The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  Bonner professed to be amazed at this – ‘Is not Paul’s church in my diocese?’ he protested. ‘It certainly costs me a great deal of money every year!’

  A legal opinion was now sought from a Dr Cole who was present (most probably Henry Cole, a cleric with a legal background who, in December 1556, himself became Dean of St Paul’s). Cole, predictably, thought that Philpot was making too much fuss about this legal nicety, particularly as Bonner had said he was not trying to hurt but rather help him, and that Philpot should therefore explain what it was that was being held against him. But Philpot said he feared this might prejudice his eventual trial.

  The Bishop of Gloucester, James Brooks, approached the nub of the difficulty of the Protestant position that authority lies solely in the scriptures when he asked: ‘Why, Mr Philpot, do you think that the universal church has erred, and you only to be in the truth?’

  When Philpot responded that, in matters of controversy, the word of God (that is, the Bible) would be the judge, the bishop pressed him further: ‘What if you take the word one way, and I another way? – who shall be the judge then?’

  ‘The Primitive Church,’ replied Philpot, meaning ‘the Doctors’ or early Church Fathers.

  The bishop did not let up: ‘What if you take the Doctors in one sense, and I in another, who shall be the judge then?’

  Philpot replied: ‘Let that be taken which is most agreeable to God’s word.’

  The fact that Philpot wrote an account of this conversation after the event suggests that he did not actually realize how circular the argument had become. Dr Cole had had enough of it, however, and interrupted to say that this had nothing to do with why Philpot was being examined, which concerned his error over the sacrament. Bishop Bonner soon brought this examination to an end, with Philpot still complaining that the bishops thought they understood more than they did, and the Bishop of Worcester protesting that he was ‘the most arrogant and stoutest fond fellow that I ever knew’.

  A large assembly was gathered to hear Philpot’s fifth examination, which took place in the gallery of Bishop Bonner’s palace. Besides Bonner himself, there were the bishops of Rochester, Coventry and Lichfield, and St Asaph; also Drs Story and Pendleton (one of Bonner’s chaplains and Vicar of St Martin Outwich in the City), with various other chaplains and Gentlemen of the Queen’s Chamber. Bonner announced that on the following day he would be sitting in judgement on Philpot and so today’s conversation was a last chance for him to ‘play the wise man’ and be ruled by all the learned men who were gathered there. During the ensuing discussion, Philpot was even more insistent than previously that he should not be held to account for what he had said at the convocation, because the convocation house was a member of the Parliament house – ‘where all men in matters propounded may frankly speak their minds’ – and he appealed for support to one of the Queen’s Gentlemen who had been present at the convocation. But this man’s opinion was that the most sensible thing Philpot could do would be to take back what he had said on that occasion. The Bishop of St Asaph (Thomas Goldwell) attempted to steer the conversation towards the substantive matter – ‘Is not there in the blessed sacrament of the altar [and here everyone, apart from Philpot, raised their caps in reverence] the presence of our Saviour Christ, really and substantially after the words of consecration?’ – but as usual Philpot refused to be drawn. As Philpot continued to prevaricate, finding reasons not to answer any questions, Bonner finally lost his patience – ‘You are the veriest beast that ever I heard!’ he exclaimed. ‘I must needs speak it, you compel me to.’

  Philpot was sent back, once again, to the coalhouse where he had had neither fire nor candle for a fortnight – and this was now late October, the days getting shorter and the nights colder.

  Despite Bonner’s assertion that he was to be judged on the day after this last examination, the time of judgement was not yet, and the aim was still to secure a recantation if possible. On 6 November Philpot appeared before a group of laymen, including members of the Privy Council rather than clerics, though Bonner and Dr William Chedsey (another of Bonner’s chaplains and the Archdeacon of Middlesex) were there too. The laymen included the Lord Chamberlain (Sir John Gage), the Viscount Hertford (also known as Lord Ferrers), the Lord St John, the Lord Windsor, the Lord Shandoys, Sir John Bridges (the Lieutenant of the Tower) and – someone who played a significant part in the proceedings – the Lord Rich. The importance being attached to persuading Philpot to recant is indicated by Bonner coming up to him privately before the hearing commenced, counselling prudence and to be careful what he said. There is no suggestion that Bonner himself wanted Philpot to burn.

