THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FRANCISCAN MARTYRS ENGLAND. BY MRS. HOPE, iUTHOR OF ' TEE EA3LY MARTYRS,' *THE APOSTLES OF ECEOPE, ' LlfE OF S. PHILIP BTERI,' ETC. LONDON: BURNS AND OATES. 1878. [All rights reserved.] LOXDOX : ROBSON AND SOXS, PRINTERS, PAXCRAS ROAD, N. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PACK S. FBANCIS OF ASSIST I State of Europe in the twelfth century,! S. Francis of Assisi, 3 Spirit of the Franciscan Order, 5. CHAPTEK II. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIABS IK ENGLAND 1 Arrival in England, 8 At Canterbury, 9 In Lon- don, 10 At Oxford, 11 At Northampton, Cambridge, &c. 13. CHAPTER III. WORK IN ENGLAND 14 General character of work, 14 Adam de Marisco, 14 In towns, 16 Among the poor, 17 Among lepers, 18 Preaching, 19 Confessors, 20 Poverty, 20 Joy and cheerfulness, 23. CHAPTER IV. PROGRESS 24 Rapid spread of the Order, 24 Poor Clares. 25 Royal benefactors, 25 Schools, 27 Roger Bacon, 28 Duns Scotus, 28 Strict Obser- vance, 30. 1490428 IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. PAGE THE MARTYR'S CROWN 31 The three crowns, 31 Religion iu England in the beginning of the sixteenth century, 32 First signs of the coming storm, 35 Peto, 36 El- stow, 37 Forest, 39 Maid of Kent, 40 Open- ing of the persecution, 44. CHAPTER VI. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII 45 Suppression of the Observants, 45 Forest's Corre- spondence, 47 Suppression of lesser Monas- teries, 55 Martyrdom of the Observants, 56 Brockbey, 58 Cort, 58 Belchiam, 59 Waire, 61 Forest, 61 Abel, 63 Suppression of the whole Franciscan Order, 63 Conscience, 66 Fulfilment of Prophecies, 67. CHAPTER VII. RESTORATION OF THE ORDER G9 Heresy and Cruelty during the reign of Edward VI., 69 Accession of Mary, 71 Good Govern- ment, 71 Reluctance to shed blood. 72 Re- storation of the Observants, 73 Persecution, 75 Who was responsible for it, 76 Pole and Peto, 79. CHAPTER VIII. PERSECUTION UNDER ELIZABETH . . . .80 Banishment of the Observants, 80 Bourchier, 80 Fox, 80 Richel, 81 Gray, 81 Position of Catholics, 83 John, the Old Beggar, 86 Nelson, 87 Richard, 87 Collier, 87 Stanny, 87 State of the Franciscan Province. 87 Buckley, 89. CHAPTER IX. FOUNDATION OF THE SECOND PROVINCE ... 98 Persecution of Catholics under James I., 98 Edmund Genings, 100 John Genings. 103 Foundation of the Second Province, 105 Nuns, 108. CONTENTS. T CHAPTER X. PAGE PERSECUTION UNDER CHARLES 1 110 Formal establishment of the Second Province, 111 Progress inEngland, 113 Francis a Sta. Clara, 114 Devotion to our Blessed Lady, 116 Revival of Persecution, 11G Life and martyrdom of William Ward, 117. CHAPTER XI. LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF F. COLMAN . . . 125 CHAPTER XII. LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF F. BULLAKER ... 130 CHAPTER XIII. LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF F. HEATH . . .155 CHAPTER XIV. LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF F. BELL . . . .186 CHAPTER XV. LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF F. WOODCOCKE . . 216 Other Martyrs, 228 Novices, 229. CHAPTER XVI. PERSECUTION UNDER CHARLES II 231 Interval of peace, 231 New character of the per- secution, 232 Popish Plot, 232 F. Wall, 233 F. Levison, 240 F. Mahony, 240 F. Parry, 241 F. Nappier, 242. fl CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVII. PAGE CONCLUSION .... . 243 Persecution during the Revolution of 1C88, 243 F. Fortescue, 244 F. Atkinson, 244 F. Holmes, 245 Position of the Province. 24G Its suppression, 248 F. O'Farrell, 248 Founda- tion of the Third Province, 249. PREFACE. THE revival of wide-spread interest in the English martyrs and confessors of the six- teenth and following centuries, and the steps recently taken for their beatification, are a sufficient apology for the publication of what- ever may throw fresh light on the subject. A special call for the present volume, however, exists. The Records of the English Jesuit Province and the Troubles of our Catholic Fore- fathers have done justice to the members of the Society. The Douay Diaries and F. Knox's interesting preface to them have set forth the glories of the secular clergy and the English colleges on the Continent. Challoner's Memoirs have taken a wider range, including clergy and laity, regulars and seculars. But all these works are limited to the second perse- cution, which was opened by Queen Elizabeth. Up to the present time the heroic virtues of those who bore the first burst of the storm and were literally swept away by its fury, Benedic- 11 PREFACE. tines, Franciscans, and the other old Orders, have been left unnoticed, the bare mention of the names of a few of them in F. Law's Calendar of the English Martyrs, and scarcely more in Sanders' Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, alone bearing witness to their very existence. Nor has even an attempt been made to show how at a later period the fiery heat of perse- cution awoke a new life in these old Orders, and how the supernatural power of their re- spective rules carried them on fearless through the darkest times up to the long-delayed hour of victory and peace. To fill this gap as regards the Franciscans is the motive and object of the present volume. The reason for thus treating them as a separate group is simple and obvious. Each Order has its distinctive spirit, and historic truth and de- votion alike are best served by drawing out the characteristics of each. This is especially true with respect to the Franciscans. Contempt for the world and human respect, insatiable thirst for poverty, humiliations, and suffering, and passionate longing for union with Jesus cruci- fied, which naturally led to indomitable courage, childlike simplicity and joyousness, and tender personal love of our Lord, "were the heritage bequeathed to them by their Seraphic Father. This peculiar Franciscan spirit may be traced throughout their history, and gives a certain PREFACE. Ill unity of character to their early prosperity, their fearless defiance of Henry VIII., and all their martyrdoms. A further motive for the publication of this volume is afforded by the nature of the original materials from which almost exclusively it is drawn. These are, for the earlier period of the history, Thomas of Eccleston, the Register of the London Friary and other Franciscan records published by Dr. Brewer, Wadding's Annals of the Order, and F. Parkinson's Col- lectanea Anglo-Minoritica, and for the post- Reformation time, Wadding and Parkinson, who carry on the history to the reign of Eliz- abeth, Danielle's translation of F. Bourchier's Historia Ecclesiastic^ F. Angelus Mason's Cer- tamen Seraphicum, and De Marsys' Histoire de la Persecution pr^sente des Catholiques en Angle- terre* As all these books are more or less rare, and all except Danielle, Parkinson, and De Marsys are in Latin, they are beyond the reach of the ordinary English reader. The same applies to Certamen Seraphicum, or the Seraphic Conflict, which consists of the bio- graphies of five martyr-priests in the reign of * Sieur de Marsys was a gentleman attached to the French Embassy in London in the time of Charles I. His narrative of the martyrdoms of which he was an eye- witness is very graphic. The present writer is indebted to F. Law's kindness for the use of a transcript of this scarce book, a full account of which will be found in F. Law's preface to Challoner's Memoirs, ed. Jack, 1878. IV PREFACE. Charles I., written by their contemporary, F. Angelus Mason, who was intimately con- nected with four of them. It is an exquisitely beautiful work,* but unfortunately very rare, and therefore little known. De Marsys' book also is very scarce. It was noticed for the first time by Mr. Simpson in the Rambler ; but it has hitherto been unknown to, or at least un- used by, other English writers on the subject. Frequent reference has also been made to State papers and to Protestant historians of authority. The brief sketch of Mary Tudor's reign is taken exclusively from Protestant writers, some of whom, such as Burnet, Fuller, and Fox, are notorious for their bigotry and bitter animosity to the Church. Finally, we would offer our thanks for valuable assistance to FF. Law and Garnett of the London Oratory, F. Dolan, O.S.B., F. Eccles, O.S.F., the Abbess of the Francis- can Convent at Taunton, the Abbess of St. Clare's Abbey, Darlington, and the Abbess of the Poor Clares-Colletines at Baddesley. * The full title of this book may be thus translated : ' The Seraphic Conflict of the English Province for the Holy Church of God. In -which is briefly set forth how the English Friars Minor have, with pen and blood, done battle for the Faith of Christ and His Holy Church. Douai, 1649.' FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. S. FRANCIS OF ASSIST. THE thirteenth century was a great era in Christian history. It was the transition period between the Middle Ages and modern times. At its opening the Christian faith ruled Europe. In Christ's name every law was promulgated. On His authority all govern- ment was based. His Vicar enjoyed not only his inalienable position as the spiritual law-giver of Christendom, but also the political power which the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire had forced upon him. At its close, national and civil rights were set up in defiance of Christ's authority. His Vicar was subjected to personal violence, and natural motives of action began to take the place of supernatural principles. Though at the beginning of the century the old order of things was still unmoved, yet it was evi- dent that some great change was close at hand. While commerce, wealth, and general civilisation had greatly advanced, the ideas which had hitherto held society together were losing their hold. The union of the innumerable races and tribes of Christian Europe into one family, under Christ as their common Father and the Pope as His Vicar, was breaking up 2 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. through the growth of its members into separate nations with their mutual rivalries and contending rights. The feudal system, which had defined the respective duties of superiors and inferiors, was para- lysed by the ambitious pretensions of both kings and nobles to increase their power; while the middle classes, enriched by commerce and massed together in towns, strove to assert their independence of both and were always ready to help each against the other. Thus oppression, strife, and violence reigned on every side. Moreover, intercourse with the East through the Crusades and with the Arabs in Spain, while it had given a great impulse to thought and learning, had also brought into Christian Europe Oriental luxury and vices, the practice of magic, Manichreism, and a host of heretical and pagan opinions, which were rapidly spreading among all classes. At the same time the natural increase of the Church's wealth, and the sacrilegious intrusion of unworthy men into her bishoprics and abbeys, had combined with the dis- orders of the times to ruin discipline and produce great laxity of clerical morals, so that the spiritual influence of the clergy was weakened, or even lost, at the very time when it was most imperatively called for. But the indwelling Divine life which animates the Church, not only sustains her in her ceaseless warfare against enemies superior to her in natural strength, but is within her an inexhaustible source of vital energy, which, at the very moments when her outer life seems to languish, bursts forth with irresis- tible force, and developing itself in new and more perfect forms, reveals her Divine origin and imperish- able nature. Widespread as was the demoralisation of the clergy, the numerous severe decrees issued at this time by Bishops and Councils against gross immo- S. FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 6 rality, simony, and worldliness, prove that this Divine life still dwelt in the rulers of the Church. Even the complaints of clerical depravity which are found in writers of this period show that it still stirred many souls to aim at the highest perfection, and conse- quently to practise it to some extent. It also kept alive the religious spirit, giving birth to new and stricter Orders, such as the Cistercians, Carthusians, Premonstratensians, and Carmelites, to take the place of relaxed communities. Nay, so earnest was this religious spirit that it gave an opportunity to the heretics to lead pious souls astray by contrasting their own rigorism with the degeneracy of Catholics. The great practical question then was, how this living energy within the Church could be turned to account to correct the prevailing disorders. Pope Innocent III., who then sat in S. Peter's chair, courageously upheld Christian principles in his decisions on the numerous appeals which came to him from almost every country in Europe. The great Council of Lateran, over which he presided, promul- gated canons which are a standing monument of Christian faith and morals. But still it was uni- versally felt that all this did not suffice to meet fully the present emergency, and that some new and more powerful instrument than any which the Church yet possessed was wanted to leaven the great masses of society with the Christian spirit, to bend rebellious wills, and to kindle the dying sparks of Divine faith and love in hard and worldly hearts. Such an instrument, supernaturally formed to meet this great crisis in the Chiirch's life, was found in the Seraphic S. Francis of Assisi. In him Pope Innocent recog- nised the poor despicable man whom he had seen in vision propping up the Church of the Lateran as it was tottering to its ruin, and also the palm springing up at his feet, which became a tree of wondrous size. FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. The way in which S. Francis accomplished his task was so novel, yet so simple and so perfectly suited to the position of the Church, as to leave no doubt of his Divine call. The spirit of S. Francis and his Order sprang out of the leading events of his conversion and life. Gifted with a generous and aspiring nature and filled with the chivalrous feelings of his time, he could not be content with the mere acquisition of wealth, to which, as the son of a merchant of Assisi, he was born, but panted with youthful ardour for a more noble career. One night he had a vision in which he saw a magnificent palace full of warlike arms all marked -with the cross ; and on asking to whom they belonged, he was told that they were destined for him and his soldiers. Greatly elated at the promise of military renown which he understood to be made him, he set out to join the army of Walter, Comte de Brienne, in Apulia, saying triumphantly to his friends, ' I am sure to be a prince.' But the next night at Spoleto our Lord said to him, ' Francis, who can do most for thee the Lord or the servant, the rich or the poor ?' ' The Lord and the rich,' answered Francis. ' Why, then, dost thou leave the Lord for the servant, the infinitely rich God for man who is only poverty ?' ' O Lord,' exclaimed Francis, ' what wilt Thou that I do T Jesus answered, ' Eeturn home. The vision with which thou hast been favoured foretells only what is spiritual. It is from God, and not from man, that its accomplishment will be brought about.' Francis at once obeyed, and returning to Assisi, gave himself up to prayer. One day, as he prayed, Jesus appeared to him, as if attached to the cross. At this sight his soul was so transfixed and melted, and the image of his cruci- fied Saviour was so intimately imprinted on his heart, that whenever from this time forth he thought of S. FIUXCIS OF ASSIST. 5 Jesus crucified, he could not restrain his sobs and tears. From this loving compassion there sprang up within him humility, the love of poverty, and ardent charity for the poor, especially for lepers, in whom he saw the image of Him who had made Himself ' as it were a leper,' 1 for love of him. After two years the words of the Gospel, ' Po not possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff,' 2 fully revealed to him his vocation. He threw away his purse, took off his shoes, and exchanged his coat for a coarse and rough tunic of undyed wool, and his girdle for a cord. Henceforth his life was simply an imitation of Christ crucified, exteriorly by poverty, mortification, and preaching ; and interiorly by con- templation, through which, ' beholding the glory of the Lord with open face,' he was ' transformed into the same image from glory to glory.' 