The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (13 page)

Amongst the earliest to be arrested, held in the Tower and put on trial were a number of priests and soldiers from the Calais garrison who, like Lambert, were also accused of denying the ‘Real Presence’. Legally, their heresy dated from before the Six Articles became law, so they were spared after making full recantations. They were merely paraded through the London streets as a humiliation, carrying a faggot or bundle of wood – the fuel normally used to burn heretics alive – on their shoulders before beginning various terms of imprisonment.

On 12 April 1540, Cromwell, in the king’s name, told a new session of Parliament of the importance of a ‘firm union’ amongst all of Henry’s subjects. He knew that

there were many incendiaries and much cockle grown up with the wheat. The rashness and licentiousness of some, and the inveterate superstition and stiffness of others in the ancient corruptions, had raised great dissensions, to the sad regret of all good Christians.

Some were called papists, other[s] heretics; which bitterness of spirit seemed the more strange, since now the holy Scriptures, by the king’s great care of his people, were now in all their hands, in a language they understood.

But these were grossly perverted by both sides who studied rather to justify their passions out of them than to direct their belief by them.

Significantly, he added:

The king leans neither to the right nor to the left hand, neither to the one nor the other party, but set[s] the pure and sincere doctrine of the Christian faith only before his eyes.
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Henry was anxious to see ‘decent’ religious ceremonies continued, Cromwell went on, ‘and the true use of them taught, by which all abuses might be cut off and disputes about the exposition of the Scriptures cease’. The king was also ‘resolved to punish severely all transgressors of what sort or side, [who]soever they were’ and was determined, Cromwell added portentously, ‘that Christ, the gospel of Christ and the truth should have the victory’.

In just over fourteen weeks, Cromwell himself was dead, beheaded as a traitor and heretic. Despite his considerable political and administrative skills and his eloquence in laying out the king’s religious policies, Henry’s chief minister fell because many of his noble and episcopal rivals had become intolerant of his influence with the king and jealous of his continued advancement, both in status and wealth. They chose his failure over the disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves as the moment to strike, as Henry nursed his burning resentment at being ‘ill used’ by Cromwell. His alleged heresy was his declaration on 30 March 1539, in the parish of St Peter the Poor in London, that teaching in the reformed religion was ‘good’ and ‘if the king would turn from it, yet I would not turn’. If Henry did reject it ‘and all his people, I would fight in this field in mine own person with my sword in my hand against him and all other’. Then he pulled out his dagger, held it up and vowed:
‘Or else this dagger thrust me to the heart, if I would not die in that quarrel against them all.’
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He was not the only one to perish for heresy. Three notorious evangelical priests – William Jerome,
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Robert Barnes and Thomas Garret
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– had been arrested in 1540. Barnes had returned to London from exile in Antwerp in 1535 at Cromwell’s invitation. He made the great mistake of preaching against Gardiner during Lent 1540 at Paul’s Cross (a covered churchyard pulpit outside the north-east wall of the great London cathedral). Barnes punningly and mockingly referred to the bishop as a ‘gardener setting ill plants in a garden’.
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A vibrant sense of humour was not one of the prickly Bishop of Winchester’s most abundant assets. The preacher was forced to seek Gardiner’s pardon and the bishop ‘being twice desired by him to give some sign that he forgave him, did lift up his finger’. All three were brought before the king soon after and Garret, for his part, signed a document acknowledging that ‘his highness, being assisted by some of his clergy, had so disputed with him that he was convinced of his rashness and oversight and promised to abstain from such indiscretions’. The Tudor propaganda machine was at work again. Barnes also submitted to the king, but was quickly snubbed. Henry walked to the altar within his chamber, devoutly genuflected and told him: ‘Submit not to me. I am a mortal man, but yonder is the Maker of us all – the author of truth.’
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The three accused were required to preach at St Mary’s Church, Spitalfields, in London that Easter, to demonstrate their new support of orthodox doctrine. But this was not enough for Gardiner. Despite his denials, it seems plain that he was behind their immediate imprisonment in the Tower after their interview with Henry on charges of heresy. Once behind bars and only too conscious of their impending fate, they withdrew their recantations.

