The Burning Time

by Virginia Rounding

  Gibson’s answers to these initial charges having not satisfied the authorities, he continued to be held in the Counter until November, when he was summoned to appear before the bishop. Despite Gibson’s outspokenness and determination to witness to the Protestant cause, he did not, as a member of a significant City family, relish the idea of being paraded through the busy City thoroughfares in the obvious and embarrassing guise of someone under arrest. He was, Foxe tells us, ‘a very big and tall man, of a personable and heroical stature’; he also sported the traditional Protestant beard. Whether with the deliberate intention of making him look ridiculous in the City, in the hope that this might bring him to his senses, or through mere absent-mindedness or accident, the authorities had arranged for Gibson to be escorted to the bishop by ‘a little and short person’, whom Foxe names as Robin Caly, a ‘promoter’, or one known as a denouncer of heretics. As this mismatched couple set out from the Poultry, Gibson requested that they take a back route towards St Paul’s, avoiding Cheapside, but Caly was having none of it. Not only was he determined to show off his prisoner to as many City dwellers and tradespeople as possible, but he also intended to display his own importance in the process, and so he insisted on grabbing Gibson by the arm and trying to drag him along. Gibson pleaded for him to let go, stating his intention of coming along quietly wherever he was bidden, but requesting to walk merely side by side and not in a way that would draw attention to his invidious position. But Caly, who barely came up to Gibson’s shoulder, would not give in, and clung on. ‘I will hold you fast, despite your beard,’ he bragged, ‘whether you like it or not.’ Gibson, abandoning Christian forbearance, finally snapped. ‘You will, will you?’ he said, and told Cary that if he didn’t take his hands off him right now, and keep them off, he’d wring his neck. Threats proved more effective than persuasion, and the two walked along separately the rest of the way.

  Having arrived before the bishop, Gibson refused to be examined by him. This stalemate persisted for several sessions, until the time came for Gibson to be sentenced in the Consistory Court. Upon being asked if there was any reason why sentence should not be given against him, Gibson replied that he had not done anything for which the bishop could justly condemn him. To the bishop’s explanation that ‘men said he was an evil man’, Gibson retorted that he could say the same thing of the bishop. Like many before him, once the definitive sentence had been passed against him, Gibson felt free to speak, having previously kept quiet in order not to condemn himself. And so now he told the bishop he was not going to listen to any more of his ‘babbling’, and he reversed the charge of heresy to turn it against his accusers: ‘now heresy is to turn the truth of God’s word into lies, and that do you’.

  Rather than answer the ‘articles’ Bonner had put to him, Gibson had chosen to draw up a corresponding set for Bonner to answer – ‘by yes, or no, or else to say he cannot tell’. While hardly expecting the bishop to answer his questions, designed to demonstrate episcopal wrong-headedness, inconsistency or ignorance, Gibson had put his finger on some fundamental issues in the war on so-called heresy. Central to the debate was the nature of authority. ‘What is authority,’ asked Gibson’s second article, ‘and from where does it come, to whom does it appertain, and to what end does it tend?’ His sixth article was perhaps even more pertinent than he had himself realized; intended to suggest that those in power in the official Church might be ministers of Satan rather than of Christ, it could equally be turned against those who assumed authority in the unofficial, Protestant, churches:

  By what evident tokens Antichrist in his ministers may be known, seeing it is written that Satan can change himself into the similitude of an angel of light, and his ministers fashion themselves as though they were the ministers of righteousness, and how may it be known to him that is desirous thereof, when he is one of that number or in the danger thereof, or when he is otherwise?

  This intellectually gifted and well-built young man was burnt alongside John Hallingdale and William Sparrow: ‘being brought thither to the stake, after their prayer made, they were bound to it with chains, and wood set unto them, and after wood, fire’.

  An unquestioned assumption made by men in authority on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide was that women should be subject to their authority (apart, of course, from the Queen – though she had her own inner conflicts in trying to resolve sovereign rule with womanly obedience). This assumption is by and large shared by Foxe in his accounts of the martyrs, but some female characters nevertheless manage to escape from between his lines, emerging as feisty and self-defining, even while demonstrating the limitations imposed on them by the society in which they lived. That Protestant leaders wielded quite as much authority over their flock, and particularly over its female members, as did Catholic priests and bishops over theirs, is nowhere clearer than in the story of Margaret Mearing – who also proved those who denigrated her character and misinterpreted her natural warmth and spontaneity to be spectacularly wrong.