3 He was now always either weeping for the Passion of Jesus, or filled with ecstatic joy at the outward insults and interior consolations which he received, or labouring in works of charity for the sick and poor, and espe- cially for sinners, for whom Christ had died and for whom he longed to shed his own blood. At length, two years before his death our Lord appeared to him in the form of a seraph on the cross, rapt him in seraphic joy while the sword of compassion pierced his soul, and teaching him that it was not by morti- fication of the flesh, but by the fire of love that he was to be wholly transformed into the perfect like- ness of Christ, imprinted His wounds on his hands, his feet, and his side, as on liquid wax, and sealed him bodily with the image of Jesus crucified. As disciples flocked to him, he trained them on the same principles in which he himself had been supernaturally trained. He told them our Lord's 1 Istiias liii. 4. * S. Matt. x. 9, 10. * 2 Cor. iii. 18. b FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. words to himself, ' Francis, I desire that thou shouldst be in the world a fool, preaching by thine actions and thy discourses the folly of the Cross. Do thou and thine follow Me only, and not any other manner of life.' 1 The crucifix was their only book, and the ob- servance of the Gospel, in obedience, in poverty, and in chastity, was their rule. In the practice of evange- lical poverty they acquired humility to accept insults and injuries with joy, obedience like that of a dead body which does not notice what is done with it, 2 mortification of self-love, self-will, and self-opinion ; and thus stripped both of worldly possessions and of personal property in their talents and acquirements, they could place themselves unreservedly in our Lord's hands and offer themselves to the embraces of Jesus crucified. 3 The apparent austerity of this mode of life was merged in its spirit, which was essentially gentle and sweet. For as the lover deems nothing hard or painful which removes the barrier between him and his beloved as the seven years that Jacob served for Rachel ' seemed to him but a few days, be- cause of the greatness of his love,' 4 so the son of S. Francis was filled with joy and consolation by the hunger, thirst, nakedness, insults, and sufferings which broke down the barrier of his sinful nature and trans- formed him into the image of Jesus crucified. Though the Franciscan Order was founded at the close of the Middle Ages, three of its features show that its character was modern. Its motive principle was not faith, which was that of the Middle Ages, but love, which marks the modern spirit. The promise of obedience to the Pope made by S. Francis and suc- ceeding Ministers- General was unnecessary at a time 1 Life of S. Francis, by Chalippe, book iii. p. 270, Ora- torian Series. 2 S. Bonaventure, Legend of S. Francis, chap. vi. 3 Ibid. chap. vii. 4 Gen. xxix. 20. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IN ENGLAND 7 when Christ's Vicar was universally obeyed as His representative ; and thus it evidently looked forward to a period of schism when this obedience would be the test of Catholic unity. Finally, the popular or- ganisation of the Order anticipated the increasing influence of the popular element in national life, which dates from the thirteenth century and continues to the present day. CHAPTER II. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IN ENGLAND. ON the 16th of October 1209, S. Francis and his sons, twelve in number, made their vows to Pope Innocent III. Within ten years, on Whit- Sunday, May 2Gth, 1219, more than five thousand brethren assembled at Assisi to hold the second Chapter of the Order, and during its course S. Francis admitted above five hundred novices. There was already in the Order an Englishman, Br. William, who was greatly revered for his sanctity, and on account of his remarkable gift of miracles, was often called Thaumaturgus. He prevailed on S. Francis to found in this Chapter an English Province ; and Br. Agnellus of Pisa, a deacon, was appointed to be its first Minister-Provincial. Br. Agnellus had already, by order of the first Chapter, taken part in the foundation of the French Province and had held the offices of Gustos 1 of France, and Guardian of the convent in Paris, which he had built. On his pre- sent journey through France he made a short stay with his brethren for their mutual consolation, and in order to collect helpers for his new mission. He 1 The Custos was next in rank to the Provincial, and had charge of all the convents in a custody or district. B FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. chose three clerks, all Englishmen, and five lay- brothers who were to go with him, besides several others who were to follow before long. The clerks whom he took with him were Richard of Ingeworth, already a priest and preacher, Henry of Devon, who was in minor orders, and William of Essebey, a novice, but already remarkable for his great virtues. When the Provincial of France said to him, ' Do you wish to go to England V he answered, ' I know not whether I wish or not.' The Provincial expressing surprise at the strange answer, he added, ' I know not what I will, because my will is not my own, but my Superior's, and he can determine it as he pleaseth.' The lay-brothers were Henry of Cervise, a Lombard, and afterwards the first Guardian of the convent in London, Laurence of Beauvais, William of Florence, Meliorates, and James Ultramontanus, still a novice. The monks of Fescamp charitably conveyed the missionary band to Dover, where they landed on the 3d of May 1220. 1 The first night that they spent in England they begged for hospitality at a gentle- man's house. Their strange dress and miserable ap- pearance excited suspicion, and when they retired to rest their host locked them up in a strong and well- barricaded room. But being very tired they slept 1 F. Parkinson, the author of the Collectanea Anglo- Minoritica. prefers this date, as agreeing with the Annals of the Order by Wadding, and with Matthew Paris, who say?, under the year 1243, ' the Friars began to build their first house in England scarce four-and-twenty years ago.' But Thomas of Eccleston and the register of the house in London, probably on his authority, give the date Septem- ber 8, 1224, apparently because Eccleston says that they came four years after Henry III.'s coronation, without noticing that Henry was twice crowned namely, in 1216 and 1220. The earlier date is confirmed by the fact that Br. Laurence of Beauvais spent some years in England before he returned to S. Francis, at whose death in 1226 he was present. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IX ENGLAND. U soundly, and did not find out till day-break, when they were preparing to go away, that they were prisoners. Later in the day they were brought forth before a great crowd of people, and were asked who they were, and why they had come to England. Their explanation of their pious motive not being believed, they were accused of being spies and rob- bers. Whereupon one of the friars, handing his cord to his accusers, said merrily, ' If you take us for rob- bers, here is a halter ready to hang us with.' The humorous reply turned the tide of .popular feeling; and all present declaring that those who were so ready to die could have no evil intentions, they were allowed to go on their way in peace. They now went to Canterbury, where they were hospitably received by the Benedictines of the Holy Trinity. After two days they removed to the Poor Priests' Hospital, to which was attached a school, a small room of which was assigned to their use. Here it was their custom to spend the day in prayer till evening, when the scholars joined them. Then they would make a fire, round which they would all sit ; and heating in a jar, with a plate over it, the stale beer which they had begged, they would pass it round, and each as he drank would be required to say something for general edification. Many an innocent joke would mingle with pious tales and quaint maxims, and the evening would pass in simple and holy merriment. The friars soon became very popular, and those who were admitted to their society deemed themselves fortunate. Meanwhile Br. Agnellus had presented his com- mendatory letters from the Pope to the king, Henry III., who received him graciously and gave him leave to settle at Canterbury. Henry was even said to have founded the house there, which was the first 10 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. they had in England; 1 but their principal benefac- tors were Alexander, a priest and provost of the Poor Priests' Hospital, to which the land on which it stood belonged, Cardinal Stephen Langton, his brother Si- mon, Archdeacon of Canterbury, and Lord Sandwich. Here they lived, constantly increasing in numbers and public estimation, till 1270, when Sir John Diggs, Alderman of Canterbury, removed them to the island called Binnewith, between the two channels of the Stour, which he had bought for their use, and on which he built them a large convent. This continued till the sixteenth century to be one of the principal houses of the Order. After the Ember-days in September Br. Agnellns was ordained priest, and Henry of Devon subdeacon, by Cardinal Langton. On this occasion the Arch- deacon said, ' Draw near, ye Brothers of the Order of the Apostles ;' and for many years they were known in England by this honourable name. They were also called Grey Friars, from the colour of their habit, and Friars Minor or Minorites, because, from humility, they professed to be less than all other Orders or per- sons. After the ordination Br. Agnellus sent Richard of Ingeworth, Henry of Devon, Henry of Cervisc, and Melioratus to London, bidding the two former go on to Oxford as soon as the others should have found a home. In London they stayed for a fort- night with the Dominicans, who had a house in Holborn. At the end of this time John Travers, Sheriff of the city, and several other pious citizens, hired for them a small house in Cornhill where they remained till the next summer. So great were the devotion and charity excited by their penitential life, that Ewin or Irwin, a rich mercer and citizen who afterwards entered the Order, gave a piece of land 1 Collect. Angl. -Minor, part ii. p. 8. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IX ENGLAND. 11 in the Shambles of S. Nicholas, near Newgate, and with the help of the principal citizens built a large convent and church for their use. Br. Agnellus laid the foundations when he came to London on his way to Oxford a little before Christmas 1220 ; and it took more than five years to complete the buildings. Richard of Ingeworth and Henry of Devon set out for Oxford just before the feast of All Saints. Having lost their way, they were benighted near a grange belonging to the Benedictines, about six miles from Abingdon. Knocking gently at the door they humbly begged for a night's shelter ; and the monks, supposing from their patched habits that they were wandering mountebanks, gladly invited them in. But when the friars explained that they had devoted them- selves to an apostolic life, the monks were so angry at losing their expected amusement, that they kicked and beat them, and turned them out of doors. A young monk, however, fearing that they would perish in the bitter cold night, sought them after the Prior and the brethren had gone to bed, put them into the hay-loft, and brought them food. During the night the young monk dreamt that he and his brethren stood at Christ's judgment-seat, and that a poor man in a habit like that of his guests, called on our Lord to avenge the cruelty with which his sons had been treated on the preceding night. Our Lord asked the Prior to what Order he belonged. He answered, to that of S. Benedict. But S. Benedict disowned him, because he had ordered that his houses should always be open to all sorts of guests. Whereupon the Prior and all the elder monks were hanged on an elm-tree that stood by. Our Lord then asked the young monk to what Order he belonged. He, fearing a like punish- ment, answered that he was of the Order of S. Fran- cis. Then that poor man, who was no other than S. Francis, ran up to him, exclaiming, 'He is mine, Lord; 12 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. he is mine !' and pressed him so closely to his heart that the young monk awoke. Terrified at this awful dream, he rushed half dressed to the Pricr, and found him and the other monks struggling with death as if they were being hanged. They all ran to the loft to bring the friars into the guest-rooms, but found that, fearing farther ill-treatment, they had gone away at break of dawn. The young monk was so impressed by his dream that he soon after entered the Order at Oxford. Richard of Ingeworth and Henry of Devon ar- rived early in the morning at Oxford, where they stayed for a week with the Dominicans. Then Robert le Mercer, a citizen of Oxford, lent them a house. But many bachelors of arts and nobles having en- tered the Order, they soon after hired a larger house in the parish of S. Ebb's, between the church and the Watergate, from Richard le Muliner, or Miller, a very rich citizen, who before the lapse of a year made it over to the corporation of the city for their use. Br. Agnellus arrived in Oxford about Christmas, and appointed William of Essebey, who now made his profession, the first Guardian of Oxford. He was careful also to have a good school attached to the convent ; and he asked Robert Grosseteste, after- wards Bishop of Lincoln, who was then considered the very glory of the university, to undertake the charitable office of teaching the friars. Grosseteste gladly consented, and taught in the friars' school for several years, till Br. Adam de Marisco, also a cele- brated doctor of Oxford, who had entered the Order, returned from his travels and took his place. Both the town and the university now rang with the praises of the friars, and great crowds of people flocked to their house, some from curiosity, and others from a sincere desire to know more of these men whose apostolic way of life had touched their hearts. ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IX ENGLAND. 13 The school was thronged with scholars, and many persons of high birth and great learning and talents entered the Order. All classes vied with each other in rendering them service. Their house and land being too small for their increasing numbers, Mr. Thomas Walonges, Dr. Eichard de Mepham, and Agnes, a widow, each made over for their use a small piece of ground ; and many other wealthy persons ex- erted themselves to build them a large house. But the principal founder was the king, Henry III., Avho held his court at Oxford. Being anxious to have the convent as near him as possible, he had a gate made in the wall of the city, so as to give him a free com- munication with their house. Not only did he bear the principal expense of building it, but he put his own hand to the work ; and many prelates and nobles, animated by his example and still more by that of the friars, laid aside all pride and thoughts of worldly greatness, and served the masons with stones and mortar. On the arrival of Br. Agnellus in Oxford, Eichard of Ingeworth and Henry of Devon had gone on to Northampton, where, being kindly received, they built a house in the parish of S. Giles's. They then went on to Cambridge, where the citizens assigned to their use an old synagogue adjoining the gaol to which there was a common entrance. But being disturbed in their devotions by this noisy neighbourhood, they procured a plot of ground with ten marks sent them, by the king for the purpose, on which they built themselves a very small chapel, such as a carpenter could erect in one day with fourteen couples of planks. At Shrewsbury the king gave them a piece of land and the citizens built them a house. The king also built them a convent at Salisbury, and another at Southampton ; and his affection for them was so great that he would gladly have placed them in all the 14 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IX ENGLAND. great towns in his kingdom. Houses were also found- ed for their use at Worcester, Lichfield, Gloucester, Lynn, Norwich, Bridgewater, Bristol, and many other places, sometimes by bishops and nobles, but more often by the citizens. As time went on the Order was carried to York and the north of England, and even earlier to Scotland and Ireland. CHAPTER III. WORK IN ENGLAND. WHEN the Friars Minor arrived in England, King John's persecution of the Church and the recent civil war had reduced the nation to extreme misery. Ex- cessive worldliness and licentiousness prevailed among clergy and laity. 