The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  Bishop Gardiner had also been summoned to appear before the Privy Council early in Edward’s reign, on 25 September 1547, and he too was initially incarcerated in the Fleet. At least imprisonment here was not as unpleasant as at Newgate, as it had special privileges on account of being ‘the King’s own proper prison next in trust to his Tower of London’. Gardiner was held there until January 1548, not being released until after the closure of Edward’s first Parliament (it was Gardiner’s belief that he was kept locked up expressly to prevent him attending Parliament and being anywhere near the centre of power), and he was then asked to subscribe to a statement on the doctrine of justification. This he refused to do and was subsequently placed under house arrest in his Southwark palace. He then returned to his diocese where he continued in his stubbornness.

  The stern treatment meted out to the former bishops who refused to conform was motivated by a desire for conformity and good order; Edward and his advisers had no appetite for open contention in matters of religion – not least because there were many matters over which there was still no firm agreement among the reformers. In the first part of Edward’s reign there seems to have been a desire at court and among the church hierarchy to keep the lid on dissent, in the hope of being able to devote some time to working out definitive positions on questions of faith and practice. The first act of Edward’s first Parliament was the Act against Revilers of the Sacrament and for Communion in both kinds – so on the one hand setting out the reformed principle that the people were to receive both bread and wine at Holy Communion, while on the other making it an offence punishable by fines and imprisonment to speak disrespectfully of the sacrament of the altar, a measure aimed at those, including some preachers, who had been scoffingly referring to it as a ‘jack-in-a-box’.

  The chronicler Wriothesley noted in 1548 at Whitsuntide: ‘the censing in Paul’s clean put down’ – that is, no more incense was to be used in St Paul’s Cathedral. Many outdoor processions were ended too, including the Worshipful Company of Skinners’ procession on Corpus Christi day. Only ‘the English procession’ – that is, the penitential litany composed by Cranmer (with its repeated refrain of ‘have mercy upon us, miserable sinners’) – was allowed to take place, inside the churches. There was nevertheless still confusion as to what people could and could not do and, more precisely, what they did and did not do, so for instance the Greyfriars chronicler notes: ‘Item the 20th day of June [1549], the which was Corpus Christi day, and as that day in divers places in London was kept holy day, and many kept none, but did work openly, and in some churches service and some none, such was the division.’

  When Bishop Gardiner was made to preach in the summer of 1548, as a test of his orthodoxy, he was instructed to comply with the recent ruling that no one was to preach on the theology of the Eucharist until it had been properly determined. As with most other instructions emanating from the Edwardian hierarchy, Gardiner refused to obey. In his sermon, preached on the feast of St Peter and St Paul, 29 June, he spoke of the sacrifice of the Mass and, though he admitted that communion could be received in both kinds and he attacked papal authority, he went on to defend religious ceremonies on the basis that they helped to move men towards God. His insistence on speaking in this way afforded his opponents a pretext for his immediate rearrest and exclusion from the second session of Parliament under Edward, that second Parliament convening in November 1548. A year later, in November 1549, when the third session was convening at Westminster, Gardiner again wrote to the Privy Council, urging them to release him so that he could sit in the Upper House, which he claimed to be his right. But by the time the next session convened, he had been deprived of his see, having been tried on nineteen charges in front of royal commissioners, headed by Cranmer, the trial beginning at Lambeth on 15 December 1550. Though he strongly defended himself, many witnesses spoke against him. The eighth session of the court appointed to try him was held at Lord Rich’s house at St Bartholomew’s on 20 January 1551. He was deprived of the see of Winchester on 14 February, and spent the rest of Edward’s reign in the Tower, the Protestant John Ponet replacing him as bishop. Cuthbert Tunstall, former Bishop of Durham, fared no better, being called before the Privy Council in February 1550, committed to the Tower in 1551, and deprived of his see in October 1552.

  The difficulty in controlling what priests said from the pulpit led to restrictions being placed on the parish clergy – who, at Thomas Cromwell’s instigation, had been obliged under Henry VIII to preach in their own churches every quarter – so that from April 1548 only a small list of clergy with a royal licence had the right to preach at all. There is no indication that Sir John Deane of St Bartholomew’s was ever on this list and no reason why he would have been; a priest who wanted to stay out of trouble in these turbulent years was well advised not to express his opinions from the pulpit, but to administer the sacraments according to the officially sanctioned rite – marrying, burying, baptizing and doing pastoral work – while leaving doctrinal considerations to his superiors. This, as far as we know, was Deane’s policy.

