doctrines were sometimes carried into practice, and the orthodox clergy had little ceremony in visiting them with the sharpest penalties of the canons. It was about this time that Stokesley, Bishop of London, condemned to imprisonment for life Thomas Patmore, the incumbent of Hadlam in Hertfordshire, for encouraging his curate to marry and permitting him subsequently to officiate; and the unfortunate man actually lay for three years in gaol, until released by the intercession of Cranmer.1

If the reforming polemics were thus bold while Henry was yet orthodox, it may readily be imagined how keenly they watched the progress of his quarrel with the Pope, and how loud became their utterances as he gradually threw off his allegiance to Rome and persecuted all who hesitated to follow in his footsteps. He soon showed, however, that he allowed none to precede him, and that all consciences were to be measured by the royal ell-wand. Thus his proceedings against the Carthusians and Franciscans in 1534 were varied by a proclamation directed against seditious books and priestly marriages. As we have seen, some unions had taken place, and all who had committed the indiscretion were deprived of their functions and reduced to the laity, though the marriages seem to have been recognised as valid. Future transgressions, moreover, were threatened with the royal indignation and further punishment—words of serious import at such a time and under such a monarch.2

self to chastitie to obteyn that which Criste purchesed for the, surely soo art thow an infidele."

The "Revelation of Anticriste" carries the war into the enemy's territory in a fashion somewhat savage : "Keping of virginitie and chastite of religion is a devellishe thinge" (Wilkins III. 728-34).

1 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Book III. Chapter 34.

2 Wilkins III. 778.-Strype, in his "Memorials of Cranmer," Bk. 1. Chap. 18, gives this proclamation as dated November 16, in the 30th year of Henry VIII., which would place it in 1538, and Bishop Wilkins also prints (III. 696) from Harmer's "Specimen of Errors" the same with unimportant variations, as given this 16th day of November, in the 13th year of our reign," which would place it in 1521.

"

In spite of all this, the chief advisers of Henry did not scruple to connive at infractions of the proclamation. Both Cranmer and Cromwell favoured the Reformation: the former was himself secretly married, and even ventured to urge the King to reconsider his views on priestly celibacy;1 while the latter, though, as a layman, without any such personal motive, was disposed to relax the strictness of the rule of celibacy. During the visitation of the monasteries, for instance, the Abbot of Walden had little hesitation in confessing to Ap Rice, the visitor, that he was secretly married, and asked to be secured from molestation. The confidence thus manifested in the friendly disposition of the vicar-general was satisfactorily responded to. Cromwell replied, merely warning him to "use his remedy" without, if possible, causing scandal. A singular petition, addressed to him in 1536 by the secular clergy of the diocese of Bangor, illustrates forcibly both the confidence felt in his intentions and the necessity of the Abbot of Walden's It is impossible, however, at a time when even the Lutherans of Saxony had scarcely ventured on the innovation, that in England priestly marriage could already have become as common as the proclamation shows it to be. The bull of Leo X., thanking Henry for his refutation of Luther, was dated 4 November, 1521, and we may be sure that the King's zeal for the faith would at such a moment have prompted him to much more stringent measures of repression, if he had ventured at that epoch to invade the sacred precincts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction-a thing he would have been by no means likely to do. The date of 1521 is therefore evidently an error.

2

For the same reasons I have been forced to reject a discussion in convocation of the same year (Wilkins III. 697), in which the question of sacerdotal marriage was decided triumphantly in the affirmative. The proceedings are evidently those of December 1547, in the first year of Edward VI.

1 Burnet's Collections I. 319.

2 MS. State Paper Office (Froude, III. 65). Ap Rice's report to Cromwell is sufficiently suggestive as to the interior life of the monastic orders to deserve transcription. "As we were of late at Walden, the abbot there being a man of good learning and right sincere judgment, as I examined him alone, showed me secretly, upon stipulation of silence, but only unto you as our judge, that he had contracted matrimony with a certain woman secretly, having present thereat but one trusty witness; because he, not being able, as he said, to contain, though he could not be suffered by the laws of man, saw he might do it lawfully by the laws of God; and for the avoiding of more inconvenience, which before he was provoked unto, he did thus, having confidence in you that this act should not be anything prejudicial

unto him."

