The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  On hearing that, and ‘swearing a great oath’, Wilmot’s master demanded the boy tell him what he had said. ‘Nothing that could reasonably offend you or Mr Lewes,’ answered Wilmot and then, indicating Lewes: ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ So Lewes launched into a summary of what Wilmot had said, in the process exaggerating the most inflammatory parts of it, and emphasizing Wilmot’s defence of Cromwell, well aware that to defend a convicted traitor was in itself a treacherous act. Wilmot, now beginning to wake up to the fact that he might be in trouble, protested that Lewes was making what he had said sound worse than it was. His master, infuriated and no doubt very anxious that such dangerous talk had been going on in his shop, lambasted the boy, telling him he was quite likely to be hanged or burnt – or at the very least to have all his books confiscated and destroyed. The other young man, Fairfax, now joined the fray, supporting Wilmot against Lewes; this only stoked the fire and Lewes, furious at being bested in argument by these know-it-all young men, ‘went his way in a rage to the Court’.

  The next day Wilmot and Fairfax were both summoned to see the Lord Mayor, who this year was Sir Martin Bowes, under-treasurer at the Royal Mint. This was not an official hearing, as they were first of all given dinner and then called into a parlour where they were examined separately by the Lord Mayor himself and Sir Roger Cholmley (or Cholmondeley), formerly the Recorder of London and now the Chief Baron of the Exchequer (and the ‘first known eminent resident’ of that part of north London known as Highgate). No church officials were as yet involved, Sir Roger explaining that he and the Lord Mayor had received an instruction from the Privy Council to question the two young men. (And the City authorities, aware of the prevalence of reformist thinking among their young people, were anxious not to be seen as unable to control their own apprentices.) During the questioning, Sir Roger made the rather strange accusation of Wilmot being Dr Crome’s son, an assertion Wilmot vigorously denied. They then discussed Crome’s anticipated recantation, and whether the content of his previous sermons was heretical. Wilmot, not at all cowed by his surroundings, declared that if Crome was a heretic, then so was St Paul, as Crome’s teachings were confirmed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Sir Roger then raised the pertinent question of the accuracy of English translations of the Bible and the authority to be given to them; how did Wilmot know St Paul actually wrote these things now attributed to him, he asked, when the apostle never wrote in either English or Latin? Wilmot answered that he was sure that the ‘learned men of God’ who had undertaken this work of translation would not have presumed to alter the meaning of the scriptures. The Lord Mayor now interjected crossly in this rather scholarly discussion, angry at the whole idea that apprentices should be spending their time reading unauthorized texts instead of getting on with the work they were supposed to be doing, and declaring that Wilmot must be punished for having spoken ill of Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. And Sir Roger, presumably intending to frighten Wilmot, referred approvingly to the work Sir Richard Rich had been undertaking in Essex to round up heretics, who were soon to be sent to Bishop Bonner and would then ‘all be hanged and burned’. To which the irrepressible Wilmot responded: ‘I am sorry to hear that of my Lord Rich, for he was my godfather, and gave me my name at my baptism.’ He admitted that he had not, however, spoken to Rich for twelve years. ‘If he knew what you’d been getting up to, he’d have arrested you as well,’ declared Sir Roger.

  Wilmot continuing to defend himself by reference to the Bible, Sir Roger decided it was time to draw the interview to a conclusion.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Cholmondeley, ‘because you are so full of your Scripture, and so well learned, we consider you lack a quiet place to study in. Therefore you shall go to a place where you shall be most quiet, and I would wish you to study how you will answer to the Council of those things which they have to charge you with, for else it is like to cost you your best joint.’