  Another item up for discussion during Edward’s reign was compulsory clerical celibacy, and the desire by the reformers to bring forward legislation to abolish it, but the Lords were not as in favour of this as the Commons, and the bill was not passed early in the reign. Clerical marriage was, though, finally legalized by Parliament in 1549, at which time many clerics either began to marry or brought out into the open the wives they had had for some time. It had clearly been expected that this legalisation would take place, Cranmer himself living openly as a married man from the beginning of Edward’s reign, and routine official documents coming from Lambeth Palace soon mentioning clerical wives.

  John Deane never married. The bill permitting clergy marriage still maintained that ‘it were more commendable for them to live chaste and without marriage, whereby they might better attend to the ministry of the Gospel, and to be less distracted with secular cares’. Whether or not this was John Deane’s motivation – that he could better attend to the ministry of the Gospel by keeping to his celibate state – it was a circumstance that certainly aided his survival.

  Deane would have been among those who, in May 1550, went to listen to and be examined by Dr Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London in succession to the disgraced Bonner, as in that month Dr Ridley sat in visitation in St Paul’s Cathedral and in various other places within the diocese of London and ‘called all the parsons and curates of his diocese with 6 persons of every parish before him, and gave them divers godly injunctions and instructions to be enquired of, and also examining every parson and curate himself in his own house privately of their learning, and gave them four days to make their answer in Whitsun week next’. In addition to fulfilling his role as a priest and demonstrating obedience to his bishop, Deane participated, along with many of his parishioners (so many of whom were officials of the Court of Augmentations), in the redistribution of wealth and property that occurred as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries. Deane was a pragmatist, and he had as his patron the ultra-pragmatist, Lord Rich; he both learnt from him, and benefited from his influence when necessary. The Rector of St Bartholomew’s was exceptionally well placed to know what former monastic property was available for purchase and he took advantage of this knowledge – not only, or indeed primarily, for himself, but for his relatives and the people he cared about in his native Northwich, as will be seen subsequently. John Deane made one purchase of monastic property direct from the Crown: in Henry’s reign, by a grant dated August 1543, he bought property in Northwich previously belonging to the Cistercian monastery of Basingwerk. For this he paid £54 to the Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, Sir Edward North (a parishioner, living in Bartholomew Close). The property consisted of two salt pits or ‘salinas’ (plots of land with buildings on them, one of which had to be occupied by any intending maker of salt before he could be allowed to take brine from the pits). Still in Henry’s reign, Deane was involved in l
itigation to establish his right to part of this, addressing a complaint to the Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations; the exact date of the petition is not known but the Chancellor would have been either Richard Rich or Edward North, both Deane’s parishioners. He had further trouble with one of his properties while Rich was Lord Chancellor, addressing a petition to him against Thomas Bromfield and Thomas Newall for withholding the rents and profits of the salt-house from him. Deane asked for a writ of subpoena on Bromfield and Newall, commanding them to surrender the deeds and to pay the rent due at the previous Michaelmas. It is perhaps not surprising that his petition appears to have been successful.

  During Rich’s period as Lord Chancellor he found himself more exposed than he was accustomed to, and it drew upon all his skills for nimble political footwork and self-preservation. His relations with Lord Protector Somerset, as indeed with anyone else in or out of power, were always ambivalent and dependent on changes in circumstance and alignment. From the start of his Protectorate, Somerset’s position was threatened by his own brother, Thomas Seymour. Thomas had been appointed Lord Admiral and given a seat on the Privy Council, in the hope of taming him, but keeping quiet and subservient was not in Thomas’s character. In the spring of 1547 he had secretly married Henry VIII’s widow, Katherine Parr, who died in childbirth in September 1548, and he was clearly not prepared to work indefinitely under his brother. Steps were therefore taken against him and in January 1549 he was arrested on various charges, including embezzlement at the Bristol Mint. There was no clear evidence against him for treason, so he was not tried but condemned by Act of Attainder. Lord Chancellor Rich was necessarily involved.