On 30 July 1540 they were burnt at Smithfield. In a macabre public demonstration of Henry’s even-handiness in his determination to stamp out heresy and treason, they were dragged face down on sheep hurdles through the streets alongside three papists – Richard Featherstone, Thomas Abel
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and Edward Powell – who themselves faced execution by hanging, drawing and beheading for treason because of their denial
of the royal supremacy. Thus, one heretic and one papist were strapped to each hurdle and as they were bumped along the cobbles through the mud, horse droppings and foul sewage, they reportedly argued furiously about which one of them was truly facing a martyr’s death.
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Barnes generously reassured his fellow victim: ‘Cheer up, brother, today we shall be in glory.’
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At the place of execution, standing at the stake above a huge pile of wood faggots, Barnes raised his voice to ask Sir William Laxton and Martin Bowes, the two sheriffs of London, the reason why he was about to die. The wretched sheriffs, shaking their heads, did not know.
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Barnes then repeated the question to the watching crowd and asked them whether ‘they had been led into any errors by his preaching’. Defiantly, he went on: ‘Let them now speak and I will make them answer.’ No one spoke out. Then, said Barnes, he had ‘heard I was condemned to die by act of Parliament, seemingly for heresy, since we are to be burned’. He prayed to God to forgive those responsible and, in particular, the Bishop of Winchester:

If he had sought or procured my death either by word or deed, I pray to God to forgive him, as heartily, as freely, as charitably and as sincerely as Christ forgave them that put Him to death.

In a strange display of loyalty in his last moments of life, Barnes urged the people to pray for the king ‘and after him that godly prince Edward’. He added:

I have been reported a preacher of sedition and disobedience to the king’s majesty. But here, I say to you that you are all bound by the law of God to obey your prince with all humility, not only for fear, but for conscience.
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All three evangelicals prayed for the pardon of their sins and the constancy and patience to endure their sufferings. They embraced, kissed each other and then were tied to their stakes. A horror-struck silence fell on the crowd as their pyres were lit.

Their deaths were not popular in Protestant London. One contemporary commentator wrote:

Most men said it was for preaching against the doctrine of Stephen Gardiner … who chiefly procured this their death. God and he knoweth, but a great pity it was that such learned men should be so cast away without examination, neither knowing which was laid to their charge, nor never called to answer.
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The burnings and executions continued, including three in Salisbury and two in Lincoln on the same day. In January 1541, Henry issued instructions to Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, and Sir Richard Gresham, the Lord Mayor, to root out once and for all those in the capital who rejected the ‘Real Presence’ during communion. One case stands out from many: that of the orphan Richard Mekins, ‘a boy not above fifteen years of age and both illiterate and very ignorant’ who denied the corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament and, additionally, praised Robert Barnes for his beliefs. When he appeared on trial for his life at the Guildhall, two witnesses reported his words, but the jury foreman said the case had not been proved.

Upon which Bonner cursed and was in a great rage and caused them to go aside again.

So they being overawed, returned and found the indictment [true].

But when he was brought to the stake, he was taught to speak much good of Bonner and to condemn all heretics and Barnes in particular.
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The chronicler Edward Hall said contemptuously that

the poor boy would for the safeguard of his life have gladly said that the Twelve Apostles taught it him, for he had not cared of whom he had named it, such was his childish innocence and fear.
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Mekins was executed anyway at Smithfield on 30 July.

Another youth called John Collins, who lived in Southwark, within
Gardiner’s diocese of Winchester, had objected to what he saw as idolatrous worship of a wooden statue of Christ within a chapel used by Spanish sailors arriving in the port of London to offer up prayers of thanks for their safe passage. He shot an arrow at the statue, which lodged in one of its feet, and loudly called on the crucifix to defend itself and punish him for his sacrilege.
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Collins had been kept in prison for two or three years and had been confined with Lambert. He was quite possibly insane, but Henry’s Act, passed for use against Lady Jane Rochford, which permitted the execution of those found guilty of heresy or treason even if they were deemed insane, was conveniently used against Collins. He, too, was burnt to death.
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Again, he was popularly thought to have been a victim of Gardiner.

