There seems, however, to be little doubt that the activity of the Romish priesthood in England was fiercely sharpened by the progress of the great religious revolution in Germany. The proceedings against the Lollards, about this time, assumed an aspect of most fearful severity. In 1519, six men and one woman were burned in Coventry, during the passion week,* for teaching their children the Lord's prayer and the ten commandments in English and the year 1521 was calamitously distinguished by the activity with which Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, laboured for the suppression of heretical pravity throughout his diocess; and, more especially, by his persecution of the Lollards of Buckinghamshire.† The same sanguinary course was pursued during the following years, by the vigilant guardians of the Romish orthodoxy and about 1527, Cardinal Wolsey began to raise his almost omnipotent voice, and to call upon the hierarchy for a faithful and unsparing discharge of their duty to the Catholic Church, Of the alacrity with which this call was obeyed, sufficient evidence may be found in the registers even of the comparatively mild and charitable Bishop Tonstal; who at that time occupied the see of London. It appears from those dismal records, that the whole interval between 1527 and 1531 was rendered unhappily memorable by the exertions of that prelate for the suppression of Scriptural Christianity: and it was not till the disgrace and fall of Wolsey, and the marriage of Henry with Anne Boleyn, that the gospellers (as they were called) experienced a suspension or mitigation of their sufferings.

It would be foreign to our present purpose to exhibit in detail these melancholy annals of martyrdom. *Foxe; Burnet, b. i. 31, ed. 1679.

†The account of this persecution may be found in Foxe: from whom it has recently been printed by the Religious Tract Society, Brit. Reformers, p. 210-242.

See Strype, Eccl. Mem. vol i. c. 7, 8; and Append Nos. 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22,

Bilney.

The sufferers were, generally, found in the humbler walks of life. And it is one most hateful feature in the inquisitorial system of that period, that almost all of them were convicted on the extorted testimony of their associates. Nay, the bonds of domestic confidence, and the sacred ties of kindred, were rent asunder by the hand of persecution: and not only were servants compelled to appear as traitors to their masters, but parents and children were constrained to stand forward as the accusers of each other. But though a lengthened narrative of these atrocities is incompatible with our design, one name there is which must not be passed over without distinguished mention. The tale of Bilney's martyrdom has been frequently related; and, on one account more especially, it is full of solemn interest: for it shows how irresistibly the spiritual principle within us will eventually assert its supremacy over flesh and blood, when once it has been touched with the living fires of the sanctuary. Thomas Bilney, it is well known, was a student of the University of Cambridge, where he became a respectable proficient in the civil and canon law. But having, as Foxe expresses it, "gotten a better schooling, even the Holy Spirit of Christ," he forsook "the knowledge of man's laws, and converted his study to those things which tended more to godliness than to gain." In two particulars, indeed, like many other adversaries of the papal despotism, he preserved his orthodoxy unimpeached; for his understanding never broke away from the Romish perversion, relative to the power of the keys, and the presence of Christ's body in the sacrament. But he speedily became conspicuous for his unwearied testimony against the grösser traditional superstitions of the Romish Church: and in 1527 was consigned, by Cardinal Wolsey, to the judicature of Bishop Tonstal. The comparative moderation of that estimable man proved more formidable to Bilney's constancy,

than the darkest terrors of persecution would probably have been; and it won from him, at last, a reluctant abjuration of his obnoxious opinions. But the fire still remained shut up in his bones, and would not suffer him to rest. The pangs of his conscience became so intolerable, that his friends dared not to leave him in solitude either by day or by night. They essayed to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted. And as for the consolatory words of Scripture, with which they sought to assuage his anguish, they were to him "as if a man should run him through the heart with a sword!" At length, however, he suddenly recovered his serenity; and declared to his friends that his face was set to go up unto Jerusalem. The manner of this pilgrimage speedily became apparent. His voice was again lifted up for the truth, which, in a moment of weakness, he had renounced; and the cheerfulness of his last hours soon testified to the world, that the pains of martyrdom are light, in comparison with the agonies of a wounded spirit."