  Margaret was a member of the congregation led by John Rough, a man whose surname seems to have been rather well-suited to aspects of his personality. Rough, who by his death in 1557 was about fifty years old, was from Scotland and had in his youth entered the Dominican friary in Stirling, possibly after a family argument over property. His first doubts about Catholic practice and doctrine emerged during visits to Rome, when he was taken aback by the adulation afforded the Pope, borne aloft in his sedia gestatoria or ceremonial throne, ‘to be carried on the shoulders of four men, as though he had been God and no man’. In the 1540s Rough served as chaplain to the Earl of Arran, the governor of Scotland, who was himself inclining towards Protestantism, and Rough showed his own sympathies by requesting, and receiving, a dispensation to cease wearing his Dominican habit while in this role. Not content with making merely sartorial changes, Rough, along with another Dominican called Thomas Williams, began preaching in various parts of Scotland against papal authority, the adoration of images and intercession to the saints. The message of the two men was not received with universal acclaim; there was nearly a riot after they preached in Edinburgh, Arran and the Earl of Angus having to intervene to prevent the preachers being assaulted. Comparing the two zealous Dominicans, the leader of the Scottish Reformation, John Knox, considered Rough to be ‘not so learned, yet more simple, and more vehement against impiety’. Rough was later instrumental in developing Knox’s own vocation as a preacher, the two men working together to promote the Protestant cause in the town of St Andrews. They had first met while Rough was acting as chaplain to the band of Fife lairds and their families who had seized St Andrews Castle in May 1546 and assassinated the Archbishop and Lord Chancellor of Scotland, Cardinal Beaton (on political rather than purely religious grounds). Cardinal Beaton had been one of Henry VIII’s chief opponents in Scotland, and Rough had been in receipt of an annual payment of £20 for acting as one of Henry’s agents in the country. After Henry’s death, Rough managed to find favour with the Duke of Somerset who continued his pension and sent him to preach at Berwick. He next moved to Newcastle, where he married (in common with many other former friars and monks during Edward’s reign), and then to Hull, where he was presented with a benefice by the Archbishop of York, Robert Holgate.

  On Mary’s accession, the Roughs emigrated to Norden in Friesland, where they engaged in the woollen trade, making a living through knitting caps and hosiery, while associating with other Protestant exiles. Rough returned to England in the autumn of 1557 – hardly a good time to have chosen – ostensibly to purchase yarn for his work, but also (according to the authorities) to smuggle in Protestant literature. The fact that he then became deeply involved with the underground Protestant congregation, succeeding Thomas Foule as its minister, would suggest that this was indeed no mere business trip, nor that his arriving at this time of heightened danger for Protestants was accidental. Like other banned organizations throughout history, the London congregation moved around from one �
�safe house’ to another, and often made use of taverns, such as the Swan at Limehouse or the King’s Head in Stepney.

  The vehemence alluded to by John Knox was as evident in the way John Rough led his congregation as in his preaching to the unconverted. His style of leadership involved strict discipline and the use of public shaming, practices witnessed in congregations he had visited while abroad. And like other Protestant authority figures of this time, he would tolerate no compromise with the Catholic Establishment on the part of his followers. So one woman, who had made the mistake of attending Mass (which she was of course obliged to do by law), was instructed by Rough to confess before the congregation (after which she was forgiven and ‘received into their fellowship again’), but in the case of Margaret Mearing, who was believed to have spoken incautiously about the meetings of the congregation and whom he suspected of spying on them, he went as far as excommunication, virtually throwing her out of the group altogether. The reason she had fallen under suspicion was that she was by nature a rather talkative woman and very friendly – to the extent that she kept bringing new people with her to the meetings of the congregation. She did not exercise the usual reserve recommended to members of secret societies, and to that extent the nervousness she generated among her fellow believers is understandable, but there is also a sense that she could not – or would not – easily be controlled, and this made her an object of suspicion in a group that was quite as rigid in its ideas of hierarchy and authority as the Church which it was seeking to escape.

