The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  The harsh physical punishments meted out in the mid-sixteenth century for even minor infractions of the law – quite apart from the extreme punishment of death by burning – must have provided a very strong incentive for the average person to toe the line. One excruciating example among many is the case of Anthony Fowlkes, ‘a gentleman’ and merchant who, on 9 December 1552, was ‘set on the pillory in Cheap’ with his ear ‘hard nailed to the pillory’ for having swindled his customers and been tried for this offence by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen at Guildhall. After he had stood, attached by his ear, to the pillory all morning, he was allowed to go but was understandably reluctant to tear himself away (literally) as it would have meant leaving part of his ear behind. And so ‘one of the beadles slit it upwards with a penknife to loose it’. The fact that the chronicler found this incident of sufficient interest to record it suggests that sometimes the method of release was to be yanked off the pillory, with or without one’s ear.

  Obedience to the law in 1552 included using the second version of the Book of Common Prayer, which had been revised to remove those survivals of old tradition that were still in the 1549 book. It was complete by the spring of 1552 but was not finally published until the autumn as an annex to the second Act of Uniformity, which declared this revised prayer book to contain the only permissible liturgy in the realm. It was used for the first time in St Paul’s Cathedral on All Saints’ day, 1 November, in 1552. ‘This day all copes and vestments were put down through all England, and the prebendaries of Paul’s left off their hoods and the Bishops their crosses, so that all priests and clerks should use no other vestments, at service or communion, but surplices only: as by an Act of Parliament in the Book of Common Prayer more at large is set out.’ So John Deane, along with all other obedient clergy, now ceased to wear the eucharistic vestments – chasuble, stole, alb and maniple – that he had worn previously, exchanging them for a simple cassock and surplice to celebrate the Holy Communion. And, for all he knew, this and all the other changes recently introduced were to be permanent. We of a later generation know Edward’s reign was brief and that many of his ecclesiastical policies were soon reversed, but there was no particular reason to anticipate this at the time. He was a young king and, though sudden death was a common occurrence, he was in no worse health than most of his subjects until the last few months of his life. His contemporaries could well have imagined that his reign would last as long as that of his father. So decisions to accept – or reject – change were for the long term.

  To end this chapter, which has provided something of an interlude between the burnings under Henry VIII and the many burnings under Mary I, it is interesting to consider the reaction to the burning of Joan Boucher on the part of one of the most renowned clergymen to have flourished under Edward VI and of whom we will hear more in the next chapter. This is the Reverend John Rogers and the story is a striking one. Foxe recounts how, after Joan’s sentencing, Rogers was approached by an unnamed friend, often assumed to have been Foxe himself. This friend urged Rogers, who was a prebendary of St Paul’s and Vicar of the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, a few hundred yards from St Bartholomew’s, to intercede on behalf of Joan, ‘exhorting and beseeching him that he would use his utmost influence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, that, her error being as far as possible chastised and restrained, the life at least of the unhappy woman might be spared’. The conversation between the two men is reminiscent of the arguments over the parable of the wheat and tares discussed earlier, the friend suggesting that if Joan were allowed to live, she might in time be cured of her erroneous opinions and would ‘corrupt’ at most only a few people, whereas her execution might actually promote her opinions. It would therefore be more sensible as well as more merciful to keep Joan in close custody where she could not have access to what the friend termed ‘persons of weak mind’, while also being given the opportunity to repent. But Rogers, after listening to him, declared that he nevertheless thought Joan deserved to die.

