Book of English Martyrs - E. M. Wilmot-Buxton




The English Terror
1535–1540

"He shall be judged by the bloody laws he hath himself made."
(The Council at the Trial of Cromwell.)

The martyrdom of Blessed Thomas More and of six Carthusian monks was but the prelude to a veritable Reign of Terror, which lasted with scarcely ntermission till the death of Cromwell in 1540.

For these live years, under the plea of protecting his royal master from the slightest breath of disloyalty, this "Hammer of Monks," as he has been called, held England in thrall, watering her soil meantime with the blood of many martyrs, while he strove to destroy the Church by striking a death-blow at the religious houses in this land.

Soon after the passing of the Act of Supremacy, steps had been taken to dissolve the smaller monasteries, on the plea that they were no longer needed, or that they had failed to keep their former good reputation. That both these accusations were false is clearly seen in the consternation felt in their own neighborhood at their loss. Many of these houses were the only means of relief for the poor of the district; many kept the only schools for many miles round; some, such as that of Hexham in Northumberland, situated in a bare country, with not a house between it and Scotland, were invaluable in times of border warfare. But though attempts at resistance were made, monks and nuns were ruthlessly flung forth, and helped to swell the swarms of wandering beggars, which were the disgrace of England at that time.

At length the smoldering discontent of the Northerners, in Yorkshire, where most of the more important abbeys were situated, broke into open flame. "The world will never mend till we fight for it," declared one landowner, and zeal for the faith of their Fathers kindling in the hearts of the stout Yorkshiremen, they marched, "with the parish priest at their head," upon York and seized the city. Then Durham rose, almost to a man, and the Mercies of Northumberland led out their clan, though the head of their house feigned sickness and lay abed. "The whole nobility of the north were now in arms, and thirty thousand, "tall men and well horsed," moved on the Don, demanding the reversal of the royal policy, a reunion with Rome, the restoration of Catherine's daughter, Mary, to her rights as heiress to the Crown, redress for the wrongs done to the Church, and above all, the fall of Cromwell."

Alas for the "Pilgrimage of Grace"! The wiles of Cromwell in promising pardon and a free Parliament at York to the insurgents broke up the ranks. The rebels thought they had been granted all they asked, and went home with glad hearts. Then Cromwell struck, and struck hard; and the nobles of the north went under for good and all. Many went to the block, and amongst them Lord Darcy, whose words as he stood before the Council are memorable enough:

"Cromwell, it is thou that that art the very special and chief cause of all this rebellion and wickedness; and thou dolt make it thy daily work to bring us to our ends and strike off our heads. I trust that ere thou die, though thou wouldst procure all the noblest heads within the realm to be stricken off, there yet shall oar head remain that shall strike off thine."

With Sir Thomas Percy of Northumberland were hung at Tyburn the Abbots of Fountains and of Jervaulx; the Abbots of Balding and of Kirkstead shared their fate elsewhere, their only crime being the sympathy they had shown with the rebellion, or the fact that the insurgents had reinstated them in their monasteries.

The farmers and yeomen who had shared in the revolt were hanged by hundreds at a time upon the trees of the north country waysides.

Encouraged by the success of this wholesale suppression, Henry, following Cromwell's lead, determined to strike a blow not only at the north, but at the west, where the twin houses of the Courtenays and the Poles, staunch adherents of the Faith, held rule. The head of the Pole family, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was of royal descent, and Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, his kinsman, was next in succession, after Henry's children, to the throne. Reginald, fourth son of the countess, after refusing the highest bribes to approve his divorce that the king could offer him, had fled for safety to Rome, where he had been made Cardinal, and from whence he openly attacked the king in his outspoken book on the Unity of the Church. His representation at Rome had hastened the Excommunication now pronounced upon Henry by the Pope, and the king took a cowardly revenge. "They shall feel what it is to have a traitor for their kinsman," cried he, and forthwith Lord Montague, Pole's elder brother, was executed, together with the Marquis of Exeter, on Tower Hill. Sir Geoffrey Pole, a younger brother, who had been prevailed upon to hear witness against them, was pardoned, and passed the rest of his life in miserable regret for his Judas-like act.

