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there was no sacrament in this marriage. that appear so plainly, that I have more reaThis having been the common doctrine of son to complain of his sincerity, than of his the church of Rome, some remnant of that judgment. might have too great an effect on Cranmer. But if the consenting to an unjust sentence, in a time of much heat, and of general consternation, is so criminal a thing, what will he make of Liberius, Filix, Ossius, and many more, whose names are in the Roman calendar. The carrying this too far, will go a great way to the justifying the Luciferians. Whatever may be in this, I had opened the matter of Anne of Cleve so impartially, that 1 deserve no censure on that account.

After he had attacked the matter of my History in these particulars, he falls next upon my way of writing. In this, I confess, I am not so much concerned, for if the things are truly related by me, I can very easily bear all the reflections that he can lay on my way of writing. But that he may censure me with a better grace, he bestows some good words on me. He is not displeased with my preface, and the beginning of my work: but all these hopes were soon blasted. I fall into a detail of little stories, with which he was quite disgusted. Yet if he had considered this better, he would have been milder in his censure. My design was to shew, what seeds and dispositions were still in the minds of many in this nation, that prepared them for a Reformation, in the beginning of King Henry's reign, before ever Luther had preached in Germany, and several years before that King's divorce came to be treated of in England. I therefore judged it was necessary for me to let the reader know what I found in our registers of those matters: how that many were tried, and some condemned upon those opinions, that were afterwards reckoned among the chief grounds of our separating from the church of Rome. It seemed a necessary introduction to my work, to open this as I found it upon record. My censurer blames me for not opening more copiously what the opinions of the Lollards and the Wicklifists were: he may see in these Articles that I mention, what the clergy were then charging them with, and what was confessed by those, who were brought into their courts. I wrote in English for my own countrymen. There are many books that give a very particular account of Wickliff, and his followers: this being so well known, it was not necessary for me to run this matter up to its original; all that was incumbent on me, was to shew the present state of that party, and their opinions and sufferings in the beginning of the reign of King Henry so that a fair judge will not think that a few pages spent in opening this, was too great an imposition on his patience: this having such a relation to my main design in writing. It is he, and not I, that has transgressed Polybius's rule he considers these particulars as little stories, without observing the end for which I set them down; though I have made

His next exception is, that I give abstracts of the reasons on which the proceedings in the Reformation were grounded. He thinks that in this, I plead as an advocate, and do not write as a historian. I do believe there are few things in my History with which he is more displeased than this. I give no reasons of my own making, nor do I put speeches in the mouths of our reformers, though if I had done this, he knows that I could have said that I followed the precedents set me by the best writers of history, both among the Greeks and the Romans. But since I was engaged to write of a Reformation of errors in doctrine, and of abuses in worship and government, I must have been very defective, if I had not set out the reasous upon which those of that time went, as well as I related the series of what was done by them. Both Father Paul, and Cardinal Palavicini, in the histories that they wrote of the Council of Trent, have related the arguments used of all sides very copiously. In political matters, the chief use and beauty of history is, the laying open the secret reasons of state, upon which all parties have proceeded and certainly those who write concerning matters of religion, ought to open all that comes in their way, of the grounds on which any changes were made.

He thinks all the King's reasonings for the divorce were fully answered by Queen Cathenine's reasons against it. But he does not consider that he is in a communion, in which tradition is set up, as that which must decide all controversies. King Henry's arguments run all upon tradition, whereas the Queen pretended to no tradition, but only brought arguments of another sort, which was the way of those called heretics: but in that matter the King insisted upon tradition, the great topic of papists. He censures me for bringing a Jew on the stage, after I had set out the opinions of the universities: but it seemed very reasonable to shew the notions that the Jews had of their own laws.

He returns again to reflections on the divorce of Anne of Cleve. It seems he had few things to reflect on, when in so short a paper he returns twice to the same matter. From her he passes to Anne Bullen; he fancies my whole design in writing, was to establish her descent: but that I do not acquit her mother of the imputations Sanders had laid on her; nor herself of the amours in the court of France, and King Henry's ill commerce with her. If the crown of England had remained in a line derived from that Queen, it might be supposed that some would have wrote on such a design: but that not being the case, there is little reason to think that any man would have given himself the trouble, only on design to justify her title to the crown. I have made it fully out that a

great part of Sanders's charge on her, was an ill-invented calumny, to bring her right to the crown in question and by proving some part of bis relation to be false, I have destroyed the credit of the whole. I cannot be obliged to prove the negative in every particular, the proof lies upon the affirmative, and the author of a train of defamation is sufficiently disproved, when it is apparent that some parts of his relation must certainly be false. If any of these slanders had been in any sort believed in that time, there is no reason to think that the Pope or the Emperor would have neglected to publish them: for the court of Rome kept none of the measures of common decency with the King. Nor were these things objected to Anne Boleyn after that her unhappy fate gave some colour to believe every thing to her prejudice. Her brother and she did both at their death deny all criminal commerce together: nor was any thing proved against them, only the testimony of a dead woman was alleged to destroy them.