1 All classes were a prey to faction, strife, and violence ; mutual hatred took the place of Christian charity; and the peace which the Pope's Legate had lately brought about, was but a pause in the civil war, which within a few years again broke out. In these wretched circumstances the perfect detachment of the friars from all worldly objects, and their simple charity towards all persons and classes without any distinction, won them universal confi- dence and influence. The letters which Br. Adam de Marisco wrote at this time give us a vivid picture of their social position. Br. Adam was, as has been told, the head of the friars' school at Oxford. He raised the school and university to the first rank in Europe, and this great work might naturally have engrossed all his time 1 This description of the work of the friars in England is taken chiefly from Brewer's preface to his Monumenta Franciscana. WORK IX ENGLAND. 15 and thoughts. But he was also the most intimate friend of Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the two reformers of the day. Great as was the bishop's zeal for clerical reform, it did not satisfy Br. Adam, who constantly pressed on him the necessity for greater strictness. While he encouraged Simon de Montfort to devote himself to the relief of his oppressed fellow-subjects, he exhorted him to correct the faults of his own cha- racter, and especially to govern his temper, 1 to procure for himself ' the saving comfort of God's word by frequent examination of the Holy Scriptures, especi- ally the Book of Job with S. Gregory's Commen- taries ;' 2 and to preserve ' in his own person, his soldiers and servants, and all belonging to his govern- ment, devotion to God, unbroken loyalty to man, friendship, uprightness, peace with each other, and perfect charity with all.' 3 His affection for the two reformers did not, however, cut off Br. Adam from the friendship of their opponents. The king and queen frequently required his attendance at court. Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, leant on him for counsel and support ; and bishops, abbots, nobles, and persons of all classes called for his help. In fact, nothing was too great or too small to claim his loving care, from preaching a crusade to begging books and parchments for poor scholars. Meanwhile his brethren sent him to Rome with S. Anthony of Padua, to uphold strict observance of their rule. The Minister-General, S. Bonaventure, summoned him to France ; and he was carried off to the General Council of Lyons. But in spite of such varied and important duties, he never remitted his loving quest for souls, nor ceased to be the lowly ser- 1 Ep. Adas de Marisco, 137, ap. Brewer, Monuments Franciscana, p. 264. 2 Ep. 140, p. 268. 3 Ep. 135, p. 261. 16 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. vant of the poor. He still found time to write count- less letters, suggesting religious motives for ordinary actions, interceding for penitents snatched from the jaws of hell, seeking redress for the oppressed, help for poor simple women, and charity for insolvent debtors, needy scholars, and indigent persons of all degrees. Though all the friars had not the same talents nor the same distinguished position as Br. Adam, yet the above gives a correct idea of the sort of life which all of them led. Wherever they went, whether to royal and lordly halls or to the peasant's mud hovel, they mixed familiarly with all classes, finding in all the same vices and the same scope for loving admonition, strengthening counsel, and acts of charity. Thus they were like a fragrant and healing balm poured out over the bleeding land, penetrating into deep festering wounds, and infusing the life-giving spirit of Christian love. But it was with the town populations that the mission of the Friars Minor chiefly lay. In the towns the English thanes, driven from their family lands by the Normans, had taken refuge. Thither they had transplanted their old German habits of in- dustry, association, and law. They had formed them- selves into guilds, had gradually obtained various pri- vileges from the Crown as a protection against the barons, and quite recently by uniting with the barons they had wrung civil liberty from the Crown. But while thus rising in social importance, they held them- selves aloof in proud independence, without any feel- ing of loyalty to the sovereign, who was a foreigner, hating the barons as their hereditary foes, and de- spising the clergy for the scandalous failings of indi- viduals which came most prominently to their notice. "Without schools or libraries, which as yet were to be found only in monasteries, they were necessarily ig- norant and narrow-minded. But in their intercourse WORK IN ENGLAND. 17 with foreign traders, whether at home or in journeys abroad, they often picked up notions suggestive of subtle religious doubts, which they were too ignorant to solve, and which, being regarded with horror and contempt by the ill-educated clergy with whom alone they came in contact, were thus left to be obstinately brooded over by their active minds. To the towns the mendicant lives of the friars naturally led them. Travelling two and two, sleeping under arches or hedges, or in a barn or shed, receiv- ing gratefully the poorest scraps of food and giving in return manual labour, or at least cheering and edifying words, they could approach the reserved citi- zen without rousing his pride or awaking his suspicion, and could draw out the best points of his generous nature. In familiar intercourse their host would be drawn on to open his heart to -his guests, whose sym- pathy would give them the key to his thoughts and feelings. Possibly the poor friars might be learned in theology, or they would probably have heard subtle questions simply explained in their convent. But in any case they had spent days and nights before the crucifix, and had learned from it how to meet their host's difficulties and open out to him the deep mys- teries of God's love and wisdom in the simple form which he could best understand. The heretical and communistic principles which now disturbed France and Italy, and a century later broke out in England as Lollardism, had already found an entrance among the traders in the English towns ; and it was only through the influence of the Friars Minor that they never spread widely or took deep root. But there was still a lower class who had a prior claim on the son of S. Francis. Round the base of the hill on which the English towns generally stood, within the walls down to the edge of the stagnant ditch into which ran the refuse of the shambles, or even spread- c 18 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. ing beyond their protection, rude wooden sheds thickly clustered, choice lurking-places for fever and leprosy, and in which plague did it's worst. Here dwelt a mot- ley crowd of wretched beings, slaves escaped from tyrannical masters, criminals flying from the cruel justice of feudal barons, poor outcasts of all classes and races, without social rights, living and dying un- known and uncared for. But in the Friar Minor they had a brother. Among them he by preference took up his abode. The chief house of the Order in Eng- land was in Stinking Lane, near the shambles, and close to the Newgate of the city of London. In Oxford, their convent was in the low parish of S. Ebb's ; in Cambridge it was near the gaol ; in Nor- wich it was by the water-side close to the town wall ; and in all other cases the friars sought to be lodged no better than the poor among whom they lived and worked. However poor and wretched these outcasts of the towns might be, the friar was bound to be more so. Whatever he might chance to possess in excess of their destitution, he was taught by his Seraphic Father to regard as a loan which he must restore to those who -were poorer than himself, and the keeping of which would be a theft of which he would have to give account to God. 1 On them he lavished his care and love, helping them in their work, nursing them in sickness, starving with them, and raising them to hope and self-respect. For when they beheld poverty greater than their own thus vo- luntarily embraced by their social superiors, their hearts were opened to perceive the dignity and the joys of the state, which had hitherto inspired them only with sullen discontent and fierce enmity to God and man. In the Middle Ages leprosy was looked on as a- curse from God beyond the reach of medicine. 1 Legend, chap. viii. WORK IN ENGLAND. 19 The leper was driven from his home and family, dis- qualified to make a will or exercise any civil right, and received even by the Church only as a penitent. S. Francis shared this universal feeling. One day, at the very beginning of his conversion, as he was crossing on hoi-seback the plain which surrounds Assisi, he unexpectedly fell in with a leper. He natu- rally turned away with horror and disgust. But quickly remembering that he must conquer himself if he wquld be the soldier of Jesus, he dismounted, and hurrying towards the leper, kissed the hand which was stretched out to him for an alms. He then re- mounted his horse, but as he looked round the wide plain no leper was to be seen. 1 Surprised and over- joyed he broke forth into songs of praise ; and from this time the leper, in whose form our Lord had deigned to appear to him, was the special object of his love and the favourite of his Order. He taught his sons to frequent the leper hospitals ; and novices, whatever might be their rank, were required to prove their vocation by nursing lepers. Besides their daily work among their neighbours, such of the brethren as were best qualified were ap- pointed preachers. They made excursions into the country to assist priests unaccustomed to preaching, or they collected a crowd at some thoroughfare or under some spreading tree, and preached to them as S. Aidan, S. Cuthbert, S. Aldhelm, and holy men of old used to do. Their eloquence caused them also to be sent for _to preach before the court, or in cathe- drals and abbeys on great festivals. Their style was brief, simple, and practical. The life of our Lord on earth, especially His Nativity and His Cross and Passion, was to them an inexhaustible theme. His relations to His Virgin Mother, her Immaculate Con- ception, tenderness, and authority, and the obedience 1 Legend, chap. i. 20 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. due to Christ's Vicar, were always on their lips. Through these mysteries they appealed to the purest affections of their hearers, illustrating their teaching by anecdotes or parables, and sometimes even by playful jokes. Thus they brought their instructions within the comprehension of the most ignorant and connected them practically with their daily life. Many of the brethren, whether preachers or not, were trained to be confessors. The necessity for this part of their work appears in the fact, that Br. Hay mo of Faversham having once preached in a church on Good Friday, a great crowd of persons who he knew could not have been to confession, came up to the altar on Easter-day to receive Holy Communion. Fearing that many of them might be in mortal sin, he asked leave of the priest of the church to address them ; and he preached to them with such effect that most of them deferred their Communion, and he spent the three following days in hearing their con- fessions. 1 The tender sympathy and unlimited charity of the friars caused them to be much in request as confessors with both clergy and laity. Br. Vincent of Worcester, who was remarkable for severity to himself and sweetness to others, was universally be- loved as the angel of God. Br. Godfrey of Salisbury was moved with such compassion in hearing confes- sions, that if his penitent did not feel due compunc- tion he would excite it in him by tears and sobs. Thus Alexander of Bissinburne, once confessing his sins as if he were telling a tale, was softened to tears by seeing his spiritual father weep bitterly, and re- solved to enter the Order, in which he soon after made a holy death. But it was by their example, which was a con- stant protest against the world and the flesh, that the 1 Eccleston, Collat. v. ap. Brewer, Monument. Francisc. p. 221. WORK IN ENGLAND. 21 Friars Minor preached most forcibly. When they were about to settle in any place they were careful, in obedience to S. Francis, not to accept more land than was absolutely necessary, and to erect on it only low buildings with mud walls of the poorest kind. As they were forbidden to possess property, gifts of land and houses to them were vested in corporations and other trustees, on whose charity they depended for their use. In their first house in London the partitions between their cells were made of twigs and stuffed with dried grass. Br. Agnellus insisted that the walls of their house at Oxford should not be more than a man's height; and when the house in London had to be repaired the low roof was left standing, and only the mud walls were cleared away and re- placed by stone. At Gloucester he refused the greatest part of a piece of land that was offered him ; so that some years after when Br. Haymo of Faver- sham, the third Provincial, wished the brethren to have some land to till, they were obliged to beg for it a second time as an alms from the owners. At Shrewsbury the townsmen having built the dormitory walls with stone, Br. William of Nottingham, the fourth Provincial, removed them and replaced them with mud walls. The Guardian of Gloucester was deprived of his hood for placing pictures in the church, and one of the friars for painting the pulpit. Though they lived on alms, yet S. Francis bade them work when possible, not for hire or to receive the price of their labour, but as a good example and to avoid idleness. In begging they were forbidden to take any but the commonest food, or more than was barely necessary, or to return often to the same person, lest the alms should become virtually a pen- sion. They were allowed to accept beer, provided it was stale ; and often it was so thick that they were obliged to put water into it, and so sour that they 22 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. could not drink it till it was heated. At Shrews- bury when two monks asked hospitality of them, they had to borrow a jug of ale; and when it was passed round the friars placed it to their lips for appearance' sake, but did not drink. 1 In London they had so little firewood that when Br. Salomon returned home from his quest so frozen that they thought he would have died, they could not light a fire, and could only warm him by pressing round him and thus giving him heat from their own bodies. In the Custody of Cambridge for many years they had no cloaks, and in that of Oxford they had no pillows. Going barefoot in the ice and snow of England was very different from what it was in sunny Italy. Notwithstanding, it was done. Br. Salomon, after his ordination and having dined at the Archbishop's table, walked barefoot from Canterbury to London through such deep snow that his feet were frost- bitten ; and after two years one foot was about to be cut off, when happily an abscess broke and brought relief. On another occasion two friars were picking their way on Christmas-day through a wood between Oxford and Gloucester along a rough road of frozen mud and snow, marking their path with the blood from their naked feet. Behind them, at some dis- tance and unknown to them, rode a knight who bore them ill-will. As they went along the younger friar said to the elder, ' Brother, shall I sing and lighten our journey V Leave being given, he thun- dered out a ' Salve Regina,' exclaiming joyously at its close, ' Brother, was not that antiphonal well sung V Whereupon the knight, who had been noticing the blood from their feet on the ground, broke in, saying, * Yes, by the Lord, it was ! May the Lord bless and prosper you, who, like the Apostles, are patient in necessities and rejoice in tribulation !' Then slipping 1 Eccleston, Collat. i. p. 8. WORK IN ENGLAND. 