  And so Wilmot was sent to cool his heels in the Counter at Poultry, while Fairfax was sent to the other Counter in Bread Street. They remained in their respective prisons for eight days. There now began a series of anxious delegations and attempts to get the two boys out of trouble, or at least to mitigate the trouble they were in. The motivation throughout seems to have been to keep the matter as quiet as possible, with as few repercussions for the reputations of City officials and commerce as could be managed. The two apprentices and their masters were connected to the Drapers’ Company, one of the most influential of the City’s guilds, and so the Wardens of the Drapers were enlisted in the damage limitation exercise and they accompanied the Lord Mayor when he went to report on the case to the Privy Council and Bishop Gardiner. Initially, Gardiner fulminated that the two young men deserved to die, but then agreed to the concession that they should instead be tied to a cart’s tail and whipped through the City, on three market days. The Lord Mayor and Wardens of the Drapers’ Company came home, thought a bit more, and then went back again the next day. Now they knelt before the bishop and his friend and fellow courtier Sir Anthony Browne and begged the favour that the two apprentices should be punished in the Company’s Hall* and in front of some of the members, rather than drag the name of the Drapers through the ignominy of a public whipping. And, finally, this was agreed.

  Wilmot and Fairfax were then informed of what had been negotiated on their behalf. ‘Then were they sent before the Masters [i.e. the Master and Wardens of the Drapers] the next day to the Hall, both their masters being also present, and there were laid to their charges, the heinous offences by them committed, how they were both heretics and traitors, and had deserved death for the same, and this was declared with a long process by the Master of the Company, whose name was Mr Brooke.’ The ‘long process’ delivered by Mr Brooke involved a detailed retelling of all the efforts and humiliation – including having to pay a very large fine of £100 – which their superiors had gone to in order to spare the boys from death or public shame. And following the speech came retribution. ‘After these and many other words, he commanded them to address themselves to receive their punishment.’ The two young men were stripped to the waist, and each was roped by an ankle to an iron ring in the centre of the Hall. ‘Then came two men down, disguised in mummers’ apparel, with visors on their faces, and they beat them with great rods until the blood did flow on their bodies.’ This savage beating finally put paid to Wilmot’s assertiveness. He was so badly injured that he couldn’t lie in his bed for a week, and the health of both young men was permanently affected.

  A little over six months after Anne Askew’s execution and the punishment of Wilmot and Fairfax, on 28 January 1547, King Henry VIII died. He had been seriously ill for months, and from early November had been restlessly moving from place to place, visiting eight houses in Middlesex and Surrey in the space of six weeks. He arrived back in London, at the palace of Whitehall, just before Christmas and, despite his poor health, remained in control until about ten days before his death. The factional struggles at court had resulted in the triumph of those of a Protestant tendency, and Bishop Stephen Gardiner found his power slipping away even before the death of the King. Yet, despite having previously been associated with the traditionalists – even to the extent of being implicated in the torture of Anne Askew, whether or not he actually participated in it – the great survivor, Richard Rich, not only survived but prospered yet again. Henry had arranged in his will for Rich to receive a barony and, on 15 February, the Privy Council ratified the decision that he should be so created, and he took the title of Baron Rich of Leez, in Essex.

  *Previously, and ironically, the home of Wilmot’s hero Thomas Cromwell, forfeit to the Crown on his execution in 1540 and acquired by the Drapers’ Company in 1543.

  Chapter Eight

  PROTESTANTISM IN THE ASCENDANT

  Where heretofore there hath been great diversity in saying and singing in churches within this realm: some following Salisbury use, some Hereford use, some the use of Bangor, some of York, and some of Lincoln: Now f
rom henceforth, all the whole realm shall have but one use.

  From the preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer

  HENRY’S YOUNG SON Edward was crowned on 20 February 1547, the event accompanied by much pageantry and celebration:

  Item the 20th day of the same month the said King Edward the Sixth came from the Tower of London through London, and in divers places pageants, and all the streets hanged richly, with all the crafts standing in Cheap, presenting them as loving subjects unto their King, and so to Paul’s; and at the west end of Paul’s steeple was tied a cable rope, and the other end beside the Dean’s place at an anchor of a ship, and a man running down on the said rope as swift as an arrow out of a bow down with his hands and feet abroad not touching the rope; and when the King had seen the said thing went forth unto the palace of Westminster; and the next day came from thence unto Westminster church, and there was crowned, and kept his feast in Westminster Hall. God of his mercy send him good luck and long life, with prosperity! And this was done in the 9th year of his age and birth.