  Three days after the Bill of Attainder against Thomas Seymour had received the royal assent, the Lord Chancellor called a Council meeting to deliberate about having it carried into effect. The Protector withdrew from the meeting – while knowing it to be very likely that the Council would resolve that his brother be executed – and he himself signed the warrant for the execution later that day. The second signature was that of Archbishop Cranmer, and the third that of Lord Chancellor Rich. It was also Rich who announced to the young Edward VI that his uncle Thomas was to be beheaded, the sentence being carried out on 20 March 1549. Edward betrayed no emotion at this news, accepting the assurances of his councillors that the execution of his ambitious relative was in his own best interests.

  A few months after Thomas Seymour’s death, Rich found himself having to work out where he stood between opposing rival factions. On the one side there were discontented members of the Privy Council, headed by ex-Chancellor Wriothesley and the Earl of Warwick (formerly Lord Lisle), and they had established a rival government at Ely House (where Wriothesley had not so long before been under house arrest), taking advantage of Somerset’s unpopularity and weakness. During 1548 England had experienced much social unrest and, after April 1549, a series of armed revolts had broken out over both religious and agrarian grievances, two serious rebellions occurring in Devon and Cornwall and in Norfolk. These events were taken as evidence of the failure of Somerset’s government, a number of members of the Council laying the responsibility at his door. On the other side was Somerset, and at first Rich seemed to be with him.

  On 1 October 1549 Somerset had been alerted that his rule faced serious threat, and on that day he issued a proclamation calling for assistance, took possession of the King’s person and withdrew with him to the fortified Windsor Castle, in the hope that the King’s name might prove a tower of strength. Rich had been with the Protector at Hampton Court and he initially accompanied him and King Edward to Windsor. But when Rich saw that Somerset was being deserted by everybody and was likely to lose, he switched sides and joined forces with the malcontent privy councillors, taking the Great Seal with him as a symbol of authority against the Lord Protector.

  On Sunday 6 October Rich made a long and powerful speech to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City gathered at Ely House, asserting that Somerset had usurped the protectorship against the will of the late King, that he had abused his power, mismanaged foreign affairs by allowing the infant Queen of Scots to be married into the royal family of France, that he had oppressed the nobility and the people at home, and that it was now necessary to rescue the King, who was being held by Somerset at Windsor Castle.

  The Lord Mayor and Aldermen were sufficiently receptive to Rich’s speech to agree to meet at Guildhall in the afternoon of that day and to consider requests for military assistance from both the Protector and the opposing Council. At that point no decision was taken to offer military assistance to either party, but the Aldermen did agree to strengthen the night watches at the gates of the City. That same day the Earl of Warwick moved the short distance from Holborn into the City and took lodgings with one of the sheriffs, John York. This would suggest that he was expecting the City to declare for his side. On the following day the Common Council met, in the presence of the Lord Mayor, the Recorder and the Aldermen, and heard letters from both Somerset and the Privy Council, deliberated and pondered on them, and agreed to side with the privy councillors, against the Protector, ‘for the defence, safeguard, and maintenance of the King’s Majesty’s person, and for his grace’s City of London and to aid the said Lords within the said City according to the tenor of their said letters’. They thereby committed themselves as opposed to Somerset, but agreed to take action only within the City, and not to give money for troops further afield.

  On 8 October Common Council convened again and on this occasion the leaders of the Privy Council were present at the meeting at Guildhall. Lord Rich and other lords declared to Common Council ‘the great abuses of the said Lord Protector, desiring that all the citizens be aiding and assisting with the lords for the preservation of the King’s Majesty’s person, which greatly feared being in his adversary’s hands’. After the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council had heard these remarks of Lord Rich and others, they ‘promised their aid and help to the uttermost of their lives and goods’. They still had not promised to provide armed forces, however, and it was not until the next day, 9 October, that Common Council agreed to provide armed men, pressure having been put on them by the Aldermen. On 10 October, the Councilmen finally assented to a commitment of 500 men, of whom 100 were to be cavalry. A list was drawn up with numbers of men to be provided by each of the livery companies, and this military force mustered at Moorfields on 11 October, but by that day the Protector’s support had dwindled to the point at which troops were no longer required. Somerset was taken into custody by Sir Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Guard, and the King was brought to Richmond. On 14 October the former Lord Protector was committed to the Tower. Lord Rich ‘presided at the examinations of his former patron before the Council, – drew up the articles against him – obtained his confession – and brought in the Bill of Pains and Penalties, by which he was deprived of all his offices, and sentenced to forfeit land to the value of 2,000L a year’.