  Everyone, apart from Philpot, took their seats, with Bonner placing himself at the end of the table. Philpot initially knelt, but was commanded to stand, which he did.

  Lord Rich intervened early on in the proceedings, instructing Philpot to answer questions of fact – ‘Were you imprisoned by my Lord or not? Can you find any fault since with his cruel using of you?’ – before going on to other matters. And, when Philpot repeated his assertion that free speech was permissible in the convocation house because it was a member of the Parliament house, it was Lord Rich who put him right: ‘You are deceived herein,’ he said, ‘for the Convocation house is no part of the Parliament house.’ Rich was backed up by the Lord Windsor, and Philpot had to admit defeat on that point. Nevertheless, said Rich, they would not want him to be in trouble for anything he had said there, provided he now repented of it.

  In the ensuing conversation, Lord Rich showed confidence in discussing theological matters, if only in knowing how to articulate the orthodox position. ‘How say you?’ he asked of Philpot. ‘Will you acknowledge the real presence of the blood and body of Christ, as all the learned men of this realm do in the Mass, and as I do, and will believe as long as I live, I do protest it?’ Philpot was evasive, saying he acknowledged ‘such a presence, as the word of God allows and teaches me’, and Bonner tried to pin him down to a straight answer by providing a definition: ‘A sacrament is the sign of a holy thing. So that there is both the sign which is the accident (as the whiteness, roundness, and shape of bread) and there is also the thing itself, as very Christ both God and man. But these heretics will have the sacraments to be but bare signs. How say you? Declare unto my Lords here whether you do allow the thing itself in the sacrament or not?’ But Philpot continued to beat about the bush (as Bonner complained), explaining to the assembled lords that he could not speak of these things without endangering his life. ‘There is none of us here that seeks your life,’ asserted Rich, ‘or mean to take any advantage of what you say.’ Those who knew Richard Rich also knew that nothing he said should ever be taken at face value, but Philpot seems to have gained the impression that these members of the Privy Council posed less of a danger to him than Bishop Bonner. In fact the reverse was the case; Bonner was still desperate to secure a recantation, while the Privy Council wanted an end to the matter and were not particularly concerned with saving Philpot’s life. Nevertheless, in the presence of these lords, Philpot did at last agree to say what he believed: ‘And as touching the sacrament, which they term of the altar, I say now as I said in the Convocation house that it is not the sacrament of Christ, neither in the same is there any manner of Christ’s presence. Wherefore they deceive the Queen’s majesty: and you of the nobility of this realm, in making you to believe that to be a sacrament which is none, and cause you to commit manifest idolatry in worshipping that for God, which is no God.’

  It is noticeable that, for Philpot, the real and only culprit is the Roman (and currently the English) Church and the church hierarchy – not the Queen, and not the representatives of temporal power; they have merely been led astray by the likes of Bonner and Gardiner. In fact, he views these church dignitaries in much the same way they view him – as dangerous heretics, who pose a threat to the eternal souls of everyone who comes into contact with them. Once having begun to speak, Philpot went on at some consi
derable length, and he interpreted Bonner’s downcast expression (he was in ‘the dumps’, Philpot observed) as annoyance that he was talking so much; Bonner may in fact have been depressed at the realization that Philpot was indeed now condemning himself out of his own mouth, and that a recantation was very unlikely indeed.