23 down from his horse and falling on his knees, he asked their pardon for the harsh judgments he had passed on them. 1 The bare foot of the friar was not only his uni- versal passpoi't, it was also his safeguard amid all dangers. It chanced one day that Br. Walter Ma- dele found a pair of shoes ; and being tempted to put them on when he went to Matins, he thought he was more comfortable than usual. But when he re- turned to bed he dreamt that he was passing through a part of Bagley Wood between Oxford and Glouces- ter, where robbers fell upon him, saying, ' Kill him, kill him !' He cried out, ' I am a Friar Minor.' But they answered, ' Thou liest ; thou art not barefoot.' ' Indeed I am,' he exclaimed, and instinctively put out his foot. But lo ! he had the shoes on. Where- upon waking in a great fright, he jumped up and threw the shoes out of the window. 2 A peculiar attraction of the Order was the ab- sence of any trace of gloom, or of the solemn gravity which suggests the suspicion of hypocrisy. S. Francis said that his sons ought to be an example to others by their charity rather than by excessive abstinence or severity ; and that discretion ought to regulate their practice of virtue. 3 S. Bonaventure considered joy an unfailing sign of a high state of grace ; and Br. Peter of Tewkesbury, the fifth Provincial, said that three things were necessary for health of body, viz. food, sleep, and fun. 4 The brothers were always happy and merry, and even when silent, joy beamed on their countenances and a mirthful smile played on their lips. Some of the young friars at Oxford were even so given to laughing that a rule had to be made, that whenever they did so in choir they should be 1 Chronic, de Lanercost, 31, ap. Brewer, p. G32. 2 Eccles. Collat. vi. p. 28. 3 Legend, chap. v. 4 Eccles. Collat. xiv. p. 64. 24 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. beaten. This rule, however, was not very severely en- forced. Eut one of them, who had laughed as usual and had not been beaten once throughout the day, had at night a vision that he was in choir and his companions were tempted to laugh, when the Crucifix over the door turned to them and said, ' Those who laugh and sleep during the chanting are the sons of Core.' Our Lord then tried to take His hand from the cross, as if He were about to go away ; but the Gustos went up to Him and fastened the nails, so as to prevent His doing so. The young friars were so frightened at this vision that there was no more laughing in choir, and they applied themselves with greater zeal to the practice of truthfulness and hu- mility. 1 CHAPTEE IV. PROGRESS. THE rapid spread of the Franciscan Order in England amid rampant vice and worldliness was a striking proof of the supernatural vitality of the Church. Thirty-two years after the arrival of the Grey Friars no less than forty-nine houses had been founded for their use. In 1258, when S. Bonaventure held a General Chapter at Narbonne, there were seven Custodies in the English Province, viz. London, York, Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle, and Worces- ter. Bartholomew of Pisa gives us the names of sixty convents in England in 1399 ; and F. Parkinson adds eighteen more, besides five in the English pos- sessions in France, four in the English Pale in Ireland, and others in England which he does not specify. It should be borne in mind that these friaries 1 Eccleston, Collat. iv. p. 20. PROGRESS. 25 were not splendid edifices like the abbeys of the Middle Ages, but mean buildings, barely sufficient to accom- modate their inmates, and therefore their increase im- plies a corresponding increase in the number of the friars. So numerous were the friars in the English Province that the Minister- General was in the habit of appointing an English friar to be his Commissary and act for him in important affairs. The Provincial of the Observants, i.e. the Grey Friars of Strict Observance, who lived at Greenwich, generally held this office. 1 There were also several houses of Poor Clares, one of which was founded in London on the spot still called the Minories by Blanche, Queen of Na- varre, and her husband, Edmund of Lancaster, bro- ther of Henry III. 2 Though all the records of the Grey Friars, with the exception of the Register of their London house, were destroyed in the sixteenth century, yet we learn from other sources that all the Catholic sovereigns of England, except Richard III., were their bene- factors. Henry III. was either a founder or bene- factor of the convents of Canterbury, Oxford, Southampton, Salisbury, "Winchester, Nottingham, Coventry, Bury S. Edmund's, Dunwich, and York. 5 Edward I. built them a new house in Cambridge on the site where Sydney Sussex College now stands, with a very large hall in which the public business of the university was carried on. He also built them a house in Reading to which he gave a good library ; and he induced the Bishop of Exeter to build them one in that town. 4 His first queen, Eleanor, was buried in their convent at Bedford, of 1 Collect. Angl. -Minor, part i. p. 213. 2 Ibid. Supplement. * Dugdale, vol. vi.pp. 1512, 1524, 1532, 1533, 1545. 4 Ibid. p. 1509, Collect. Angl.-Minor. part ii. p. 22. 26 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. which she was the foundress j 1 and his second queen, Margaret, founded their new church in London. 2 Edward II. was a benefactor of their house at Scar- borough and also of that at Colchester. 3 Edward III. was a founder or benefactor of their convents at Walsingham, Berwick, Greenwich, and Maidstone ; and the Black Prince of that at Coventry. 4 Richard II. took them under his protection and in 1383 ordered the universities to repeal various laws which they had made against them ; and Henry IV. confirmed his order by a writ dated 140 1. 5 Henry IV. also, in his expedition against the Welsh rebels in 1401, restored their liberty and their house to the Grey Friars of Llanvais, near Beaumaris, whom his troops had plundered and made prisoners ; c and some years later when they were in great distress, Henry V. relieved them, and provided that eight friars should always be maintained there. 7 Henry VI. wrote to S. John Capistran inviting him to send a number of Observants to occupy the houses which he had built for them in England, but the locality of which we do not know. 8 Edward IV. built a house for the Observants at Greenwich.9 Henry VII. built houses for them at Greenwich, Richmond, and Newark, and restored those at Canterbury, Southampton, and Newcastle. 10 Henry VIII. made an annual allowance to the Grey Friars at Oxford ; and Mary refounded the houses of London and Greenwich. As to 1 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1509. 2 Ibid. p. 1519. 3 Ibid. p. 1511. * Ibid, pp, 1512, 1513, 1523, 1533, Collect. Angl.-Minor. part ii. p. 31. 5 Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 173, part ii. p. 17. Ibid. p. 186. 7 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1545. 8 Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 202. 9 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1512. 10 Ibid. pp. 1512, 1523, 1524, 1532, Collect. Angl.-Minor. part ii. p. 12. PROGRESS. 27 Richard III., though not their benefactor, he was the recipient of their charity. After the battle of Bosworth, when his body was stripped, thrown across a horse, and borne ignominiously from the field, it received hospitality and Christian burial from the Grey Friars of Leicester. 1 The Register of the London house tells us that in their church were the tombs of four queens, viz.. the foundress Margaret, Isabella, queen of Edwardll., Joan, queen of David Bruce of Scotland and daugh- ter to Edward II., and Isabel, queen of the Isle of Man, besides those of a host of other persons of royal and noble birth, all of whom must have been benefactors. Nobles and bishops, it is true, had their share in the erection of this church and house, which it took twenty-one years to finish but the chief benefactors were the Corporation and citizens of London. Side by side with Edward III., Queen Phi- lippa, and the four queens above mentioned, stand the names of the Corporation, of Richard Whittington, the famous Lord Mayor, who built the library and bought most of the books, of William Tayler, Henry III.'s shoemaker (Stow says tailor), who gave the water- course, conduit-head, and water-house, and those of numerous Lord Mayors, Sheriffs, Aldermen, citizens and traders of all degrees, Priors and Prioresses, priests and religious communities. The smallness of many of the donations, down even to the annual rent of a few pence, shows how strictly the friars observed poverty, and that all classes, whether rich or of small means, united in devotion to them. 2 So far as can now be gathered from our imperfect sources of know- ledge, the principal benefactors of the convents in the other English towns were their citizens. 1 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1513. 2 Prima Fundatio Fratrum Minorum Londonia;, ap. Brewer, p. 493. 28 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IX ENGLAND. Similar success attended the schools of the Grey Friars. When they arrived in England the English universities were in a low state. Englishmen went abroad to study, and such of them as gained a repu- tation for learning preferred to hold chairs in foreign universities rather than at home. But the foundation of the Grey Friars' school at Oxford made a total change. Foreigners flocked thither in hundreds. Thousands of students crowded the streets, and intense intellectual activity became the chief charac- teristic of the place. The other provinces of the Order sent their members to study in England, and obtained from thence teachers for their own schools ; and foreign universities acknowledged the preeminent learning of the English doctors. We have a long list of doctors and writers of the Order, whose influence in advancing learning was very great. Of these the two most famous were Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus. Roger Bacon has been styled the father of experimental philosophy. He explored every branch of science, and there is scarcely a principle of physics since discovered of which he had not a glimpse. So deeply did he pene- trate into the mysteries of Nature that he was popu- larly believed to owe his knowledge to magic. He died in 1292 at the age of seventy-eight. 1 His contemporary, though much his junior, was Duns Scotus, surnamed the Subtle Doctor, who died in 1308 at the age of thirty-four. So vast was the fund of knowledge which he acquired in so short a life that he is said to have been indebted for it to the special favour of our Blessed Lady, to whose service he had vowed himself. But all his other attainments are thrown into the shade by the fact that to him the Church owes the earliest promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which, after the lapse 1 Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 109, Brewer, preface, p. 50. PROGRESS. 29 of five centuries and a half, has been dogmatically defined as he taught it. After his famous public disputation in its defence in Paris, that university decreed that the degree of doctor should not be granted to any one who did not take an oath to defend and promote his doctrine on the subject ; and the universities of Cologne, Naples, Mainz, Sala- manca, Seville, and Alcala de Henares required their doctors to promise never to argue against it. 1 It was, however, only as the means of gaining a deeper knowledge of God and making Him better known to others, that the Grey Friars prized learning. S. Francis had ordered his sons not to let their studies intei-fere with their spirit of prayer, but to pray more than they read. Hence the Cross and the Gospel con- tinued to be their great book, and their other studies were but a commentary on them. Theology, which at this period was generally neglected, they made their principal study. Logic, which was abused by heretics and unbelievers, they applied to its legitimate use as the handmaid of revelation ; and by sound reasonings they removed the captious doubts which heretics had infused into the minds of the simple and ignorant. The sympathy with nature as God's work, which S. Francis had bequeathed to his sons, led them to the study of physical science ; and their ministrations to the sick turned their attention to medicine, so that they were universally sought for as- physicians of the body as well as the soul. With a view to their apos- tolic mission schools were established in most of their convents. As early as 1254 they had no less than thirty lecturers on divinity in various parts of England ; and no one was allowed to teach at the universities till he had already done so at these convent schools. Thus, on the one hand the tone of their teaching was kept up to the highest standard, and on the other the 1 Collect. Angl. -Minor, part i. p. 129. 30 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. knowledge of theology was diffused among the brethren, by means of whose apostolic work it filtered down through all classes of society. The remarkable tena- city with which the lower classes of the nation clung to the Catholic faith in the sixteenth century, in spite of the persevering efforts of their rulers to corrupt them, is a striking proof how widely theology in its simplest catechetical form had been diffused by the oral teaching of the friars. The great and continued success of the Order in England may be traced to the strictness with which they kept to their founder's rule. In the General Chapter of 1230 Br. Elias, the first Minister-General after S. Francis, tried to introduce a relaxation of the rule. But the English friars unanimously voted against it; and chiefly through their influence and that of S. Anthony of Padua strict observance was maintained. 1 Br. Albert of Pisa, who was elected the second Provincial of England in 1233, declared, after putting the virtue of the English friars to the severest tests, that he had found them exemplary in the pursuit of perfection and ready to go to prison or to exile for the strict observance of the rule. 2 John of Parma, the eighth Minister-General, after making a visitation of the English Province, used to say, ' 0, that this province was placed in the middle of the world that it might be an example to all the churches.' 3 In course of time relaxations of the rule as re- garded property were granted by successive Popes. Notwithstanding, strict observance was kept up by a large party, who took the name of Observants, while the others were called Conventuals. The Observants applied in 1415 to the Council of Constance, who dis- charged them from the ordinary obedience to the Minister-General, and allowed them to have three 1 Eccles. Collat. xii. p. 49. 2 Ibid. Collat. xiii. p. 55 . s Ibid. Collat. xiv. p. 68. THE MARTYR'S CROWX. 31 provinces under a Vicar-General. The greater part of the English friars, however, refused to take part in this separation, because, in fact, they were all Observants except in name, both parties living to- gether in community and renouncing all property. 1 Gradually the Observants increased in number, till in 1499 the whole Province of England, whether Con- ventuals or Observants, was incorporated in the Ob- servance and had two votes in their General Chapter. 2 Finally, in 1517 Pope Leo X. issued the famous Bull of Union, which decreed that all the friars who lived among the Conventuals and yet observed the whole rule, were to be united with the Observants ; that the Minister- General of the whole Order was to be an Observant; and that the Conventuals were to be governed by a Master-General and Masters-Provincial, who were to be subject to the Minister- General and Ministers- Provincial of the Observants. In obedience to this Bull most of the Grey Friars in England be- came Observants and the Conventuals were subject to them. Thus in the early part of the sixteenth century the English Province was in the highest state of dis- cipline. CHAPTER V. THE MARTYR'S CROWX. S. FRANCIS, at the beginning of his conversion, rebuilt the churches of S. Damian, S. Peter, and S. Mary of the Angels, in literal obedience to our Lord's command, ' Francis, go and build My house; for it is falling into ruins, as you see.' These three churches symbolised the three heavenly crowns predestined for 1 Collect. Angl.- Minor, p. 19)?. 2 Ibid. p. 211. 32 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IX ENGLAND. his Order. 1 Three centuries had elapsed since the foundation of the English Province. The crowns of sanctity and learning had been quickly won ; but the martyr's crown was still in abeyance, and even seemed to be quite out of reach. Not only was the English nation unstained by martyr's blood, since the murder of S. Thomas had not been a national act, but the state of religion in England appeared to shut out the very possibility of martyrdom. While all other countries of Europe were con- vulsed by heresy and schism, England's faith and loyalty to the Pope were beyond suspicion. The popular devotion to our Blessed Lady was such as befitted ' the servants of her special inheritance and her own dowry.' 