The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  The ‘Matthew Bible’ is a lively translation, many of its verses familiar to anyone acquainted with the later King James ‘Authorized’ version, but with an earthiness and directness that show this was primarily the work of an orator, gifted in the pulpit, knowing how to deploy his tongue and not only his pen to good effect. It also conveys a sense of urgency, reminding the reader that Rogers, and the translators whose work he built on, were working against time, with a mixture of delight and desperation – this was an unprecedented, joyous task, yet fraught with danger; it had to be completed as quickly as possible, for who knew when they might be interrupted, arrested, even put to death for their endeavours? They were right in perceiving, during Henry’s reign and particularly while Cromwell was in power, a ‘window of opportunity’ when their work might be acceptable and capable of dissemination, but the forces militating against acceptance were also very powerful and there was no knowing how long the opportunity might last. The sense of urgency was compounded by the belief that what they were doing was of enormous significance: those at work on delivering the scriptures in English to an English audience were sure they were doing the work of God, that this was their calling and it could not be ignored; and it must be done to the best of their ability. This sense of urgency gives the work its visceral quality and immediacy, and it is the version I have chosen to use for biblical quotations in this book – both because it would have been familiar to the reformers of the Tudor period, and because it is so alive, so much the vivid language of those who were prepared to die in order to deliver these words to their readers and listeners.

  The Matthew Bible is dedicated to ‘the most noble and gracious Prince King Henry the Eight, King of England and of France, Lord of Ireland etc. Defender of the faith: and under God the chief and supreme head of the Church of England’. The importance attached to this work of translation is clear from words within that dedication: ‘It is no vulgar or common thing which is offered into your grace’s protection, but the blessed word of God: which is everlasting and cannot fail, though heaven and earth should perish.’ There is also expressed the belief that recent generations of churchmen have prevented this word of God being heard by the people: ‘Long and oft was it obscured and darkened, yea and in manner clean abolished in the time of the commonwealth of Israel. The wily juggling of the priests in persuading the princes and rulers to be conformable to their inventions, and the rash believing people, which thought everything an oracle that the priests breathed into their breasts, did oft and many times fill all full of superstition and Idolatry.’ There is also a reference to Josiah, on which Cranmer must have drawn in his sermon on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VI: ‘Josiah after he had once read the book of the law found in the temple, let no time slip till he had called all Israel together, put down all kinds of Idolatry, and held the feast of Passover according to the law.’ Rogers and his publishers liken Henry to the Old Testament characters to whom his son would also be likened: ‘That Hezekiah and Josiah were unto Israel, the same is your grace unto the Realm of England: yea the godly have great hope that your praise shall be far above theirs.’

  That in the midst of this frenetic work of translation and scholarship, John Rogers found time to marry and went on to produce a large number of children in a short time testifies to his great energy and zest for life (as well as to the remarkable qualities of his wife). His taking a wife also signalled a path of no return as far as the Catholic Church was concerned. Rogers married a Flemish woman named Adriana de Weyden (or Pratt – both names meaning ‘meadow’) in 1536 or 1537; Adriana was a relative of Jacob van Meteren who had sponsored Miles Coverdale’s Bible of 1535. Rogers stayed in Antwerp for six years, and then left with his young family for Wittenberg where he continued to study, being awarded further degrees in November 1540, and becoming one of four superintendents of the Lutheran Church in the Dietmarsh region, in the north-west of Germany. At about the end of 1543, he became pastor at Meldorf, the capital of the Dietmarsh region, and superintendent of the Meldorf district. Prior to Rogers taking up this post, Philipp Melanchthon had written to the superintendent of one of the other districts to recommend him, writing of him in glowing terms as ‘a learned man … gifted with great ability, which he sets off with a noble character … he will be careful to live in concord with his colleagues … his integrity, trustworthiness and constancy in every duty make him worthy of the love and support of all good men’. The only problem, according to Melanchthon, was that Rogers spoke strongly accented German (presumably with a mixture of accents from Birmingham, London and Antwerp), but that would correct itself over time. Rogers and his growing family stayed in Meldorf until the spring of 1548.

  By 1 August Rogers was back in England, signing the preface to his translation of Melanchthon’s Weighing of the Interim with that date and the words: ‘at London, in Edward Whitchurch’s house’. It is possible that he was staying alone with his publisher, paving the way for bringing his whole family to England (by now he and Adriana had eight children). As noted in the previous chapter, there was no particular reason at the time to suppose that Edward’s reign, or the reforms introduced during it, would be short-lived, and hence no reason for a reformist clergyman to imagine that returning to England, complete with wife and children, would turn out to be a life-threatening enterprise. And, if he had had any doubts about his position, he had only to consider the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was now living openly with his (second) wife.