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remedy" in the immorality which prevailed. There had been a visitation in which the petitioners admit that many of them had been found in fault, and as their women had been consequently taken away, they pray the vicargeneral to devise some means by which their consorts may be restored. They do not venture to ask directly for marriage, but decency forbids the supposition that they could openly request Cromwell to authorise a system of concubinage. Nothing can be more humiliating than their confession of the relations existing between themselves, as ministers of Christ, and the flocks entrusted to their spiritual care. After pleading that without women they cannot keep house and exercise hospitality, they add: "We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at alehouses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses." 1

The tendencies thus exhibited by the King's advisers called forth the remonstrances of the conservatives. In June 1536 the Lower House of Convocation presented a memorial inveighing strongly against the progress of heresy, and among the obnoxious opinions condemned was "That it is preached and taught that all things awght to be in comen and that Priests shuld have wiffes," and they added that books containing heretical opinions were printed "cum privilegio," were openly sold among the people, and

1 MS. State Paper Office (Froude, III. 372). It is not to be assumed, however, that the clergy were worse than the laity. During the visitation of the monasteries, Thomas Legh, one of the visitors, says, in writing to Cromwell, 22 August, 1536, concerning the region between Coventry and Chester: "For certain of the knights and gentlemen, and most commonly all, liveth so incontinently, having their concubines openly in their houses, with five or six of their children, and putting from them their wives, that all the country therewith be not a little offended, and taketh evil example of them" (Miscellaneous State Papers, London, 1778, I. 21). It perhaps would not be easy to determine the exact responsibility of the clergy for this immorality of their flocks.

were not condemned by those in authority.1 Possibly it was in consequence of this that in the following November Henry issued a circular letter to his bishops in which he commanded them-" Whereas we be advertised that divers Priests have presumed to marry themselves contrary to the custom of our Church of England, Our Pleasure is, Ye shall make secret enquiry within your Diocess, whether there be any such resiant within the same or not"-and any such offenders who had presumed to continue the performance of their sacred functions were ordered to be reported to him or to be arrested and sent to London." Curiously enough, there is no reference to the subject in the" Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie to stablyshe Christen Quietnes and Unitie amonge us," issued by Henry in this year.3

Notwithstanding the ominous threat in the letter to the bishops, there appears about this period to have been great uncertainty in the public mind respecting the state of the law and the King's intentions. Two letters happen to have been preserved, written within a few days of each other, in June 1537, to Cromwell, which reveal the condition of opinion at the time. One of these complains that the vicar of Mendelsham, in Suffolk, has brought home a wife and children, whom he claims to be lawfully his own, and that it is permitted by the King. Although thys acte by hym done is in thys countre a monstre, and many do growdge at it," yet, not knowing the King's pleasure, no proceedings can be had, and appeal is therefore made for authority to prosecute, lest "hys ensample wnponnyched shall be occasion for other carnall evyll dysposed prestes to do in lyke manner." The other letter is from an unfortunate priest who had recently married, supposing it to be lawful. The "noyse of the peopull," however, had

1 Strype, Eccles. Memorials, Vol. I. Append. p. 176.

2 Burnet's Collect. I. 362.

3 Formularies of Faith, Oxford, 1856.-Wilkins III. 826.

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just informed him that a royal order had commanded the separation of such unions, and he had at once sent his wife to her friends, three-score miles away. He therefore hastens to make his peace, protesting he had sinned through ignorance, though he makes bold to argue that "yf the kyngys grace could have founde yt laufull that prestys mught have byn maryd, they wold have byn to the crowne dubbyll and dubbyll faythefull; furste in love, secondly for fere that the byschoppe of Rome schuld sette yn hys powre unto ther desolacyon." 1

1

It is evident from these letters that there was still a genuine popular antipathy to clerical marriage, and yet that the royal supremacy was so firmly established by Henry's ruthless persecutions that this antipathy was held subject to the pleasure of the court, and could at any moment have been dissipated by proclamation. In fact, the only wonder is that any convictions remained in the minds of those who had seen the objects of their profoundest veneration made the sport of avarice and derision. Stately churches torn to pieces, the stone sold to sacrilegious builders, the lead put up at auction to the highest bidder, the consecrated bells cast into cannon, the sacred vessels melted down, the holy relics snatched from the shrines and treated as old bones and offal, the venerated images burned at Sinithfield-all this could have left little sentiment of respect for worn-out religious observances in those who watched and saw the sacrilege remain unpunished.

Notwithstanding the reforming influences with which he was surrounded, Henry sternly adhered to the position which he had assumed. When, in 1538, the princes of

1 Suppression of Monasteries, pp. 160-1.

2 He made one exception. Nuns professed before the age of 21 were at liberty to marry after the dissolution of their houses, whereat, according to Dr. London, they "be wonderfull gladde . . . and do pray right hartely for the kinges majestie' (Suppression of Monasteries, p. 214).