The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  In between examinations and altercations with his prisoner, Bishop Bonner had other duties to attend to, including officiating at the protracted and elaborate exequies of the late Bishop Gardiner:

  The 21 day of November at noon began the knell for my Lord Chancellor, for then was the body brought to the church of St Mary Overy, with great company of priests and clerks, and all the bishops; and my Lord of London did execute the office, and wore his mitre; and there were 2 goodly white branches burning, and the hearse with arms and tapers burning, and 4 dozen of staves; and all the quire with black, and his arms; and before the corpse the King of heralds with his coat, and with 5 banners of his arms, and 4 of images wrought with fine gold and enamel; and the morrow-mass 3 masses, one of the Trinity, one of Our Lady, and the 3rd of requiem for his soul; and after to dinner; and so he was put in a hearse till a day that he shall be taken up and carried unto Winchester to be buried there.

  The onset of winter meant that the removal of Gardiner’s body to Winchester did not finally happen until 24 February.

  On 24 November Bonner decided to increase the pressure on his prisoner by having him transferred from the coalhouse into solitary confinement in a small room high up in St Paul’s, in a turret on the other side of the Lollards’ Tower (the earlier threat to accommodate him in the Lollards’ Tower itself was never carried out). From here Philpot could ‘look over the tops of a great many houses’. On entering the room, the prisoner was searched, and had his pencase, inkhorn, girdle and knife removed. Fortunately, however, he had had an intimation (presumably from someone on the bishop’s staff who was sympathetic to him) of what was about to happen before he was removed from the coalhouse, and he had taken the opportunity of going to the latrine to throw away a number of letters – but he had stuffed the latest instalment of his examinations down his hose. The keeper felt the packet, and made an attempt to get it out. ‘Let me alone,’ said Philpot, ‘I’ll do that myself,’ and he contrived to extract a couple of not very important letters, while manipulating his own written notes into his codpiece. As soon as the keeper had gone out, he hid them near his bed, and by making a great show of tearing up some other letters, he managed to convince the keeper he had nothing further to hide.

  Philpot’s eighth examination took place before Bishops Bonner and Morgan (the Bishop of St David’s), Sir John Mordaunt (a member of the Privy Council, and son of the John Mordaunt who had refused to inform on Friar John Forest in 1538), Archdeacon Harpsfield and a number of others in the bishop’s chapel on 25 November. Philpot became very agitated and angry during this brief hearing, again refusing to answer the articles drawn up by Bonner and protesting furiously to him: ‘Knock me on the head with a hatchet, or set up a stake, and burn me out of hand without further law: as well you may do so, for all is without order of law. Such tyranny was never seen, as you use nowadays. God of his mercy destroy your cruel kingdom.’ Bishop Morgan tried to calm Philpot down, begging him to be quiet, while Bonner gave up and hurriedly left the room. It took three or four men, by his own admission, to get Philpot back to his cell.

  A further attempt to cajole Philpot to provide answers to the articles was made the next day. Philpot as usual refused, to Bonner’s expressed bewilderment. (‘Do you not see all the realm against you?’) Archdeacon Harpsfield took a turn at persuasion, privately – but Philpot castigated him as though he, Harpsfield, were the one accused of heresy and not Philpot himself. ‘Before God I tell you plainly you are highly deceived, and maintain false religion,’ Philpot said to his former schoolfellow (they had been schoolboys together at Winchester College and had even indulged in a late-night Latin verse-writing competition with one another – which Philpot had won), ‘and if you do not repent, and leave off your persecuting of Christ’s truth, you will go to the devil for it.’

  Philpot’s formal trial, at which the bishop’s registrar (Robert Johnson) was present alongside the bishop and others, finally began on 27 November. The old argument over Bonner’s authority was played out yet again, Philpot asserting that Bonner was not his ordinary, and had no legal grounds on which to deal with him, and Bonner as usual exploding: ‘What an obstinate fool is this! I tell you I will be your Ordinary whether you like it or not.’ Philpot could certainly not be accused of giving up easily or of a lack of tenacity. ‘And because of this your unrighteous force towards me,’ he declared, ‘I have appealed from you, and I require you, Master Registrar, that my appeal be entered in writing.’

  ‘You are an arrogant fool,’ said Bonner. ‘And now I have to go to Parliament.’