  And so on 11 October 1548 Rogers made his return to parochial ministry in the City of London, being inducted into the rectory of St Matthew’s, Friday Street, off Cheapside. Eighteen months later, on 10 May 1550, he was also given the rectorship of St Margaret Moyses in the same street and, three days after that, he became vicar of one of the leading London churches, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, just opposite Newgate prison and a few hundred yards from St Bartholomew’s (St Sepulchre’s had originally been a possession of the priory). In the following year, on 27 August, he became a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral, being awarded the prebend of St Pancras by Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and he subsequently surrendered his two livings in Friday Street. He was also appointed lecturer in divinity at the cathedral. In April 1552 his wife and their children who had been born in Germany were naturalized (which indicates how secure he felt in England at that time).

  While at St Sepulchre’s, Rogers became embroiled in a dispute about clergy dress. It was the custom for the clergy to wear square caps, and sometimes gowns and tippets (ceremonial scarves), when they were out and about. Some of the reforming clergy of Edward’s reign refused to wear such garments, Rogers being among the most vociferous, despite these clothes having been prescribed by Parliament; he insisted on wearing no other distinctive garb than his round cap. He seems to have viewed the wearing of any other special clothing for clergy as reminiscent of the practices of the Roman Church; hence his refusal to comply. A ‘portrait’ which purports to be of Rogers is from a later period and is at best based on a lost sketch, more probably on recollections of him passed down through his numerous descendants. He is shown with a neatly trimmed beard, and not dressed in specifically clerical attire. Apart from this dispute, Rogers’s ministry was free of controversy until the untimely death of Edward VI radically altered his position and that of all reformist – and particularly married reformist – clergy in the kingdom.

  On Sunday 13 August 1553 the newly reinstated Bishop Bonner was present at Paul’s Cross for a sermon given by the leading conservative preacher and one of Queen Mary’s chaplains, Gilbert Bourne (who later became Bishop of Bath and Wells). Bourne included in his opening words a prayer for the dead, declared that Bonner had been wrongfully imprisoned, and attacked the preachers of reform, including John Rogers. According to Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant living in London who wrote an account of the events surrounding Mary’s accession, Bourne declared that Bishop Bonner had been imprisoned for four years for having preached the truth about the ‘Holy Sa
crament of the Altar’ and other Catholic doctrines. There was a serious commotion at this – it became known as the Paul’s Cross riot – and a dagger was thrown at Bourne, missing him but hitting the post of the pulpit. As the chronicler of the Grey Friars recorded the event: ‘Item the 13 day of August preached Master Bourne at Paul’s Cross at the commandment of the Queen’s Grace, and there was pulled out of the pulpit by vagabonds, and one threw his dagger at him.’ Machyn, the chronicler and parish clerk of Holy Trinity the Less, who recorded so many of the public events and ceremonies of Mary I’s reign, was even more graphic: ‘The 13 day of August did preach at Paul’s Cross Doctor Bourn parson of High Ongar, in Essex, the Queen’s chaplain, and there was a great uproar and shouting at his sermon, as it were like mad people, what young people and women as ever was heard as hurly-burly, and casting up of caps.’ Some among the crowd were also disturbed by what they had heard about a Requiem Mass for the late King having been celebrated in the Tower of London, where Mary was currently staying. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen, who were in attendance, had some difficulty dispersing the crowd, and Bishop Bonner had to be led through St Paul’s to safety. Wriothesley’s account of this event is also very graphic:

  Sunday the 13 of August Doctor Bourne, one of the Prebendaries of Paul’s, preached at Paul’s Cross by the Queen’s appointment. And in the sermon time, because he prayed for the souls departed, and also in declaring the wrongful imprisonment of Doctor Bonner, late Bishop of London, certain lewd and ill-disposed persons made a hollering and such a crying ‘thou liest!’, that the audience was so disturbed, that the preacher was so afraid by the commotion of the people, that one Bradford, a preacher, pulled him back, and spoke to the people, desiring them in Christ’s name and for the blood of Christ to pacify themselves, which people were so rude that they would not, but one lewd person drew a dagger and cast it at the preacher, which, as God would, hit against one of the posts of the pulpit. My Lord Mayor then and Aldermen rising from the places, went about the churchyard to cause the people to depart away, who were so rude that in a great space they would not depart, but cried ‘kill him!’; and so, with great pain and fear the said Bourne was conveyed from the pulpit to the schoolhouse in Paul’s Churchyard. The Lord Courtney and the Lady Marquess of Exeter stood above my Lord Mayor, with Doctor Bonner, Bishop of London, who were sore astonished to see the humour of the people, and had as much ado by their means to see the said Bishop conveyed in safety through the church, the people were so rude.

  John Rogers was also present at this sermon and it was he, along with fellow reformer John Bradford, who played the chief role in calming the angry crowd, as the protestors knew and trusted them.