  His friend continued to try to persuade him otherwise and then, when he had realized Rogers could not be so persuaded, begged that at least he petition for another method of execution, protesting that Christians should not follow the example of ‘the Papists’ by consigning someone to ‘the horrors of a death so tormenting’. But Rogers disagreed. This form of punishment, ‘by which men are burned alive’, was, in his opinion, ‘the least agonizing of all, and sufficiently gentle’. At this, his friend responded with passion, striking Rogers’s hand which he had been holding, and uttering the prophetic words: ‘Well, perchance you may yet find that you, yourself, shall have your hands full of this so gentle fire.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘TURN, AND TURN, AND TURN AGAIN’

  No sooner Edward was laid in his tomb,

  But England was the slaughter-house of Rome:

  Gardner and Bonner were from prison turned,

  And whom they pleased were either saved or burned:

  Queen Mary, imitating Jezebel,

  Advanced again the Ministers of Hell:

  Then tyranny began to tyrannise –

  Tortures and torments then they did devise:

  Then Master Rogers, with a faith most fervent,

  Was burned, and died (in Smithfield) God’s true servant.

  from the original edition of a poem by John Taylor,

  the ‘Water Poet’, in the Book of Martyrs, London, 1639

  ‘Turn, and turn, and turn again, is the very life and property of our popish prelates, and of the whole crown-shaven clergy.’

  from The confession of John Rogers made and

  that should have been made, if I might have been heard,

  the 28 & 29 of January, Anno Domini 1555

  EDWARD VI DIED on 6 July 1553 in Greenwich, where his body was embalmed and placed in a lead coffin; he was not buried until over four weeks later. In his will, Edward had named his Protestant cousin and Northumberland’s daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor, overturning the claims of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and on Sunday 9 July, the day before Jane was officially proclaimed Queen, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, by order of the Privy Council, had preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross in which he denounced the Princess Mary as a thoroughgoing papist and declared that, had she become queen, she would have betrayed the kingdom to a foreign power. This outspoken and injudicious language did its speaker no favours in later days. By the next Sunday, when it was the turn of John Rogers to preach at Paul’s Cross, Jane’s claim to the throne was under threat, with Mary having rallied her supporters and Northumberland having set out from London with his troops in the hope of countering them. Rogers sensibly avoided politics on this occasion, confining himself to speaking about the Gospel text set for the day. Three days after this sermon, on 19 July, the Privy Council having switched sides and Northumberland’s support having collapsed, Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen at the Cross in Cheapside.

  The chronicler Wriothesley’s account of the proclamation suggests overwhelming support for Mary in the City of London:

  Then [the Privy Council] declaring to the Lord Mayor and his brethren that he must ride with them into Cheap to proclaim a new Queen, which was the Lady Mary’s Grace, daughter to King Henry VIII, which was so joyful news that for joy all the people present that heard it wept, and before the Council had ridden up the hill to Paul’s Churchyard the people were so great assembled running into Cheap that the Lords could scarce pass by; the Lord Mayor and the Council coming to the Cross in Cheap, where the proclamation should be made, Mr Garter, the King of Arms, in his rich coat of arms, with a trumpeter being ready, and, [when] the trumpet blew, there was such shout of the people with casting up of caps and crying, God save Queen Mary, that the style of the proclamation could not be heard, the people were so joyful, both man, woman, and child. The proclamation there ended, the Lord Mayor and all the Council rode straight to Paul’s Church and went up into the quire, where the canticle of Te Deum laudamus was solemnly
sung with the organs going, and that done, the Council departed and commanded Mr Garrett the Sheriff, with the King of Arms and trumpeter, to see the proclamation made immediately in other accustomed places within the City. All the people and citizens of the City of London for such joyful news made great and many fires through all the streets and lanes within the said City, with setting tables in the streets and banqueting also, with all the bells ringing in every parish church in London till 10 of the clock at night, that the inestimable joys and rejoicing of the people cannot be reported.

  The threat to the Protestant reforms introduced during Edward’s brief reign was apparent almost immediately. Before the end of July, Queen Mary had told the imperial ambassadors that she was unhappy about her half-brother being buried without the benefit of the traditional liturgy and ritual, and asked for their advice. As the newly acceded monarch, she was legally head and governor of the Church of England, however much she did not believe in that concept, and the only legal form of public worship in the realm was the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. The representatives of the Emperor Charles V advised circumspection, both in order to avoid any violent reaction and because Edward had been, in Catholic eyes, a heretic and schismatic, so that it would be inappropriate (as well as illegal) to use the old liturgy for his funeral and burial. On 2 August Ambassador Simon Renard sent a secret memorandum to Mary, suggesting the compromise of Edward being buried according to the Prayer Book ritual but without Mary herself in attendance; she could instead arrange for a traditional Requiem Mass to be said for her half-brother elsewhere.