  The trial was resumed on St Andrew’s day (30 November) before the bishops of Durham (Cuthbert Tunstall), Chichester (George Day), Bath (Gilbert Bourne) and London (Bonner), the chairman of the lower house of convocation (John Christopherson), Dr William Chedsey, Master Morgan of Oxford, Master Hussey of the Court of Arches, Dr Hugh Weston (Dean of Westminster), Archdeacon Harpsfield and the registrar. Bonner began the proceedings courteously, greeting Philpot at the door and introducing him to the assembled dignitaries: ‘My Lords, I shall desire you to take some pains with this man, he is a gentleman, and I would he should do well: but he will wilfully cast himself away.’

  The mild-mannered and elderly Cuthbert Tunstall began the examination, asking if, whatever had gone before, Philpot would now agree to ‘be a conformable man to the Catholic faith, and leave all new-fangled opinions and heresies’.

  ‘My Lord, I am of the Catholic faith,’ replied Philpot, ‘and desire to live and die in the same.’ The dispute concerned the definition of that faith. Philpot set out his view, held by many on both sides, that two faiths, two churches, were now opposing one another – the true and the false.

  The examination quickly became confrontational. One of the questioners, Master Morgan, said he believed that the Protestants who had already been burnt had been drunk when they went to their deaths, and that was why they had appeared brave. This accusation infuriated Philpot, who railed at Morgan, calling him a ‘painted wall and hypocrite’ and warning him, ‘in the name of the living Lord’, that ‘God shall rain fire and brimstone upon such scorners of his word, and blasphemers of his people as you are’. Philpot had now embraced the role of prophet, seeing himself – and his inevitable fate – as in the tradition and vocation of the prophets of both Old and New Testaments, from Elijah to St Paul. Further calling Morgan a ‘blind and blasphemous doctor’, he told him: ‘I have spoken on God’s behalf, and now have I done with you.’ Nothing cowed, Morgan traded insult for insult, curse for curse: ‘Why, then I tell you, Philpot, that you are a heretic, and shall be burnt for your heresy, and afterwards go to hell fire.’ Philpot declared he cared nothing for ‘your fire and faggots’, and insisted that those heading for hellfire were his adversaries, like Morgan – ‘and such hypocrites as you are’ – and not himself. Morgan fell back on his original imputation of drunkenness, accusing Philpot of having ‘tippled well today’. Philpot justifiably observed that this was precisely what was said by the unbelieving observers of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. So while he had headed closer to being burnt through this examination, Philpot had also had his sense of righteousness and confidence bolstered by the very accusations flung at him.

  Philpot’s final examinations, and his condemnation, took place in mid-December. Even now, in this endgame, the accused continued to protest that Bonner was not his ‘competent judge’. After examinations on both 13 and 14 December, Philpot was brought before the bishops of London, Bath and Wells, Coventry and Lichfield, and Worcester on the afternoon of 16 December to have ‘the definitive sentence of condemnation pronounced against him’, if he still refused to recant. Philpot continued to cast himself in the role of prophet, inveighing against the bishops sitting in judgement on him – ‘you and all others that be of your generation and sect’ – as hypocrites and enemies of Christ. ‘And I am sorry to see you sit in the place that you now sit in,’ he declaimed, ‘pretending to
execute justice, and do nothing less but deceive all men in this realm.’

  The counterproductive nature of repression as a means of dealing with ‘extremism’ is clearly demonstrated in the examinations of Philpot which consistently, and with increasing force as they neared their climax, bolstered his self-image, his conviction that he was right and that his adversaries were the enemies not only of himself and of his fellow believers, but of Christ. ‘You profess Christ and maintain Antichrist,’ he asserted boldly. ‘You profess the Gospel, and maintain superstition – and you are able to charge me with nothing.’

  That the condemnation and sentence had already been determined is clear from the arrival at this point of the Lord Mayor, Sir William Garrard, Alderman Sir Martin Bowes (who had been Lord Mayor at the time of the trial of Anne Askew) and one of the sheriffs, Alderman Sir Thomas Leigh. They sat down with the bishops to await the judgement, and the anticipated handing over of the condemned man into their charge. Recognizing that the end was now coming, Philpot ceased any attempt at prevarication and declared himself not to belong to the ‘Babylonical’ Church of Rome, and that the Mass as practised by that Church was blasphemy, invention and deception. He also ‘utterly denied’ the doctrine of transubstantiation, and charged his accusers with being not only idolaters but traitors – ‘for in your pulpits you rail upon good kings as King Henry, and King Edward his son, who have stood against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome’.