Despite his continued pleas for religious unity in his realm, by 1540 Henry’s Privy Council and court were riven by what had become two opposing factions over the proper future direction of the Church of England. Those supporting the more traditional doctrines were led by Gardiner and Norfolk and included the king’s long-time friends Southampton and Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the King’s Horse, as well as Sir William Paulet, Lord St John; Sir John Baker, Attorney-General; Sir Richard Rich (who had perjured himself so shamefully at the trial of Sir Thomas More in 1535 and was a prime informant against Cromwell)
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and Wriothesley. Opposing them were the evangelicals: Cranmer and Sir Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford and Suffolk, Henry’s old jousting partner. In view of the constant plots and counterplots, it is not surprising that Henry’s religious policies during this period of his reign appear sometimes incongruous as he tried to maintain a precarious balance by cunningly playing off one faction against the other.

Two weeks after Henry’s marriage to Katherine Parr, there was another case against Sacramentarians, this time rather closer to home – at the court in Windsor. John Marbeck, organist of the Chapel Royal, St George’s, and local men Anthony Pearson – a priest from Winkfield, Berkshire, Henry Filmer – a tailor, Robert Testwood – ‘a singing man’, and another called Bennet had been charged with heresy and held in
the Marshalsea Prison, Southwark. They were brought to trial on Thursday 26 July 1543 at Windsor before the former Benedictine monk John Capon, now Bishop of Salisbury, William Franklin, Dean of Windsor, and a jury drawn from the Chapel Royal’s own tenants. Testwood was so ill that he arrived in court only with the aid of crutches; Bennet was sick with the plague and was left in the Marshalsea,
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the sickness incongruously saving his life. Therefore only four appeared in the dock and all were found guilty after a controversial trial in which the case against Testwood included the vacuous charge that he avoided looking at the Host when it was raised during Mass, instead of acknowledging it devoutly. Marbeck was, however, reprieved by royal pardon because Gardiner apparently enjoyed his music
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and pleaded with Henry for his life.

No one was entirely safe from the devious intrigues at court. Almost certainly encouraged by Gardiner and Sir John Baker, some of the seven conservative canons of Canterbury Cathedral accused Cranmer himself of encouraging heretical sermons within the diocese of Canterbury in 1543. Their complaints and accusations were dispatched to the king. As Henry was rowed upriver on his royal barge one evening, he saw Cranmer standing outside the gates of his palace at Lambeth. The vessel pulled into the bank and the archbishop, coming aboard, was stunned by the king’s light-hearted greeting: ‘Ah, my chaplain! I have news for you. I know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent.’ Henry then pulled the paper listing the accusations against Cranmer from his sleeve and showed it to him.
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The king liked Cranmer, perhaps was even fond of him, for his easy-going honesty, otherworldliness, compassion and total lack of personal ambition. With a neat sleight of hand, Henry appointed him to head the commission of inquiry into the accusations against himself. After lengthy deliberations, a general pardon was issued to all concerned.

The Bishop of Winchester also moved against a number of Cromwell’s former protégés who remained in court and shared his reformist views on religion. At Easter 1543, Gardiner seized his opportunity to ‘bend his bow against the head deer’, as he described it, and
arrested the diplomat Sir Philip Hoby, shortly to join Katherine Parr’s household as receiver of foreign receipts, for sheltering a Sacramentarian. Hoby’s companions Sir Thomas Carwarden, Edmund Harman, Thomas Sternhold (a Groom of the Robes) and Thomas Weldon were also caught up in Gardiner’s sweep for heretics but all were later pardoned, presumably because of their closeness to the royal family.
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Gardiner himself had a narrow escape in January 1544 when his cousin and secretary Germain was executed for upholding the papal supremacy. Suffolk believed that the miscreant had been protected from justice by his powerful patron and urged Henry to bring Gardiner to trial as a traitor. But the bishop’s allies on the Privy Council warned him and he hastened to the king’s side to head off any attempt to arrest him. Gardiner humbled himself, was forgiven and kept both his head and his position at court.