  In giving his opinion of the situation, Lord Rich alluded to an earlier encounter he had had with a heretic. ‘All heretics boast of the spirit of God,’ he said, ‘and every one would have a church by himself – like Joan of Kent and the Anabaptists.’ He went on to recall the occasion when Joan Boucher had been held at his house at St Bartholomew’s for a week, during which time ‘my Lord of Canterbury and Bishop Ridley resorted almost daily unto her: but she was so high in the spirit that they could do nothing with her for all their learning’. Joan ‘went wilfully to the fire’, declared Rich, and was burnt – ‘and so do you now’. Whether anyone present noticed Rich’s remarkable slip in what he had just said, no one – including Philpot – picked up on it. For Rich had just referred, with apparent approval, to ‘all the learning’ of two men, Thomas Cranmer (‘my lord of Canterbury’, as he was at the time to which Rich referred) and Nicholas Ridley (the former Bishop of London), who were now judged to be among the foremost heretics of the realm. Cranmer was currently in prison, while Ridley had actually been burnt in Oxford, in horrible, protracted agony, during the period of Philpot’s examinations, on 16 October.

  It is of course possible that Rich never made this remark at all, but that it was either misremembered by Philpot or invented by Foxe, who certainly experienced difficulty in justifying the burning of Joan Boucher under a Protestant administration. But Rich’s opening phrase – ‘All heretics boast of the spirit of God, and every one would have a church by himself’ – is in keeping with the general attitude of Philpot’s examiners, and there is no reason to think he would not have said this. It is also perfectly believable that Philpot’s intransigence reminded Rich of Joan – and that the vividness of that recollection led him to reminisce rather carelessly about this memorable episode in his life at St Bartholomew’s, momentarily forgetting that Cranmer and Ridley were the last people he should have mentioned. If the normally circumspect Rich could slip up in this way, it only shows how very difficult it was constantly to censor one’s memories and keep a guard on one’s tongue. Rich was saved from embarrassment – or worse – on this occasion, by Philpot not taking advantage of his momentary lapse but instead concurring that Joan of Kent was indeed a ‘vain woman’ and a heretic, and that she had deserved to be burnt. And so what has been remembered from this exchange is that Philpot, like John Rogers, showed no tolerance for Anabaptists or sympathy with Joan.

  When Rich next spoke, it was to change the subject. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked. ‘Are you one of the Hampshire Philpots?’

  On Philpot’s replying in the affirmative and giving the name of his father, Rich claimed to be closely related to him and all the more sorry for the plight Philpot found himself in – ‘In faith I would go a hundred miles on my bare feet to do you good,’ he declared.

  Returning to theological matters, Rich demanded to know why Philpot insisted on denying Christ’s very words, when he had declared of the bread: ‘This is my body.’ ‘Is not God omnipotent?’ Rich expostulated. ‘And is not he able as well by his omnipotence to make it his body, as he was to make man flesh of a piece of clay? Did he not say: This is my body which shall be betrayed for you? And was not his very body betrayed for us? – therefore it must needs be his body?’

  Bonner was impressed – ‘My Lord Rich, you have said wonderful well and learnedly,’ he declared.

  Philpot replied that he did not deny Christ’s words, but that he believed they were to be taken ‘sacramentally and spiritually’ and not ‘carnally, as the papists now do’.

  Bonner returned to the point about God’s omnipotence: ‘Is he not able to perform that which he spoke, as my Lord Rich has very well said? I tell you, that God by his omnipotence may make himself to be this carpet, if he will.’

  Philpot was well able to deal with this somewhat absurd remark. ‘As concerning the omnipotence of God,’ he replied, ‘I say that God is able to do (as the Prophet David says) whatsoever he wills: but he wills nothing that is not agreeable to his word: as that is blasphemy which my Lord of London has said, that God may become a carpet. For as I have learned of ancient writers: God cannot do what is contrary to his nature, as it is contrary to the nature of God to be a carpet.’

  Leaving aside the question of carpets, Bonner tried to get an answer about the sacrament. ‘Will you not say that Christ is really present in the sacrament?’ he asked. ‘Or do you deny it?’

  ‘I deny not that Christ is really in the sacrament to the receiver thereof,’ replied Philpot, ‘according to Christ’s institution.’

  ‘What do you mean by really present?’ pressed Bonner.

  ‘I mean by really present, present indeed,’ said Philpot, unhelpfully.

  ‘Is God really present everywhere?’ asked Bonner.

  ‘He is so,’ replied Philpot.

  ‘How do you prove that?’ asked Bonner (meaning ‘What is your evidence for saying so?’).