2 Crowds of pilgrims flocked to her shrines, especially to that at Walsingham. Thither the king, Henry VIIL, had gone in 1505, and again in 1510, when he had make the pilgrimage barefoot from Barsham, had presented her with a necklace of great price, and had undertaken the expense of glazing the windows of her chapel. Not only had he himself written the famous book in defence of the Pope, and engaged Dr. John Kynton, a learned Franciscan of Oxford, to write on the same subject, 3 but when Sir Thomas More objected that in his book he had advanced and defended the Pope's authority unduly he had an- swered, ' We are so much bounden unto the See of Rome that we cannot do too much honour unto it. Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth that authority to the uttermost, for we received from that See our crown imperial.' 4 The favourite spiritual reading of the day, such as Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love and the Scale 1 Legend, chap. ii. 2 Wilkin's Concilia, torn. iii. p. 246. 3 Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 222. 4 Life of More, by William Roper, p. 66, ed. 1822. THE MARTYR'S CROWN*. 33 of Perfection, shows that the religious fervour which had characterised the nation in past ages was un- abated. The glimpse into ordinary family life afforded by the Paston Letters proves that the Church was deeply rooted in the habits and affections of the people. The Franciscans, Carthusians, and Bridget- tines, all three of an austere and contemplative cha- racter, were the most popular religious Orders ; and of these the Franciscans were the most influential. Closely united to each other by strict discipline and fraternal love, and to S. Peter's Chair by their Minister- General's vow of obedience, their interior supernatural strength was very great. Their position at Oxford placed the learning and education of the country in their hands. Their poverty and detach- ment from human respect and worldly motives made them fearless in speaking plain truths, even to the king and most powerful nobles. Their tender sym- pathy and charity won the hearts of the poor and sorrowing ; while their eloquence and indefatigable zeal in going about preaching, hearing confessions, and promoting religious devotions commanded the esteem of all classes. 1 Both the king and the queen were attached to them. In 1519 Henry ob- tained from Pope Leo X. an exemption for them from the authority of all prelates, and even of the apostolic legates ; and during the first ten years of his reign, F. Stephen Baron, Provincial of the English Obser- vants, was his confessor. Catherine was a Tertiary of the Order, and wore the habit under her royal robe. Whenever the court was at Greenwich she joined the friars in the nocturnal office. She fasted every Friday and Saturday, and on the Vigils of our Lady's feasts took only bread aud water. She confessed every Wednesday and Friday, and went to Communion on Sunday. She said the Office of the 1 Burnet, Hist. Reform, part i. book iii. p. 304, ed. Pocock. D 34 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. Blessed Virgin daily, spent six hours every morning in church, had the Lives of the Saints read to her during dinner and till two o'clock, after which she returned to the church and remained there tiirsupper- time. 1 But in this fair picture of the general religious state of England up to the year 1530, there was one dark spot. This was the excessive worldliness of the nobility, gentry, and higher clergy. No sacrifice of principle to the king's will in exchange for honours and wealth, was deemed too great. Even before the separation from the Catholic Church, the servility of the courtiers and Parliaments, ' as if in mockery of their own and their country's liberties,' 2 was really amazing ; and in the subsequent progress of schism and heresy, worldly motives of various kinds were openly held out as the lure to the upper classes to take part in each downward step. As worldliness was the sin which thus secretly sapped the foundations of English society, the only cure lay in a return to the supernatural precepts of Christ's law. None could stand up more effectively for these than the men who had freed themselves from the world's shackles, and embracing holy poverty had taken up the Cross of Christ and followed Him. Accordingly, while nobles and bishops cringed to the king and readily obeyed his commands, the Obser- vants boldly withstood him to his face. In the depths of their hearts the martyr-spirit had ever burnt brightly, and now that the martyr's crown was unexpectedly offered them they joyfully accepted it. In 1519 Dr. Henry Standish, Provincial of the Order, was made Bishop of S. Asaph. He was after- 1 Sander, De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani, part i. p. 5, ed. Rishton, 1585. 2 Hallam, Constitutional Hist. vol. i. chap. i. p. 23, ed. 1857. THE MARTYR'S CROWN. 35 wards one of the five bishops who, together with Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, were appointed to defend Catherine's marriage before the Legatine Commission. 1 He and all his Order supported her claims most zealously ; and as the king professed to be actuated by religious scruples alone, and it was essential to the success of his cause at Rome that his sincerity should not be doubted, it was impossible to check the freedom with which they openly discussed the question. In proportion, however, as the violence of Henry's passions grew stronger and the Pope's sentence was delayed, his irritation at their opposition increased. The first sign of his displeasure was a letter which he wrote in 1532 to the Minister- General, Paul Pissotus, requesting him, for the sake of peace and good agreement between his majesty and the Observants in his kingdom, to depose the English Provincial and send Br. John de Haye, of the Pro- vince of Flanders, whom the king knew and liked, to be his Commissary and Provincial in the other's place. Pissotus answered that he had not the power to institute ministers of Provinces, but he would send De Haye to England as his Commissary. The records of the Order at this time being rather confused, it cannot be said positively who was the Provincial ; but it is believed to have been Dr. John Forest. 2 Forest had taken the habit at Greenwich when he was seventeen, and had afterwards studied at Oxford, where he distinguished himself by his talents and learning. He was appointed confessor to Queen Catherine, and when the divorce question came on he argued strenuously in her support. The king imputed Catherine's appeal to the Pope and her refusal to retire into a monastery to his influence and 1 Sander, part i. p. 45. 2 Collect. Angl,- Minor, part i. p. 227. 36 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. advice ; and this alone would have been sufficient to account for Henry's request for his deposition. In the following year, 1533, Henry, having no longer any hopes of gratifying his lawless passions by legitimate means, broke through all bounds, married Anne Boleyn, and on the 12th April 1533 brought her forward as his queen. As he had not yet been divorced from Catherine this marriage was obviously illegal, and therefore not binding. The Observants lost no time in remonstrating publicly with him while he was still free. At this time the Guardian of the Grey Friars' Convent at Greenwich was F. William Peto or Peyton. He belonged to a family of some importance at Chesterton in Warwickshire. He took the habit and was educated in the convent at Oxford. He was remarkable for devotion and holy simplicity, and Queen Catherine, whose confessor he had been for some years, held him in high esteem. It happened that in one of the first days of May 1533 he was preaching on the 22d chapter of the 3d Book of Kings, in the presence of the king in the church at Greenwich. As he proceeded with the history of Achab he applied to the king the Prophet's threat, ' Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall the dogs lick thy blood, even thine.' He tried to per- suade the king to separate from Anne Boleyn ; add- ing, ' I am that Micheas whomthou wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful. I know that I shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the water of sorrow, yet because our Lord hath put it into my mouth I must speak it. There are many other preachers, yea too many, who preach and per- suade thee otherwise, feeding thy folly and frail affec- tions upon hope of their own worldly promotion, and by that means betraying thy soul, thy honour, and thy posterity, to obtain fat benefices, to become rich THE MARTYR'S CROWN. 37 abbots, and get episcopal jurisdiction and other eccle- siastical dignities. These, I say, are the four hundred prophets who, in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee. But take good heed lest, being seduced, thou find Achab's punishment, and have thy blood licked up by the dogs. It is one of the greatest miseries of princes to be daily abused by flatterers/ The king bore the reprimand quietly and did no violence to Peto. But the next Sunday, which was the 8th of May, Dr. Curwin preached in the same place, sharply reprimanding Peto and his preaching, calling him dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, rebel and traitor, saying that no subject ought to speak so audaciously to princes, and much more to the same effect and in praise of the king's marriage, whereby his seed, he foretold, would be for ever established on the throne. Having thus, as he supposed, utterly crashed Peto and his brethren, he raised his voice and cried out, ' I speak to thee, Peto, who makest thyself Micheas, that thou mayest speak evil of kings, but art not now to be found, being fled for fear and shame at being unable to answer my arguments.' Whereupon Elstow, another friar, cried aloud from the rood-loft to Dr. Curwin, ' Good sir, thou knowest that F. Peto is now gone, as he was commanded, to a Provincial Council at Canterbury, and not fled from fear of thee ; for to-morrow he will return. Mean- while I am here as another Micheas, and I will lay down my life to prove the truth of all that he has taught out of the Holy Scriptures. To this combat I challenge thee before God and all impartial judges, even thee, Curwin, I say, who art one of the four hundred prophets into whom the spirit of lying is entered, and who seekest by adultery to establish the succession, betraying the king into endless perdition, uion- lor thine own vain glory and hope of promotion than for the discharge of thy clogged conscience and 38 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. the king's salvation.' Thus Elstow waxed hot and spoke very earnestly, and they could not stop him till the king himself bade him hold his peace. 1 The next day Peto and Elstow were summoned before the king and his council. While they were waiting for the opening of the council Peto for a long time kept silence. At length, by way of rousing his courage, he said, as if in colloquy with himself, ' Speak, brother.- I dare not. Wherefore art thou afraid ? I fear the king. Indeed ; and art thou not rather filled with horror and terror at the thought of God, the omnipotent King of kings 1 Whether it is right to fear a man rather than God, the Lord of lords, judge thou thyself, Oking.' Thus he continued till the council was assembled. 2 Undaunted by the reprimands of the council Peto defended his sermon, and even went on to predict that unless the king changed his conduct he would not have a male descendant to carry on his royal line. Cromwell, the king's principal minister, said that he and Elstow deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the Thames. Whereupon Elstow, smiling, an- swered, ' My lord, be pleased to frighten with such threats your court epicures, men who have lost their courage in their palate, and softened their minds with pomp and pleasure. Such people, who are tied by their senses close to the world, are most likely to yield to your menaces ; but they make no impression upon us. We count it an honour to suffer for our duty, and bless God for keeping us firm under trial ; and as for your Thames, the road to heaven lies as near by water as by land, and therefore it is indifferent to us which way we go thither.' After they had been severely reproved by the council they were dismissed. They soon after went abroad, and remained there till Queen Mary's reign. 1 Stow, p. 5G2. * Certamen Seraphicum, p. 11. THE MARTYR'S CROWN. 39 Heedless of these remonstrances Henry advanced in his wicked course. In May Cranmer declared the marriage with Catherine null and void, and her daugh- ter Mary's right of succession to the throne was set aside. 1 The Pope annulled Cranmer's sentence, and excommunicated Henry and Anne unless they sepa- rated before September ; but he afterwards extended the time till the end of October. Still Henry was un- moved. Far from repenting, he threw off the Pope's authority, declared himself sole head of the Church in England, and resolved to crush all who would not acknowledge his right to this title. F. Forest was now thrown into prison, some say because in the king's presence he had opposed Lati- mer when he was inveighing against the Pope. 2 But others mention as the more probable cause of his im- prisonment 3 that one of the courtiers went to him for confession with a treacherous design, and profess- ing to be troubled at Henry's having imperilled his salvation by usurping the authority of Christ's Vicar, drew on the holy priest to confirm his pretended opinion with many learned and scriptural arguments. From the confessional the sacrilegious traitor went to the king and denounced his confessor. Forest was seized, thrown into Newgate, loaded with chains, and most barbarously tortured. 4 After his constancy had been tried for some days by these sufferings and all 1 Buriiet, part i. book iii. p. 219. 2 Sander, ap. Collect. Angl. -Minor, part i. p. 228. F. Parkinson appears to have quoted from the original edition of Sander. 3 Danielle, Martirio e Morte d' alcuni Frati di San Francesco, chap. vii. p. 16, which is a translation of F. Thomas Bourchier's Historia Ecclesiastica de Martirio Fratrum Ordinis Minorum Divi Francisce ; Burnet, part i. book iii. p. 561 ; Wood, Athen. Oxon. vol. i. p. 108, ed. Bliss, 1813. 4 Wadding, Annales Fratrum Minorum, vol. xvi. p. 490. 40 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. the hardships then involved in imprisonment, he was brought before the king and council. He answered all their questions with great intrepidity ; and when they urged him to retract his former opinion and de- clare the king the head of the English Church, he repeated over and over again that he was ready to suffer the most cruel death rather than depart in the smallest tittle from the Catholic faith. Even Henry was touched with remorse by his undaunted bearing and his powerful arguments, as was by no means unusual to him ; but the stings of his conscience were quickly stifled, and Forest was sent back to Newgate. The Observants soon fell into even deeper disgrace. For the last seven years there had been in the Priory of S. Sepulchre at Canterbury a nun called Elizabeth Barton. She was quite uneducated, and had been a servant at a farmhouse in the village of Aldington in Kent ; but having been miraculously cured by our Blessed Lady she had devoted herself to God's ser- vice in religion. She soon gained such a reputation for sanctity that she was generally known as the Holy Maid of Kent. She was favoured with revelations from God, and in obedience to them she constantly reproved the vices of the times and induced many priests and other pious persons to adopt a very austere life. Cardinal Wolsey was admonished by her as to the performance of his legatine duties. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, thought very highly of her. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More examined her closely, and could find no trace of delusion or imposture in her ; and the Observants and many other pious and learned priests believed that she was inspired by the Holy Ghost. Some time before Henry declared Anne Boleyn queen she had a revelation, ordering her to go and tell him ' that if he went forward with the purpose that he intended, he would not be King of England seven months later;' THE MARTYRS CROWN. 