  Among those in charge of the arrangements for the coronation and accompanying festivities was Lord Rich (a title that by this time he had enjoyed for five days). On the day of Rich’s ennoblement, the corpse of Henry VIII had arrived at Windsor where it was received by Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who preached at the Requiem Mass, and at Edward’s coronation Archbishop Cranmer was flanked by both Gardiner and Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall. But that the tide was turning against such religious conservatives as Gardiner, Tunstall and Bonner was already evident, Cranmer in his coronation sermon extolling Edward as a royal iconoclast and second Josiah. (Josiah, according to the Second Book of Kings, became King of Judah at the tender age of eight, and was known for having destroyed the images, idols and other ‘abominations’ that had been spreading among the Hebrews.) The nine-year-old Edward must indeed have appeared a Josiah-like godsend to the convinced reformers at court and in the Church.

  Under the terms of Henry’s will, sixteen executors were to act as Edward’s Council until he was eighteen, and these sixteen executors were to be supplemented by twelve other men, who would assist them. The will had not provided for one of those men to lead the others or to act as Regent, but on 12 March the young King’s uncle, Edward Seymour, who had recently become first Duke of Somerset and is therefore usually known merely as ‘Somerset’, succeeded in getting his nephew to sign letters patent appointing him as Protector without limitation until the King reached the age of eighteen.

  One of the few people to oppose Somerset was Lord Chancellor Wriothesley (who had been created Earl of Southampton on the same day that Richard Rich was ennobled). Wriothesley found himself dismissed and placed under house arrest in Ely Place, in what was formerly the London townhouse of the bishops of Ely in Holborn (just outside the City), on a charge of selling off some of his office to delegates, to which he had laid himself open by having appointed four persons to take on some of his duties as Lord Chancellor (not that this was at all unusual, the practice having been followed by his immediate predecessors and subsequently by his successors – including Rich). The attack on him, which was part of the power struggle now going on within the Privy Council, was orchestrated by Rich and the man for whom he may have historically taken the rap for the torture of Anne Askew, Sir John Baker. Whoever had actually turned the wheels of Anne’s rack, these three – Rich, Wriothesley and Baker – were closely implicated in what had happened to her, and each of them knew what the others had done. Perhaps it is only to be expected that, within this threesome of intrigue and shameful secrets, there should also lurk treachery towards one another.

  The replacement Rich had in mind when he set out to topple Wriothesley from his position as Lord Chancellor was – unsurprisingly – himself, but he had to wait a few months for this prize as initially the appointment went to William Paulet. Rich did not complain openly, but he did privately lament the fact that Paulet was not a lawyer and that the Lord Chancellor ought to have been one, and so he got others to complain that the appointment was insulting to the profession and not good for the public. And in fact Paulet does not appear to have been particularly efficient. Rich’s campaign to discredit him soon attained its desired outcome with Rich himself being appointed Lord Chancellor of England on 23 October 1547. The Great Seal was delivered to him at Hampton Court in the presence of the child-King, the ceremony being carried out in the King’s name by the Lord Protector. Ex-Chancellor Wriothesley was back in the Privy Council fairly soon after his dismissal, but did not regain anything like his former position.

  Success in the pursuit of power and influence meant that Rich had to discard, or at least conceal, what had appeared previously to have been his preferences in matters of religion. He was hardly alone in having to perform a volte-face in 1547, with Protestantism now being officially established for the first time in England, after more than a decade of an increasingly conservative doctrinal and liturgical stance under Henry. What had been deemed heresy on the part of Anne Askew and her sympathizers was now being enthusiastically embraced by the church hierarchy and ratified by Parliament. So throughout his time as Lord Chancellor, Rich was responsible, with others, for bringing forward bills to establish the King’s power to appoint bishops, to dissolve chantries, to allow priests to marry and to repeal the Act of Six Articles, under which the martyrs of the latter years of Henry’s reign had been condemned (with, at the time, Rich’s full approval).

  Many of those with less elastic consciences went quickly into exile, among them someone we will encounter later at St Bartholomew’s, the Dominican Father William Peryn, a staunch conservative in doctrine, who had already been in exile in the 1530s. He had come back to England in the latter years of King Henry’s reign, but returned to Louvain in 1547, fleeing before any official changes in doctrine – and accompanying sanctions for deviance – could be introduced. Before departure, he had preached on St George’s day (23 April) at St Andrew Undershaft in the City on the spiritual benefits of using pictures of God and the saints in worship. This was in complete opposition to the new approved line, articulated by Nicholas Ridley on Ash Wednesday, 23 February, in a sermon at court deprecating the use of images and holy water. Preferring exile to imprisonment or worse, Peryn had recanted his views, as instructed, on 19 June but then left the country.

  Services began to be conducted in English at St Paul’s Cathedral as early as Easter 1547, by order of the Dean, William May. In September that year began what was known as the King’s visitation at St Paul’s and all the images there were pulled down. On 9 September it took place at St Bride’s in Fleet Street and after that in various other parish churches. The churches were white-limed, and the Ten Commandments written on the walls. At the time of the visitation of St Bride’s, the vicar there was John Cardmaker, an evangelical, who would have unequivocally approved of the changes being made. All roods – that is, the great crucifixes separating nave and chancel, often affixed to screens – were taken down. The chronicler and Windsor Herald Charles Wriothesley (cousin of ex-Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley) noted that, on the night when the rood with all the images was dismantled in St Paul’s, negligence led to some people being hurt and one killed when the great cross fell from the rood loft, ‘which the popish priests said was the will of God for the pulling down of the said idols’.

  Bishop Edmund Bonner, who had been so active in promoting the Henrician definition of orthodoxy, was called before the Privy Council and sent to the Fleet prison on 18 September 1547 for refusing to observe the Royal Injunctions to have the Epistle and Gospel at High Mass read in English. He was released a few weeks later from this first imprisonment in the Fleet, and actually attended the House of Lords during Edward’s first Parliament. In the second session of Parliament, Bonner again regularly attended proceedings in the Lords, opposing the religious changes introduced by the reformers, and encouraging others to follow suit. He neglected to enforce use of the new English prayer book, and this resulted in a remonstrance
from the King who wrote to him on 2 August 1549, soon after this first Book of Common Prayer had come into force, taking him to task over the many people in his diocese who were neglecting to attend church and Holy Communion and putting this down to Bonner’s own ‘evil example and slackness’. Bonner had previously preached a great deal, particularly on all the major feast days, and he was now refusing to do so. The young King told him to reform, and commanded him to preach strongly against rebellion and resistance to temporal authority in his next sermon at St Paul’s, and in support of obedience in using the rites established by law to be used in the Church. On 10 August further injunctions were delivered from the King to Bishop Bonner, requiring him to celebrate communion in St Paul’s in a few days’ time and to declare in his sermon that the present King’s authority was no less than that of any of his predecessors, despite his youth, and to preach God’s displeasure at rebellion. The Greyfriars chronicler reported that, on 18 August 1549, Bishop Bonner, knowing what was likely to happen to him, ‘did the office at Paul’s both at the procession and at the communion discreetly and sadly’.

  On 1 September Bonner preached at Paul’s Cross and was subsequently accused regarding his teaching. His failure to obey the clear instructions from the King was discussed by the Privy Council on 8 September and a commission for his deprivation was appointed. He was made to appear before Archbishop Cranmer and others on 13, 16 and 18 September. On 20 September he was sent at night to the Marshalsea prison and, reported the chronicler, ‘he went the same day unto Lambeth in his scarlet habit and his rotchet upon it’ (that is, dressed in his episcopal robes). He was deprived of his bishopric at Lambeth on 1 October 1549 by Archbishop Cranmer. He was then sent back to prison, where he was to remain at the King’s pleasure.