  Philpot quoted the prophet Isaiah – ‘that God fills all places’ – and the promise contained in Matthew’s Gospel, that ‘wheresoever there be two or three gathered together in Christ’s name, there is he in the midst of them’.

  ‘What? His humanity?’ questioned Bonner.

  ‘No, my Lord, I mean the deity,’ replied Philpot, ‘according to what you asked.’

  Rich, perceiving that this line of questioning by Bonner did not seem to be going anywhere, and that Philpot might even be getting the better of Bonner, suggested that Dr Chedsey take over – ‘a learned man indeed’. Bonner decided it was time for a pause in the proceedings, and offered the assembled dignitaries something to drink. It was Lord Rich who insisted Philpot be given a drink too, for which he was grateful. And indeed, by the end of this examination, Philpot seemed convinced of Rich’s good intentions towards him but that, in agreeing to hear him out fully, he had promised more than he could deliver, as the bishops were the ones in control.

  Philpot’s seventh examination took place on 19 November (a week after the death, after a protracted illness – possibly dropsy – of Bishop and Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner) before Bishops Bonner and Griffith, the chancellor of Lichfield diocese, and Dr Chedsey. By now Bonner was getting very tired of the argumentative Philpot and introduced him tetchily to the chancellor: ‘Lo, Master Chancellor, I told you we should have a froward fellow of him: he will answer directly to nothing. I have had him before both spiritual Lords and temporal, and thus he fares still: yet he reckons himself better learned than all the realm. Yes, before the temporal Lords the other day, he was so foolish to challenge the best: he would make himself learned, and is a very ignorant fool indeed.’

  ‘I reckon I answered your Lordship before the Lords plain enough,’ retorted Philpot. He had also had enough of Bonner, responding to the bishop’s assertion that he was being ‘too well handled’ with: ‘If to lie in a windowless coalhouse may be counted good handling, without either fire or candle, then may it be said, I am well handled. Your Lordship has power to treat my body as you wish.’

  ‘You are a fool, and a very ignorant fool,’ responded the bishop. He was also very clear about the choice Philpot had to make; despite the death of Stephen Gardiner (whom he imagined Philpot believed to be the instigator of the burnings), it was not the case that ‘we will burn no more’. (In fact, Gardiner, increasingly convinced that the policy of burning was turning out to be a failure, had in recent months become a restraining influence on the Privy Council; with his death, the councillors acquiesced wholeheartedly with the determination of the Queen and Cardinal Pole to continue the persecution.)

  ‘Yes, I warrant you,’ Bonner told Philpot, ‘I will dispatch you shortly, unless you recant.’

  Philpot said he was
expecting nothing less. Yet again the discussion turned to whether Bonner had the authority to proceed against his prisoner. ‘What? Are you not of my diocese?’ asked Bonner crossly. ‘Where are you now, I pray you?’

  ‘My Lord, I cannot deny that I am in your coalhouse,’ responded Philpot, ‘which is your diocese. Yet I am not of your diocese.’ And he refused to answer any further questions.

  Relations between the bishop and his prisoner now rapidly deteriorated, with Philpot responding offensively to a summons to hear Mass – ‘My stomach is too raw to digest such raw meats of flesh, blood and bone this morning’ – and Bonner resorting to physical punishment for Philpot’s continued refusal to answer the ‘articles’ he had drawn up. The former archdeacon was now put in the stocks, fastened by his wrists and ankles, and left there for several hours, in solitude, unable to move. And the next day he was forcibly escorted to the bishop by two of his servants. Bonner informed him that his own position was now very difficult, as he was being pressurized to get this case over and done with. There had been complaints from the other bishops, he said, because he had allowed Philpot to speak so much in his examinations – ‘they say it is meat and drink to you to speak in an open audience, you glory so of yourself’. And when Philpot still stubbornly tried to insist that Bonner was not his ordinary, the bishop bellowed at him: ‘I am your Ordinary and here do pronounce by sentence peremptory, that I am your Ordinary, and that you are of my diocese.’