41 at the same time giving it to be understood that ( this punishment would be brought about, not by any tem- poral or worldly power, but by God alone.' 1 This revelation was now fulfilled in an unexpected way. For when October was ended and seven months had passed since Henry had carried out the wicked purpose that he had intended, he was excommuni- cated, and therefore, according to the law of all Christendom, which was then also the law of Eng- land, he had forfeited all his civil rights and was no longer a lawful king, though his subjects, not having been freed by the Pope from their allegiance, were still bound to obey him. The nun had now a second revelation, which said ' that Henry was no longer a king, because he reigned not of God, and that Mary, the daughter of Catherine, then regarded as one born out of lawful wedlock, would ascend the throne in her own right.'- Henry had not heeded her first prophecy. But now he was really alarmed, because there was already a great stir in the nation about his revolt from the Church's authority and his treatment of Catherine. He therefore threw the nun into the Tower, together with two Observants, Hugh Rich, Guardian of Can- terbury, and Richard Risby, Guardian of Richmond, two Benedictine monks, Edward Booking and John Dering, and two secular priests, Richard Masters, Rector of Aldington, and Henry Gold, Rector of Al- dermary in London, all of whom were supposed to be her principal advisers. After being examined several times they were sentenced to stand on a scaffold at 1 Fisher's letter to the House of Lords, Cotton MS., Cleop. E vi. fol. 1G5, ap. Collier, part ii. book ii. vol. iv. p. 247, ed. Barham. As Fisher heard this from her own lipp, and his letter would necessarily be seen by the king, his version of her revelation must be the true one. 2 Sander, p. 74. 42 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. S. Paul's Cross while the Bishop of Bangor preached against them ; and after the sermon the king's officers gave each of them a bill of confession, which they handed to the preacher, who read them out as being their confessions. 1 But it was soon spread abroad that these confessions had not been their own free act, and the nun was detected sending messages to her friends to ' animate them to adhere to her and to her prophecies.' 2 Meanwhile Henry, fearing that some conspiracy might be hatching against him, set on foot inquiries throughout the kingdom. But not a trace of any thing of the kind could be discovered. He found out, however, that wherever the Observants went about preaching they defended the Pope's authority and the lawfulness of his marriage with Catherine, and that the whole nation agreed with them. With the view of striking terror into the friars and all others who should oppose his will, he resolved to put the nun and the six priests to death. They were all attainted of treason in Parliament, though no treason had been discovered against them ; and without any trial they were condemned to die. At the same time a bill was passed through Parliament, making it trea- son to say anything against the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn and the succession of her children to the throne, or in defence of the Pope's authority. Thus that which was not treason was declared to be treason ; and not only the nun and her friends, but all good Catholics were declared guilty of treason and were liable to be punished as traitors. Com- mon sense tells us that an act of Parliament cannot make anything that which it is not. Treason con- sists in rebelling or conspiring against the king. As 1 Burnet, vol. i. book ii. p. 251. * Rolls MS., ap. Froude, Hist. Eng. vol. ii chap. vii. p. 168. THE MARTYR'S CROWX. 43 the nun and her friends and other good Catholics neither rebelled nor conspired, they were not guilty of treason, and therefore they were unjustly punished as traitors. On the 20th April 1534 the nun and the six priests were drawn on hurdles from the Tower to Tyburn, and as the hurdles had no wheels they were bruised and bespattered with mud as they were dragged along the rough and stony ground. 1 The mob believ- ing they were really traitors, mocked and insulted them ; but they bore the revilings with extraordinary patience and magnanimity. At Tyburn they beheld a scaffold on which stood a high gallows, and at its foot a caldron full of boiling water, an axe, and a huge knife, as if intended to strike them with terror. The holy maid was the first who was hanged and beheaded. Then F. Rich, Guardian of Canterbury, mounted the ladder ; and while his foot was on it a messenger from the king arrived and offered him life and liberty if he would throw off the Pope's authority. But he instantly answered, ' Not only will I not rebel against the authority of the Pope, but I am ready to suffer the most cruel death for Holy Mother Church.' The executioner then seized him. While the rope was being placed round his neck he repeatedly ex- claimed, 'I will freely* sacrifice to Thee and will give praise, God, to Thy name, for it is good.' 2 He was thrown from the ladder, and the rope being instantly cut, he was ripped open while still alive, his palpitating heart was held up to the people with the insulting words, ' Behold the heart of a traitor !' after which it and all his entrails were thrown into the fire. Finally, his head was cut off, and his body was divided into four quarters, which were thrown into the caldron of boiling water to preserve them for a time from corruption. 1 Stow, Chronicle, p. 571. * Ps. liii. 8. 44 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. As soon as this cruel butchery was completed F. Eisby, Guardian of Richmond, mounted the ladder. Life and liberty were offered to him also if he would acknowledge the king's supremacy, and many of those who stood by tried to persuade him to consent, and not to end his days in so shameful a manner. But far from being moved by their entreaties he laughed at their words as if they were a joke; as indeed they were to a son of S. Francis, whose life had been a long aspiration for suffering and the crown of martyrdom. When his resolution was found to be immovable the executioner seized him violently, dashed him from the ladder, instantly cut the rope, and throwing him quite alive on the ground, began to rip him up. As the man, groping through his entrails, seized his heart, F. Risby said to him, ' That which thou hast in thy hands is consecrated to God.' His heart was then torn out, held up to the crowd and thrown into the fire. His head was cut off, and his body was quartered and thrown into the boiling caldron. The two Benedictine monks and the two secular priests suffered in like manner. Finally, the nun's head was placed on a pole on London Bridge, and the heads and quarters of the other martyrs on the gates of the city. Thus opened the great persecution which was to last for nearly three centuries. On this solemn occa- sion the whole English Church was fitly represented. The nun took precedence, as if in honour of the Queen of Martyrs, and the sons of S. Francis stood side by side with the descendants of S. Gregory and S. Augustine, and with the secular clergy. As in primitive ages a single grain of incense thrown on the idol's altar, so now a single word against the Pope, would have rescued the martyrs from torture and death. But the incense and the sacrilegious word were alike refused. The distinctive feature of the PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 45 English martyrdom was that the martyrs suffered, not for any abstract controversial point of doctrine, but simply for the authority of the Pope. As the early Christians died solely for their faith in Christ, so the English Catholics died solely for their faith in Christ's Vicar. CHAPTER VI. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. ABOUT three months after the martyrdom of the Holy Maid of Kent and her spiritual advisers, the Observants' Convent at Richmond was visited in the king's name by Lee, Bishop of Lichfield and Coven- try, and Thomas Bedyl, Secretary to Cromwell. They ordered the friars to swear, that by the law of God the Pope had no greater jurisdiction in the kingdom than any other foreign Bishop. This, they said, had been sworn to by several Bishops, heads of houses, and other learned clerks of the realm ; and they de- sired the friars to refer the matter to four seniors of their house, and to acquiesce in whatever they should decide. But the friars answered that it concerned their consciences and therefore they would not sub- mit it to a small part of their house ; adding that they had sworn to follow the rule of S. Francis, a chapter of which said, ' That their Order should have a Cardinal for their protector, by whose directions they were to be governed in their obedience to the Holy See ]' and in that rule they would live and die. In vain the Bishop argued with them. They all main- tained firmly that they had professed S. Francis's rule, and would still continue to observe it. The fate of the Observants was now sealed. On the llth of August 1534, above a year before any other Order was touched, they were turned out of their 46 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. house at Greenwich, and shortly after out of all their other houses in the kingdom. Their Order was sup- pressed : some of the friars were sent into the houses of the Conventuals, to whom they were made subject ; a few escaped abroad ; but the greater number were thrown into prison. The only person who dared to say a word for them was Sir Thomas Wriothesley, a privy councillor and one of their benefactors, who interceded for them with the king, holding out the hope that possibly in time some of them might sub- mit. The example of the Observants gave courage to others. At the same time the king's rage became more and more excited by indulgence. On the 4th of May and the 18th of June the Charterhouse monks were executed. On the 22d of June Cardinal Fisher was beheaded, and Sir Thomas More on the 1st of July. Standish, Bishop of S. Asaph, escaped a similar doom only through his death, which took place at this time. F. Forest, who had been imprisoned in Newgate for two years, was now condemned to death. The immediate cause of his condemnation was his having written a book styled Of the Authority of the Church and of the Pope, the opening words of which were, ' Let no man assume to himself the honour, unless he be called as Aaron.' In this book he reproved the pride and impiety of the king, because, without any call from God, he did not scruple to entitle himself the head of the Church in England and to take upon him that of which he was not capable ; whereas if he had wished to be a true member of the Catholic Church, he ought to have given God thanks that he was such, and remained humbly in the Church, instead of trying to tear it to pieces. This book eame to the king's knowledge and was an unpardonable addition to F. Torest's offences. On his refusal to retract it he was PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 47 condemned to die, and only allowed a few days to make his peace with God and man. 1 Great was Queen Catherine's sorrow on hearing of his condemnation. Moved with the most tender compassion for her spiritual father, she wrote him the following letter, though at great risk to herself : ' My Reverend Father, You who have been accus- tomed to give advice to others under hard circum- stances cannot be at a loss for what is most proper to be suggested to yourself now you are to be put to the tryal for Christ's cause. If you bear these few and short torments whereunto you are condemned, you will (as you know very wel) receive an everlasting reward, which, whosoever will choose to lose for any tribulation of this life, seems to be wholly void of all sence and reason. But, O you, my happy father, to whom God has granted the blessing of knowing this above many mortals, and of finishing your life and the course of your labours by these chains, by these tor- ments, and by this most cruel death for Christ ! And, me, your wretched daughter, who, in this sad time of my distress and solitude, am to be deprived of such a monitor and a father beloved in the bowels of Jesus Christ ! And truly, if I may freely confess my most earnest desires in this matter to you, to whom I have always (as I ought) laid open all the secrets of my very heart and conscience, I acknowledge to you that my most ardent wishes are to die with you, or before you, and that also with the greatest torments imaginable, provided it were pleasing to the Divine Will, to whom I always submit all my desires most willingly, as also my life itself. For far am I from any enjoyment of this unhappy world after those are gone whom the world was not worthy of. But per- haps I have talked like one of the foolish women, 1 Wood, Athcn. Oxon. vol. i. p. 108. 48 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IX ENGLAND. since God seems to have so decreed it. Go before me, therefore, my Eeverend Father, happily and cou- rageously, and importune Christ in your prayers that by this though difficult way I may soon, without fear, follow you. And in the mean time I desire this as your last blessing in this life, that I may be a par- taker of your holy labours, of your torments, and of your conflicts; and after your suffering and your crown, I shall expect more plentifull favours from heaven by your intercession. I think it superfluous to animate you to that immortal reward preferable to all other goods, though purchased with the most ex- cessive pains, you who, by your birth, are intitled to a generous mind ; you who are endowed with such an excellent knowledge of Divine mysteries ; you who, from your very youth, have (which is the main) been trained up in the holy religion and profession of a Franciscan. Yet, since to suffer for good's sake is the greatest happiness bestowed upon man in this life, I will implore His Divine Majesty, with continual prayers, tears, and penitential labours, that you may happily finish your course, and may obtain a never- fading crown of eternal life. Farewel, my Reverend Father, and be always mindful of me with God, both on earth and in heaven. ' Your sorrow full daughter, ' CATHERINE.' 1 The martyr received this letter with great joy, and having succeeded in getting paper and secured an opportunity for sending his answer, he wrote to- the queen as follows : ' Most serene Princess, my sovereign Queen, and my Daughter in Jesus Christ, Your majesty's ser- vant delivered to me your most gracious letter, which 1 Collect. Angl.-Miaor, p. 234. PERSECUTION UNDER IIEXBY VIII. 49 was not only a great joy and consolation to me, but also a fresh encouragement to patience and constancy in this my affliction and continual expectation of death; for though I plainly see that not only all perishing goods, but likewise all the miseries and evils of this world, are to be despised for the future glory which will be revealed in us if we fight a good fight, yet I find my soul which (as 'tis usual with human nature on the like occasions) was somewhat heavy and pen- sive on the near view of death, and not without some fear a#d solicitude on the consideration of its own un- worthiness and frailty is now enlivened by those most pious expressions of your great charity, and wonder- fully animated in the contempt of all torments, and inspirited with a fresh fervour in the hopes and con- templation of future joys. My sovereign lady and well-beloved daughter, may Jesus Christ reward your goodness with eternal glory and bliss for this consola- tion ! and I do most earnestly beseech you to recom- mend my approaching sufferings, conflict, and agony to the Divine mercy, and to assist me therein by your continual prayers. And for the rest, I do most humbly entreat you not to doubt of my constancy, nor to be troubled for the grievousness of the torments appointed for me ; for it does not become my gray hairs to be disturbed in God's cause with such childish bugbears ; it does not become a man to fly from death basely after he has lived sixty-four years ; much less does it become a religious man not to love God and with his utmost endeavours aspire to heavenly things after he has been for four-and-forty years in the habit of S. Francis, learning and teaching the contempt of all that is earthly. I will be mindful of you, my sove- reign lady and daughter in Christ, both in this life and in the next, and will never cease from praying to the God of mercy to give you, according to the great- ness of your sorrows, all grace and comfort. In the E 50 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. mean time, vouchsafe to pray most earnestly for me, your devoted servant and beadsman, especially at that hour when you shall understand I am to be labouring under those dreadful torments prepared for me. I presume to make you a poor present of my beads, having, as 'tis given out, but three days longer to live on earth,' &C. 1 Mrs. Elizabeth Hammond, one of the queen's ladies of honour, also wrote to F. Forest : ' My most worshipful Father, The sorrow which my most serene queen and I feel on hearing of your severe and acute sufferings is quite incredible, and all the more because we are deprived of all consolation, so that her majesty never ceases to weep and does nothing but pray. I conjure you, if it be possible through any of your friends to obtain your liberty, let us not be deprived of you ; for her majesty is so deeply moved by this great affliction that I fear lest she should fall ill and die. Moreover, the fury of the king is so great that her majesty can scarcely bear it. On Monday last the ministers of the king came here, seeking for we know not what, and fright- ened us so dreadfully that we did not know what course to follow ; and even now we have no idea what was the king's intention in thus terrifying us. I entreat you to pray God for me and for rny companion, Dorothea Lichfield, who salutes you with all her heart.' 