Two years later his mother, the aged countess, who had formerly had charge of the unhappy Princess Mary, and was herself a royal princess, after a long and tedious imprisonment, was led out to die on Tower Green. She was nearly ninety years old, and to the last she knew not of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced. We know, however, that she suffered solely and entirely for the Catholic Faith, of which her son was at that time the most active defender; and her last words, "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake," are fulfilled in the title conferred upon her by the Church of "Blessed Margaret Pole."

The "Pilgrimage of Grace," failure though it seemed, had succeeded in staying for a while the suppression of the monasteries, for even Henry and Cromwell dared not entirely ignore the temper of the country. When they turned again to the matter they tried a different method. Instead of using force to close the religious houses, Cromwell in some cases persuaded the superiors to submit quietly to the king's authority; in others he set up as abbot one who was willing to acknowledge the royal supremacy, and ordered him to convert his monks as a preliminary to a peaceful surrender.

The latter plan was tried at the London Charterhouse after the martyrdom of Blessed John Houghton, and several of the monks and lay brothers, under the threat of total suppression, were induced to acknowledge the royal supremacy. This they did "with remorse of conscience and with many reserves"; but of their companions, ten valiant souls scorned utterly to buy their safety with such base compromise.

Thrown into Newgate without even the pretense of a trial, these ten monks and lay brothers were chained in standing position to posts in a filthy dungeon, with hands tied behind them, and were there left to die. For a short time their lives were preserved by the beautiful devotion of Margaret Giggs, now Margaret Clement, whom we remember as an inmate of the household of Sir Thomas More, and specially entrusted by him with works of mercy. She bribed the gaoler to let her enter the prison disguised as a milkmaid, and carrying a "great pail upon her head full of meat, wherewith she fed that blessed company, putting meat into their mouths, they being tied and not able to stir, nor to help themselves."

[Illustration] from Book of English Martyrs by E. M. Wilmot-Buxton

THE EXECUTION OF MARGARET POLE


Then the king, finding they were still alive, "commanded a straiter watch to be set over them, so that the keeper durst not let in this good woman any more, fearing it might cost him his head if it should be discovered." But she, undaunted by difficulties, persuaded and bribed him to let her clamber over the tiles of the roof till she reached the cell where they were confined; then, having made a hole in the roof, she let down meat in a basket, "approaching the same as well as she could unto their mouths as they did stand chained against the posts. But they, not being able to feed themselves out of the basket, or very little, and the gaoler, fearing very much that it should be perceived, in the end refused to let her come any more. And so, soon after, they languished and pined away."

Thus did they win their crown of martyrdom; nor was the charity of Margaret Clement forgotten by them in the realm of bliss. For on the day of her death she told her husband that "there were standing about her bed the Reverend Fathers, monks of the Charterhouse, whom she had relieved in prison, and who did call upon her to come away with them."

The Carthusians had thus paid rich toll of their numbers to the cause of the Faith. It was now the turn of the Franciscans to offer up their sacrifice.

There was an important monastery of the Friars Observant of the rule of St. Francis at Greenwich in those days, the warder of which, John Forest, acted for a time as confessor to Queen Catherine of Aragon and her gentle-women of the Court. The unhappy queen had a special love for the Observant Friars, as is shown by the clause in her will asking that she should be buried in one of their convents; and this alone was enough to draw down upon them the wrath of Henry after his divorce.

For a time Forest seems to have warded off the threat of dissolution of the whole Order throughout England, and actually prevailed upon the king to change his mind; but he knew that this would not last for long, and in 1534 the Observants, who were the strictest Order of the Franciscans, were everywhere suppressed. Their convents were handed over in some cases to other communities for a time, and of those who refused thus to change their Order, some two hundred were imprisoned, of whom fifty died in captivity.

That Forest was among these prisoners is proved by a pathetic letter written to him at this time by Queen Catherine, encouraging him to be brave and constant, while full of grief for herself at the thought of losing him. To this he replied with courageous words of consolation, and sent to her his rosary, since he believed he had but three days to live. To a very natural and impulsive little letter from one of the queen's ladies which reached him at the same time, and which urged him to try to make his escape, the Franciscan friar replied in gentle reproof: "Elizabeth Hammon, my child, I am very sorry for the great grief of your mistress and yourself on account of the pains I suffer, as if there were no resurrection to glory. . . . If I were willing to break faith, and through fear of torments or love of riches were to give myself to the devil, beyond doubt I could easily escape, but pray think of none of these things."

The call to martyrdom, however, was delayed for some time yet. How or why he was released from prison we know not; it is difficult to believe, after reading the brave words above, that he took the Oath of Supremacy, as his enemies would have us believe, though it is possible that, like so many other monks at that time, he took it under some form of compromise. Four years later we find Forest again acting as confessor at a convent of the Grey Friars, another branch of the Franciscans, in Newgate Street, where Christ's Hospital, the Bluecoat School, afterwards stood. If he had ever wavered, his faith burnt clear again in these days, and his foes, suspecting this, had recourse to the meanest of devices to bring a charge against him. A certain man called Waferer, in the confessional, asked him his opinion as to the king's supremacy, and being answered frankly by him, went out straightway and laid information that he had said that the king was not Supreme Head of the Church.

Brought before the Council, bullied and coaxed alternately, bewildered by countless questions and endless points of controversy, the unfortunate friar seems to have signed some form of recantation of certain doctrines, which was eagerly seized upon by his enemies as an "abjuration." It is not difficult to realize the agony of mind that would be the lot of a sensitive nature, lacking the gift of moral courage, and possibly weakened somewhat by the remembrance of a former successful compromise, before such a thing was possible. Of one thing we may be sure. The physical pains of martyrdom were as nothing compared to the misery of remorse that were certainly his immediately after he had done the deed. All that he could do to atone was nobly done. Says a writer of the time: "The 12th of May being the third Sunday after Easter, the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Latimer, preached at Paul's Cross, at whose sermon should have been present a penitent to have done his penance, called John Forest . . . who should have borne a faggot and with a loud voice have declared certain things."

But "when his abjuration was sent him to read and look upon, he utterly refused it." So Latimer could but read it for him and ask the crowd to pray that "the friar might be converted from his said obstinacy."

On May 22, 1538, this old friar, dressed in his torn habit, was drawn from Newgate to Smithfield on a hurdle, and there, after a lengthy sermon by Latimer, in which he offered Forest "a good living" if he would "turn," he was burnt alive.

"Neither fire nor faggot nor scaffold shall separate me from Thee, O Lord," he cried, and with his last breath asked for mercy, not from man, but from the Lord whom, in confusion of mind, he had gone near to deny. An onlooker declares that "the fire had hardly destroyed the body, when at mid-day was seen a dove, as white as snow, over the head of the sainted dead, and remained there a long time, seen by many people."

The next year, 1539, saw the martyrdom of three abbots of the great Benedictine Order. By this time the work of destruction had gone on so fast that only a few of the larger monasteries survived; and now, under the pretext of creating new bishoprics and endowing them with the confiscated monastic lands, the three great monasteries of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester were ordered to surrender.

Those of us who have visited the ruins of Glastonbury and tried to reconstruct the past, can have but little real idea of the glory of this ancient foundation. It is built on the spot to which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the Holy Grail, the chalice containing the blood of Our Savior; where year by year the thorn tree bears its white blossoms in dead of winter; where Saint Paulinus and Saint Dunstan and King Alfred lived and prayed and worked. The great Abbey Church, the vast library, the sunny cloisters, the "scriptorium," where some of the most beautiful of the ancient missals were produced, the noted school full of youths of noble blood, the kitchens from which the poor were fed day by day—all these formed an immense and most powerful community, whose good deeds were known throughout Christendom, and whose Abbot sat as a peer in the House of Lords, and ruled his vast domain in all wisdom and justice.

