The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  Flower was arrested at the scene and conveyed initially to the Tower. Bartolomé Carranza played a part in ensuring he suffered exemplary punishment, personally visiting Philip and Mary at Hampton Court to urge strong action. They needed little encouragement, both Bishop Bonner and the secular authorities being ordered to deal with Flower with the utmost severity. Ten days after the attack, on 24 April, Flower had the hand which had wielded the knife cut off outside the door of the church he had profaned, and he was then burnt, in a slow fire, in the area known as the Sanctuary between St Margaret’s and Westminster Abbey. Carranza later arranged for the priest who had been seriously wounded in the attack, a former Dominican, to be taken to the community at St Bartholomew’s, readmitted to the order, and there restored to health.

  A degree of anti-Spanish feeling was manifest in England from the time of Philip’s arrival, and mutual suspicion occasionally spilled over into actual disturbances. The combination of foreignness and traditional religious practices could be a potent mix. In a letter Carranza wrote to Cardinal Pole on 1 September 1554 (a few weeks before Pole returned, as papal legate, to England), he told how he and his fellow Dominicans felt uncomfortable wearing their habits in public as this overt display of restored monasticism sometimes provoked attack in the streets around Westminster Abbey, in the precincts of which they were lodged. The prejudice and bad feeling could operate in both directions, an anonymous Spaniard in Philip’s household relaying his view of the English as ‘a barbarous and heretical race, with no fear of God or his saints’, while another described them as ‘white, pink and quarrelsome’ and addicted to beer-drinking. When disturbances did break out, both sides could be to blame, as appears to have been the case with the ‘great fray’ at Charing Cross on 4 November 1554, described by Machyn as taking place ‘at 8 of the clock at night between the Spaniards and Englishmen, the which through wisdom there were but a few hurt, and after the next day they were certain taken that began it; one was a blackamoor, and was brought before the head officers by the knight-marshal’s servants’.

  Queen Mary’s husband, King Philip, appears even at this early stage of the burnings not to have been convinced that this was necessarily a wise course of action. Aware that popular opinion in England was already anti-Spanish, he feared that a spate of horrific executions would only exacerbate the ill-feeling and, six days after the burning of John Rogers, he instructed his Franciscan confessor, Alfonso de Castro, to preach a sermon at court in which ‘he did earnestly inveigh against the bishops for burning of men, saying plainly that they learned it not in scripture to burn any for his conscience: but the contrary, that they should live and be converted, with many other things more to the same purport’. Castro was in general no opponent of taking the most stringent measures against heretics, but in his book On the just punishment of heretics, written in 1549, he did counsel against allowing heretics what we might term ‘the oxygen of publicity’. They should be admonished before being punished, but in private, and any public disputation with them should be avoided; it may have been the publicity and public support likely to be engendered by the burning of notorious heretics that both Castro and King Philip deplored, rather than the burnings in themselves. Ambassador Renard also feared the hostility towards the Spanish king and his courtiers that might be provoked by dislike of this policy of persecution. Bartolomé Carranza seems to have suffered no such doubts, one of Philip’s courtiers, Luis Venegas, confirming that the friar was ‘the main person from whom the Queen sought advice’ on matters of heresy and asserting that Carranza was dissatisfied with Cardinal Pole ‘because he saw him as being softer than he would have wished in the punishment of such things’. Pole’s rather naive and optimistic attitude was that he wanted to be an ‘indulgent loving father’ to the straying English; he seems to have imagined at the outset of the reign that all they needed was something in the nature of a ‘short, sharp shock’ to bring them into line, and that after that they would be happy. This, broadly, seems to have been Mary’s view too, coupled with her belief that she had a solemn duty to return her people to the Catholic fold and faith. As for the Dominicans in Smithfield, their connection with Carranza would suggest that they too were broadly in support of the burnings, at least in theory and as a matter of politics, even if some individuals among them may have suffered in their conscience through what they knew was going on outside their gates.

  Chapter Eleven

  CEREMONIES OF MARTYRDOM

  It is very harsh to burn men on account of articles which are not only dubious and controversial, but even trivial, and most harsh to do so because of propositions which the theologians have just made up out of their own heads.