  Bonner now proceeded to read out the sentence of condemnation, in Latin. Halfway through a sentence the Bishop of Bath tugged at his sleeve to interrupt him, saying: ‘My Lord, my Lord, first ask him whether or not he will recant.’

  ‘Oh, leave me alone,’ snapped Bonner, shrugging off the interruption and carrying on with his reading. He then handed Philpot over to the waiting sheriffs. For Bonner, this whole long-drawn-out procedure had been a failure; he had tried everything he could think of, from courtesy to bullying, from engaging in argument himself to enlisting the help of other learned men, from cups of wine to confinement in the stocks, to get Philpot to recant. Philpot had never wavered and had proved difficult, stubborn and repetitive throughout, as well as apparently impervious to fear of the consequences. By the end Bonner had just had enough of the whole business.

  As Philpot was led out into Paternoster Row, his servant was waiting for him and, seeing that he was now in the custody of the sheriffs and knowing what that meant, he said: ‘Ah, dear master.’ The sheriffs’ officers thrust him away, and conveyed Philpot to Newgate. To begin with, he was treated very badly there, being shackled to a block with ‘as many irons upon his legs as he might bear’. Only the intercession of one of the sheriffs, John Machil, along with the gift of his ring, persuaded the keeper of Newgate to remove the irons.

  At least Philpot did not now have long to wait. He was condemned on 16 December, and on the following evening the message came from the sheriffs that he was to prepare himself for execution the next day. When the sheriffs duly arrived at eight o’clock in the morning, Philpot came down to them ‘most joyfully’. Outside, the wintry streets had turned to mud. When two of the sheriffs’ officers attempted to lift Philpot above the mud on his way to the stake, to stop him getting his feet dirty (as if the state of his feet could really matter at this point), he had the presence of mind to joke: ‘What! Will you make me a pope? I am content to go to my journey’s end on foot.’ He, like Bradford and Leaf, made a ceremony of his final moments, kneeling before the stake and declaring: ‘I will pay my vows to thee, oh Smithfield.’ Then, kissing the stake, he recited three psalms of thanksgiving and gave himself up to the fire.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MATTERS OF CONSCIENCE

  The same thing commonly happens in our own day and will happen, that many are regarded as heretics and punished, whom future generations will revere as saints. Wherefore I fear that many good Christians have been numbered among the heretics.

  Augustine Eleutherius (Sebastian Franck), 1531

  PHILPOT AND CRANMER were the last major clerical leaders to be burnt under Mary. (The latter was burnt in Oxford in March 1556 and was succeeded as Archbishop by Cardinal Pole.) If the intention of the authorities had been to showcase a few burnings of major influencers of opinion, in order to turn their erstwhile followers away from the path of heresy, the strategy had signally failed. Bishop and Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner had initially expected that the mere threat of such a terrible death would lead to most if not all of the Protestant rebels abandoning their convictions, which he did not believe were held seriously in the first place. He died himself well before the catalogue of burnings was complete, but not before he had realized the failure of this tactic. The Queen, however, persisted in believing that the policy of burning was the right one; she held to the view of the hardliners in the interpretation of the parable of the tares – that heretics, whoever they were, had to be rooted up, cast away and burnt, to protect the innocent and maintain the purity of the Church. And so, despite the doubts of many of her advisers, and of those who had to conduct the heresy trials – the bishops – the burnings went on.

  When John Philpot was searched prior to being confined in the high turret at St Paul’s, one of the letters he made a great show of tearing up was addressed to another prisoner of Bonner’s, a young lawyer called Bartlet (sometimes referred to as Bartholomew) Green. Bartlet had been born in the City of London, in the parish of St Michael Bassishaw, in 1529 or 1530, into a family who valued education and sent him to Oxford where he took his BA degree in 1547. Being both hard-working and possessed of intellectual curiosity, he found time at Oxford to attend lectures on theology given by the influential Italian Protestant, Peter Martyr Vermigli (often known just as Peter Martyr, the name he had taken on becoming an Augustinian canon), who had been appointed to a professorship during the reign of Edward VI. After some initial resistance and questioning, Bartlet Green was converted to Protestantism. On completing his studies in Oxford, he moved back to London to embark on a legal career at the Inner Temple, associating there with other committed evangelicals and continuing to practise the reformed religion after the accession of Mary, refusing to attend Mass or make confession to a priest. He nevertheless still found time to enjoy some of the lighter-hearted activities available to reasonably affluent students of the law in London – activities such as dressing up, going to banquets and other ‘fond follies’ – which he later came to regret, as not fitting for a serious follower of the gospel. He was able to afford this sort of lifestyle through the generosity of his grandfather, the eminent physician Dr Richard Bartlett (after whom he was named, his grandfather’s surname having been given him as a first name – the two spellings being interchangeable at the time), who lived in Bartholomew Close and was one of Sir John Deane’s parishioners.