*

But while the ministers of the church were on the quest, throughout the humbler regions of society, certain signs had long been discernible in the high places of this realm, which portended the approach of danger to her supremacy. And here, it is impossible to remark, without pride and satisfaction, that, even in the worst of times, the judges of the land had occasionally manifested but small inclination to deliver the laity, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the Romish priesthood. Their firmness had been more particularly exemplified in two instances, which occurred in the reign of Edward IV.

* It was affirmed by Sir Thomas More, that Bilney recanted a second time at the stake; and Collier is of opinion that Foxe has failed to disprove this assertion. But yet it is scarcely to be credited that, if he had repeated his recantation, Latimer would speak of him so confidently, and so repeatedly, as he does in his sermons, as a martyr to the reformed doc. trines. See Eccl. Biog. vol. ii. p. 40-52.

verted to.

The cases of Key In the first of these cases, one Keyser, who ser and Werner, in the reign of had been excommunicated by Thomas Edward IV. ad- Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the suit of another, ventured openly to affirm (in conformity with the principles of Wiclif) that the censure was not to be feared; for that, in spite of the archbishop's sentence, he was not excommunicated in the judgment of God. Upon this he was committed under the warrant of the primate, as one justly suspected of heresy. The judges, however, on his application, granted him a writ of habeas corpus; and when the prisoner was produced, and with him the warrant for his imprisonment, they declared that the matter contained in that document was not within the meaning of the statute; and having first bailed him, they afterward ordered him to be discharged. The other case was that of a person by the name of Werner, who was imprisoned by the command of the Bishop of London, for having said that he was not bound to pay tithes to his curate. The man, having escaped from his confinement, brought an action for false imprisonment against the bishop's officer. The defendant pleaded the statute of Henry IV. But the judges determined that the plea was bad; for that the words spoken by Werner, although erroneous, were not heretical.* Whether this formidable decision met with any resistance from the clergy is now unknown. But their astonishment and displeasure must, doubtless, have been vehemently excited, by a precedent which, if followed up to its utmost extent, might end in transferring, from the ecclesiastical to the secular tribunals, the office of pronouncing what opinions fell within the description of heresy.

Early in the reign of Henry VIII., another instance occurred, of evil augury to the privileges and immu

*Burnet, b. i. p. 27.

nities of the church. About the year 1516,

1516. The Abbot of

book on the im

a book was published by the Abbot of Winchelcomb's Winchelcomb, the object of which was to munities of the prove, that all clerks, whether of the higher clergy.

of

or the lower orders, are sacred, and consequently exempt from punishment by the secular judicature, even for the most flagitious crime's. This doctrine instantly produced so violent an agitation, that an address was presented to the king by the temporal lords, with the concurrence of the Commons, soliciting him to suppress the audacious insolence of the clergy. In compliance with this request, his majesty brought the matter to a solemn hearing Discussions before all the judges and the members of his doctrine. his council. The supremacy of the law of the land was maintained by Dr. Standish, the chief of the king's spiritual advisers. The doctrines of his own book were hotly vindicated by the abbot himself; and the main authority on which he relied for its defence was the scriptural text, Touch not mine anointed* (Nolite tangere Christos meos). The court was so little satisfied with this application of the words of David, that they urgently moved the bishops to order that the abbot should recant his opinion at St. Paul's Cross. This demand was resisted; and was followed, not only by much intemperate debate, but by some violent proceedings on the part of the Convocation, who issued a monition to Standish to answer to certain articles to be exhibited against him. On this the doctor appealed to Henry for his royal protection: and the result was another meeting of the judges, the council, and a deputation from both houses of parliament, at Blackfriars, to hear the question once more discussed. On this occasion, the clergy contended, that to violate the sacred immunities of their order was no less than a breach of the commandment,

*Ps. cv. 15

1516.