  Desiderius Erasmus,

  from ‘Adversus Monachos Quosdam Hispanos, Titulus IV,

  Contra Sanctam Haereticorum Inquisitionem’, Opera Omnia IX

  IN THE ARGUMENTS between authority and dissent in the reign of Mary I, one can detect a hardening of the battle lines and a more equal and determined confrontation between two rival religions – or, arguably, rival interpretations of the same religion – than in the cases of those who fell foul of the heresy laws in Henry VIII’s reign and earlier. No longer is this a matter of a few reformers pitched against the orthodox majority; rather, we now encounter two radically different ‘churches’, in a realization of the earlier Lollard vision, both convinced of their rightness, both sure that the other is utterly wrong, blasphemous and evil. As John Philpot put it in one of his ‘examinations’ before Bishop Bonner and others, ‘You say, you are of the true Church: and we say, we are of the true Church.’ The Protestant opposition to Mary’s Catholic England knew it had the backing of hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow believers in other parts of Europe; there was a body of doctrine now in existence (even if not always in internal agreement with itself) that provided support for their views. The dissenters were able to perceive themselves less as voices crying in the wilderness, than as prophetic voices of doom for their opponents and of eventual triumph for themselves (even if this had to be after their own lifetime). They were able to conceptualize the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England as a temporary aberration, believing that they would ultimately be proved right, in this world as well as in the world to come.

  The second Protestant to suffer, after John Rogers, was Thomas Tomkins, a weaver from Shoreditch, who was burnt in Smithfield on 16 March 1555, at eight o’clock in the morning. Tomkins had first come to the attention of the authorities at Easter 1554 for refusing to take communion, and he had subsequently been examined by Bishop Bonner and confined in the bishop’s palace at Fulham. Here he was made to assist in the hay harvest, as a way of contributing to his keep. He was no shirker, and his hard work impressed the bishop who expressed the hope that he might yet become as good a Catholic as he was a worker. Tomkins was ready with a biblical quotation, citing St Paul’s injunction that anyone who did not work did not deserve to eat.

  ‘Ah,’ said the bishop, ‘St Paul is a great man with you.’

  ‘And so he should be with you,’ retorted Tomkins, ‘if you were a good bishop.’

  Like many of the confirmed evangelical men, Tomkins had a long flowing beard, an accoutrement which such men seemed to associate with their prophetic role (and an affectation which provoked the ire of Bishop Bonner on more than one occasion). Tomkins had a formidable reputation for piety and ‘godliness’, and was known to begin every encounter with prayer. He was not of a disposition to be moved, whatever attempts at persuasion Bonner might devise. He may also have been very irritating; certainly Bonner found him so – to the extent that on one occasion, during the weaver’s imprisonment in his palace, he actually beat him about the face, causing it to swell. The bishop subsequently paid a shilling to have a barber come and shave off Tomkins’s beard – because, he said, that would make him look ‘like a Catholic’, though Tomkins’s sympathizers believed the real reason was that removing the beard would disguise the fact that Bonner had, in his rage, already pul
led tufts of it out. Whatever the reason for calling the barber, what is clear is that the beard was indeed a source of irritation to Bonner, as a symbol of Tomkins’s Protestantism and of his obstinacy, his determination to be different from the clean-shaven, or at least tidily bearded, norm. (A simplistic equation of beard equals Protestant, no beard equals Catholic, is, however, subverted by Cardinal Pole’s possession of a magnificent spade-like beard which, in later years, he cultivated into the bifurcated style; whether the bishop found the cardinal’s beard irritating is not known.)

  Not content with attacking his prisoner’s facial hair, Bonner decided to demonstrate to Tomkins what awaited him if he would not recant, grabbing his hand and holding it over a large candle flame – ‘till the veins shrank, and the sinews burst, and the water did spurt into Master Harpsfield’s face’. Unsurprisingly perhaps, even Archdeacon Harpsfield found this action of Bonner’s too much to stomach. If the Bishop had hoped to frighten Tomkins into submission, his action was a complete failure; all it served to do was to enhance his own reputation for brutality. Such stories became widely known, Foxe himself having heard them when compiling successive editions of Acts and Monuments from members of Tomkins’s parish of Shoreditch.

