in appealing to a general council, or in accepting the mediation of the King of France. But it is by no means unlikely that he relied, throughout, on the resources of his own arbitrary character, and of his almost unlimited power, for the means of trampling down all difficulties which might, from time to time, spring up in his path. He probably saw but little hope of any cordial or permanent union with the court of Rome, and therefore declined to suspend his adverse operations. If, however, the event should turn out to be different from his anticipations, he felt that he had a ponderous prerogative, and a light obsequious legislature; and, with the help of these, he possibly trusted that the kingdom might, at any moment, be brought back to that state of ecclesiastical dependence which he had so long been teaching them to renounce and to forget.

CHAPTER IV.

1533-1535.

Difficulties of Cranmer's situation-Spirit of dissension among the Clergy -The Nun of Kent-Cranmer's account of her-Birth of the Princess Elizabeth-Various statutes against the Pope-Acquiescence of the Clergy-Assent of the Convocation, and subscription of the Chapters and Universities-Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More Cranmer's interference in their behalf-The Ecclesiastical Supremacy conferred upon the King-The Clergy ordered to publish and inculcate the King's Supremacy-Cranmer's letter to the King respecting it-Expectations of a General Council-Cranmer's discussions of this subject-The "King's Primer."

Difficulties

of

WHEN Cranmer was advanced to the primacy of England, and had time to survey the vaCranmer's situa- riety and extent of his responsibilities, the prospect must have been sufficient to appal him, and to show that, so far as his own personal

tion.

ease was concerned, he did well to deprecate the preferment. For several years past, the mind of England had been in a state of incessant commotion. Questions had been freely agitated, the discussion of which was sure to send a feeling of restlessness and impatience throughout the whole mass of the community. A force had been incessantly at work, gradually to loosen the connexion which bound the whole frame of society to the fabric of the Romish church, with a cement which had been hardened by the lapse of ages. Things which, for many a century, had been deemed by multitudes immutable as the laws of nature, were now found to contain within themselves the elements of change. The supremacy of the Roman pontiff, more especially, had, till then, been very generally regarded as a fundamental principle of revealed religion. Yet this was precisely the principle against which the first violence of the spirit now abroad was vehemently directed: and, what was still more astounding, the assault against it was either directed or assisted by men who had pledged themselves to its maintenance by the most solemn sanctions which religion can impose. All this cannot have happened without a perilous convulsion of the public mind. It may be said, without the smallest exaggeration, that no disturbance in the order of the physical world could have produced, in many a heart, much more confusion and dismay than that which was occasioned by this rupture of immemorial prejudices and associations. The fountains of the great deep were breaking up before their eyes, and the summits of ancient institutions seemed in danger of disappearing beneath the deluge.

An Archbishop of Canterbury might well regard with some consternation the elemental war before him. The winds of discord were, even then, beginning to rush from their confinement; and their roar might have appalled the bravest heart. Humanly speaking, Cranmer might soon have been lost in the

tempest, if a more lordly spirit than his own had not controlled its fury. It was fortunate, perhaps, for the cause of this great mental revolution, that his master was one who, according to Wolsey's description of him, would rather lose half his kingdom than miss the accomplishment of his will,-one whom nothing could appal, save the destruction of the pillars that kept the firmament from falling. And yet this very attribute of Henry was, itself, another source of difficulty and danger to those who were doomed to act in the same sphere with him. The increasing distraction of the times was bringing a change over his spirit. Six years of vexatious delay and treacherous chicanery (soon followed up, as we have seen, by an act of insult and defiance) gradually brought out the more formidable qualities of his nature. The frank, joyous, and convivial prince was beginning to degenerate into the stern and inflexible sovereign; and to verify the saying, that he spared no man in his wrath, and no woman in his jealousy or his lust. This was the master whom Cranmer was to serve. This was the power under whose auspices he was to work out the deliverance and restoration of the English church. He was doomed to stand by, while the cradle of our spiritual independence was rocked by the hand of impetuous and capricious despotism.

One of the first measures which Cranmer had found it necessary to adopt was the publication of certain restraints on the licentious abuse of the pulpit. His diocess, from its geographical position, was favourable to the introduction of the reformed opinions from the Continent: and the conflict between the new and the ancient learning was there proportionably violent. The spirit of dissension was sion among the active among his clergy. Their pulpits were often the watch-towers of a fierce controversial warfare. The injuries of the incomparable Catherine, and the elevation of a youthful

Spirit of dissen

clergy.

upstart in her place, were themes far too tempting for the advocates of the papal supremacy to resist : and the violence with which these subjects were publicly discussed by the clergy speedily communicated itself to their still more unlettered and ignorant hearers. The consequence was, that the new queen was becoming the object of such coarse and vulgar_raillery,* that it became expedient to put some restraint upon this most unseemly liberty of prophesying.

The nun of Kent.

The general discontent, however, did not confine itself to invective. It took the shape of treasonable conspiracy and imposture: and the diocess of Cranmer was the scene of the disgraceful exhibition. No incident in English history is better known than the story of Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent. This wretched Pythoness-the Sœur Nativité of her dayt-was a native of Aldrington, in Kent. Her epileptic affections were exalted by her accomplices into mystic trances. She was skilfully trained by them to utter treason in the shape of prophecy and her mission was accredited by a "letter written in heaven," and delivered to her by the hand of Mary Magdalene! Abel, the ecclesiastical agent of Queen Catherine, degraded himself by joining in this vile confederacy; and it is melancholy to find that such men as Warham, Fisher, and, for a time, Sir Thomas More, were dupes of the delusion. For no less than eight or nine years together had this miserable woman and her priestly confederates continued to assail the proceedings and character of the king; till at length she ventured to proclaim that he should die a villain's death, and to fix on the day on which he should cease to reign. It was not till the extensive patronage of the papal clergy had begun to make the fraud formidably dangerous that the original

*Specimens of this may be seen in Ellis's Original Letters, vol. ii. 42, First Series.

&c.

† As she has been very justly termed by Mr. Turner, Henry VIII. p. 584. VOL. I.-G

contrivers of it were sent to expiate their offences at Tyburn.

Cranmer's ac

The activity of Cranmer in assisting to detect this cheat was among the earliest services rendered by him to the cause of good order and religion. His own account of the fraud is still extant in count of her. a letter to Archdeacon Hawkins, dated December 20, 1533: and, in one respect, it is eminently curious, since it serves to show that, like the impostors of the remotest times, the holy maid of Kent was partly indebted for her success to the faculty of ventriloquism. After informing his correspondent of the great miracle wrought upon her eight years before, "by the power of God, and our Lady of Curtup-street,* and of the pilgrimage established in consequence of it," he adds--" When she was brought thither and laid before the image of our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being, in a manner, plucked out and laid upon her cheeks; and so, greatly disordered. Then was there a voice heard speaking in her belly, as it had been in a tun, her lips not greatly moving; she all that while continuing, by the space of three hours or more, in a trance. The which voice, when it told any thing of the joys of heaven, it spake so sweetly and so heavenly, that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof. And, contrary, when it told any thing of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly that it put the hearers in great fear. It spake, also, many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages, and trentals, hearing of masses, and confessions, and many such other things. And after she had lain there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. And so this miracle was finished and solemnly sung, and a book written of all the whole story thereof, and put into print; which, ever since that time, hath been commonly

* Or Court-at-street, in the parish of Aldrington.