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a A

DECLARATION

OF THE

REVEREND FATHER IN GOD

THOMAS ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,

CONCERNING

THE SLANDEROUS AND UNTRUE REPORT OF SOME,
WHICH HAVE REPORTED, THAT HE SHOULD

SET UP THE MASS AT CANTERBURY".

Camb.

As the Devil, Christ's ancient adversary, is a liar and the MSS. Emfather of lying, even so hath he stirred up his servants and man. Coll. members to persecute Christ and his true word and religion MSS. with lying which he ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this C.C.C.C. present time. For as a prince of most famous memory, King Harl. ColHenry VIII, seeing the great abuses of the Latin mass, lect. 417.

[a This Declaration is printed from a manuscript copy in the Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as being, on the whole, the best authority. The copies published by the English exiles 1557, by Coverdale, and by Foxe, differ much from each other. That of Foxe approaches the nearest to the manuscript here used.]

b[There can be no doubt that this Declaration was the "seditious "bill" referred to in the following minute from the Council Book. On the 8th of September, 1553, "Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury ap❝peared before the lords, as he was the day before appointed. After "long and serious debating of his offence by the whole board, it was "thought convenient that as well for the treason committed by him "“ against the Queen's Majesty, as for the aggravating of the same his "offence, by spreading about seditious bills moving tumults to the disquietness of the present state, he should be committed to the Tower, "there to remain and be referred to justice, or further ordered as "shall stand with the Queen's pleasure." Extracts from the Proceedings of the Privy Council, printed in Archæologia, vol. xviii. p. 175. According to Foxe, the Declaration was circulated in London on the 7th of September; according to Burnet's Latin copy, it was "lecta "publice in vico mercatorum ab amico qui clam autographum surripuerat, 5 Septemb. anno Dom. 1553." See Preface.]

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cv. p. 321.

the Mar

&c. vol. iii.

P. 94.

Answer,

&c. edit. 1580. Strype,

P. 305.

Acta Dis

sis, &c.

Coverdale, reformed some things in his time; and after, our Sovereign Letters of Lord King Edward VI. took the same wholly away for the tyrs. great and manifold errors and abuses of the same, and restored Foxe, Acts, in the place thereof Christ's holy Supper according to Christ's own institution, and as the Apostles used the same in the priCranmer's mitive Church in the beginning: so the Devil goeth about now by lying to overthrow the Lord's holy Supper again, and to restore his late satisfactory masses, a thing of his own Cranmer, invention and device. And to bring the same more easily to pass, some have abused the name of me, Thomas Archputationis bishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad, that I have set up Londinen- the mass again at Canterbury, and that I offered to say edita a Va- mass at the burial of our late Sovereign Prince King Edward, and also that I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness, and at Paul's Church, and I wot not where. And Burn. Ref: although I have been well exercised these twenty years to App. vol. ii. B. ii. No. 8. suffer and bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much grieved thereat, but have borne all things quietly; yet untrue reports to the hinderance of God's truth are in no wise to be tolerated and suffered. Wherefore these be to signify to the world, that it was not I that did set up the mass at Canterbury, but it was a false, flattering, lying, and dissimuling monk d, which caused mass to be set up there without mine advice or counsel. Reddat illi Dominus in die illo.

Jerando

Pollano,

1554.

And as for offering myself to say mass before the Queen's Highness or in any other place, I never did, as her Grace right well knoweth. Nor no man can say to the contrary, and speak truth, that there is any thing in the Communion set out by the most godly and innocent Prince King Edward VI. in his high court of Parliament, but that it is conformable to the order which our Saviour Christ did observe and command to be observed, and which his Apostles and the primitive Church used many years. Whereas the

с

[Foxe reads "his Latin," which is supported by the Latin version in Burnet.]

d ["Whom the Archbishop afterward named to be Thornton." Foxe, Acts, &c. 1st edit. p. 1478.]

mass in many things not only hath no foundation of Christ's Apostles or the primitive Church, but is manifestly contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible abuses in it. And although many, unlearned or malicious, doth report, that Mr. Peter Martyr is unlearnede, yet, if the Queen's Highness will grant thereunto, I with the said Peter Martyr and other four or five which I shall choose, by God's grace will take upon us to defend, that not only the Common Prayers of the Church, the ministration of the sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies, but also that all the doctrine and religion set out by our late Sovereign Lord King Edward VI, is more pure and according to God's word, than any other doctrine that hath been used in England these thousand years: so that God's word may be the judge, and that the reasons and proofs on both parties may be set out in writing; to the intent, as well that all the world may examine and judge therein, as also that no man shall start back from his writings. And where they boast of the faith which hath been in the Church these thousand years, we will join with them in this point: for that doctrine and usage is to be followed, which was in the Church fifteen

hundred years past. And we shall prove, that the order of the Church set out at this present in this realm by Act of Parliament, is the same that was used in the Church fifteen hundred years past. And so shall they never be able to prove theirs.

[This report had been circulated, and contradicted by Cranmer two years before. See Answer to Gardyner, vol. iii. p. 308. and Answer to Smythe, vol. iii. p. 12.]

(4)

[Disputation at Oxford with Chedsey and others, April, 1554.]

Foxe, Acts, &c. vol. iii.

p. 44.

About the tenth of April, Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, Ridley Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer BiApril 1o. shop also sometime of Worcester, were conveyed as prisoners Dr. Cran- from the Tower to Windsor; and after, from thence to the mer, Dr. Ridley, and University of Oxford, there to dispute with the divines and Mr. Lati- learned men of both the Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, about the presence, substance, and sacrifice of the sacra

mer sent

down to

Oxford to dispute.

a [This Disputation is taken from Foxe. Four notaries (two on each side) were appointed to report it, and Jewell and Gilbert Mounson acted in that capacity for Cranmer. Yet, notwithstanding this apparent fairness, Bp. Hoper and his friends, in their reasons for declining a similar disputation at Cambridge, expressed their fears, not only that they should be stopped from prosecuting their arguments, but also "that the censors and judges at their pleasure would put to and take "from that which was written by the notaries; who can not or must "not have in their custody that which they write, longer than the dis"putation endureth, as their doings at Oxford declareth.” . . . “ Yea, "if any man was seen to write, as the report is, the same man was sent "for, and his writings taken from him." Foxe however, as Strype relates, "by his diligence procured many and divers copies" of the proceedings, (among which probably was one written from memory by Cranmer himself,) and he may be supposed to have compiled his account from such as he considered the most copious and correct. The greater part of these are now lost; but there still exist in manuscript, the official report from Weston the Prolocutor, to Boner, (Harl. MSS. 3642;) some short notes of the chief arguments, in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, (340. art. 13;) and some longer ones, in the Public Library of the same University, (Kk. 5. 14.) None of these documents enter so fully into detail as Foxe, but they are of considerable use in confirming his statements. They have been consulted for this purpose, and some parts of them also have been extracted; particularly Cranmer's two Explications or Answers in the original Latin.

Several of Foxe's logical remarks have been removed from the text to the notes; some portions of his narrative have been omitted; and many errors have been corrected in the quotations. In other respects, it is hoped, his report of the Disputation will be found to have been faithfully reprinted. See Preface; Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vol. iii. pp. 44. 100; Strype, Cranmer, p. 340; and compare Strype's Grindal, p. 18, with the marginal note of Foxe, vol. iii. p. 56.]

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