  Despite John Rogers having made no attack on Mary and her attachment to traditional Catholicism, the mere fact of his having succeeded Bishop Ridley in the Paul’s Cross pulpit, along with his obvious ability as a reformist preacher which was recognized by supporters and opponents alike, made him a marked man from the outset of Mary’s reign. For the public, the first signs that the old ways had returned were the release and reinstatement of the bishops imprisoned under Edward, without their even having to wait for a formal nullification of their deprivations. ‘The 5 of August, being Saturday, Doctor Bonner, the old Bishop of London, prisoner in the Marshalsea, and Doctor Tunstall, the old Bishop of Durham, prisoner in the King’s Bench, had their pardon sent them by the Queen, under the great seal of England, and were discharged out of prison; the Bishop of London went to his house at Paul’s immediately.’ ‘The 5 of August at 7 o’clock at night came home Edmund Bonner bishop from the Marshalsea like a bishop, that all the people by the way bade him welcome home [both] man and woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him, and so came to Paul’s, and knelt on the steps and said his prayers; and then the people rang the bells for joy.’ For John Rogers, living at this time with his large family in a clergy house in the precincts of St Paul’s, this must have been less an occasion of rejoicing than of anxiety. But, rather than lying low and waiting to see what Bonner’s return might mean for his own circumstances, Rogers chose on the very next day to preach a trenchant anti-Catholic sermon at Paul’s Cross. According to Foxe, this was ‘a most godly and vehement sermon, avowing and confirming such true doctrine as he and others had there taught in King Edward’s days, exhorting the people constantly to remain in the same and to beware of all pestilent Popery, idolatry, and superstition’. As a result of this sermon, Rogers was called before the Privy Council but succeeded in defending himself on this occasion, pointing out, quite accurately, that there was as yet nothing illegal in what he had said, the Acts in favour of the Protestant religion enacted under Edward VI having not yet been repealed. This was, however, the last sermon Rogers ever preached.

  Despite the compromise suggested by Renard to which Mary had agreed, there was considerably more pomp attending Edward’s funeral than might have been expected for a firmly Protestant king. His coffin was transported by river from Greenwich to Whitehall Palace, and on the night of Monday 7 August (the day following Rogers’s anti-Catholic sermon) it was carried from there to Westminster Abbey in a traditional procession involving a large number of choirboys and men in surplices, as well as twelve of Henry VIII’s ‘bedesmen’ from the former Observant Franciscan house at Greenwich. There were banners, heralds, and horses decked in black velvet. The coffin itself was draped in blue velvet, borne on a chariot covered in cloth of gold, and topped by an effigy of Edward, carved by the Italian sculptor Niccolò Bellini. In the Abbey on 8 August Archbishop Cranmer reverted to the practice allowed by the 1549, rather than the 1552, Prayer Book by including a Eucharist within the funeral service. The only other reforming bishop present was Hugh Latimer; the sermon was preached by the newly restored Bishop of Chichester, George Day, and it was not laudatory about Edward’s achievements. Mary remained in the Tower of London where she duly attended a Requiem Mass for her half-brother, at which the celebrant was Stephen Gardiner, restored to his bishopric of Winchester. After the Mass, Mary moved upriver from the Tower to Richmond Palace, leaving behind as prisoners Lady Jane Grey and the Duke of Northumberland.

  There is an indication in the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments that the return to the old, Catholic, ways was welcome at John Deane’s church for, as early as 11 August, well before any changes were made official, ‘did a priest say mass at St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield; but before he had half done, he was glad to take him to his legs, for as he was lifting up the bread, there were stones flung at him, and one hit him between the shoulders, as the bread was over his head; so that he would not tarry, to make an end of his mask’. Whether the priest involved in this incident was Deane himself is impossible to say for sure, but the celebration could certainly not have happened without his knowledge and approval. The sharpness of the division in the City of London is well illustrated by this incident, the traditional Mass being celebrated at St Bartholomew’s even as, just a few hundred yards away, the vicar of the neighbouring church of St Sepulchre’s was inveighing against such practices – though Rogers would also have been the first to condemn stone-throwing, his preferred weapon being always, and only, words.