  And so, on Friday 10 December, Rough took the very serious step of excommunicating Margaret, in public, effectively telling her she was no longer welcome as a member of the congregation. Her initial, furious, reaction served only to make everyone more convinced than ever that she was untrustworthy, indeed a danger to them – for she, ‘being moved, did not well take it, nor in good part’ and told one of her friends ‘in a heat’ that it would serve them right if she reported the lot of them.

  But when, two days later, on the third Sunday of Advent, a meeting of the congregation was broken up and Rough was arrested, imprisoned in the Westminster Gatehouse and refused visitors, it was Margaret Mearing who showed herself to have a better grasp of Christian charity than many of the eloquent debaters in their opposing camps. Pretending to be Rough’s sister, she turned up at the prison and managed to get in to see him, bearing not only words of comfort but a clean shirt. It is to be hoped that he was surprised and comforted, but also mortified, by her arrival, for he had been very harsh in his misjudgement of her.

  The meeting at which Rough and others were arrested had been taking place at a tavern in Islington called the Saracen’s Head, and they had let it be thought they were there to watch a play. In fact they had met to hear a lecture and were intending also to hold a communion service, according to the forbidden English rite, but the Vice Chamberlain of the Queen’s house, accompanied by officers of the guard, arrived before this could commence. The person who had betrayed the meeting to the authorities was not Margaret Mearing, but a tailor called Roger Sergeant. Upon hearing that this man was the culprit, the forthright Margaret turned up at his house, demanding to know whether Judas lived there. Receiving a negative answer, she persisted: ‘No? Dwells not Judas here who betrayed Christ? His name is Sergeant.’ Roger Sergeant had nothing to say in reply, and Margaret Mearing ‘went her way’.

  Margaret was herself soon arrested, an eventuality she embraced as cheerfully and with as much fortitude as she did everything else that happened to her. On the day the bishop’s summoner came for her, she was standing gossiping with one of her woman friends at the end of Mark Lane (a street at the eastern end of the City, towards the Tower of London). She saw the summoner, whose name was Cluney, heading towards where she lived. ‘Whither goeth yonder fine fellow?’ she wondered aloud to her friend. ‘I think he’s going to my house!’ She watched him go in through her door, and then set off to confront him.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’ she asked him.

  ‘For you,’ replied Cluney. ‘You must come with me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Margaret. ‘Here I am – let’s go.’ And so she set off uncomplainingly, towards imprisonment, interrogation and death.

  Rough was examined by the Privy Council on 15 December and subsequently sent to Newgate, with a report being made to Bonner, describing him as a seditious and heretical person. The bishop examined Rough at his palace, as instructed by the Queen, on 18 and 19 December, putting articles to him which ranged from the usual subjects concerning papal authority and the nature of the sacraments through to his alleged smuggling of books and correspondence. Rough was uncompromising in his replies, insisting that people should pray in a language they understood (so in English, rather than in Latin), that there were only two sacraments rather than seven, and that there was no need for believers to confess to a priest rather than to anyone else. If Foxe is to be believed, when Rough recounted his youthful impressions of the Pope, declaring that the reverence accorded him proved him to be the Antichrist, Bishop Bonner had another of his beard-plucking tantrums, ‘flying upon’ Rough to yank out a piece of the offending facial hair. Rough also refused to divulge any of the names of his congregation and maintained that he had been present at the Saracen’s Head ‘to hear and see a play’.

  In the Consistory Court on 20 December, before Bishop Bonner and the Bishop of St David’s (Henry Morgan), Abbot Feckenham and others, Rough continued to uphold his Protestant opinions, including that his marriage was lawful and his children legitimate (the youngest, Rachel, was just two years old when her father died), and that the Mass was an abomination. He was in consequence formally degraded from his clerical orders, condemned as a heretic, and committed for punishment to the secular authorities. Margaret Mearing, when asked if she stood by the answers she had given two days previously, declared: ‘I will stand to them to the death: for the very angels of heaven do laugh you to scorn, to see your abomination that you use in the Church,’ and was also condemned.

  Rough reveals his most human, vulnerable side in the letters he wrote to friends and members of his congregation in the forty-eight hours between his condemnation and death. His outward resilience under interrogation, his bold words and forthright manner, had concealed the inward struggle of this fifty-year-old father of young children. ‘I have not leisure and time to write the great temptations I have been under,’ he tells his friends. ‘I speak to God’s glory: my care was to have the senses of my soul open, to perceive the voice of God, saying: whosoever denies me before men, him will I deny before my father and his angels. And to save the life corporal, is to lose the life eternal.’ Having made the decision to stand firm and face the inevitable punishment, he now feels the worst of the battle – that with himself and with his own desire for life – is over, though he cannot help but be anxious over whether he will have the strength to endure what is to come: ‘I have chosen death to confirm the truth by me taught. What can I do more? Consider with yourselves, that I have done it for the confirmation of God’s truth. Pray that I may continue to the end. The greatest part of the assault is past, I praise my God.’ In a second letter, addressed to his congregation, he again emphasizes the difficulty of the inner struggle he has been through since his arrest: ‘What a journey (by God’s power) I have made, these eight days before this date, it is above flesh and blood to bear: but as Paul says, I may do all things in him who works in me, Jesus Christ. My course, brethren, have I run, I have fought a good fight, the crown of righteousness is laid up for me, my day to receive it is not long too.’ The final paragraph of his letter to his friends calls on them to be faithful and to pray, believing victory will be theirs in the end – but his bold rhetoric cannot quite disguise the fear and distress of a living, feeling human being soon to meet his death by fire:

  It is no time for the loss of one man in the battle, for the camp to turn back. Up with men’s hearts, blow down the daubed walls of heresies: let one take the banner, and the other t
he trumpet, I mean not to make corporal resistance, but pray … The cause is the Lord’s. Now, my brethren, I can write no more, time will not allow it, and my heart with pangs of death is assaulted: but I am at home with my God yet alive. Pray for me, and salute one another with the holy kiss. The peace of God rest with you all. From Newgate prison in haste, the day of my condemnation.

  The farewell to his congregation is more conventional and restrained than these anguished words to his friends. Here he does not mention the ‘pangs of death’, but concludes, like a model pastor, with a blessing, quoting from the Psalms and the Book of Revelation; his words are no less genuine for their restraint, for what he does not say, and his prayer is as much for himself as for his flock. One can almost hear him weeping as he writes: ‘The Spirit of God guide you in and out, rising and sitting, cover you with the shadow of his wings, defend you against the tyranny of the wicked, and bring you happily to the port of eternal felicity, where all tears shall be wiped from your eyes, and you shall always abide with the lamb.’

  John Rough and Margaret Mearing were burnt together ‘most joyfully’ on 22 December 1557. One wonders who gave more encouragement to the other.

  The secret underground congregation continued, Rough’s role as minister and chief pastor being taken on by Augustine Bernher and then by Thomas Bentham, who would later (in the next, and final, reversal of religious policy, under Elizabeth I) become Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.

  Arrested at the same time as John Rough, but held for longer before being condemned, were his second-in-command of the London congregation, Cuthbert Simpson, and two other members – Hugh Foxe (a hosier) and John Devenish. The Friday night before the arrests was a busy one for John Rough, for not only did he excommunicate Margaret Mearing that same evening, he was also plagued by nightmares about Cuthbert Simpson – to the extent that he was moved to get up out of bed. ‘Kate, strike a light,’ he said to his wife, ‘for I am much troubled about my brother Cuthbert this night.’ Cuthbert had himself been feeling anxious and unable to sleep – all of which suggests that the leaders of the congregation suspected they were about to be, or had been, betrayed, and goes some way to explain the harsh treatment of Margaret Mearing, amidst nervousness over her lack of discretion – and he arrived, carrying the book in which he maintained the accounts of the congregation (for they were in the habit of collecting donations from the wealthier members to support the less well-off). The accounts book contained names, and it was the thought of this that was giving John Rough – and Cuthbert Simpson – a sleepless night. Cuthbert tried at first to make little of their fears (despite his having turned up in the middle of the night because of them), telling the Roughs (and himself) that dreams were ‘but fantasies, and not to be credited’. But then Rough exercised his authority, ordering Cuthbert to stop carrying the accounts book around with him. He obeyed, leaving it with Rough’s wife, Kate.