  Following these stormy events at Paul’s Cross, Rogers was called for a second time before the Privy Council, meeting in the Tower of London, on 16 August 1553. He was not alone in being summoned before the Council, there being much anger against the City authorities too for having allowed matters to get so out of hand. The City was in crisis, as is clear from Wriothesley’s account:

  This business was so heinously declared to the Queen and her Council, that my Lord Mayor and Aldermen were sent for to the Queen’s Council to the Tower the 14 and 15 of August, and it was sore laid to their charge, that the liberties of the City had like to have been taken away from them, and to depose the Lord Mayor, straightly charging the Mayor and Aldermen to make a direct answer to them on Wednesday the 16 of August whether they would rule the City in peace and good order, or else they would set other rulers over them, whereupon my Lord Mayor caused all the Commons of the Livery to be warned to appear at the Guildhall on Tuesday the 15 of August. And, they being assembled, Mr Recorder declared to the Commons the sore words and threatenings of the Queen’s Council, praying them to show their minds whether they would stick to my Lord Mayor and his brethren, to see such malefactors and rude people reformed, or else their liberties should be taken away from them; the Commons answering, that by the good help and means of my Lord Mayor and his brethren they would be so aiding and assisting to them, that they trusted the Queen’s Highness nor the Council should have no more such cause against the City, but that such malefactors and offenders should be punished; which answer was made by my Lord Mayor and Aldermen to the Queen’s Council, at the Tower, on Wednesday the 16 of August, and was well accepted and taken.

  Also, my Lord Mayor caused a proclamation to be made in the City, that if any person could bring knowledge who threw the dagger at the preacher on Sunday, at Paul’s Cross, should have £5 for his labour.

  Rogers was not accused of anything new on 16 August (having already defended himself once), but was being viewed with suspicion on account of the part he and John Bradford had played three days earlier; if, so the argument appeared to go, these two men had had the authority to quell the disturbance at Paul’s Cross, they had also had the power to provoke it. After this second appearance before them, the Council instructed that Rogers was to be placed under house arrest. The minute of the meeting reads: ‘John Rogers, alias Matthew, a seditious preacher, ordered by the Lords of the Council to keep himself as prisoner in his house at Paul’s, without conference of any person other than such as are daily with him in [his] household, until such time as he hath contrary commandment.’ In other words, Rogers was to become his own jailer, an instruction which he obeyed meticulously. He seems to have made a decision early on that he was not going to run for it, despite being given ample opportunity to do so, for no guards were assigned to him and the cathedral clergy might have been only too glad if he had disappeared. Many other people of his religious persuasion were already packing up their possessions and heading for such Protestant cities as Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Zurich and Geneva, and there is even a suggestion that Stephen Gardiner was encouraging this exodus, while outwardly condemning those who fled. According to the imperial ambassador Simon Renard, Gardiner had sounded pleased with himself as he related how ‘When he hears of any preacher, he summons him to appear at his house, and the preacher, fearing he may be put in the Tower, does not appear, but on the contrary absents himself.’ But John Rogers chose not to absent himself. His house, henceforth his prison, was in the cathedral close so, while imprisoned, he remained very much at the centre of the scene of action.

  Two days after Rogers was placed under house arrest the Queen issued a proclamation on religion in which she affirmed her own Catholic faith, but announced that she was not minded to compel her subjects to adopt it – that is, not yet: ‘unto such time as further order by common assent may be taken therein’. In the meantime, no one was to stir up trouble over religion or call each other names – neither ‘papist’ nor ‘heretic’. Mary’s biographer John Edwards has pointed out that this was more a gagging order than a measure aimed at promoting toleration.

  Further restrictions on free speech were issued on 21 August, with a proclamation to the effect that every subject was prohibited from reasoning against or discussing the actions of the Queen and her Council, whatever they might be. Steps were also taken that day (the City authorities demonstrating their zeal) against some of those held responsible for the uproar on 13 August, including another City cleric: ‘The 21 day of August were set on the pillory 2 men, one a priest and another a barber, and both their ears nailed to the pillory, the parson of St Ethelburga within Bishopsgate for heinous words and seditious words against the Queen’s Majesty Highness at the sermon at Paul’s Cross, that was the Sunday the 13 day of August, and for the uproar that was there done.’ The Rector of St Ethelburga’s was given a further stint on the pillory two days later, his first experience of this painful and embarrassing punishment not having succeeded in silencing him. (The nails were pulled out with a pair of pincers.) It is perhaps not surprising that most of the City clergy complied with the Queen’s instructions.

  During the period of Rogers’s house arrest, full Catholic ceremonial was gradually restored in the cathedral, Bishop Bonner celebrating Mass at the high altar for the first time in four years on
7 October, in his full pontifical vestments. Three days later a successor was appointed to Rogers’s prebendal stall, despite his not having been tried or officially deprived of it. And on 1 November, the feast of All Saints, the Protestant practices in language and dress introduced into the cathedral precisely one year earlier were effectively obliterated as ‘the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ was hanged up again in Paul’s Church over the high altar under a rich canopy of cloth of gold, after the old custom of the Church’. In December, by which time Archbishop Cranmer had been arraigned for high treason in Guildhall and condemned to death, an Act was passed stipulating that no service was to be used in churches other than what had been in use in the last year of Henry VIII’s reign (in other words, this made the use of the English services introduced under Edward illegal). Of even more concern to Rogers and many other Protestant clergy, a proclamation issued in the same month announced that no married priest was to be allowed to minister or say Mass.