  During an examination by the bishop on 26 September 1554, Tomkins signed a statement of his beliefs which included that ‘the body of our Saviour Jesus Christ is not truly and in very deed in the sacrament of the altar, but only in heaven’, that the Mass ‘is full of superstition, plain idolatry, and unprofitable for my soul’ and that ‘the sacrament of baptism ought to be only in the vulgar tongue’. That statement ended with a signed refusal to recant: ‘I do and will continually stand to my said confession, declaration and belief, in all the premises and every part thereof, and in no wise recant or go from any part of the same.’ He was re-examined, along with five other prisoners, on 8 February 1555; like Rogers, he had been held in confinement until such time as the heresy laws had been re-enacted and could be used against him. He was presented with his signed statement and asked to verify his signature, which he did. The bishop then set about trying to persuade him to recant, promising a pardon if he would do so, but to no avail.

  Tomkins was back before the bishop and other examiners, including John Feckenham (the Dean of St Paul’s) and John Harpsfield (the Archdeacon of London and brother of Nicholas, the Archdeacon of Canterbury), on the following morning. On this occasion he was again asked to ‘revoke and deny his said opinions’. Again, he ‘utterly refused’ to do so, and was ordered to reappear at two o’clock the next afternoon. At this session Tomkins faced the Bishop of Bath and Wells (Gilbert Bourne – he who had earlier been ‘rescued’ from the pulpit by John Rogers and John Bradford) and the Bishop of St David’s (Henry Morgan), as well as Bishop Bonner of London. To Bishop Bourne’s exhortation that he should, even at this late stage in the proceedings, ‘revoke and leave off’ his opinions, Tomkins replied that he had been ‘brought up in ignorance’ but that now, having discovered ‘the truth’, he would remain faithful to that truth until death. After resisting further attempts at persuasion by Bishop Bonner, Tomkins himself seems to have wanted the proceedings brought to an end, declaring: ‘My Lord, I cannot see but that you would have me forsake the truth, and fall into error and heresy.’ Recognizing that Tomkins would never recant, the bishop read out the sentence of condemnation. Tomkins was duly handed over to the sheriffs and conveyed to Newgate. And on 16 March he was burnt.

  The Reverend John Cardmaker, former Vicar of St Bride’s Fleet Street, had, unlike John Rogers, been persuaded to recant – or, rather, to agree to recant publicly at a later date – when he appeared before Bishop Gardiner on 28 January 1555. As a high-profile Protestant cleric at the time of Mary’s accession, he had been deprived of his livings on 18 April 1554 and had been arrested, but subsequently released on bail. In November that year he had made an attempt, along with William Barlow (Bourne’s predecessor as Bishop of Bath and Wells under Edward VI, Cardmaker having been made a prebendary of Wells Cathedral in 1550), to flee the country, disguised as merchants, but the attempt had failed, and Cardmaker and Barlow were both rearrested and imprisoned in the Fleet. The heresy laws having not yet been re-enacted, the two men were charged with trying to leave the country without permission – and kept in prison until such time as they could be charged with heresy.

  After Cardmaker had agreed, in fear of his life, to recant, he was remanded to the Bread Street Counter, the intention being that he would shortly give his formal assent to articles of the Catholic faith, whereupon he would be released. His submission – and that of Barlow – was viewed as a considerable propaganda coup by the ecclesiastical authorities and deployed as such, Stephen Gardiner constantly commending the two men’s ‘soberness, discretion and learning’ to others accused of heresy, urging them to follow the example of these well-known evangelicals. The former bishop, Barlow, did indeed recant, was released, and subsequently succeeded in fleeing the country. But in the effort to secure a recantation from Cardmaker, the authorities should have taken more care over where they held him in the interim. Solitary confinement might have kept the fear of fire uppermost in Cardmaker’s spirit, but instead the authorities allowed him to come into contact with a fellow prisoner in the Counter, Lawrence Saunders, former Rector of All Hallows Bread Street (only a stone’s throw from the prison where the men were being held) and, like Cardmaker, a renowned Protestant preacher. Unlike Cardmaker, however, he had held firm under interrogation and had been condemned to burn. Cardmaker, already troubled by his conscience and deeply disappointed in himself, was immediately receptive to his fellow City cleric’s encouragement to renounce his intention to recant. Saunders was burnt only four days after Rogers (on 8 February in Coventry), so his influence on Cardmaker must have been exercised very quickly and been very powerful; the impetuous and usually outspoken Cardmaker was no doubt feeling regretful and ashamed almost as soon as he arrived at the Counter, and Saunders’s valour in the face of imminent death had an almost instantaneous effect, increasing both his shame and his determination. Saunders himself had deliberately returned to London from Lichfield, where he held other benefices, on Mary’s accession, in order to support his London congregation in resisting the restoration of Catholic practice, so he was well placed to hearten the flagging zeal of his fellow prisoner.

