22 Henry A. D. 1506. in his cheek, in token that his whole body should afterwards be in the free and full possession of the fire. VII. The cruel killing of Thomas Chase. The pope and king 3. They who desire further information of the number and names of such as suffered about this time, may repair to the Acts and Monuments of Mr. Fox; only Thomas Chase of Amersham must not be here omitted, being barbarously butchered by bloody hands in the prison of Wooburneh. Who to cover their cruelty, gave it out that he had hanged himself, and in colour thereof, caused his body to be buried by the highways' side, where a stake knocked into the grave is the monument generally erected for felons de se. Fear not those, saith our Saviour, who kill the body, and afterwards have no more that they can do: but these men's malice endeavoured to do more, having killed his body, to murder his memory with slanderous reports, although all in vain. For the prison itself did plead for the innocence of the prisoner herein, being a place so low and little, that he could not stand upright. Besides, the woman that saw his dead body, (a most competent witness in this case,) declared that he was so loaden with manacles and irons, that he could not well move either hand or foot. But we leave the full discussing, and final deciding hereof to Him who makes inquisition for blood, at that day when such things as have been done in secret shall be made manifest. 4. By this time we may boldly say, that all the Henry VII. arrears of money due to the pope, for pardons in the h["In the bishop's prison called Little Ease," says Fox, I. p. 1011.] pardons be year of Jubilee, five years since were fully collected, A.D. 1506. 22 Henry and safely returned to Rome by the officers of his VII. holiness, the lagging money which was last sent share the thither came soon enough to be received there. We wish the sellers more honesty, and the buyers more twixt them. wisdom. Yet we envy Rome this payment the less, because it was the last in this kind she did generally receive out of England. Meantime king Henry the Seventh did enter common with the pope, having part allowed to connive at the resti. Thus whilst pope and prince shared the wool betwixt them, the people were finely fleeced. Indeed king Henry was so thrifty, I durst call him covetous, not to say sordid, had he been a private man, who knowing what ticklish terms he stood upon, loved a reserve of treasure, as being (besides his claims of conquest, match, and descent) at any time a good title ad corroborandum. (And we may the less wonder that this money was so speedily spent by his successor; a great part thereof being gotten by sin, was spent on 66 i [Parker's] Antiq. Brit. [p. 452. But lord Bacon, in his History of the reign of Hen. VII. is of opinion that the king had no part in it. That writer speaks thus; "It was I thought the king shared in "the money. But it appeareth "by a letter which cardinal "Adrian, the king's pensioner, "wrote to the king from Rome "some few years after, that "this was not so. For this "cardinal being to persuade "P. Julius on the king's be"half to expedite the bull of "dispensation for the marriage "between prince Henry and A.D. 1508. sin.) Was it then charity or remorse, giving or 24 Henry VII. restoring, that hereupon king Henry the Seventh founded the rich hospital of the Savoy in the Strand, with the finishing whereof he ended his own life. And it is questionable whether his body lies in more magnificence in that stately and costly tomb and chapel of his own erecting, or whether his memory lives more lastingly in that learned and curious history, which the lord Bacon hath written of his reign? Henry father. 5. Henry the Eighth, his son, succeeded him, ceedeth his one of a beautiful person, and majestic presence, insomuch that his picture in all places is known at the first sight. As for the character of his mind, all the virtues and vices of all his predecessors from the conquest may seem in him fully represented, both to their kind and degree, learning, wisdom, valour, magnificence, cruelty, avarice, fury, and lust; following his pleasures whilst he was young, and making them come to him when he was old. Many memorable alterations in church and state happened in his age, as, God willing, hereafter shall appear. A. D. 1509. He marrieth the relict of his brother Arthur. 6. On the third day of June he was solemnly married to the lady Katharine dowager, formerly wife to his brother prince Arthur, deceased. Two popes took the matter in hand to discuss and decide the lawfulness thereof, Alexander the Sixth, and Pius the Third; but both died before the business was fully effected'. At last comes pope Julius the k [April 22, 1509.] Sanders de schismate Anglicano, I. p. 2. [The first bull for contracting this marriage was obtained Dec. 26, 1503, upon which they were mar ried. But archbishop Warham had so possessed the king against it, that in June 27, 1505, the prince by his father's command made a protestation against it, which he declared 1 Henry Second, and by the omnipotency of his dispensation A. D. 1509. removed all impediments and obstructions against VIII. the laws of God or man hindering or opposing the said marriage. We leave them for the present wedded and bedded together, and twenty years hence shall hear more of this matter; only know that this marriage was founded in covetous considerations, merely to save money, that the kingdom might not be impoverished by restoring her dowry back again into Spain, though hereupon a greater mass of coin was transported out of the land, though not into Spain, into Italym. Thus such who consult with covetousness in matters of conscience, embracing sinister courses to save charges, will find such thrift to prove expensive at the casting up of their audit; however, divine Providence overruling all actions to his own glory, so ordered it, that the breaking off the pope's power, with the banishing of superstition out of England, is at this day the only surviving issue of this marriage. but Abjured Lollards say, wear fagAnd gots. 7. The beginning of this king's reign was barren (as the latter part thereof, some will over-fruitful) with eminent church passages. therefore we will spare when we may, and be brief in the first, that we may spend when we should, in the larger description of his latter years. Cruelty 1 Henry VIII. A. D. 1509. still continued and increased on the poor Lollards (as they call them) after abjuration, forced to wear the fashion of a faggot wrought in thread, or painted on their left sleeves, all the days of their lives; it being death to put on their clothes without that cognizance. And indeed to poor people it was true, put it off, and be burned, keep it on, and be starved; seeing none generally would set them on work that carried that badge about them". A. D. 1511. ster burned. 8. On this account William Sweting and James and Brew- Brewster were re-imprisoned. In vain did Brewster plead that he was commanded to leave off his badge by the controller of the earl of Oxford's house, who was not to control the orders of the bishops herein P. And, as little did Sweting's plea prevail, that the parson of Mary Magdalene's in Colchester caused him to lay his faggot aside. These, like Isaac, first bare their faggots on their backs, which soon after bare them, they both being burned together in Smithfield. The papists report, that they proffered at their death again to abjure their opinions, the truth whereof one day shall appear. Meantime, if true, let the unpartial but judge which were most faulty, these poor men for want of constancy in tendering, or their judges, for want of charity in not accepting their abjuration. A. D. 1514. Decemb. 7. 9. Richard Hunne, a wealthy citizen of London, Richard imprisoned in Lollard's tower for maintaining some of Wickliffe's opinions, had his neck therein secretly Hunne murdered in Lollard's tower. |