers, than he was to proceed against all the pope's adherents, or such as kept correspondence with Pole. He had observed in history, that upon much less provocation than himself had given not only several emperors and foreign princes had been dispossessed of their dominions, but two of his own ancestors Henry II. and King John had been driven to great extremities, and forced to unusual and most indecent submissions by the means of the popes and their clergy.

The pope's power over the clergy was so absolute, and their dependence and obedience ta him was so implicit, and the popish clergy had so great an interest in the superstitious multitude, whose consciences they governed, that nothing but a stronger passion could either tame the clergy or quiet the people. If there had been the least hope of impunity, the last part of his reign would have been one continued rebellion; therefore to prevent a more pro¬ fuse effusion of blood it seemed necessary to execute laws severely in some particular instances. There is one calumny that runs in a thread through all the historians of the popish side, which not a few of our own have ignorantly taken up, that many were put to death for not swearing the king's supremacy. It is an impudent falsehood, for not so much as one person suffered on that account; nor was there any law for any such oath before the parliament in the twenty-eighth year of the king's reign, when the unsufferable bull of popo Paul III, engaged him to look a little more to his own safety. Then indeed in the oath for maintaining the succession of the crown, the subjects were required, under the pains of treason, to swear that the king was supreme head of the church of England, but that was not mentioned in the former oath that was made in the twenty-fifth and enacted in the twenty-sixth year of his reign. It cannot but be confessed, that to enact under pain of death that none should deny the king's titles, and to proceed upon that against offenders, is a very different thing from forcing them to swear the king to be the supreme head of the church.

The first instance of these capital proceedings was in Easter Term, in the beginning of the Some Carthu- twenty-seventh year of his reign. Three priors and a monk of the Carthusian sians executed order, were then indicted of treason, for saying that the king was not supreme for denying head under Christ of the church of England. These were John Houghton prior of the King's the Charter-house near London, Augustin Webster prior of Axholme, Robert Laurence prior of Bevoll, and Richard Reynolds a monk of Sion: this last was

supremacy.

esteemed a learned man for that time and that order. They were tried in Westminster-hall by a commission of Oyer and Terminer; they pleaded not guilty, but the jury found them guilty, and judgment was given that they should suffer as traitors. The record mentions no other particulars; but the writers of the popish side make a splendid recital of the courage and constancy they expressed both in their trial and at their death. It was no difficult thing for men so used to the legend, and the making of fine stories for the saints and martyrs of their orders, to dress up such narratives with much pomp; but as their pleading not guilty to the indictment shows no extraordinary resolution, so the account that is given by them of one Hall, a secular priest that died with them, is so false, that there is good reason to suspect all. He is said to have suffered on the same account, but the record of his attainder gives a very different relation of it.

He and Robert Feron were indicted at the same time "for having said many spiteful and And Hall a treasonable things, as that the king was a tyrant, an heretic, a robber, and an Priest for cou- adulterer; that they hoped he should die such a death as king John, and Richard spiring against III. died; that they looked when those in Ireland and Wales should invade the King. England, and they were assured that three parts of four in England would be against the king; they also said that they should never live merrily till the king and the rulers were plucked by the pates and brought to the pot, and that it would never be well with the church till that was done." Hall had not only said this, but had also written it to Feron the 10th of March that year. When they were brought to the bar, they at first pleaded not guilty; but full proof being brought, they themselves confessed the indictment before the jury went aside, and put themselves on the king's mercy; upon which, this being an imagining and contriving both war against the king, and the king's death, judgment was given as in cases of treason; but no mention being made of Feron's death, it seems he had his pardon. Hall suffered with the four Carthusians, who were hanged in their habits.

They proceeded no further in Easter-term; but in Trinity-term there was another comThree other mission of Oyer and Terminer, by which Humphrey Middlemore, William Monks exe- Exmew, and Sebastian Nudigate, three monks of the Charter-house near London, cuted. were indicted of treason, for having said on the 25th of May, "that they neither could nor would consent to be obedient to the king's highness, as true, lawful, and obedient subjects, to take him to be supreme head on earth of the church of England." They all pleaded not guilty, but were found guilty by the jury; and judgment was given. When they were condemned, they desired that they might receive the body of Christ before their death. But (as Judge Spelman writ) the court would not grant it, since that was never done in such cases, but by order from the king. Two days after that they were executed. Two other monks of that same order, John Rochester and James Wolver, suffered on the same account at York, in May this year. Ten other Carthusian monks were shut up within their cells, where nine of them died: the tenth was hanged in the beginning of August. Concerning those persons, I find this said in some original letters, that they had brought over into England, and vended in it, some books that were written beyond sea, against the king's marriage, and his other proceedings, which being found in their house, they were pressed to peruse the books that were written for the king, but obstinately refused to do it ; they had also been involved in the business of the Maid of Kent; for which, though all the accomplices in it, except those who suffered for it, were pardoned by act of parliament, yet such as had been concerned in it were still under jealousy, and it is no wonder that upon new provocations they met with the uttermost rigour of the law.

Death.

These trials made way for two others that were more signal: of the bishop of Rochester Fisher's and sir Thomas More. The first of these had been a prisoner above a year, and Trial and was very severely used; he complained in his letters to Cromwell that he had neither clothes nor fire, being then about fourscore. This was understood at Rome; and upon it pope Clement, by an officious kindness to him, or rather in spite to king Henry, declared him a cardinal, and sent him a red hat. When the king knew this, he sent to examine him about it; but he protested he had used no endeavours to procure it, and valued it so little, that if the hat were lying at his feet, he would not take it up. It never came nearer him than Picardy: yet this did precipitate his ruin; but if he had kept his

VOL. I.

opinion of the king's supremacy to himself, they could not have proceeded further. IIe would not do that, but did upon several occasions speak against it; so he was brought to his trial on the 17th of June. The lord chancellor, the duke of Suffolk, and some other lords, together with the judges, sate upon him by a commission of oyer and terminer. He pleaded not guilty; but being found guilty, judgment was passed on him to die as a traitor; but he was by a warrant from the king beheaded. Upon the 22nd of June, being the day of his execution, he dressed himself with more than ordinary care; and when his man took notice of it, he told him he was to be that day a bridegroom. As he was led to the place of execution, being stopped in the way by the crowd, he opened his New Testament, and prayed to this purposo; that as that book had been his companion and chief comfort in his imprisonment, so then some place might turn up to him that might comfort him in his last passage. This being said, he opened the book at a venture, in which these words of St. John's Gospel turned up: "This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." So he shut the book with much satisfaction, and all the way was repeating and meditating on them. When he came to the scaffold he pronounced the "Te Deum ;" and after some other devotions, his head was cut off.

ter.

Thus died John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, in the 80th year of his age. He was a learned and devout man, but much addicted to the superstitions in which he had His Charac- been bred up, and that led him to great severities against all that opposed them. He had been for many years confessor to the king's grandmother, the countess of Richmond; and it was believed that he persuaded her to those noble designs for the advancement of learning, of founding two colleges in Cambridge, St. John's and Christ'a college, and divinity professors in both universities. And in acknowledgment of this, he was chosen chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Henry VII. gave him the bishopric of Rochester, which he, following the rule of the primitive church, would never change for a better he used to say his church was his wife, and he would never part with her, because she was poor. He continued in great favour with the king till the business of the divorce, was set on foot; and then he adhered so firmly to the queen's cause and the pope's supremacy that he was carried by that headlong into great errors, as appears by the business of the Maid of Kent. Many thought the king ought to have proceeded against him rather upon that, which was a point of state, than upon the supremacy, which was matter of conscience. But the king was resolved to let all his subjects see there was no mercy to be expected by any that denied his being supreme head of the church, and therefore made him and More two examples for terrifying the rest. This being much censured beyond sea, Gardiner, that was never wanting in the most servile compliances, wrote a vindication of the king's proceedings. The lord Herbert had it in his hands, and tells us it was written in elegant Latin, but that he thought it too long, and others judged it was too vehement, to be inserted in his history.