  John Rogers was born in about 1500 in Deritend, then a small village or hamlet in the suburbs of Birmingham but now an area just outside the city centre. He was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1526. He was from the outset a promising scholar, and a man of much energy and application. In the same year that he obtained his degree, he was made a junior canon of Cardinal College, Oxford – as was John Frith, though Rogers does not appear at this time to have been involved with the ‘new learning’. Instead he was ordained priest and on 26 December 1532, during the period when some of the early reformers were being burnt in Smithfield, Rogers became Rector of the church of Holy Trinity the Less in the City of London (the church at which the diarist Henry Machyn later became parish clerk) and officiated there for nearly two years. At that time the patrons of the church were the prior and convent of St Mary Overy in Southwark, so Rogers would have been appointed to his rectorship by them (it is one of the ironies of his life that the church of St Mary Overy, which became a parish church after the priory was dissolved, was to be a significant place for him in later, unhappier, days). He resigned as Rector of Holy Trinity the Less towards the end of 1534, moving to the great trading city of Antwerp, where he served as chaplain to the Merchant Adventurers for about three years. By the time he left London, he may already have been entertaining doubts about his future in the established Church, having begun to be influenced by the advocates of reform, but there is no suggestion that he left the country to take up this new post other than through choice. In Antwerp Rogers became acquainted with William Tyndale, who was living there as the guest of an English merchant called Thomas Poyntz and whom we encountered earlier through his friendship with John Frith (see Chapter 2). Rogers would already have known of Tyndale by name through his works, including his translations of the New Testament and his book The Obedience of a Christian Man (banned in England in 1530).

 
More than becoming acquainted with Tyndale, Rogers followed Frith’s example by joining him in his work of translating the Bible and, after Tyndale’s arrest in 1535 (and subsequent execution on 6 October 1536), he continued that work on his own, rescuing Tyndale’s work and bringing to completion what he had begun. Despite most of Tyndale’s property being confiscated on the evening of his arrest, Rogers managed to keep hold of the manuscript of Tyndale’s translation of part of the Old Testament. That he was able to do this suggests that he was not yet known to the authorities as a Protestant sympathizer; he had not been in Antwerp for more than a few months, and may have been only a recent convert. Remaining in Antwerp, Rogers began to work on assembling a complete Bible, compiling the Old Testament translation from Tyndale’s manuscript supplemented by Miles Coverdale’s version which had been printed in 1535, and using Tyndale’s 1534 version of the New Testament. More than merely copying what had already been completed and filling in the missing parts, Rogers approached his work as a scholar, using his knowledge of the Church Fathers, including St Ambrose and St Augustine, to gloss his text, and showing evidence of having read widely and with understanding. He must also have worked with extraordinary application and speed, for by the summer of 1537 copies of the complete translation, printed in Antwerp by Edward Whitchurch and Roger Grafton (the latter, a friend of Rogers, being a London grocer and Merchant Adventurer), were being sent to Thomas Cromwell in England. Rogers did not use his own name as translator and editor, but chose instead the pseudonym ‘Thomas Matthew’, an amalgam of two of Jesus’s disciples, and the version became known as ‘the Matthew Bible’. Archbishop Cranmer wrote to Cromwell in August about the translation, giving it his general approval – ‘I like it better than any other translation heretofore made’ – and expressing the view that the bishops appointed to the official task of translation were unlikely to produce a better one ‘till a day after doomsday’. A few days later Cranmer wrote again to Cromwell, thanking him for having obtained the King’s licence to have this translation published and distributed. It went on to form the basis of the ‘Great Bible’, from which Anne Askew had made such a point of reading in Lincoln Cathedral in 1544.