Great are the perils of those who stand in high places; and when in 1534 Abbot Richard Whiting was called upon to take the Oath of Supremacy, for the refusal of which More, Fisher, and the Carthusians had been content to die, it was taken by him, his prior, and fifty of his monks. We, who can never know the bitter struggle he underwent and the mental reservations made, can but feel our sorrow at his fall change into pity and respect when we realize the atonement he was to make five years later. In the following year another attempt was made by Cromwell to get hold of the coveted riches of the abbey. Commissioners were sent to find something of which to accuse the monks and so form a pretext for dissolution. But here again he failed. "At Glastonbury," writes one of his evil subordinates to him, "the brethren be kept so strait that they cannot offend." This is only one of many testimonies to their upright and holy lives. "The monks," says a Protestant bishop a little later, "following the example of the ancient fathers, lived apart from the world religiously and in peace, eschewing worldly employments, and wholly given to study and contemplation."

Everything was done by the commissioners sent by Cromwell, men of most evil character, to force the monks "by harsh regulations or cruel privations" to leave the monastery, but in vain. So, in fear and trembling, the Abbot continued to hold sway till the year 1539, when by Act of Parliament all monasteries were granted to the king, both "those that should surrender and those that should come by attainder of treason."

When this was known, three abbots, who had long held secret communication with each other—Richard Whiting; of Glastonbury, Hugh Faringdon of Rending, and John Beche of Colchester—knowing well that the consequence was a cruel death, determined not to surrender the sacred change that had been committed to them. All three had taken the Oath of Supremacy five years before; but time had made clear to them the weakness they had shown and the peril of their position in yielding any point of the Catholic Faith to such a king as Henry.

They now prepared to face the worst. It was not long before Cromwell's minions had found the empty pretext they wanted. At Glastonbury they searched the old Abbot's rooms by night, and found there a "book of arguments against the divorce, which we take to be a great matter, as also divers pardons, copies of bulls, and the counterfeit life of Thomas Becket in print; but we could not find any letter that was material."

On this feeble charge, coupled with the fact that his answers to all questions showed his unswerving faith in the Papal Authority which he had once denied, was Abbot Whiting sent to the Tower and condemned to death.

In his prison he was tortured mentally, if not physically, by the most severe investigation as to where he had hidden the money and plate of the abbey; for of this there seemed strange dearth at Glastonbury, now in the spoilers' hands. He had indeed concealed much of the Church property, sacred vessels, copes, and money within the walls, rightly conceiving it to be in his trust and not to be delivered into lay hands. Most of this was found before his death, and was laid to his charge as a "theft" by judges blinded with avarice and greed. Up to the very end they ceased not to pester him for fresh information, until he was actually brought back to Glastonbury to die.

They jeered at his last request that he might be allowed to enter the abbey, once more to bless his sons before his death, knowing, as they did, that the walls stood bare and roofless to the sky; and binding him to a hurdle, they drew him up the steep side of Tor Hill, and before the eyes of two of his monks, "who also took their deaths very patiently," the old man expiated his sin of weakness by a glorious death.

"Remember how poor Abbot Whiting was used," says a ballad written some hundred years later; and it is remarkable that the memory of this good old man has been kept green in that countryside almost down to the present day.

On that same grey November morning there suffered at his abbey gate at Reading another abbot, Blessed Hugh Faringdon or Cook, declaring his firm belief in the Holy See—"a belief that was but the common faith," said he, "of those who had the best right to declare the true teaching of the English Church." And a few days later Blessed John Beche of Colchester had also won his martyr's crown. He had always been a great admirer of Sir Thomas More and of Bishop John Fisher, and after their deaths he frequently spoke of them, "being in the habit of extolling the piety, meekness, and innocence of the late martyrs to those guests whom he invited to his table."

But there came at length a Judas guest who invited the good Abbot to speak in praise of them and to "marvel what cause of complaint the king could have found in men so virtuous and learned, and the greatest ornaments of Church and State."

Away hurried the traitor to Cromwell, and the condemnation of the Abbot was assured. One can but feel the deepest pity for the aged man, worn out with anxiety and ceaseless questioning, even when we hear that for a brief while he tried to save his life at the expense of his convictions; but his repentance was bitter and complete. At his trial he pleaded guilty, thus proclaiming his contrition for his momentary fall; and went forth to execution at Colchester with a steadfast heart.