  The overthrow of Somerset occurred only a few days after the deprivation of Bishop Bonner, and the shift of power to Warwick (who became Duke of Northumberland early in 1551 and was subsequently generally referred to as Northumberland) also presaged a strengthening of the reformist position (somewhat to the surprise, and discontent, of the conservatives among the Privy Council who had backed the coup). On Christmas Day 1549 a royal circular to the bishops was issued, reinforcing the message of an earlier proclamation, ordering the destruction of all Latin service books. There were bonfires of books all over England, the bishops being forced to supervise these burnings. The Greyfriars chronicler, sympathetic to Bonner, relates the hard time the former bishop had in prison – how, on 8 January 1550, Bonner had his bed removed by the keeper of the prison and for eight days had only straw and a coverlet to lie on, for refusing to pay his jailer the sum of £10. He appealed against his sentence, and on 6 February he was taken from the Marshalsea to appear before the Privy Council sitting in Star Chamber at Westminster. Here he was informed th
at his appeal had been considered, and dismissed, by eight privy councillors (among them Lord Rich). It was Rich, as Lord Chancellor, who concluded the proceedings by commanding that Bonner (with whom in the previous reign he had worked closely in the pursuit of heretics) ‘be had from thence to the place he came from, from there to remain in perpetual prison at the King’s pleasure, and to lose all his spiritual promotions and dignities for ever’.

  Lord Rich was also involved in the steps taken against the King’s half-sister Princess Mary (now known as ‘the Lady Mary’, as her father had decreed) in her desire to have Mass said in her house, in defiance of the King’s instructions. On 22 July 1550 Sir William Petre and Lord Rich were nominated by the Privy Council to visit Mary to convey the message of the King, insisting that only the authorized English services were to be used in her household. The message was delivered by Rich at Copped Hall in Essex, where Mary was then living. She knelt to receive the King’s letter, explaining that she was paying respect to the writer, rather than to the letter’s contents.

  Though the young Edward expected obedience in religious matters from his half-sister (from whom he did not receive it – though she did eventually agree not to be ostentatious in her observances of traditional worship) and his other subjects (from whom he largely did) and placed a high value on conformity, coercion of belief and practice by means of capital punishment was not, in general, part of his policy. There were nevertheless two people – both Anabaptists – burnt at the stake in his reign. As soon as Edward’s first Parliament met, it had repealed the Six Articles and the laws against heresy, but it was subsequently decided, in the cases of Joan Boucher and George van Parris, that the King had the right to punish heretics under the common law, and so these two victims were burnt on the authority of a royal writ. Joan Boucher, also known as Joan Knell and Joan of Kent, came from the area near the Romney Marshes and had been involved in reforming circles in Canterbury in the late 1530s and early 1540s. During Henry’s reign she had spoken against the sacrament of the altar, been imprisoned for a while and then released, largely on the initiative of Cranmer’s commissary, Christopher Nevinson. Joan was related by blood or marriage to William Knell of Kent, who was executed for speaking in support of the papacy in 1538, and so she was turning against her own family when she embraced Protestantism. Some time after 1543 she became an Anabaptist, or one of those who would be defined as Anabaptists, her views now beginning to part company with even the most radical of Protestant beliefs. She became convinced of a theory concerning Christ’s celestial flesh, the belief that Christ did not receive his physical body from his mother Mary, but that it was a divine distillation, views that may have come from exiled Dutch Anabaptists, fleeing persecution in Holland. She was arrested in 1548 and convicted of heresy in April 1549. When she was condemned and her sentence read out, she told the tribunal: ‘It is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It was not long ago since you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet came yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same things for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will come to believe this also, when you have read the scriptures and understand them.’ She was right about Anne Askew’s views on the sacrament now being shared by those in authority, but her own opinions on ‘the celestial flesh’ remained beyond the pale of Christian orthodoxy.