His last charge relates to More and Fisher; but how this comes to support his censure of my manner of writing is not so clear. I seem in these matters to write like one that intended to raise their character, rather than to depress it: nor do I justify King Henry's violences, but set them out as there is occasion for it. More knew a law was made, requiring the subjects to swear to the King as Supreme Head, under the pain or perpetua. imprisonment; upon which he ought to have gone out of England, since he resolved not to take the oath. Fisher knew that the Nun of Canterbury had in very indecent words foretold the King's death, and had not revealed it as he ought to have done.

to find fault, he could not find much matter for his spleen to work on, when in so short a paper he is forced to return in three several places to the article of the divorce of Anne of Cleve: and he shews such an inclination to censure, that I have no reason to think he would have spared me, if he had found greater matters to have objected to me. So all he says that seems to intimate that, must pass for words of course, which ought to make no impression.

III. Some remarks sent me by an
unknown person.

KEILWAY'S Reports were published 1602, by Jo. Crook, who was afterwards a judge. He gives a character of Keilway, as a lawyer of good reputation; and that he was surveyor of the courts of wards in Queen Elizabeth's reign. It appears that the King's ordering the Attorney General to confess Dr. Horsey's plea, without bringing the matter to a trial, was plainly a contrivance to please the clergy, and to stifle that matter without bringing it to a trial, and so must have satisfied them better than if he had pardoned him. Little regard is to be given to Rastall, who shewed his partiality in matters in which the Pope's authority was concerned; for, in his edition of the Statutes at Large, he omitted one act of parliament made in the second year of Ricnard the Second, cap. 6. which is thus abridged by Poulton. Urban was duly chosen Pope, and so ought to be accepted and obeyed: upon which the Lord Coke in his institutes, p. 274. infers, that antiently acts of parliament were made concerning the highest spiritual matters; but it seems Rastall had no mind to let that be known. He was a judge in Queen Mary's time, but went beyond sea, and lived in Flanders in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and there he wrote and printed his Book of Entries.

There is a very singular instance in the Year Book, 43. Edward III. 33. 6. by which it appears, that the Bishop of Litchfield was sometimes called the Bishop of Chester; for a quare impedit was brought by the King against him, called Bishop of Chester: the judgment given at the end of it is, that he should go to the great devil. This is a singular instance of an extraordinary judgment; there being no precedent like it in all our records.

He says my History reflects much on the memory of King Henry. I did not undertake to write a panegyric on him, but only to write the history of that time: in doing this, as I have discovered the injustice of many scandals that have been cast on him, so I have not spared to lay open many ill practices, when I was obliged to do it, by that impartial sincerity to which I obliged myself when I undertook that work: though he charges me as biassed by partiality, a censure I deserved not. But I do more easily submit to his charging me with my ignorance of law, and of ecclesiastical antiquity. Such general censures are little to be regarded: when he is at leisure to reckon up the particulars in which I have erred, I shall be very glad to be In Brook's Abridgment, Tit. Præmunire,sect. instructed by him. For though I have looked 21, it is said, That Barlow had, in the reign a little into law, and ecclesiastical history, of Edward the Sixth, deprived the Dean of yet I value myself upon nothing but my sin- Wells (which was a donative), and had therecerity. It is very easy to lay a detracting by incurred a pramunire; and that he was character in some general words upon any forced to use means to obtain his pardon: so person. The artifice is so commonly prac- if he had not his bishoprick confirmed, by a tised, that it will not pass upon any but those new grant of it, he must have lost it, in a judgwho by some prejudices are prepared to take ment against him in a pramunire. And if he down every thing that is boldly asserted. It wrote any such book, it was in order to the seems that how a great a mind soever he had_ obtaining his pardon. Brook was chief jus.

Barlow did feebly promise to be reconciled to the Church of Rome: but it seems, that was only an effect of weakness, since he quickly got beyond sea; into which the Privy-Council made an inquiry: that shews, that he repented of that which was extorted from him.

tice of the Common-Pleas, in the first of Queen for by a letter of Sampson's it appeare, that Mary but yet it is no ways probable that Barlow wrote any such book as is mentioned p. 428 of the second volume of the History of the Reformation: for he went out of England, and came back in the first of Queen Elizabeth. He assisted in the consecration of Archbishop Parker, and was made bishop of Chichester; which probably would not have "There are in this paper some quotations been done, if he had written any such book, out of Harmer's Specimen, on which general unless he had made a public recantation of it; remarks are made, but particulars are not which I do not find that he did. So there is added. The writer of this has not thought fit reason to believe, that was a book put out in to name himself to me; so I can give no other his name by some papist, on design to cast a description of him, but that he seems to be a reproach on the Reformation. This is further person who has studied the law, and perused confirmed, by what I have put in the History: our historians carefully."

A TABLE

OF THE

RECORDS AND PAPERS THAT ARE IN THE COLLECTION,

With which the Places in the History to which they relate are marked. The First Number, with the Letter C. is the Page of the Collection; the Second, with the Letter H. is the Page of the History.

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