On the 1st of July, sir Thomas More was brought to his trial. The special matter in his indictment is, that on the 7th of May preceding, before Cromwell, Bedyll, and some others that were pressing him concerning the king's supremacy, he said he would not meddle with any such matter, and was fully resolved to serve God, and think

More's Trial and Death

upon his passion, and his own passage out of this world. He had also sent divers messages by one George Gold to Fisher, to encourage him in his obstinacy; and said, "The act of parliament is like a sword with two edges, for if a man answer one way, it will confound his soul, and if he answer another way, it will confound his body." He had said the same thing on the 3rd of June, in the hearing of the lord chancellor, the duke of Norfolk, and others; and that he would not be the occasion of the shortening his own life. And when Rich, the king's solicitor, came to deal with him further about it, but protested that he came not with any authority to examine him, they discoursed the matter fully; Rich pressed him, “that since the parliament had enacted that the king was supreme head, the subjects ought to agree to it; and said Rich, what if the parliament should declare me king, would you not acknowledge me? I would, said More, Quia (as it is in the indictment) Rex per Parliamentum fieri potest, et per Parliamentum deprivari; but More turned the argument on Rich, and said, what if the parliament made an act that God was not God? Rich acknowledged

it could not bind: but replied to More, that since he would acknowledge him king, if he were made so by act of parliament, why would he not acknowledge the king supreme head, since it was enacted by parliament. To that More answered, that the parliament had power to make a king, and the people were bound to acknowledge him, whom they made; but for the supremacy, though the parliament had enacted it, yet those in foreign parts had never assented to it." This was carried by Rich to the king, and all these particulars were laid together, and judged to amount to a denial of the supremacy. Judge Spelman writ, that More being on his trial, pleaded strongly against the statute that made it treason to deny the supremacy, and argued that the king could not be supreme head of the church: when he was brought to the bar, he pleaded not guilty, but being found guilty, judgment was given against him as a traitor. He received it with that equal temper of mind, which he had showed in both conditions of life, and then set himself wholly to prepare for death; he expressed great contempt of the world, and that he was weary of life, and longed for death; which was so little terrible to him, that his ordinary facetiousness remained with him even on the scaffold. It was censured by many as light and undecent; but others said, that way having been so natural to him on all other occasions, it was not at all affected; but showed that death did no way discompose him, and could not so much as put him out of his ordinary humour. Yet his rallying everything on the scaffold, was thought to have more of the Stoic than the Christian in it. After some time spent in secret devotions, he was beheaded on the 6th of July.

Thus did sir Thomas More end his days, in the 53d year of his age*. He was a man of rare virtues, and excellent parts: in his youth he had freer thoughts of things, His Cha- as appears by his Utopia, and his letters to Erasmus; but afterwards he became racter. superstitiously devoted to the interests and passions of the popish clergy and as

:

he served them when he was in authority, even to assist them in all their cruelties; so he employed his pen in the same cause, both in writing against all the new opinions in general, and in particular against Tindal, Frith, and Barnes, as also an unknown writer, who seemed of neither party, but reproved the corruptions of the clergy, and condemned their cruel proceedings. More was no divine at all, and it is plain to any that reads his writings, that he knew nothing of antiquity, beyond the quotations he found in the canon law, and in the master of the sentences; (only he had read some of St. Austin's treatises), for upon all points of controversy, he quotes only what he found in these collections; nor was he at all conversant in the critical learning upon the Scriptures; but his peculiar excellency in writing was, that he had a natural easy expression, and presented all the opinions of popery with their fair side to the reader, disguising or concealing the black side of them with great art; and was no less dexterous in exposing all the ill consequences that could follow on the doctrine of the reformers: and had upon all occasions great store of pleasant tales, which he applied wittily to his purpose. And in this consists the great strength of his writings, which were designed rather for the rabble, than for learned men. But for justice, contempt of money, humility, and a true generosity of mind, he was an example to the age in which he lived.

But there is one thing unjustly added to the praise of these two great men, or rather feigned, on design to lessen the king's honour; that Fisher and he penned the book which the king wrote against Luther. This Sanders first published, and Bellarmin and others since have taken it up upon his authority. Strangers may be pardoned such errors, but they are inexcusable in an Englishman. For in Moro's printed works there is a letter written by him out of the Tower to Cromwell, in which he gives an account of his behaviour concerning the king's divorce and supremacy: among other particulars one is, "that when the king showed him his book against Luther, in which he had asserted the pope's primacy to be of divine right, More desired him to leave it out; since as there had been many contests between popes and other princes, so there might fall in some between the pope and the king; therefore he thought it was not fit for the king to publish anything which might be afterwards made use of against himself: and advised him either to leave out that point, or higher; others say 1480; and others 1481.-FULMAN'S CORRECT.

* The year of sir Thomas More's birth is not certain; by Erasmus's reckoning, it was in the year 1479, if not