The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  ‘Away, away,’ said Gardiner, ‘we have other people we need to talk to; if you won’t be reformed, away with you.’ Rogers, rather indignant at the use of the word ‘reformed’ in this context, stood up, for he had been kneeling throughout the interview (which must have made it doubly hard for him to be heard). Sir Richard Southwell, who had been standing by the window for the duration of the interview, turned and jeered at him: ‘I bet you won’t carry on like this when you see the flames.’ ‘I cannot tell,’ responded Rogers quietly, ‘but I trust in God.’ Then Thomas Thirlby, the Bishop of Ely, ‘very gently’ explained to Rogers what the Queen had in mind for those who would not conform, so that he could be left in no doubt that he must admit the authority of the Pope, or burn. For the Queen took the view, said Thirlby, that those who would not accept the Bishop of Rome’s supremacy were not deserving of her mercy. Rogers repeated that he would not refuse her mercy, and that he had never offended her in all his life, and he beseeched her and all those present to be good to him, while allowing him to remain true to his conscience. This remark seemed to amuse the assembly, and especially Secretary Bourne who scoffed: ‘What does he mean, he hasn’t offended the law? – he, a married priest?!’ Rogers protested that he had not broken any law when he married, for he had done so in a place where such marriages were lawful. His interrogators seemed surprised at this, apparently imagining – or pretending they imagined – that clergy marriage was illegal everywhere. Rogers pressed on, explaining that he had married in Holland, and further, that ‘if you had not here in England made an open law that priests might have wives, I would never have come home again: for I brought a wife and 8 children with me, which you can be sure I would not have done, had not the laws of this realm permitted it.’ Then all present shouted him down, saying he had come back too soon, and that he would wish he hadn’t, with various other such remarks. And, with the argument still raging, Rogers was led out of the room by the serjeant who had brought him there.

  On 25 January, the feast day of the Conversion of St Paul, a great church procession was staged in London. It involved all the City clergy (apart, of course, from those Protestants who were awaiting their fate in prison), so Sir John Deane would have been among ‘all the clerks, curates, and parsons, and vicars, in copes, with their crosses’, accompanied by the choir of St Paul’s, all singing ‘Salve festa dies’ (‘Hail thee, festival day’). Bishop Bonner ‘in his pontificals and cope’, accompanied by eight other bishops, bore the blessed sacrament under a canopy which was carried by four prebendaries, and the procession, including the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet gowns and members of the livery companies ‘in their best array’, wove its way from the cathedral up to Leadenhall and back by a parallel route. When the procession was over, King Philip and Cardinal Pole arrived at the cathedral to hear Mass, and in the evening ‘was commandment given to make bonfires through all London for the joy of the people that were converted likewise as St Paul was converted’. All the church bells were also ringing in this demonstration of decidedly non-spontaneous ‘joy’. Numbers of their Majesties’ subjects were genuinely pleased at this return to the old ways, but joy that has to be commanded cannot easily be measured.

  During the night of 27 January Rogers completed writing his account of the questioning he had been subjected to five days previously, having been advised that he would be called back in the morning to be questioned further. He concluded his words with prayer (showing clearly his fear and distress, as well as his earnest desire to acquit himself well in his anticipated torment). He asks that other believers should pray for him, and for his fellow prisoners:

  that the Lord God of all consolation will now be my comfort, aid, strength, buckler, and shield, and also of all my brethren that are in the same case and distress; that I and they all may despise all manner of threats and cruelty, and even the bitter burning fire and dreadful dart of death, and stick like true soldiers to our dear and loving captain Christ, our only redeemer and saviour.

  He was also very anxious about the fate of his wife and children, particularly as his wife was a foreigner, and he begged those who would read his words:

  if I die, to be good to my poor wife, being a stranger, and all my little souls, hers and my children; whom, with all the whole faithful and true catholic church of Christ, the Lord of life and death save, keep, and defend, in all the troubles and assaults of this vain world, and bring at the last to everlasting salvation, the true and sure inheritance of all Christians: Amen, Amen.

  Beginning on Monday 28 January, Gardiner and a number of other bishops sat in judgement on ‘the Protestant preachers’ in the church of St Mary Overy, by authority of Cardinal Pole’s Legatine Commission. The wardens of the City livery companies had also been instructed to attend as observers (so there must have been quite a crowd). First to appear before them were John Hooper (former chaplain to Lord Protector Somerset, witness for the prosecution at Bishop Bonner’s trial in 1549, and former Bishop of Gloucester and then Worcester), John Cardmaker (who on this occasion recanted) and John Rogers.

  Rogers made a record of this interrogation too, to which he gave the poignant title: ‘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’. The questioning began in the same way as it had the previous week, but with Rogers being, if anything, even less willing to compromise than before. He had clearly spent the intervening days coming to terms with his fate – in so far as he had not already done so – and was not expecting anything other than condemnation. So, on being asked once again if he ‘would come into one Church with the bishops and the whole realm … and so receive the mercy before proffered [him]’, he answered boldly that ‘before, I could not really tell what his mercy meant, but now I understand: it was a mercy of the antichristian Church of Rome, which I utterly refused’. He then expressed his willingness to prove that all the doctrine he had ever taught was ‘true and catholic’ and that he would do so ‘by the scriptures and the authority of the fathers who lived 400 years after the death of Christ’.