  At Easter of both 1554 and 1555, Bartlet Green received communion according to the outlawed Edwardian rite in the private rooms of the Rector of the City church of St Peter Cornhill, John Pullain, who conducted the services. Such unlawful activities might never have come to the attention of the authorities, had not correspondence been intercepted between Green and one Christopher Goodman, a Protestant in exile and previously one of Green’s friends in Oxford, in which Goodman asked whether it was true that the Queen had died. According to Foxe, Green had simply stated in reply that, no, the Queen was not (yet) dead – but the suspicion to which the interception of this correspondence gave rise was that he was more than a mere disseminator of information, and was involved in circulating propaganda, smuggled out of Danzig and into England, denouncing Philip and Mary and advocating her half-sister Elizabeth’s claim to the throne. In consequence, Bartlet Green was arrested, initially not for heresy but for treason. He was imprisoned first in the Fleet and subsequently in the Tower. The charges of treason came to nothing, but – as a young man who seems to have had little concern for his own safety, and who must have caused enormous heartache to those who cared for him – he was reckless enough, while in pr
ison, to give voice to his Protestant beliefs, denying the real presence in the Mass. On 10 November 1555, therefore, rather than being released, he was sent by the Privy Council to Bishop Bonner to be examined for heresy.

  At first Green was treated well by Bonner, being detained in the bishop’s London palace, where he shared a room with John Dee, the mathematician, astrologer and antiquary, who was also at that time in Bonner’s custody. (Accused of using magic to plot against Queen Mary’s life, Dee had been acquitted of this charge on 29 August 1555 but handed over to Bonner for an inquiry into his religious orthodoxy.) Green got on very well with Dee, as he did with everyone with whom he came into contact; he seems to have been a naturally affable young man, whom people immediately liked. Green himself admitted, in a letter to Philpot, that the bishop and his chaplains were so friendly towards him that he could almost have forgotten he was a prisoner – were it not that ‘this great cheer was so often powdered with unsavoury sauces of examinations, exhortations, posings [i.e. posing of questions] and disputations’. As a result of this lenient treatment, rumours spread that Green had recanted and John Philpot wrote him a letter, rebuking him for backsliding. Green responded, in a letter printed by Foxe but never received by Philpot, indignantly denying this, and reproving Philpot for believing ‘slanders’ made against him.

  Foxe mentions, almost as an aside – and a disapproving one – that, during the time of Bartlet Green’s imprisonment, his grandfather ‘Master Doctor Bartlet’ made him ‘large offers of great livings’, if he would recant and return to the Church of Rome. That this was the Dr Bartlett who was a parishioner of John Deane is evidenced by his will (witnessed by Deane), in which his first bequests are to his niece Anne Grene (the spellings Green and Grene being used interchangeably at the time, and ‘niece’ also meaning ‘granddaughter’ until about 1600), to Elizabeth Grene and Margaret Grene. Of the three women, Margaret received the largest bequest (£40), so it is likely that she was Dr Bartlett’s daughter, hence Bartlet Green’s mother, Anne and Elizabeth being his sisters. That Dr Bartlett’s efforts to bring Bartlet back to the ‘Church of Rome’ were not motivated solely by familial feeling – though he must have been desperate to save the life of his talented young grandson if it could be done – but also by conviction is indicated by other bequests, in particular that of his estate in Edgware to his old college of All Souls, Oxford, on condition that they celebrate a daily Mass for his soul and that of his wife, and by his bequest of £6 to the Black Friars at St Bartholomew’s. But however heartfelt, Dr Bartlett’s pleas went unheeded by his grandson.