2 To this letter F. Forest replied : 'My daughter, Elizabeth Hammond, I am cer- tainly grieved at your great sorrow and that of your lady on account of my sufferings, as if there were 1 Collect, ADgl.-Minor. p. 235. a Danielle, chap. x. p. 27. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 51 not a resurrection to glory. In truth this is not what I have often taught you amongst other acts of piety ; and even should I ever have taught it you, you know that then I committed a great sin. If through fear of torments or love of the riches of this world, I would cast my faith behind my back and give myself a prey to the devil by consenting to that which I ought not, there is no doubt that I should be free. But let not such a thought ever enter your heart. Rather learn to suffer for the truth of Christ's faith, and even to die for the Catholic Spouse, your Mother ; and seek not to withdraw me from these torments, by means of which I hope to obtain eternal blessedness. I entreat you to follow in the footsteps of the queen, your lady, and to pray God for me that the torments which are destined for me may be increased, for they are little to obtain the glory of God.' 1 Dr. Thomas Abel, who had been the queen's confidential chaplain and one of the theologians appointed to defend her before the Legatine Commis- sion, 2 had been sent to the Tower with Bishop Fisher and several ecclesiastics on the very day that the Holy Maid of Kent and the first martyrs had suf- fered. 3 He had now been above a year in prison. He had been tortured thirty-seven times, and his pa- tience was well-nigh exhausted, not that he dreamt of giving up a single iota of the faith, but he longed to be released to enjoy the Beatific Vision. He wrote at this time the following letter to F. Forest : ' Very Reverend Father, Although human nature is terrified by the intensity of tortures, yet our faith demands and requires us to bear them. I said, " My foot is moved because Thou hast turned away Thy 1 Danielle, chap. x. p. 28. 2 Sander, part i. p. 45. 3 Stow, p. 571. 52 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. face from me." But wherefore this delay to one who eagerly longs for that supreme blessedness? blessed face, in which is the fullness of joy ! Whence David says, " I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear." 1 But " Thou turnedst away Thy face from me, and I became troubled;" 3 troubled, I say, because the pain of the tortures which I desire is prolonged ; it is prolonged, and at the same time I am humbled; humbled and not raised up, because not drawn to my Saviour ; not drawn, because I am burdened with the weight of my sins ; burdened and not refreshed by Him. What then profits my condemnation if there be longer to wait? " With expectation I have waited for the Lord," 3 and He has not heard me. Where- fore, I ask ? Because you have not implored the mercy of God with such a multitude of prayers as would have availed me. For I know of how much weight is the prayer of the just man before God ; "Because with the Lord there is mercy; and with Him plentiful redemption." 4 " In- Thee have our fathers hoped ; they have hoped, and Thou hast deli- vered them," 5 for the sake of David Thy servant. Why then is not an end put to these tortures ? I have now suffered seven-and-thirty days, and I find no rest. But my hope is that we shall die together by the same punishment. Let us die, I pray, that we may live with Him, to whom, Martyr of all Mar- tyrs, I commend you earnestly in my prayers. Fare- well, and pray for me.' To this letter F. Forest returned the following answer : ' Very excellent Sir, In proportion to the clear- ness of knowledge will be the fruition of joy and of 1 Ps. xvi. 15. 2 Ps. xxix. 8. * Ps. xxix. 1. 4 Ps. cxxix. 7. Ps. xxi. 5. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 53 the eternal abode. Whence S. Augustine says in the book Of the City of God, there are many mansions in one house, there will also be various ranks of rewards ; but where God will be all in all, He will also be in different degress of clearness through joy, in order that what each has may through joy be common to all ; because the glory of the Head will be that of all through the bond of love, and thus each will rejoice at the happiness of others as if he himself possessed it. Count not your tor- tures, my son, for that is to add pain to pain ; but rather, as S. Paul says, " Reckon the sufferings of this time not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed in us." 1 To whose words may well be added those of the prophet who says to our Lord, " For a thousand years in Thy sight are as yesterday, which is past." 2 If you bear patiently the tortures that are inflicted on you, doubt not of your reward. Of which the Psalmist says, " I have inclined my heart to do Thy justifications for ever, for the reward." 3 O blessed and thrice - happy reward, which God gives to those who fear Him. Whence we pray, " Lord, reward Thy ser- vant." But only on the condition, " I have kept Thy words." If, therefore, there is a reward for keeping the words of the Lord, keep them, my son. But you will ask, " How long ?" To the end. For our Saviour says, " He that shall endure unto the end, he shall be saved." 4 Therefore, neither the tortures of thirty-seven days, nor of a thousand years, but the last end, will crown your combat. With labourers the work of a single day does not satisfy for a whole year ; nor do those who are sent on military service to Rome receive as much as those who go to Jeru- salem. If you take such care to follow to Rome, 1 Rom. viii. 18. 2 Ps. Ixxxix. 4. * Ps. cxviii. 112. * S. Mark xiii. 13. 54 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. think you not of going on to Jerusalem? Jerusalem, I say, which is the City of the great King, 1 in her houses you will know when you attain to her ; to her, I say, in whom is the highest peace and the greatest tranquillity. Think you, my son, that we shall run together, and rejoice in the same punishment, and drink of the same chalice ? A greater combat awaits me ; but for you lighter sufferings remain. What- ever they be, act manfully, our Lord supporting you. Farewell.' 2 When these letters were written it was supposed that F. Forest would have received his crown before the queen. But God had appointed otherwise. His execution was put off for about three years, while her majesty's days of sorrows were shortened. She died at Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire, in January 1536, in the fiftieth year of her age and the thirty- third after her arrival in England. On her death- bed she asked to see her daughter, who had been separated from her ever since Cranmer had pronounced her marriage null and void. But Henry would not grant her last request to him. 3 She ordered that she should be buried in a convent of the Obser- vants, who had done and suffered the most for her. 4 But the king would not allow her last wishes to be carried out, and by his command she was buried in the abbey church of Peterborough. 5 In spite, however, of bloodshed and cruelty, there was still a great stir throughout the nation on account of the change of religion. Then it was suggested that there was no other way of supporting the king 1 Ps. xlvii. 3. 2 Wadding, vol. xvi. p. 393. 3 Cardinal Pole. Apol. ad Cassar, p. 162. 4 Burnet, part i. book iii. p. 308. 5 Herbert, Life of Henry VIII. ap. Kenuet, vol. ii. p. 188. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 55 in his assumed supremacy than by getting rid of the monks, who were a body of reserve for the Pope and were always ready to support his claims; be- sides which, there were amongst them many men of talent and learning, who might prove troublesome. Moreover, the king's revenue did not cover his lavish expenditure. He did not wish to lay more taxes on his subjects, whom he had already heavily burdened, and the suppression of the monasteries was thought to be the easiest way of raising money. 1 Accordingly, in 1536 all the religious communities whose income was less than two hundred a year were dissolved and their property was seized. The Conventual Grey Friars, however, were exempted from this first storm, for the evident reason that ' there was nothing to be got by their ruin, forasmuch as they had no endowments of lands,' - or other property. They were therefore allowed to breathe for three years longer. But though the Bishops and higher clergy deemed it prudent to be silent spectators, and the nobles urged on the king in hopes of sharing the plunder, the people, who had been well grounded by the friars in their knowledge and love of the faith, rose in arms in the northern and eastern counties, not against the king their loyalty to whom was most remark- able but against the unprincipled councillors who alone, they fancied, could have devised so much wickedness. After first pacifying and dispersing them by characteristic double-dealing Henry turned upon them with sanguinary fury. Amid the indiffer- ence or even flattering applause of his court, his ' fierce temper, strengthened by habit and exasperated by resistance, demanded more constant supplies of 1 Collier, vol. iv. part ii. 1. ii. p. 290 ; Burnet, part i. book iii. p. 305. 2 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1534. 56 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. blood ; !1 and the rest of his reign was but a series of cruel butchery and violence. In 1534 two hundred Observants had been thrown at once into prison ; and since then, as occasion served, all the rest in England had been shut up. Gladly would the king have hanged them all, but he feared the infamy that he would incur by such an act. Already there was such widespread discontent and such loud outcries, even at the court, on account of their cruel treatment, that it was necessary to get rid of them more quietly. Accordingly some of them were starved to death, others were tortured till they expired, and a great number, coupled two and two, were sent into distant prisons in order that they might there perish with less notice. How many were thus disposed of we do not know. The Franciscan Meno- logium commemorates, on the 27th of September 1537, thirty-four friars and 'others not a few.' The Franciscan Martyrology commemorates, on the 31st of July 1538, thirty -two who had been removed into distant prisons during the preceding years, and had sunk under hard usage. Sander mentions twenty- two who died in one prison or another. 2 Another contemporary writer says there was an ' immense number' of them, and that all perished either on the scaffold or by starvation, or through their sufferings in prison. 3 But though it is doubtful when, how, or in what numbers the Observants suffered, yet it is undoubted that all of them remained firm to the very last, and that neither now nor in the following reign did a single one of them fall away from the faith. We hear of the release of only eight friars, 1 Hallam, Constitut. Hist. vol. i. chap. i. p. 27, ed. 1857. 2 Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 244. 3 Contemporary Account of Fisher and More preserved in the Vatican, ap. Pocock, Records of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 562. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 57 who were banished to Scotland or Germany. 1 But four of these Thomas Packington, Bonaventure Roo, John Tuit, and Richard Carter had undergone such hardships in prison, that all four died a few days after their release. 2 The friars who had escaped to Flanders and other places abroad were looked on with great venera- tion, as confessors for the faith. F. Peto went to Rome, where he was made Gustos of the Hospital of the Most Holy Trinity of S. Thomas. In 1544, the bishopric of Salisbury falling vacant, it was conferred on him by the Pope, and on John Capon, alias Salcot, by the king. 3 F. Henry Holstam went to the Netherlands, where he was held in such esteem that in 1544 he was made Visitor of the Province of Brabant, and in 154$, Minister Provincial. Other English friars distinguished themselves so greatly as lecturers of divinity in the Franciscan convent of Louvain, that F. Pinchartius, Minister Provincial in the following century, said to F. Francis a Sancta Clara Davenport, that they were indebted to the English, for their learning. 4 Many of the friars escaped to Ireland, where they were received with characteristic hospitality. In return they picked up the language with a quickness which their hosts deemed quite supernatural, and went about the country instructing the people and strengthening their faith to meet the persecution which a few years after was extended to them. The following are the only martyrdoms of which any details have reached us : 1 Wadding, vol. xvi. p. 419. 2 Franciscan Martyrology, August 9, ap. Collect. Angl.- Minor. part i. p. 238. 3 The Episcopal Succession, by W. Maziere Brady, vol. i. p. 5. 4 Hist. Min. Provin. Angl. p. 55, ap. Collect. Angl.- Minor. p. 247. 58 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. F. Anthony Brockbey, or Brorbey, was Professor of Divinity in Magdalen College, Oxford. He was very learned in Greek and Hebrew and was distin- guished as an eloquent preacher. One day as he was preaching in the Church of S. Lawrence in Lon- don, he inveighed strongly against the king's late proceedings. He was consequently taken up by his majesty's express command and was thrown into a loathsome dungeon. Here he was placed on the rack in order to induce him to retract his words. But he bore all the tortures with wonderful courage and constancy ; and far from yielding a single point, he only expressed an ardent desire to suffer yet more cruel torments for the love of God. So unusually barbarous was his racking that every joint in his body was dislocated, and he could not move, or even raise his hand to his mouth. For five-and-twenty days a devout old woman charitably waited on him and fed him. At the end of that time, on the 19th July 1537, an executioner came to him by the king's command, and as he lay in bed strangled him with the cord which he wore for a girdle. 1 On the 27th of the same month F. Thomas Cort ended his life in prison. He is described as a man of noble lineage, but still more noble through the eloquence and zeal which led him, at the peril of his life, to preach openly against the king's con- duct in the matter of the divorce and his assumption of the supremacy of the Church in England. He was seized while he was preaching in the Church of S. Lawrence, and was thrown into Newgate. He was put into the cell with thieves, murderers, and the worst criminals, thus walking in the footsteps of Him to whose example he had vowed himself, and ' who was mimbered with the transgressors.' Here, partly 1 Danielle, chap. ii. p. 6 ; Collect. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 239. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 59 through the filth and fetid air of the gaol and partly through starvation, he closed his life. But at his departure, in order that his sanctity might be known to all, the whole prison was lit up with a heavenly and miraculous light. The king was greatly troubled when this circumstance came to his knowledge, and he desired him to be decently buried. He was there- fore laid in the churchyard of S. Sepulchre, near the great door of the church, and a stone with an epitaph asking for the prayers of passers-by, which was still standing in 1G07, was placed over him by a devout matron, Margaret, the wife of a certain Herbert, a shopkeeper of Ghent. 1 On the 3d of the following August F. Thomas Belchiam died of starvation in prison. He was a very learned man and a great preacher ; and though only twenty-eight years of age he distinguished himself by the zeal and courage with which he opposed the king's proceedings. In order to give the greater force to his bold assertions, he wrote a book addressed to his brethren on the text, ' They that wear soft clothing are in king's houses.' 2 In this work he pointed out the manner of life too common in the courts of great princes, which ordinarily are such a filthy sink of vice as to give rise to the threadbare proverb, ' He that will be godly must depart the court ;' where, so far from finding examples of religious deportment, licen- tiousness and vices of all sorts and degrees bud forth and grow up luxuriantly. He also inveighed against the avarice of the English clergy, expressing his de- testation of this vice in those who ought to outdo all others in hospitality and charitable liberality. Nor did he spare the Bishops, whom he reproached with cowardice and worldliness, since for temporal advan- 1 Danielle, chap. iii. p. 7 ; Collect. Angl. -Minor, part i. p. 239. * Matt, xi. 8. GO FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. tages and the goods of this perishing life they chose rather to incur the anger of God Himself than lay open the plain truth to the king, as, even at the risk of death, they were bound in duty to do. One copy of this book, which is said to have been a very learned work, he placed in the hands of his brethren at Greenwich, who when they were turned adrift carefully preserved it, intending to have it printed. But F. Angelus Mason says that he could never hear of its having been pub- lished, and the MS. was unhappily lost. 1 The other copy he took with him to prison. Here "while he was being starved to death every sort of torture was in- flicted upon him, his tormentors frequently varying their proceedings in the hope of tiring him out with the constant succession of different sufferings. But through them all he conquered, and closed his life only the more triumphantly. When he was reduced to skin and bone and was at the point of expiring in the Christian hope of eternal glory through the merits of Christ, he commended his soul to God in the words, 'In Thee, Lord, have I put my trust, let me never be confounded.' As he expired the gaol shook as if with an earthquake, and the keepers were terrified. The king, too, was startled by this supernatural mani- festation and ordered him to be decently buried. The copy of his book which he had with him in prison was carried to the king, who, as he read it, was struck with such remorse that he burst out weeping and bitterly lamented his own misery. The good impres- sion, however, was of no long continuance. Boon hardening his heart he ordered the book to be burnt. But the king's jester, William Sommer, who had never had the use of reason, ran through all the king's court, exclaiming vehemently, ' The plain dealing of one beggar baffles the king's anger.' 2 1 Certamen Seraphicum, p. 345. 2 Danielle, chap. v. p. 9 ; Col. Angl.-Minor. part i. p. 240. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 61 F. Francis Waire, also, was hanged at S. Thomas Watering's in 1539, but we know nothing more about him. Though several years had passed away since F. Forest's execution had been put off, yet it is not to be supposed that he had been forgotten. .Attempts were constantly renewed, whether by torture or by offers of life and worldly wealth and honours, to induce him to acknowledge the king's supremacy. But in vain. He. always answered firmly that he was ready to suf- fer the greatest torments rather than offend God by acquiescing in the king's usurpation of the Pope's divinely appointed authority. He added that all this storm had arisen in the nation through the national sins, the most severe punishment of which was that God had abandoned it and allowed it to fall away. He accused himself for his own sins and those of the people, and used the prayer, ' Spare, Lord, spare Thy people.' At length, on the 22d May 1538, he was drawn on a hurdle to Smithfield, where there was a high scaffold, on which sat the king's council and principal nobles, who were authorised to pardon him if he showed any spark of repentance. There was also a pulpit from which Latimer, now Bishop of Worcester, preached to him. But utterly unmoved, he disputed with Latimer and answered him so forci- bly from Scripture that his opponent had not a word to say in reply, and the people around bgan to whisper at his confusion. Whereupon Latimer, as his last refuge, called out, ' Burn him, burn him ; for his words prove that he deserves death.' Finally, Latinv^r asked him in what state he would die. Whereupon Forest answered in a loud voice, so as to be heard by the surrounding crowd, ' Were an angel to come down from heaven to teach me any other doctrine than that which I have received and believed from my youth, I would not believe him ; and if my body should be cut 62 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. joint after joint, or member after member, hanged, burnt, or whatever pains soever might be inflicted on me, I would never turn from my old profession.' He added, 'Seven years past thou, Latimer, durst not for thy life have preached such a sermon as thou hast just spoken.' 1 He was now conducted from the high scaffold on which he stood to the gallows which had been erected over a great pile of fagots and straw. On seeing the tortures that had been prepared for him, he cried out in a loud voice with undaunted courage, ' Lord God, neither fire, nor gallows, nor any torments whatsoever, shall separate me from Thee.' An iron, chain was then passed round his waist and under his armpits, and he was hung up over the fire which scarcely reached to his feet. The wind being high the flames were sometimes blown away, so as greatly to lengthen his agony. But he bore his sufferings with wonderful intrepidity and patience, constantly repeating, ' In the shadow of Thy wings will I hope, until iniquity pass away.' 2 After he had thus hung for a considerable time, some of the crowd, either wearied with the protracted spectacle or touched with compassion at his intense sufferings, pushed down the gibbet, so that both he and it fell into the fire and he passed quickly out of the power of his tormentors to receive his crown of glory in Paradise. The fire which consumed him was made in great part of a crucifix of unusual size, called Darvel Gathren, which had been held in great vene- ration in South Wales, and to which was attached an old prophecy, that it would one day set a forest on fire. This unusually cruel execution, which so remark- ably fulfilled F. Forest's prophecy of the 'greater combat' that awaited him, must no doubt have come 1 Wood, Athen. Oxon. vol. i. p. 109, ed. Bliss, 1813. 2 Ps. Ivi. 2. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 63 to the ears of Dr. Abel, who was still languishing in the Tower. But far from intimidating him, it only revived his hope and assurance of the ' lighter suffer- ings' that remained for himself, as had at the same time been foretold. The long trial of his patience, however, was not yet over. As year after year had slowly worn away, the over-eagerness of natural desire which appears in his letter to F. Forest had been supernaturalised, and as his love had grown in depth and intensity he had become willing to await his Lord's own time to crown his combat. At length, in the year 1540, he, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell, priests, were attainted for denying the king's supremacy and adhering to the Pope, 1 and on the 31st July they were led out to execution. Fetherston and Powell had formerly been associated with him as theologians for Queen Catherine's defence, they had been imprisoned about the same time as he, and they were now to share his victory. In grim mockery three Protestants, Barnes, Gerrard, and Jerome, who were attainted for heresy, were led out with them, a Catholic and a Protestant being coupled together on each hurdle. On arriving at Smithfield the three Catholics were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and the -three Protestants were burnt. A Frenchman who stood by, on beholding this odd exhibition of fanciful cruelty, could not refrain from saying to a friend in Latin, ' They have a strange way of manag- ing in England ; for those who are for the Pope are hanged, and those who are against him are burnt/ 2 Once more the Grey Friars stood at the head of the sufferers for religion through the spoiling of their goods. In September 1538, seven months before the general spoliation of the religious Orders, the houses 1 Burnet, vol. i. book iii. p. 066. 2 Collier, vol. v. part ii. book iii. p. 80 ; Stow, p. 58] ; Sander, part i. p. 97. G4 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. and all the property of the Conventual Grey Friars were confiscated. The Black Friars, the White Friars, the Charterhouse Monks, the Community of the Hospital of S. Thomas Akres, and that of S. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury, were at the same time robbed of their property. The Grey Friars' house in London was used as a wine-store, and in the year 1544, when three hundred French ships had been captured, their church was full of wine. In 1546 the church was reopened, and the Bishop of Kochester preached at S. Paul's Cross, de- claring that the king, for the relief of the poor, had given the church with the ground and all the buildings on it to the city of London. But as all these were valued at no more then 32Z. 19s. per annum, though the enclosure was large and the offices many, the king, intending to make it a parish church, was forced to add to it 8. Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield, lately valued at 30 5Z. 6s. 7d., and the church of the same, also the parishes of S. Nicholas and S. Ewin, and so much of the parish of S. Pulcher's as is within Newgate, and five hundred marks yearly for ever in land, which were all made into one parish in the church of the Franciscans, now called Christ- church. Within the walls were placed several slabs with the inscription, ' This is Christ's Church, founded by King Henrie the eight.' 1 ' A very odd foundation to let two churches out of four stand, sub- verting the other two and a good hospital, and to call himself a founder.' 2 The Grey Friars' house at Oxford also was seized, and the buildings and a pleasant grove of about five acres were let to William Freer and John Pye, Aldermen of Oxford, for twenty shillings per annum. The cloister or place of burial, with a plot of ground 1 Speed, p. 78:). 2 Stevens, ap. Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1515. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. (55 enclosed therein, was let to Richard Gunter, Alderman of Oxford, for three shillings and sixpence yearly rent. The orchard or garden called Paradise, with another garden called Boteham or Bateham, was let to William Thomas, alias Plomer, of Oxford, for six shillings and eightpence per annum. These rents continued to be paid yearly to the king till the year 1545, when his majesty sold the premises to Richard Andrews and John Howes, from whom the above-named Richard Gunter and his wife Joan bought them all not long after. Then the trees were cut down, the grass-plats were trodden out of all form, the church was entirely demolished, and the stones and statues, and the very monuments of the dead, were thrown down, taken away, and disposed of for any use that could make the sale of them bring in a penny. 1 The strictness with which the Friars Minor had adhered to their rule of poverty is proved by the in- significant value of their property in London and Oxford, which were their two principal establish- ments. A further proof is afforded by the reports and inventories of the Royal Commissioners, to whom their other houses were made over. The revenues of the friary at Bedford were estimated at 31. 15s. 2d. a year. Of the friars at Aylesbury Dr. John London wrote to Cromwell, ' I found them very poor and in debt, their ornaments very coarse, and very little stuff of household ; there I only sold the glass windows and their ornaments, with their utensils. I left the house whole, and only defaced the church there. The whole church is well covered with lead and a good new roof.' The revenues were valued at 31. 2s. 6d. z The friary at Walsingham was valued at 31. Northampton was comparatively rich with property valued at 6?. 13s. 4<#. per annum. 3 At 1 Wood, Antiq. Oxon. vol. i. p. 80. 2 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1509. Ibid. p. 1523. F 66 FRANCISCAN MARTYRS IN ENGLAND. Coventry the friars had neither lands nor buildings, nor other possessions spiritual or temporal, but only a permission to receive the charity of good people. 1 At Bridgnorth, in giving up their house they said, ' That they were not able to live ; for the charity of the people was so small that in three years they had not received in alms in ready money the sum of ten shillings a year, and they lived only by a service that they had in the town in a chapel on the bridge.' 2 Their property was valued at 41. per annum. 3 In Shrewsbury their house was declared to be the poor- est in the town ; for they had only three or four acres of arable land and little personal property, no jewels, nothing but a plated crucifix and a mean chalice. 4 Poor indeed must have been their condition if they were poorer than the Austin Friars in the same town, of whom Eichard, Bishop of Dover, wrote, 'All utensils gone, and nothing there to help the friars, not so much as a chalice to say Mass ; and no man durst trust the friars to lend them any, so that all that was in the house could not be praised at twenty-six shillings and eightpence, no bedding, nor meat, bread, nor drink.' 5 As early as 1541 Henry's troubled conscience had driven him to send Gardiner, Bishop of Win- chester, to Germany, to negotiate through the em- peror's mediation a reconciliation with the Pope. But the humiliation of a public confession of sins com- mitted in the sight of all Christendom, and the restitution of the Church property, which would obviously have been necessary, were more than he could brook. 6 Again, on the approach of death the 1 Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1534. 3 Chapter House Books, No. 309, p. 65, ap. Brewer, pref. p. 20. * Dugdale, vol. vi. p. 1531. 4 Ibid. p. 1531. s Chapter House Books, No. 309, p. 83, ap. Brewer, pref, p. 21. Sander, part i. p. 98. PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY VIII. 67 stings of conscience led him to consult his ministers on the same subject. But the crowd of worldly para- sites who surrounded him, fearing his anger if they spoke the truth, and trembling for the los's of the lands which they sacrilegiously held, lulled his re- morse. Gardiner alone ventured to suggest that he should lay the question before Parliament, or, should he not have time for this, that he should at leas't write down what were his wishes, since God accepts the vow of the heart when some unavoidable im- pediment renders its execution impossible. 1 But even this was not done. On the 28th January 1547 Henry died and went to his account. * Even as his life' had been ' sinful, so after his death God showed a strange ensample upon his wretched carcass. For at such time as he vras preparing to be ceared and spiced by the sur- geons in the chamber at Westminster, where he died, to be after removed down to the chapel, and so from thence to Windsor, where it was buried, it chanced his carcass by mishap and over-boisterous lifting to [fall] to the ground, out of which issued such a quantity of horrible and filthy blood and matter, that it was no small trouble to a number about it to close the place again, and to make it ready against the next day for the remove. But before all could be done there came into the place (as I have been credibly informed) a great black dog, no man could tell from whence,