  Lord Chancellor Gardiner retorted that he would not, and should not, be allowed to prove any such thing, for he was ‘but a private man’ and his views should not be allowed to stand against those of the whole realm. Furthermore, he went on, ‘when a Parliament has concluded something, does any private person have the authority to discuss whether Parliament has done right or wrong? No, that may not be.’ Rogers responded that all the laws of man could not overrule the word of God, and he would have continued, but Gardiner ‘began a long tale to a very small purpose’ and accused Rogers of exhibiting nothing ‘but arrogance, and pride, and vainglory’. Rogers denied he had such qualities, protesting that ‘all the world knows well where and on which side pride, arrogance and vainglory is!’

  It is noticeable that throughout his interrogation Rogers never speaks ill of, or seems to impute any blame to, the Queen. Rather, he blames Bishop Gardiner for having led her astray – ‘The Queen’s Majesty (God save Her Grace!) would have done well enough,’ he said, ‘if it had not been for your counsel.’ Gardiner asserted (truthfully) that the Queen went before him and that what happened as regards the Church represented her desire. ‘I neither can nor will ever believe it,’ declared Rogers.

  The interrogation now turned to another central issue, reminiscent of the question that was unfailingly addressed to those accused of heresy under Henry VIII. ‘After many words,’ as Rogers put it, Bishop Gardiner asked him what he ‘meant concerning the sacrament?’ and, on asking the question, he stood up and doffed his cap, as did all the other bishops present. They all wanted to know whether Rogers believed the sacrament ‘to be the very body and blood of our saviour Christ, that was born of the Virgin Mary and hanged on the cross, really, substantially, etc.’ Rogers insisted that this was a question he had never dwelt upon – ‘it was a matter in which I was no meddler’ – to the extent that some of his brethren thought he did not agree with
them on it. But, he now asserted, seeing ‘the falsehood’ of his questioners’ doctrine ‘in all other points’, and the fact that they defended it ‘only by force and cruelty’, he concluded that ‘their doctrine in this matter’ must be ‘as false as the rest’. And now he took the Lord Chancellor to task for the treatment meted out to him. ‘My Lord,’ he said:

  you have dealt with me most cruelly; for you have sent me to prison without law and against law, and kept me there for almost a year and a half; for I was almost half a year in my own house, where I was obedient to you, God knows, and spoke with no one; and now have been a whole year in Newgate, at great cost and charges, having also a wife and 10 children to support – and I have never received a penny from my livings, neither of the prebend, nor of the residence, neither of the vicarage of St Sepulchre’s, against the law.

  Gardiner’s reply was that Rogers should never have had these livings in the first place, as he had been given them by the former Bishop Ridley, who was a ‘usurper’ of that role. ‘So was the King who gave Dr Ridley the bishopric a usurper too?’ asked Rogers, quick as a flash. ‘Yes,’ said Gardiner, unguardedly, starting to complain about the wrongs King Edward had done to himself and Bonner. Then he remembered himself and retracted the word – ‘I misuse my terms to call the King a usurper,’ he said hastily. But Rogers detected that he had spoken with genuine resentment about his treatment, and that he was not really sorry for having used that word.

  Perhaps taking advantage of Gardiner’s momentary discomfiture, Rogers asked him why he had sent him to prison. ‘Because you preached against the Queen,’ replied Gardiner. Rogers denied he had ever done so, and was prepared to stake his life on being able to defend himself against that charge. ‘I preached a sermon at the Cross, after the Queen came to the Tower,’ he admitted, ‘but nothing was said in it against the Queen.’ There were plenty of witnesses to what he had said, and Gardiner himself had initially let him go after examining him about the sermon. ‘Yes, but you read your lectures, against the commandment of the Council,’ insisted Gardiner.

  ‘No, I did not,’ replied Rogers. ‘Let that be proved, and let me die for it!’ He went on to accuse Gardiner of having held him all this time, illegally, without ever questioning him – ‘till now, that you have got a whip to whip me with’ – in other words, that he had been held, without charge, until such time as the heresy laws had been re-enacted, so that now they could be used against him. The intention had been, he said, ‘to keep me in prison so long, till they might catch a man in the law, and so kill him’. The only mistake Rogers was making about this was to blame Gardiner solely, and not to recognize the Queen’s involvement.

  Like others before him in a similar position, the more Rogers perceived his case to be hopeless, the bolder he became. ‘I was never out of the true catholic Church,’ he declared, ‘nor ever will be; but by God’s grace I will never come into your Church.’

  ‘Well then,’ asked Gardiner, ready to seize upon the evidence he needed, ‘is our Church false and antichristian?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rogers.

  ‘And what is the doctrine of the sacrament?’

  ‘False!’ Rogers replied, throwing up his hands.

  The case was closed, and all that remained was the sentencing. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ said the Lord Chancellor, ‘between nine and ten in the morning.’