  And so Cardmaker refused to recant and was brought back before Bishop Bonner on 25 May. The bishop reminded him that he had formerly been a Franciscan friar, vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience, and charged him with having married ‘a widow and with her had carnal copulation’, resulting in the birth of a daughter, ‘breaking thereby your vow and order’. Cardmaker defended himself by making the valid point that, when the monasteries were dissolved under Henry VIII, so too were his monastic vows. He also insisted, as had Rogers, that he had broken no law by marrying. Moving on from these secondary matters, Bonner came to the central questions: ‘Item, that it … is the faith of the Catholic church: that the body of Christ is visibly and truly ascended into heaven, and there is in the visible form of his humanity: and yet the same body in substance is invisibly and truly contained in the said sacrament of the altar.’ To this article Cardmaker responded that he did not believe any part of it to be true. It was a firm Protestant belief that Christ’s body, even in its resurrected state, could only be in one place at a time (as had been expressed by Thomas Tomkins), and hence it made no sense to such believers to claim that it could be both in heaven and materially present in the Eucharist.

  Five days later, on 30 May, John Cardmaker was burnt in Smithfield, alongside an upholsterer and member of the Clothworkers’ Company called John Warne, whose wife was also a prisoner in Newgate. Warne was only twenty-nine years old (Cardmaker was about fifty-nine) and had been formally condemned as a sacramentarian some nine years previously, but had been saved from execution at that time by a royal pardon. He had found himself in trouble again in September 1553 when his dog – ‘a great rough wa
ter spaniel’ – had been discovered with a tonsured head, thereby making a mockery of Catholic priests, in what turned out to be a series of blasphemous practical jokes played in the City. Warne was not actually the culprit in this instance, though he was known to have been amused by it – and it was, after all, his dog. Nevertheless, he survived for another year, until he and his wife Elizabeth were apprehended while attending a secret Protestant service in a house in Bow churchyard, just off Cheapside, on New Year’s Day 1555.

  Among the charges made against Warne at his trial on 23 May was that he had refused to attend church, to go to confession or to receive communion since Queen Mary had come to the throne, and that he was not sorry about it, but glad, as to do so would have ‘defiled’ his conscience. Bonner also recollected that he had encountered this young man before, when he had been arraigned for heresy at Guildhall ‘the Thursday after Anne Askew was burned in Smithfield’, and then sent to Newgate where Bonner himself went to instruct him ‘in the true faith of Christ’. Warne stood firm, both on that earlier occasion and now, and signed a statement assenting to his heretical beliefs. The bishop continued to try to persuade him otherwise and ordered him to reappear for further questioning on the following day. He did so in the morning, carried on refusing to recant, and was ordered to appear again in the afternoon. The same process ensued, and he was called back yet again on 25 May, at one o’clock in the afternoon. At that, his final examination, Bonner recapitulated the accusations, Warne continuing to insist that he held to all his beliefs, adding that he was convinced he was right and saw no reason to repent – ‘for all filthiness and idolatry is in the church of Rome’. So Bonner finally abandoned his efforts to get Warne to change his mind, pronounced the definitive sentence of condemnation and handed the prisoner over to the sheriffs. Warne used his final day in Newgate to write down his confession of faith, confirming his Protestant interpretation of all the clauses of the Apostles’ Creed and concluding: ‘This is my faith: this I do believe, and I am content by God’s grace to confirm and seal the truth of the same with my blood.’