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he had done it advisedly and meant, by God's grace, to keep it." The charge of blasphemy related to his view of the Sacrament of Holy Communion, of incontinency to his being a married man, and of heresy to his repudiation of Rome in administration and doctrine. Nothing was wanting in the trial to add to the full measure of insult. Every lie and slander of his enemies was brought forth and pressed against him—his first marriage and the oft-repeated story of his having been an ostler and an unlearned man, with many other like charges. But his chief offence was his repudiation of Rome and his doctrinal opposition to that Church. The proceedings were a travesty of justice administered with subtlety and cruelty. Knowing the character of his victim, the Bishop of Gloucester allowed him to be plied in private with exhortations and promises. Hence the renunciations and the recantations, the miserable intrigues against the honour of a man of highest character and yet of a yielding mind. Cranmer was no hero like the fierce and defiant Ridley or Latimer, and the proceedings were purposely prolonged to increase his humiliation. At one stage they induced him to declare that as the Queen's Majesty, by the consent of Parliament, had received and restored the Pope's authority, he would submit himself and take the Pope for the chief head of the Church of England so far as the laws of the realm would permit. This was to attack Cranmer on his weakest side, because loyalty to the Crown was a passion with him. In a few days he was induced to substitute for it a more unqualified submission, and to submit himself to the Catholic Church of Christ and to the Pope. Later he appealed from the Pope's authority to a general council. In this way six submissions were followed by six recantations, until at last all timidity and hesitation fled. Before the end he had been solemnly and with much insult stripped of each robe and symbol of office, and clad in a poor yeoman beadle's gown bare and worn. Thus attired, he was as a layman handed over to the secular authorities, to be dealt with by them.

On the day before his death he composed his seventh recantation, in which he declared: "I believe every

article of the Catholic faith, every clause, word and sentence taught by our Saviour Jesus Christ, His Apostles and Prophets in the New and Old Testaments, and all articles explicate and set forth in the General Councils."

2

The final scene at Oxford is too well known to need description; and as the flames leapt up he stretched out his right hand, saying with a loud voice, “This hand hath offended," and held it in the fire until the end came. The Pope escaped responsibility for the burning of Cranmer by causing him to be handed over to the secular power. He and Queen Mary must share the blame between them for this and all other burnings for heresy in her reign. These have branded themselves indelibly upon the hearts and memories of Englishmen. It was the hour of Rome's temporary triumph, but the five years of Queen Mary have left an heritage of suspicion of Rome in the minds of most Englishmen which has ever since grown in the minds of the uneducated into a positive horror, if not hatred. The dread of Rome helped to bring Charles I to the scaffold and drove James II from his throne; and when, in the seventeenth century, the great English theologians were building up an Anglo-Catholic theology which was true to the Bible and antiquity, the very authorities to which Cranmer appealed, they were met by opposition, as teachers are

1 "The Smithfield fires, which have cast so lurid a light upon the second half of that short period (Mary's reign), were the almost inevitable consequences in that age, and under circumstances which it is well-nigh impossible for us at this distance of time to understand and to make allowance for, of the rebellious turbulence of the men who would accept no tolerance, to whom mild measures were but incentives to greater audacity and outrage. Even so, it appears abundantly clear that this rigour was the work of a lay majority in the Council. . . . As for Pole himself, the only prosecutions for heresy which took place in the diocese of Canterbury were enacted when he lay upon his death-bed."Life of Reginald Pole, by Martin Heile, 1910.

This Roman Catholic writer wishes to lay all the blame upon English laymen, and is anxious to exonerate. Queen Mary, and still more Cardinal Pole. Not so can Rome escape the responsibility of the "Smithfield Fires.'

2 On "The Limits of Tolerance," see Appendix E, p. 219.

now in the twentieth century, prompted by fear of even looking Romewards, though nothing be taught which is distinctly Roman Catholic.

I close with Dr. Mason's summary of Cranmer's work: 1 "For two things Cranmer lived. He lived to restore as nearly as might be the Church of the Fathers, and he lived and he died for the rights and the welfare of England. The independence of the English Crown, the freedom of the English Church from an intolerable foreign yoke, an English Bible, the English servicesfor these he laboured with untiring and unostentatious diligence, and with few mistakes considering the difficulties of his task. He made no claim to infallibility, but he laid open the way to the correction of whatever might be amiss in his own teaching or in the Church which he ruled when, in the magnificent demurrer which he made at his degradation, he appealed, not for himself only, but for all those who should afterwards be on his side, to the next General Council. Under that broad shield which he threw over us we may confidently abide, and lay our cause before those who will candidly weigh the facts of History."

1 Thomas Cranmer, by Dr. A. J. Mason, 1898.

MATTHEW PARKER1

1504-15752

MATTHEW PARKER was born at Norwich in 1504, and was instructed in reading, writing, singing and grammar by the parish priest and others. His education was

1 Parker is a surname derived from occupation and means the custodian or keeper of the park. It is found in every part of England and is almost a rival of the most common names, Smith, Brown, Jones, etc. In older documents it appears thus: Adam le Parker, Peter le Parker (1273), Martin le Parkar and Hamo le Parkire. Before the sixteenth century it was written simply Parker. The founder of the commercial prosperity of the Archbishop's family was Nicolas Parker, principal registrar of the Spiritual Court of Canterbury, 1450, a man of great integrity and honour. When in after years the Archbishop visited Norwich at the time his brother was Mayor, he proudly pointed to the fact of his connection with the great middle class in England with which his brother was connected. In those days the College of Heralds was a reality, and no one could obtain a grant of arms until he had established the gentility of his family. Nicolas Parker was granted the distinction, and the Archbishop inherited the arms and obtained an addition to it. Matthew Parker was through his mother connected with Howard, Earl of Nottingham, a fact which accounts for the Earl's presence at Parker's consecration. His contemporary account is of value in the question of the consecration. The Earl says that he was ordained by the form in King Edward's Common Prayer Book. "I myself," he says, "had the book in my hand all the time and went along with the Ordination, and when it was over I dined with 'em, and there was an instrument drawn up of the form and order of it, which instrument I saw and redd over."

2 Born at Norwich, 1504. Sent to Cambridge, 1522. Subdeacon, 1526. Deacon and Priest, 1527. Fellow of Corpus Christi College, 1527. Refused Wolsey's offer to join the staff of Cardinal College, Oxford, 1528 (about). Chaplain to Anne Boleyn and Dean of the College of Stoke-by-Clare, 1535. Rector

conducted at home, and no mention is made of his attendance at any school. When he was twelve his father died, and his mother, carrying out the father's wishes, sent him at seventeen to be educated at Cambridge. The family was of commercial importance, and always possessed good means, so that his mother bore the University expenses. The choice of a College (Corpus Christi) was probably determined by the fact that one of his tutors was a member of Corpus Christi. He matriculated in 1521 and entered in 1522 as Bibleclerk, to which was attached the status of a scholarship, on the foundation of the Duchess of Norfolk. He is

of Ashdon in Essex and Prebendary of Ely, 1542. Rector of Burlingham in Norfolk, 1544. Rector of Landbeach near Cambridge, 1545. Master of Corpus Christi College by Royal Mandate, 1544. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, 1545, and again in 1549. Married, 1547. Dean of Lincoln, 1552. Deprived of all preferment under Queen Mary because of his being a married man. Consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, December 17, 1559. Died at Lambeth, May 17, 1575, and buried in the private chapel in a tomb which he had prepared for himself. This tomb was destroyed in 1648 and Parker's remains were disinterred. After the Restoration, Sancroft, under the authority of the King and Lords, restored them to their original resting-place, and placed an inscription in the ante-chapel of Lambeth Palace recording both the desecration and restoration of the tomb. The inscription and the epitaph were

(a)" Corpus Matthaei Archiepiscopi hic tandem quiescit." (b) "Matthaei Archiepiscopi Cenotaphium.

Corpus enim (ne nescius lector)

In adyto hujus sacelli olim rite conditum,
A sectariis perduellibus anno MDCXLVIII.
Effracto sacrilege hoc ipso tumulo,

Elogio sepulchrali impie refixo,
Direptis nefarie exuviis plumbeis,

Spoliatum, violatum, eliminatum;

Etiam sub sterquilinio, (proh! Scelus) abstrusum :
Rege demum (plaudente coelo ac terra) redeunte
Ex decreto Baronum Angliae sedulo requisitum,

Et sacello postliminio redditum,

Et ejus quasi medio tandem quiescit.

Et quiescat utinam

Nonnisi tuba ultima solicitandum.

QUI DENUO DESECRAVERIT, SACER ESTO."

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