  The hearings being ended by about four o’clock in the afternoon, both Rogers and Hooper were taken for the night to the Counter in Southwark, the crowds pressing around them, so that it was quite hard for the prisoners and their guards to make their way through. On the next morning the two men were returned from the Counter to St Mary Overy. Hooper was condemned first, and then Rogers was summoned. The Lord Chancellor said to him: ‘Rogers, you were here yesterday, and we gave you another night to consider your position, whether you would come to the holy Catholic Church of Christ again, or not: tell us now what you have determined – whether you will repent and be sorry, and will return and take mercy again?’

  Rogers did not waver, though he was determined yet again to argue his case, taking up Gardiner on the point he had made the day before about Parliament being above the authority of all private persons. ‘Yet, my Lord, I am able to show examples,’ he declared, ‘of one man coming to a general council, and after the whole council had determined and agreed upon an act or article, that one man coming in afterwards has, by the word of God, declared so pithily that the council had erred in decreeing the said article, that he caused the whole council to alter and change the act or article they had previously determined.’ He added: ‘I could show the authority of a learned lawyer, Panormitanus, who says that more credit ought to be given to a simple layman who brings the word of God with him, than to a whole council gathered together, without the scriptures.’

  But Gardiner, tired of listening to Rogers talking, ordered him to sit down, declaring mockingly that it was for him to be instructed by them, and not vice versa. ‘My Lord, I stand, and sit not,’ responded Rogers defiantly. ‘Shall I not be permitted to speak for my life?’

  ‘Shall we permit you to tell a tale, and to prate?’ said Gardiner, standing up and, according to Rogers, beginning to abuse him ‘after his old arrogant, proud fashion’. Rogers continued to try to speak, but Gardiner had had enough, and he proceeded to excommunicate and condemn Rogers as a heretic, and then to hand him over to the secular power, the sheriffs being at hand to take both Rogers and Hooper away. Before Rogers was removed, however, he had one last plea to make to the bishop – that his wife might come and speak with him before he died, for he wanted to advise her as to what would be best for her and their children.

  ‘No, she is not your wife,’ retorted Gardiner.

  ‘Yes, she is, my Lord,’ replied Rogers, ‘and has been these eighteen years.’

  ‘Should I accept that she is your wife?’ asked Gardiner, rhetorically.

  ‘Whether you do or not,’ said Rogers, ‘she is so, nevertheless.’

  ‘She shall not come to you,’ repeated Gardiner.

  At this Rogers could barely contain his distress, and he lashed out, exclaiming that while Gardiner and his ilk were ‘highly displeased over the matrimony of priests’, they allowed non-married clergy to carry on ‘in open whoredom’ – particularly in Wales ‘where every priest has his whore openly dwelling with him, even as your holy father allows in the whole of Holland, and in France, the priests to do the like’. Gardiner made no reply to this furious assault but, according to Rogers, ‘looked as it were asquint at it’. Then Rogers was removed from the room.

  There was some fear on the part of the authorities of demonstrations in support of Hooper and Rogers – possibly even of an attempt to rescue them – on the evening of their condemnation (an understandable fear, judging from the crowds of the night before), and therefore elaborate precautions surrounded their return journey from St Mary Overy to Newgate. They were first taken to the Clink prison, in Southwark, where they were held until nightfall. In the meantime instructions were given that all the lights in the streets along their route were to be extinguished, including the torches on the costermongers’ stalls, with the purpose of ensuring that the two condemned men would not be recognized. When it was deemed safe to set off, the prisoners were led first through the bishop’s house and then through the churchyard of St Mary Overy into the streets, then across London Bridge towards Newgate. Despite all the precautions, news had got out and, much to the annoyance of the officers in charge, the streets were lined with supporters of the two men, holding lighted candles and cheering them on with sympathetic words and prayers that they might be given strength to endure what was to come.

  Rogers spent much of the time that was left to him – and he would not have been told precisely how long that was to be – writing up the account of his interrogation and of what he had really wanted to say, had he been given the chance. He wrote partly to relieve his feelings, to pour out all his anger, frustration and distress, but he a
lso clearly intended that his written account should be found and read, not only by his wife but by his supporters and fellow believers, whom he addresses as follows: ‘But now, dearly beloved, hear what I would have said further, and what I had devised the night before, privately with prayer, and privately by imagining in my mind after what order I would speak, when I came before the aforesaid judges.’ What he had hoped to do was to set out some of the contradictions of this and the preceding two reigns, to demonstrate that the voice of Parliament should not be taken as infallible and unchangeable, when so often its deliberations had been occluded by fear of a powerful ruler who wanted his will obeyed – and how that person whose will must now be obeyed was the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Stephen Gardiner. He is insistent that Gardiner’s will is not that of the people, and he even makes the political point that it was against the will of the people that Mary should have married a ‘foreign prince’, Philip of Spain (thereby giving the lie to his earlier assertion that he had no idea of what was going on in the outside world). He thunders against ‘the Bishop of Rome’, declaring that of ‘the rotten head of Rome’ there is no mention in the scriptures. He writes with furious oratory, his written style infused with the language, tone and cadences he has imbibed and developed through his work of biblical translation, as he sums up Protestant objections to Catholic ritual: