The Eve of the Reformation / Studies in the Religious Life and Thought of the English people in the Period Preceding the Rejection of the Roman jurisdiction by Henry VIII

FOOTNOTES

[1] Opera (ed. Frankfort), tom. x. p. 56, quoted by Janssen.

[2] J. L. Andre, in Sussex ArchÆological Journal, xxxix. p. 31.

[3] The use of the expression “New Learning” as meaning the revival of letters is now so common that any instance of it may seem superfluous. Green, for example, in his History of the English People, vol. ii. constantly speaks of it. Thus (p. 81), “Erasmus embodied for the Teutonic peoples the quickening influence of the New Learning during the long scholar-life which began at Paris and ended amidst sorrow at Basle.” Again (p. 84), “the group of scholars who represented the New Learning in England.” Again (p. 86), “On the universities the influence of the New Learning was like a passing from death to life.” Again (p. 125), “As yet the New Learning, though scared by Luther’s intemperate language, had steadily backed him in his struggle.”

[4] Sermons. London: Robert Caly, 1557, p. 36.

[5] The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christ, sig. Aij.

[6] R. V. The olde Faith of Great Brittayne, &c.—The style of the book may be judged by the following passages:—“How say you (O ye popish bishops and priests which maintain Austen’s dampnable ceremonies)—For truly so long as ye say masse and lift the bread and wine above your heads, giving the people to understand your mass to be available for the quick and the dead, ye deny the Lord that bought you; therefore let the mass go again to Rome, with all Austen’s trinkets, and cleave to the Lord’s Supper”.… Again:—“Gentle reader: It is not unknown what an occasion of sclander divers have taken in that the king’s majesty hath with his honourable council gone about to alter and take away the abuse of the communion used in the mass.… The ignorant and unlearned esteem the same abuse, called the mass, to be the principal point of Christianity, to whom the altering thereof appears very strange.… Our popish priests still do abuse the Lord’s Supper or Communion, calling it still a new name of Missa or Mass.” The author strongly objects to those like Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Smythe who have written in defence of the old doctrine of the English Church on the Blessed Sacrament: “Yea, even the mass, which is a derogation of Christ’s blood. For Christ left the sacrament of his body and blood in bread and wine to be eaten and drunk in remembrance of his death, and not to be looked upon as the Israelites did the brazen serpent.… Paul saith not, as often as the priest lifts the bread and wine above his shaven crown, for the papists to gaze at.” All this, as “the New Learning” brought over to England by St. Augustine of Canterbury, the author would send back to Rome from whence it came.

[7] Urbanus Regius, A comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe, translated by William Turner. Southwark: Nicholson, 1537, sig. Aij to Cvij.

[8] Opera (ed. Le Clerc), Ep. 583.

[9] Ibid., Ep. 751.

[10] Remigio Sabbadini, La Scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese, pp. 217-18.

[11] R. Sabbadini, Guarino Veronese et il suo epistolario, p. 57.

[12] The Earl was a confrater and special friend of the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury. In 1468-69, Prior Goldstone wrote to the Earl, who had been abroad “on pilgrimage” for four years, to try and obtain for Canterbury the usual jubilee privileges of 1470. In his Obit in the Canterbury Necrology (MS. Arund. 68 f. 45d) he is described as “vir undecumque doctissimus, omnium liberalium artium divinarumque simul ac secularium litterarum scientia peritissimus.”

[13] Leland (De Scriptoribus Britannicis, 482) calls him Tilloeus, and this has been generally translated as Tilly. In the Canterbury Letter Books (Rolls Series, iii. 291) it appears that Prior Selling was greatly interested in a boy named Richard Tyll. In 1475, Thomas Goldstone, the warden of Canterbury Hall, writes to Prior Selling about new clothes and a tunic and other expenses “scolaris tui Ricardi Tyll.” In the same volume, p. 315, is a letter of fraternity given to “Agnes, widow of William Tyll,” and on February 7, 1491, she received permission to be buried where her husband, William Tyll, had been interred, “juxta tumbam sancti ThomÆ martyris.”

[14] Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), pp. 13, 15.

[15] C. C. C. C. MS. 417 f. 54d: “Item hoc anno videlicet 6 Kal. Oct. D. Willms Selling celebravit primam suam missam et fuit sacerdos summÆ missÆ per totam illam ebdomadam.”

[16] LiterÆ Cantuarr. (Rolls Series), iii. 239.

[17] Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis, p. 482. Cf. also Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.

[18] Leland, ut supra.

[19] Umberto Dallari, I rotuli dei Lettori, &c., dello studio Bolognese dal 1384 al 1799, p. 51.

[20] Serafino Mazzetti, Memorie storiche sopra l’universitÀ di Bologna, p. 308.

[21] Leland, ut supra.

[22] B. Mus. Arundel MS. 68, f. 4. The Obit in Christchurch MS. D. 12, says: “SacrÆ TheologiÆ Doctor. Hic in divinis agendis multum devotus et lingua GrÆca et Latina valde eruditus.… O quam laudabiliter se habuit opera merito laudanda manifesto declarant.”

[23] In the Canterbury Registers (Reg. R.) there is a record which evidently relates to Selling’s previous stay in Rome as a student. On October 3, 1469, the date of Selling’s second departure for Rome, the Prior and convent of Christchurch granted a letter to Pietro dei Milleni, a citizen of Rome, making him a confrater of the monastery in return for the kindness shown to Dr. William Selling, when in the Eternal City. This letter, doubtless, Selling carried with him in 1469.

[24] The Old English Bible and other Essays, p. 306.

[25] B. Mus. Cotton MS. Julius F. vii., f. 118.

[26] One of Prior Selling’s first acts of administration was apparently to procure a master for the grammar school at Canterbury. He writes to the Archbishop: “Also please it your good faderhood to have in knowledge that according to your commandment, I have provided for a schoolmaster for your gramerscole in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught gramer at Wynchester and atte Seynt Antonyes in London. That, as I trust to God, shall so guide him that it shall be worship and pleasure to your Lordship and profit and encreas to them that he shall have in governance.”—Hist. MSS. Com. 9th Report, App. p. 105.

[27] I. Noble Johnson, Life of Linacre, p. 11. Among the great benefactors to Canterbury College, Oxford, was Doctor Thomas Chaundeler, Warden of New College. In 1473, the year after the election of Prior Selling, the Chapter of Christchurch, Canterbury, passed a resolution that, in memory of his great benefits to them, his name should be mentioned daily in the conventual mass at Canterbury, and that at dinner each day at Oxford he should be named as founder.

[28] Galeni, De Temperamentis libri tres, Thoma Linacro interpretante, is dedicated to Pope Leo X., with a letter from Linacre dated 1521. “The widow’s mite was approved by Him whose vicar on earth” Pope Leo is, so this book is only intended to recall common studies, though in itself of little interest to one having the care of the world.

[29] G. Lilii, Elogia, ed. P. Jovii, p. 91.

[30] Ibid., lxiii. p. 145.

[31] Sir Thomas More writing to Colet says: “I pass my time here (at Oxford) with Grocyn, Linacre, and our (George) Lilly: the first as you know the only master of my life, when you are absent; the second, the director of my studies; the third, my dearest companion in all the affairs of life” (J. Stapleton, Tres ThomÆ, p. 165.) Another constant companion of More at Oxford was Cuthbert Tunstall, one of the most learned men of his day, afterwards in succession Bishop of London and Durham. Tunstall dedicated to More his tract De arte supputandi, which he printed at Paris in 1529.

[32] Reg. Warham, in Knight’s Erasmus, p. 22 note.

[33] Encyclop. Brit. sub nomine.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ugo Balzani, Un’ ambasciata inglese a Roma, SocietÀ Romana di storia patria, iii. p. 175 seqq. Of this an epitome is given in Bacon’s Henry VII., p. 95. Count Ugo Balzani says: “Il prior di Canterbury sembra essere veramente stato l’anima dell’ ambasciata.” Burchardus, Rerum Urbanarum Commentarii (ed. Thuasne), i. p. 257, gives a full account of the reception of this embassy in Rome and by the Pope.

[36] Harl. MS. 6237, and Add. MS. 15,673.

[37] In the same beautifully written volume is a printed tract addressed to the Venetian Senate in 1471 against princes taking church property. The tract had been sent to the Prior of Christchurch by Christopher Urswick, with a letter, in which, to induce him to read it, he says it is approved by Hermolaus Barbarus and Guarini. Christopher Urswick was almoner to Henry VII., and to him Erasmus dedicated three of his works.

[38] Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis, 482.

[39] This information I owe to the kindness of Dr. Montague James.

[40] Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.

[41] Ibid., p. 36, a letter in which Dr. Langton asks Prior Selling to “attend to the drawing of it.” The draft sermon is in Cleop. A. iii.

[42] Richard Pace, De Fructu, p. 27. The work De Fructu was composed at Constance, where Pace was ambassador, and where he had met his old master, Paul Bombasius. He dedicates the tract to Colet, who had done so much to introduce true classical Latin into England, in place of the barbarous language formerly used. The work was suggested to him by a conversation he had in England two years before, on his return from Rome, with a gentleman he met at dinner, who strongly objected to a literary education for his children, on the ground that he disapproved of certain expressions made use of by Erasmus. The tract shows on what a very intimate footing Pace was with Bombasius.

[43] De Fructu, p. 99. Pace published at Venice in 1522, Plutarchi Cheronei Opuscula, and dedicated the work to Bishop Tunstall. He reminds the bishop of their old student days, and says the translation has been examined by their “old master, Nicholas Leonicus.”

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid., p. 51. “Quas vocant proportionum inductiones … antiquitatem superasse.”

[47] More to the University of Oxford, in Knight’s Erasmus, p. 31.

[48] Bishop Fisher’s love and zeal for learning is notorious. He did all in his power to assist in the foundation of schools of sound learning at Cambridge, and especially to encourage the study of Greek. Richard Croke, the protÉgÉ of Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher, after teaching Greek in 1516 at Leipzig, was sent by Fisher in 1519 to Cambridge to urge the utility of Greek studies at that university. In the Orationes he delivered there, after speaking of the importance of Greek for all Biblical study, he says that Oxford had taken up the work with great avidity, since “they have there as their patrons besides the Cardinal (Wolsey), Canterbury (Warham), and Winchester, all the other English bishops except the one who has always been your great stay and helper, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Bishop of Ely.” It was entirely owing to Bishop Fisher’s generosity, and at his special request, that Croke had gone to Cambridge rather than to Oxford, whither his connection with Warham, More, Linacre, and Grocyn would have led him, in order to carry on the work begun by Erasmus.

[49] Thomas Lupset was educated by Colet, and learnt his Latin and Greek under William Lilly, going afterwards to Oxford. There he made the acquaintance of Ludovico Vives, and at his exhortation went to Italy. He joined Reginald Pole in his studies at Padua, and on his return, after acting as Thomas Winter’s tutor in Paris, he held a position first as a teacher and then in Cardinal Wolsey’s household. In his Exhortation to Young Men, persuading them to a good life, “written at More, a place of my Lord Cardinal’s,” in 1529, he gives a charming account of his relation with a former pupil. “It happeneth,” he says, “at this time (my heartily beloved Edmund) that I am in such a place where I have no manner of books with me to pass the time after my manner and custom. And though I had here with me plenty of books, yet the place suffereth me not to spend in them any study. For you shall understand that I lie waiting on my Lord Cardinal, whose hours I must observe, to be always at hand lest I be called when I am not bye, which would be straight taken for a fault of great negligence. I am well satiated with the beholding of these gay hangings that garnish here every wall.” As a relief he turns to address his young friend Edmund. Probably Edmund doesn’t understand his affection, because he had always acted on the principle he has “been taught, that the master never hurteth his scholar more than when he uttereth and sheweth by cherishing and cokering the love he beareth to his scholars.” Edmund is now “of age, and also by the common board of houseling admitted into the number of men, and to be no more in the company of children,” and so now he can make known his affection. “This mind had I to my friend Andrew Smith, whose son Christopher, your fellow, I ever took for my son.… If you will call to your mind all the frays between you and me, or me and Smith, you will find that they were all out of my care for ‘your manners.’ When I saw certain fantasies in you or him that jarred from true opinions, the which true opinions, above all learning, I would have masters ever teach their scholars. Wherefore, my good withipol, take heed of my lesson.”

[50] John Clement, a protÉgÉ of Sir Thomas More, was afterwards a doctor of renown not only in medicine but in languages. He had been a member of More’s household, which Erasmus speaks of as “schola et gymnasium ChristianÆ religionis.” He is named at the beginning of the Eutopia, and Sir Thomas, in writing to Erasmus, says that Linacre declared that he had had no pupil at Oxford equal to him. John Clement translated several ancient Greek authors into Latin, amongst others many letters of St. Gregory Nazianzen and the Homilies of Nicephorus Callistus on the Saints of the Greek Calendar. Stapleton, in his Tres ThomÆ (p. 250), says he had himself seen and examined with the originals these two voluminous translations at the request of John Clement himself. He had married Margaret, the ward of Sir Thomas More, and in the most difficult places of his translation he was helped by his wife, who, with the daughters of Sir Thomas, had been his disciple and knew Greek well. Mary Roper, More’s granddaughter, and the daughter of Margaret Roper, translated Eusebius’s History from Greek into Latin, but it was never published, because Bishop Christopherson had been at work on a similar translation. On the change of religion in Elizabeth’s reign, John Clement and his wife, with the Ropers, took refuge in the Low Countries. Paulus Jovius, in his Descriptio BritanniÆ, p. 13, speaks of all three daughters of Sir Thomas More being celebrated for their knowledge of Latin.

[51] Erasmi Opera (ed. 1703), Col. 40.

[52] Ibid., Ep. 241.

[53] Ibid., Ep. 363.

[54] To take one example, Thomas Millyng, who as Bishop of Hereford died in 1492, had studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a monk of Westminster. During the old age of Abbot Fleet, of Westminster, he governed the monastery, and became its abbot in 1465. He was noted for his love of studies, and especially for his knowledge of Greek. This, says the writer of his brief life in the National Biographical Dictionary, was “a rare accomplishment for monks in those days.” He might have added, and for any one else!

[55] Dennistoun, Memorials of the Dukes of Urbino, iii., pp. 415 seqq.

[56] Erasmus to Abbot Bere. Opera, Ep. 700.

[57] MS. Bodl. 80. It is the autograph copy of Free, cf. J. W. Williams, Somerset MediÆval Libraries, p. 87. It was Abbot Bere who, in 1506, presented John Claymond, the learned Greek scholar, to his first benefice of Westmonkton, in the county of Somerset. In 1516 Claymond became first President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, often after signing himself, EucharistiÆ servus. Dr. Claymond procured for his college several Greek manuscripts which had belonged to Grocyn and Linacre, which are still possessed by it. At the end of MS. XXIII., which is a volume containing ninety homilies of St. John Chrysostom in Greek, is an inscription stating that this, and MS. XXIV., were copied in the years 1499 and 1500 by a Greek from Constantinople, named John Serbopylas, then living and working at Reading.

[58] Ludovico Vives had been invited over to England by Cardinal Wolsey to lecture on rhetoric at Oxford. He lived at Corpus Christi College, then ruled by Dr. John Claymond, whom in his tract De conscribendis Epistolis he calls his “father.” The fame of this Spanish master of eloquence drew crowds to his lectures at the university, and amongst the audience Henry and Queen Katherine might sometimes be seen. For a time he acted also as tutor to the Princess Mary, and dedicated several works to the queen, to whose generosity he says he owed much. He took her side in the “divorce” question, and was thrown into prison for some weeks for expressing his views on the matter. Fisher, More, and Tunstall were his constant friends in England, and of Margaret Roper he writes, “from the time I first made her acquaintance I have loved her as a sister.” Among his pupils at Louvain, besides the above-named Canterbury monk, John Digon, he mentions with great affection Nicholas Wotton, whom the antiquary Twyne speaks of as returning to England with Digon and Jerome Ruffaldus, who calls Vives his “Jonathan,” and who subsequently became abbot of St. Vaast, Arras.

[59] J. Venn, Gonville and Caius College (1349-1897), Vol. I.

[60] Ibid., p. xvi.

[61] Ibid., p. 18.

[62] Ibid., p. 23.

[63] Ibid., p. 21.

[64] Ibid., p. xviii.

[65] Sermons (1557), f. 54.

[66] A. Chalmers, History of the Colleges, &c. of Oxford, ii. p. 351.

[67] Hearne, John of Glastonbury, ii. p. 490; from MS. Cott. Vitellius c. vii.

[68] Saint-German was born 1460. He was employed by Thomas Cromwell on some business of the State, and died in 1540. The Dyalogue was printed apparently first in Latin, but subsequently in English. It consisted of three parts (1) published by Robert Wyer, (2) by Peter Treveris, 1531, and (3) by Thomas Berthalet, also in 1531.

[69] Dyalogue, ut sup., 3rd part, f. 2.

[70] One of the first Acts of King Henry VII. on his accession, was to obtain from the Pope a Bull agreeing to some changes in the Sanctuary customs. Prior Selling of Canterbury was despatched as King’s Orator to Rome with others to Pope Innocent VIII. in 1487, and brought back the Pope’s approval of three points in which the king proposed to change these laws. First, that if any person in Sanctuary went out at night and committed mischief and trespass, and then got back again, he should forfeit his privilege of Sanctuary. Secondly, that though the person of a debtor might be protected in Sanctuary, yet his goods out of the precincts were not so protected from his creditors. Thirdly, that where a person took Sanctuary for treason, the king might appoint him keepers within the Sanctuary.

[71] Robert Keilway, Relationes quorundam casuum, f. 188, seqq.

[72] Dyalogue, ut sup., f. 12.

[73] Dyalogue, f. 23.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ibid., f. 23.

[76] Ibid., f. 21.

[77] Ibid., f. 21.

[78] A treatyse concerning the power of the clergie and the laws of the realme. London, J. Godfray.

[79] A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. 4.

[80] A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. xii.

[81] A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. xii.

[82] Ibid., cap. xiii.

[83] Ibid., cap. vi.

[84] English Works (ed. 1557), p. 1017.

[85] A treatyse, &c., ut sup., cap. vi., sig. E. i.

[86] Salem and Bizance, a dialogue betwixte two Englishmen, whereof one was called Salem and the other Bizance (Berthelet, 1533), f. 76.

[87] Ibid., f. 84.

[88] English Works, p. 892.

[89] Ibid.

[90] A Dialogue, &c., ut sup., f. 8.

[91] Ibid., f. 11.

[92] Ibid., f. 14.

[93] A Dialogue, &c., ut sup., p. 17.

[94] History of English Law, i., p. 93-4. Mr. James Gairdner, in a letter to The Guardian, March 1, 1899, says: “There were, in the Middle Ages, in every kingdom of Europe that owned the Pope’s jurisdiction, two authorities, the one temporal and the other spiritual, and the head of the spiritual jurisdiction was at Rome. The bishops had the rule over their clergy, even in criminal matters, and over the laity as well in matters of faith. Even a bishop’s decision, it is true, might be disputed, and there was an appeal to the Pope; nay, the Pope’s decision might be disputed, and there was an appeal to a general council. Thus there was, in every kingdom, an imperium in imperio, but nobody objected to such a state of matters, not even kings, seeing that they could, as a rule, get anything they wanted out of the Popes—even some things, occasionally, that the Popes ought not to have conceded.”

[95] William Bond, The Pilgrymage of perfeccyon, 1531, f. 223.

[96] Roger Edgworth, Sermons, 1557, fol. 102

[97] Edward Powell, Propugnaculum summi sacerdotii, &c., adversus M. Lutherum, 1523, fol. 22 and fol. 35.

[98] English Works, p. 171.

[99] Ibid. p. 185.

[100] Ibid., p. 528.

[101] Ibid., p. 538.

[102] English Works, p. 616.

[103] Ibid., p. 798.

[104] Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries (popular edition), p. 367.

[105] In his work against Luther, Bishop Fisher teaches the supremacy of the Pope without any ambiguity. In the Sermon had at Paulis against Luther and his followers, he also put his position perfectly clearly. The Church that has a right to the name Catholic has derived the right from its communion with the See of Peter. Our Lord called Cephas, Peter, or rock, to signify that upon him as a rock He would build His church. Unto Peter He committed His flock, and “the true Christian people which we have at this day was derived by a continual succession from the See of Peter” (fol. e. 4. d.).

[106] Simon Matthew, Sermon made in the Cathedrall Church of Saynt-Paule, 27 June 1535 (Berthelet, 1535).

[107] Joannis Longlondi Tres conciones (R. Pynson), f. 45.

[108] Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Luther (translation by J. W., 1687), f. a. i.

[109] A treatise of the donation or gift and endowment of possessions given (by Constantine) with the judgement of certain great men, 1517, Thomas Godfray.

[110] London, Thomas Berthelet.

[111] A dyalogue, ut sup., ff. 3-7.

[112] f. A. ii.; c. i.; c. iiij. The author recommends those who would understand the Pope’s power to “resort unto The glasse of truth or to the book named the Determinations of the universities.” The book named here A glasse of truth is written in favour of the divorce. “Some lawyers,” the author says, “attribute too much to the Pope—at length there shall be no law, but only his will.” The work was published by Berthelet anonymously, but Richard Croke, in a letter written at this period (Ellis, Historical Letters, 3rd series, ii. 195), says that the book was written by King Henry himself. It was generally said that Henry had written a defence of his divorce; but Strype did not think it was more than a State paper. Croke (p. 198) says that people at Oxford, “Mr. John Roper and others,” did not believe that the king was really the author. He says that the tract has done more than anything else to get people to take the king’s side.

[113] Of the olde God and the new, B. 1. As another sample of what was at this time said about the Popes, we may take the following: Rome, says the author, “was by Justinian restored from ruin and decay, from whence also came the riches of the Church. At the coming of these riches, forthwith the book of the gospel was shut up, and the Bishops of Rome, instead of evangelical poverty, began to put forth their heads garnished with three crowns.” This is taken from the preface of Hartman Dulechin, who claims to have “taught the book to speak Latin.” It was originally printed and published in German. The English version is a translation of the Latin.

[114] The Defence of Peace, written in Latin more than 200 years ago, and set forth in the English tongue by Wyllyam Marshall. R. Wyer, 1535, folio.

[115] The Defence of Peace, f. 42. The well-known anti-papal opinions of Marsilius of Padua are, of course, of no interest in themselves, but their publication at this time in English shows the methods by which it was hoped to undermine the Papal authority in the country.

[116] Exposition, &c., ut supra, f. i.

[117] Johann Sturmius, Epistle sent to the cardinals and prelates that were appointed by the Bishop of Rome to search out the abuses of the Church. Translated by Richard Morysine. Berthelet, 1538.

A later copy of the Concilium de emendanda Ecclesia, printed by Sturmius with his letter in 1538, in the British Museum, formerly belonged to Cecil. The title-page has his signature, “Gulielmus Cecilius, 1540,” and there are marks and words underlined, and some few observations from his pen in the margin. It is interesting to note that what struck the statesman as a youth were just the points which could be turned against the temporal claims of the Roman See.

The special evils needing correction which the committee of cardinals note, and which they call abuses, are collected under 22 headings, some of which are the following:—

(1) Ordination of priests without cure of souls, not learned, of lower order in life, and too young and of doubtful morals: They suggest that each diocese should have a magistrum to see that candidates are properly instructed—none to be ordained except by their own bishop.

(2) Benefices, and in particular, episcopal sees, are given to people with interest, and not because their elevation would be good for the church. They suggest that the best man should be chosen, and residence should be insisted on, and consequently “non Italo conferendum est beneficium in Hispania aut in Britannia aut ex contra.”

(3) Pensions reserved from Benefices. Though the Pope, “who is the universal dispenser of the goods of the church,” may reserve a part for a pious use, e.g. for the poor, &c., still not to reserve sufficient for the proper purpose of the beneficiary, and still more to give a pension out of a benefice to one rich enough without, is wrong.

(4) Change of benefices for the sake of gain, and handing on benefices by arrangement or always assigning episcopal sees to coadjutors, is the cause of outcry against the clergy, and is in reality making private property out of what is public.

(5) Permission to clergy to hold more than one benefice.

(6) Cardinals being allowed to hold sees. They ought to be counsellors to the Pope in Rome, and when holding sees they are more or less dependent on the will of the kings, and so cannot give independent advice and speak their minds.

(7) Absence of bishops from their sees.

(8) Such religious houses as needed correction should be forbidden to profess members, and when they die out, their places should be taken by fervent religious. Confessors for convents must be approved by the ordinaries of the place.

(9) The use of the keys ought never, under any pretext, to be granted for money.

(10) Questors of the Holy Spirit, St. Anthony, &c., who foster superstition among the poor people, should be prohibited.

(11) Confessional privileges and use of portable altars to be very rarely allowed.

(12) No indulgences to be granted except once a year, and in the great cities only.

Finally they say of Rome: “HÆc Romana civitas et ecclesia mater est et magistra aliarum ecclesiarum,” and hence it should be a model to all. Foreigners, however, who come to St. Peter’s find that priests “sordidi, ignari, induti paramentis et vestibus quibus nec in sordidis Ædibus honeste uti possent, missas celebrant.”

Cardinal Sadolet, on receiving a copy of Sturmius’s letter, replied in kindly terms. He had, he declared, a high opinion of “Sturmius, Melanchthon, and Bucer, looking on them as most learned men, kindly disposed, and cordially friendly to him. He looked upon it as the peculiar characteristic of Luther to try and overwhelm all his opponents with shouts and attacks.” He speaks of the great piety of Pope Clement from personal knowledge. His wars were, he said, rather the work of his adversaries than his own (De consilio, ed. J. G. Schelhorn, 1748, p. 91).

He also, in 1539, penned the De Christiana Ecclesia (in Specilegium Romanum, ii. p. 101 seqq.), sending it to Cardinal Salicati, and asking him to pass it on to Cardinal Contarini. It was the outcome of conversations about the troubles of the Church, and the result of the movement was the Council of Trent, to restore, as Sadolet says, ecclesiastical discipline “quÆ nunc tota pÆne nobis e manibus elapsa est.”

[118] Sermon on Palm Sunday, Berthelet, 1539.

[119] Lancelot Ridley, Commentary in Englyshe on Sayncte Paule’s Epystle to the Ephesians, L. 4.

[120] This important paper was printed for the first time in the Dublin Review, April 1894, pp. 390-420.

[121] A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualtie and temporaltie. London: Robert Redman, f. 2.

[122] English Works, p. 871. In the quotations made from the works of Sir Thomas More and other old writings, for the sake of the general reader the modern form of spelling has been adopted, and at times the words transposed to ensure greater clearness.

[123] Ibid., p. 875.

[124] Ibid., p. 882.

[125] Salem and Bizance. A dialogue betwixte two Englishmen, whereof one was called Salem and the other Bizance. London: Berthelet, 1533, f. 5.

[126] English Works, p. 934.

[127] Ibid., p. 870.

[128] Ibid., p. 877.

[129] Ibid., p. 877.

[130] Ibid., p. 878.

[131] Ibid., pp. 937, 938.

[132] A treatise concerning the division, f. 8.

[133] English Works, p. 880.

[134] Ibid., p. 951.

[135] A treatise concerning the division, f. 3.

[136] A treatise concerning the division, f. 41.

[137] English Works, p. 884.

[138] Ibid., p. 895.

[139] Ibid.

[140] Ibid., p. 896.

[141] Ibid., p. 885.

[142] Bishop Fisher gives much the same testimony to the moral character of the religious generally in his sermon against Luther. After praising the state of virginity, he continues: “And it is not to be doubted but that there is in Christendom at this day many thousands of religious men and women that full truly keep their religion and their chastity unto Christ.… If Almighty God did reserve in that little portion of Jewry so great a multitude beyond the estimation of the prophet, what number suppose ye doth yet remain in Christendom of religious men and women, notwithstanding this great persecution of religious monasteries, both of men and women, done by these heretics by this most execrable doctrine? It is not to be doubted but in all Christendom be left many thousands who at this hour live chaste, and truly keep their virginity unto Christ.” (A Sermon had at Paulis, Berthelet, f. g. ii.)

[143] Ibid., p. 735. Sir Thomas More, in his Dyalogue, thinks that the number of priests without very definite work had tended to diminish the respect paid to them by the laity. “But were I Pope,” he says, … “I could not well devise better provisions than by the laws of the Church are provided already, if they were as well kept as they are well made. But as for the number, I would surely see such a way therein that we should not have such a rabble that every mean man must have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife. This no mean man lacketh now, to the contempt of the priesthood, (placed) in as vile an office as his horsekeeper. That is truth indeed, quod he, and in worse, too, for they keep hawks and dogs.” If the laws of the Church were kept, there would not be the excessive number of priests for fit and proper positions, so that “the whole order is rebuked by the priests’ begging and lewd living who are either obliged to walk as rovers, and live upon trentals or worse, or serve in a secular man’s house” (English Works, p. 223).

[144] A treatise concerning the division, ff. 14-16.

[145] Dyalogue, &c., f. 2.

[146] A treatise concerning the division, f. 23.

[147] Ibid., f. 25.

[148] Ibid., f. 26.

[149] English Works, p. 936.

[150] English Works, p. 620.

[151] A Sermonde … made in 1538. By John Longlande, Bishop of Lincolne. London: f. 2.

[152] Henry VIII., vol. ii. pp. 50-1.

[153] Ibid., vol. i. p. 600.

[154] Ibid., ii. p. 470.

[155] Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 717.

[156] Sermo Exhortatorius, W. de Worde.

[157] Gairdner, Calendar of Papers Foreign and Domestic, v., preface, ix.

[158] Froude’s translation.

[159] Opera, ed. Leclerc, iii. col. 102.

[160] Ibid., Ep. 144.

[161] In one of his works Erasmus gives the highest praise to English ecclesiastics for their single-minded devotion to their clerical duties. He contrasts them with clerics of other nations in regard to worldly ambitions, &c. “Those who are nearest to Christ,” he writes, “should keep themselves free from the baser things of this world. How ill the word ‘general’ sounds when connected with that of ‘Cardinal,’ or ‘duke’ with that of ‘bishop,’ ‘earl’ with that of ‘abbot,’ or ‘commander’ with that of ‘priest.’ In England the ecclesiastical dignity is the highest, and the revenues of churchmen abundant. In that country, however, no one who is a bishop or abbot has even a semblance of temporal dominion, or possesses castles or musicians or bands of retainers, nor does any of them coin his own money, excepting only the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a mark of dignity and honour, which has been conferred on him on account of the death of Saint Thomas; he is, however, never concerned in matters of war, but is occupied only in the care of the churches.” (Consultatio de Bello Turcico. Opera, ed. Leclerc, tom. v. p. 363.)

[162] Opera, &c., ut sup., Ep. 149.

[163] Ibid., Ep. 175.

[164] Ibid., Ep. 216.

[165] Ibid., Ep. 272.

[166] Ibid., Ep. 474.

[167] Thomas More, Epigrammata (ed. Frankfort, 1689), p. 284 seqq.

[168] Ibid., Ep. 148.

[169] Erasmus, p. 63.

[170] Quarterly Review, January 1895, p. 23.

[171] The question about Erasmus’s translation of this word came up in the discussion between Sir Thomas More and Tyndale about the use made by the latter of the word congregatio for Church in his version of the New Testament. More writes: “Then he asketh me why I have not contended with Erasmus, whom he calls my darling, all this long time, for translating this word ecclesia into this word congregatio, and then he cometh forth with his proper taunt, that I favour him of likelihood for making of his book of MoriÆ in my house.… Now for his translation of ecclesia by congregatio his deed is nothing like Tyndale’s. For the Latin tongue had no Latin word used before for the Church but the Greek word ecclesia, therefore Erasmus in his new translation gave it a Latin word.… Erasmus also meant no heresy therein, as appears by his writings against the heretics.” (English Works, pp. 421, 422.)

[172] Ep. 384.

[173] Ep. 423.

[174] Ep. 531. Lee’s account of his quarrel with Erasmus is given in his Apologia, which he addressed to the University of Louvain. He states that Erasmus had come to his house at that place, and had asked him to aid in the corrected version of his New Testament which he was then projecting. At first Lee refused, but finally, on being pressed by Erasmus, he consented, and began the work of revision, but Erasmus quickly became angry at so many suggested changes. Reports about the annotations and corrections proposed by Lee began to be spread abroad, and Erasmus hearing of them, suspected some secret design, and came from Basle to try and get a copy of the proposed criticism. Lee wished that it should be considered rather a matter of theology than of letters. Bishop Fisher wrote, on hearing rumours of the quarrel, urging Lee to try and make his peace with Erasmus, and in deference to this, Lee informed Erasmus that he would leave the matter entirely in the hands of the bishop, and had forwarded to him the book of his proposed criticisms. Erasmus, however, did not wait, but published the Dialogus Domini Jacobi Latomi, which all regarded as an attack upon Lee. The latter would have published a reply had he not received letters from England from Fisher, Colet, Pace, and More, begging him to keep his temper. Lee agreed to stop, and only asked Fisher to decide the matter quickly. On returning to Louvain, Lee found that Erasmus had published his Dialogus bilingium et trilingium, in which Lee was plainly indicated as a man hostile to the study of letters in general. This Lee denied altogether, and in brief, he does not, he says, condemn Erasmus’s notes on the New Testament so much as the copy he had taken as the basis for his corrections of the later text. “Politian,” says Lee, at the end of his Apologia, “Politian declares that there are two great pests of literature—ignorance and envy. To these I will add a third—‘adulation’—for I have no belief in any one who, having made a mistake, is not willing to acknowledge it.”

Lee’s criticism of Erasmus’s translation appeared at Louvain in January 1520. It produced an immediate reply from Erasmus, published at Antwerp in May 1520—a reply “all nose, teeth, nails, and stomach.” In this Erasmus says that 1200 copies of the New Testament had been printed by Froben. In the collation he had been much assisted by Bishop Tunstall, who had, in fact, supplied the exemplar on which he had worked. Erasmus then gives what he thinks is the correct version of the differences between Lee and himself. Lee, he says, was only just beginning Greek, and Erasmus, who had been working at the correction of his version of the Testament, showed him what he was doing. The margins of the book were then full of notes, and here and there whole pages of paper were added. Lee said that he had a few notes that might be useful, and Erasmus expressed his pleasure at receiving help and asked for them. Lee thereupon gave him some miscellaneous jottings, and of these, according to Erasmus’s version of the facts, he made use of hardly anything. Soon, however, reports were spread about that out of some three hundred places in which Lee had corrected the first edition of the translation, Erasmus had adopted two hundred. Bishop Fisher tried to make peace, and to prevent two men who both meant well to the cause of religion from quarrelling in public. His intervention was, however, too late, as already the letter of Erasmus to Thomas Lupset had appeared and thus rendered reconciliation impossible.

[175] Ep. 231.

[176] Ep. 380. This bishop must have been the Spaniard, George de Athegua, who was appointed to the see of Llandaff in 1517, and held it for twenty years.

[177] Ep. 380.

[178] Ep. 453.

[179] Ep. 416.

[180] Ep. 547.

[181] Ep. 529. Erasmus wrote strongly against anything that seemed to favour the idea of national churches. After declaring that national dislikes and enmities were unmeaning and unchristian, he continues: “As an Englishman you wish evil fortune to a Frenchman. Why not rather do your wishes come as a man to a fellow-man? Why not as a Christian to a Christian? Why do these frivolous things have greater weight than such natural ties, such bonds of Christ? Places separate bodies, not souls. In old days the Rhine divided a Frenchman from a German, but the Rhine cannot divide one Christian from another. The Pyrenees cut off Spain from France, but these mountains do not destroy the communion of the Church. The sea divides the English and French peoples, but it cannot cut off the society of religion.…” The world is the fatherland of all people; all men are sprung from a common stock. “The Church is but one family, common to all.” (Opera., tom. iv. col. 638.)

[182] Ep. 715.

[183] Ep. 723.

[184] Ep. 477.

[185] Ep. 528.

[186] Ep. 656.

[187] Ep. 334 (second series.)

[188] Spongia (Basle, Froben, 1523), c. 5.

[189] Ibid., sig. d. 4.

[190] Ibid., sig. e. 2.

[191] Ibid., sig. e. 2. The supreme authority of the Pope is asserted by Erasmus in numberless places in his works. For example, in the tract Pacis Querimonia, after saying that he cannot understand how Christians, who understand Christ’s teaching and say their Pater noster with intelligence, can always be at strife, he proceeds: “The authority of the Roman Pontiff is supreme. But when peoples and princes wage impious wars, and that for years, where then is the authority of the Pontiffs, where then is the power next to Christ’s power?” &c. (Opera., tom. iv. p. 635). So too in his Precatio pro Pace EcclesiÆ, after praying that God would turn the eyes of His mercy upon the Church, over which “Peter was made Supreme Pastor,” he declares that there is but “one Church, out of which there is no salvation.”

[192] Ep. 478.

[193] Ep. 501.

[194] Ep. 563.

[195] Ep. 600.

[196] Ep. 563.

[197] Ep. 667.

[198] Ep. 501 (Mr. Froude’s translation).

[199] Ep. 793.

[200] Ep. 823.

[201] Ep. 751.

[202] The Pope himself read the Enconium MoriÆ and understood the spirit of the author; at least so Erasmus was told. He wrote at the time “the Supreme Pontiff has read through MoriÆ and laughed; all he said was, ‘I am glad to see that friend Erasmus is in the MoriÆ,’ and this though I have touched no others so sharply as the Pontiffs” (Ep. p. 1667). What Sir Thomas More thought about it may be given in his own words, written some years later. “As touching MoriÆ, in which Erasmus, under the name and person of Moria, which word in Greek signifies ‘folly,’ merely touches and reproves such faults and follies as he found in any kind of people pursuing every state and condition, spiritual and temporal, leaving almost none untouched. By this book, says Tyndale, if it were in English, every man should then well see that I was then far otherwise minded than I now write. If this be true, then the more cause have I to thank God for the amendment. God be thanked I never had that mind in my life to have holy saints’ images or their holy relics out of reverence. Nor if there were any such thing in MoriÆ this could not make any man see that I were myself of that mind, the book being made by another man though he were my darling never so dear. Howbeit, that book of MoriÆ doth indeed but jest upon abuses of such things.… But in these days, in which men by their own default misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God, until men better amend, if any man would now translate MoriÆ into English, or some work either that I have myself written ere this, albeit there be no harm therein, folks being (as they be) given to take harm of what is good, I would not only my darling’s books, but my own also, help to burn them both with my own hands, rather than folk should (though through their own fault) take any harm of them.” (English Works, pp. 422-3.)

[203] Opera Omnia (Froben’s ed., 1540), i. p. 831.

[204] Pp. 832-33.

[205] P. 837.

[206] A case in point was the finding of the celebrated statue of the LaocÖon on January 14, 1506. This discovery was accidentally made in a vineyard, near Santa Maria Maggiore, and no statue ever produced so general and so profound an emotion as the uncovering of this work of art did upon the learned world of Rome. The whole city flocked out to see it, and the road to the vineyard was blocked day and night by the crowds of cardinals and people waiting to look at it. “One would have said,” writes a contemporary, “that it was a Jubilee.” And even to-day the visitor to the Ara Coeli may read on the tomb of Felice de Fredis, the happy owner of the vineyard, the promise of “immortality,” ob proprias virtutes et repertum Laocohontis divinum simulachrum (I. Klaczki, Jules II., p. 115). It is not at all improbable that in the above passage Erasmus was actually thinking of the delirium caused by the finding of this statue.

[207] Ibid., p. 838.

[208] For example, the Rev. W. H. Hutton states in the Guardian, January 25, 1899, as the result of his mature studies upon the Reformation period, that “the so-called divorce question had very little indeed to do with the Reformation.” Mr. James Gairdner, who speaks with all the authority of a full and complete knowledge of the State papers of this period, in a letter to a subsequent number of the Guardian, says, “When a gentleman of Mr. Hutton’s attainments is able seriously to tell us this, I think it is really time to ask people to put two and two together, and say whether the sum can be anything but four. It may be disagreeable to trace the Reformation to such a very ignoble origin, but facts, as the Scottish poet says, are fellows you can’t coerce … and won’t bear to be disputed.” What “we call the Reformation in England … was the result of Henry VIII.’s quarrel with the Court of Rome on the subject of his divorce, and the same results could not possibly have come about in any other way.” When “Henry VIII. found himself disappointed in the expectation, which he had ardently cherished for a while, that he could manage, by hook or by crook, to obtain from the See of Rome something like an ecclesiastical licence for bigamy,” he took matters into his own hands, “and self-willed as he was, never did self-will lead him into such a tremendous and dangerous undertaking as in throwing off the Pope. How much this was resented among the people, what secret communications there were between leading noblemen with the imperial ambassador, strongly urging the emperor to invade England, and deliver the people from a tyranny from which they were unable to free themselves, we know in these days as we did not know before.”

[209] Camden Society, p. 163.

[210] The same high authority, in a letter to the Guardian, March 1, 1899, says, “People will tell you, of course, that the seeds of the Reformation were sown before Henry VIII.’s days, and particularly that it was Wycliffe who brought the great movement on. I should be sorry to depreciate Wycliffe, who did undoubtedly bring about a great movement in his day, though a careful estimate of that movement is still a desideratum. Even in theology the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation—justification by faith—is in Wycliffe, I should say, conspicuous by its absence. But, whatever may be the theological debt of England to Wycliffe at the present day, twenty Wycliffes, all highly popular, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would not have brought about a Reformation like that under which we have lived during the last centuries. That was a thing which could only have been effected by royal power—as in England, or by a subversion of royal authority through the medium of successful rebellion—as in Scotland.”

[211] Henry VIII., i. p. 51.

[212] Roger Edgworth, Sermons (London: Robert Caly, 1557), preface.

[213] English Works, p. 339.

[214] Strype, Eccl. Mem. (ed. 1822), I. i. p. 254.

[215] This book was apparently condemned for reflecting on the king’s divorce rather than for its Lutheran tendencies. “The Soul’s Garden,” as Bishop Tunstall calls it, was printed abroad, and “very many lately brought into the realm, chiefly into London and into other haven towns.” The objectionable portion was contained in “a declaration made in the kalendar of the said book, about the end of the month of August, upon the day of the decollation of St. John Baptist, to show the cause of why he was beheaded.” (Strype, ut supra, ii. p. 274.)

[216] Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 737.

[217] Ibid., 720.

[218] Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 727.

[219] Richard Smythe, D.D., The assertion and defence of the Sacrament of the Altar, 1546, f. 3.

[220] English Works, p. 940.

[221] English Works, p. 921.

[222] English Works, pp. 341-344.

[223] Ibid., p. 346.

[224] Ibid., p. 351.

[225] Germen Gardynare, A letter of a yonge gentylman, &c. London: W. Rastell, 1534.

[226] English Works, pp. 257-259.

[227] Ibid., p. 1035.

[228] Ibid., p. 409.

[229] The Werke for Householders. London: John Waylande, 1537.

[230] Richard Whitford, Dyvers holy instructions. London: W. Mydylton, 1541.

[231] Sermons, sig. h. vij.

[232] English Works (ed. 1557), pp. 233-4. This positive declaration of Sir Thomas More is generally ignored by modern writers. In a recently published work, for example (England in the Age of Wycliffe, by George Macaulay Trevelyan), it is stated that “we have positive proof that the bishops denounced the dissemination of the English Bible among classes and persons prone to heresy, burnt copies of it, and cruelly persecuted Lollards on the charge of reading it” (p. 131). In proof of this statement the author refers his readers to a later page (p. 342) of his volume. Here he culls from Foxe (Acts and Monuments) the depositions of certain witnesses against people suspected of teaching heresy. Amongst these depositions it is said by a few of the witnesses that some of these teachers were possessed of portions of the Scriptures in English. Mr. Trevelyan assumes, because witnesses speak to this fact, that it was for this they were condemned, or, as he puts it, “cruelly persecuted,” by the ecclesiastical authorities. Had he examined his authority, Foxe, more carefully, he would have found the actual list of articles formulated against these teachers of heresy. These alone are, of course, the charges actually made against them; and the mere deposition of witnesses in those days were, no more than they are in ours, the charges upon which the accused were condemned. In the articles or charges we find no mention whatever of the English Bible, and, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation of documents, this absence of any mention of Bible-reading in the indictment, formulated after the hearing of the evidence, and when witnesses had testified to the fact, should be taken to show that the mere possession of the vernacular Scriptures, &c., was not accounted an offence by the Church authorities. The real charge in these cases, as in others, was of teaching what was then held to be false and heretical, teaching founded upon false interpretations of the Scripture text, or upon false translations.

[233] Ibid., p. 235.

[234] Ibid., p. 240.

[235] Ibid., p. 241.

[236] Ibid., p. 240.

[237] Ibid., p. 241.

[238] Ibid., p. 245.

[239] Ibid., p. 510.

[240] Ibid., p. 678.

[241] Roger Edgworth, Sermons, London, Caly, 1557, f. 31.

[242] Sir Thomas More, English Works, p. 108.

[243] Thomas Lupset, Collected Works, 1546. Gathered Counsails, f. 202.

[244] Ibid. An Exhortation to young men, written 1529. He insists much on the obligation of following the teaching of the Church.

[245] John Standish, A discourse wherein is debated whether it be expedient that the Scripture should be in English for all men to read that wyll (1555), A. iij.

[246] English Works, p. 850.

[247] J. S. Brewer, Henry VIII., vol. ii. p. 468.

[248] Dore, Old Bibles, p. 13.

[249] P. 15.

[250] Ellis, Historical Letters, 3rd Series, ii. p. 71.

[251] Johannes CochlÆus, An expediat laicis legere Novi Testamenti libros lingua vernacula, 1533, A. i. The warning of CochlÆus was addressed to the Scotch king, and as a result of this letter, pointing out the Lutheran character of the English version of Tyndale, the Scotch bishops in the Synod of St. Andrews in 1529 forbade the importation of Bibles into Scotland.

[252] Ibid., L. iij.

[253] Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 727.

[254] Cf. Parker Soc. Tyndale’s Doctrinal treatises, &c., preface xxx.

[255] Probably on Sunday, February 11, when Cardinal Wolsey, with six and thirty bishops and other ecclesiastics, were present at the burning of Lutheran books before the great crucifix at the north gate. Amongst the books, according to Tyndale, were copies of his translated Testament.

[256] Dore, Old Bibles, p. 26.

[257] Dore, ut sup., 32.

[258] English Works, p. 422.

[259] Dore, 35.

[260] English Works, p. 849.

[261] English Works, p. 341.

[262] Ibid., p. 410.

[263] Ibid., p. 416.

[264] Ibid., p. 417.

[265] Ibid., p. 419.

[266] Ibid., p. 422.

[267] Ibid., p. 424.

[268] Ibid., p. 425.

[269] Ibid., p. 427.

[270] Ibid., p. 435.

[271] Ibid., p. 437.

[272] Ibid., p. 493.

[273] Ibid., p. 422. For examples of other false translations, see also p. 449.

[274] Standish, A discourse, &c., ut supra, sig. A. iiij.

[275] English Works, p. 223.

[276] Ibid., p. 223.

[277] Standish, ut supra, sig. E. iiij.

[278] Roger Edgworth, Sermons, f. 31.

[279] The assertion and defence of the Sacrament of the Altar (1546), f. 3. The amateur theologians and teachers who sprung up so plentifully with the growth of Lutheran ideas in England seem to have been a source of trouble to the clergy. There was no difficulty in Scripture so hard which these “barkers, gnawers, and railers,” as Roger Edgworth calls them, were not ready to explain, and even women were ready to become teachers of God’s Word, “and openly to dispute with men.” Speaking in Bristol, in Mary’s reign, he advises his audience to stick to their own occupations and leave theology and Scripture alone, “for when a tailor forsaking his own occupation will be a merchant venturer, or a shoemaker will become a grocer, God send him help. I have known,” he says, “many in this town that studying divinity has killed a merchant, and some of other occupations by their busy labours in the Scripture hath shut up the shop windows, and were fain to take sanctuary, or else for mercery and grocery hath been fain to sell godderds, steaves, pitchers, and such other trumpery.”

[280] A Commentary in Englyshe upon Sayncte Paule’s Epistle to the Ephesians, 1540.

[281] An Exposition in Englysh upon the Epistle of St. Paule to the Colossians, 1548.

[282] An Exposition, &c., upon the Philippians, 1545.

[283] As an example of the open way in which the reading of the Bible was advocated, take the following instance. Caxton’s translation of the VitÆ Patrum, published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, contained an exhortation to all his readers to study the Holy Scripture. “To read them is in part to know the felicity eternal, for in them a man may see what he ought to do in conversation … oft to read purgeth the soul from sin, it engendereth dread of God, and it keeps the soul from eternal damnation.” As food nourishes the body, “in like wise as touching the soul we be nourished by the lecture and reading of Scripture.… Be diligent and busy to read the Scriptures, for in reading them the natural wit and understanding are augmented in so much that men find that which ought to be left (undone) and take that whereof may ensue profit infinite” (p. 345).

[284] B. Mus. Harl. MS. 172, f. 12b.

[285] Harl. MS. 115, f. 51.

[286] Ibid., f. 53.

[287] In speaking of the third Commandment, The art of good lyvyng and good deyng (1503) warns people of their obligation to “Layr the holy prechyngys, that ys the word of God et the good techyngys, and shoold not go from the seyd prechyngs” (fol. 8. 2).

[288] Ibid., f. 1.

[289] The Myrrour of the Church (1527), Sig. B4.

[290] Exornatorium Curatorum. W. de Worde. In 1518 the Synod of Ely ordered that all having the cure of souls should have a copy of this book, and four times a year should explain it in English to their people. (Wilkins, Concilia, III., p. 712.)

[291] The Prymer of Salisbury Use. Rouen: Nicholas le Rour, f. b. vij.

[292] The art of good lyvyng and good deyng. Paris, 1503, f. g. 2.

[293] English Works, p. 116.

[294] English Works, p. 117.

[295] Ibid., p. 121.

[296] Ibid., p. 420.

[297] Sermons, fol. 40.

[298] English Works, pp. 196-7.

[299] Ibid., p. 198.

[300] Ibid., p. 199.

[301] Ed. W. de Worde, 1496.

[302] William Bond, The Pilgrymage of Perfeccyon, Wynkyn de Worde, 1531, fol. 192.

[303] Ibid., fol. 196.

[304] Ibid.

[305] English Works, p. 408.

[306] The full title of this book is: Pupilla oculi omnibus presbyteris precipue Anglicanis necessaria. It is clear from the letter that W. Bretton had already had other works printed in the same way, and it is known that amongst those works were copies of Lynwode’s Provinciale (1505), Psalterium et Hymni (1506), HorÆ, &c. (1506), Speculum Spiritualium, and Hampole, De Emendatione VitÆ (1510), (cf. Ames, Ed. Herbert, iii. p. 16). Pepwell the London publisher, at “the sign of the Holy Trinity,” was the same who published many books printed abroad, and had dealings with Bishops Stokesley and Tunstall.

[307] For further information upon popular religious instruction in England, see an essay upon the teaching in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in my The old English Bible, and other Essays. The Rev. J. Fisher, in his tract on The Private Devotions of the Welsh (1898), speaking of the vernacular prayer-books, says, “they continued to be published down to the end of Henry’s reign, and, in a modified form, even at a later date. Besides these prymers and the oral instruction in the principal formulÆ of the Church, the scriptorium of the monastery was not behind in supplying, especially the poor, with horn-books, on which were, as a rule, written in the vulgar tongue the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Hail Mary.” In 1546 appeared a prymer in Welsh in which, amongst other things, the seven capital or deadly sins and their opposite virtues are given and analysed. This book, consequently, besides being a prayer-book afforded popular instruction to the people using it. The prymers in Welsh, we are told, were usually called “Matins’ Books,” and continued to be published long after the change of religion. A copy published in 1618 is called the fifth edition, and copies of it are recorded under the years 1633 and 1783. “It is rather a curious fact,” writes Mr. Fisher, “that nearly all the Welsh manuals of devotion and instruction, of any size, published in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, were the productions of Welsh Roman Catholics, and published on the Continent. In Dr. Gruffydd Roberts’s Welsh Grammar, published at Milan in 1567, will be found poetical versions of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Ten Commandments and the Seven Sacraments. This work was followed by the Athravaeth Gristnogavl, a short catechism of religious doctrine, translated or compiled by Morys Clynog, the first Rector of the English College in Rome. It was published at Milan in 1568, and contains the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Ten Commandments, &c., in Welsh, with expositions.”

The above, with the prayer-books of 1567, 1586, 1599, were all the works of religious instruction and devotion (private and public) that appeared in Welsh down to the end of the sixteenth century. I might add that there is in the Earl of Macclesfield’s collection a large folio volume of Miscellanea (Shirburn MS. 113, D. 30), written between 1540 and 1560, which contains a prymer occupying several pages. There is also in the Swansea Public Library a Welsh-Latin MS. of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, written in different hands and in the South Walian dialect, which forms a manual of Roman Catholic devotion, containing in Welsh devotions for Mass, the usual meditations and prayers for various occasions, instructions, &c.

With the seventeenth century there is a good crop of manuals of devotion and instruction, such as the catechisms of Dr. Rosier Smith (1609-1611) and Father John Salisbury (1618 tacito nomine), both Welsh Roman Catholics (pp. 24-26).

[308] A Werke for Housholders. London, R. Redman, 1537, sig. A. 8.

[309] Ibid., sig. B. i.

[310] Ibid., sig. C. 8.

[311] Ibid., sig. D. 5.

[312] B. Mus. Harl. MS. 2125, f. 272.

[313] Penny CyclopÆdia. Art., “English Drama.”

[314] A Relation of the Island of England (Camden Society), p. 20.

[315] Ibid., p. 23.

[316] Venetian Calendar, ii. p. 91.

[317] Works on the Supper (Parker Society), p. 229.

[318] To take one instance: the church of St. Neots possessed many stained glass windows placed in their present positions between the years 1480 and 1530. Almost all of them were put in by individuals, as the inscriptions below testify. In the case of three of the lights it appears that groups of people joined together to beautify their parish church. Thus below one of the windows in the north aisle is the following: “Ex sumptibus juvenum hujus parochiÆ Sancti Neoti qui istam fenestram fecerunt anno domini millessimo quingentessimo vicessimo octavo.” Another window states that it was made in 1529, “Ex sumptibus sororum hujus parochiÆ”; and a third in 1530, “Ex sumptibus uxorum.”

[319] History of Modern Architecture, pp. 37, 87.

[320] ArchÆologia, vol. xli. p. 355.

[321] Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage (“Nineteenth Century,” March 1898), p. 433.

[322] Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), ed. Bishop Hobhouse, p. 200, seqq.

[323] Ibid., p. xxi.

[324] Ibid., p. xii.

[325] ArchÆologia, vol. xli., p. 333 seqq.

[326] Somerset Record Soc., preface, p. xi.

[327] J. W. Cowper, Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury (ArchÆologia Cantiana, 1885).

[328] SimÉon Luce, Histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin, p. 19.

[329] The words of Pope Leo XIII. as to the Catholic teaching most accurately describe the practical doctrine of the English pre-Reformation Church on this matter: “The chiefest and most excellent rule for the right use of money,” he says, “rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have the right to use money as one pleases.… If the question be asked, How must one’s possessions be used? the Church replies, without hesitation, in the words of the same holy doctor (St. Thomas), Man should not consider his outward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without difficulty when others are in need. When necessity has been supplied and one’s position fairly considered, it is a duty to give to the indigent out of that which is over. It is a duty, not of justice (except in extreme cases) but of Christian charity … (and) to sum up what has been said, Whoever has received from the Divine bounty a large share of blessings … has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the minister of God’s Providence, for the benefit of others.”

[330] The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 63.

[331] Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), p. xxiv.

[332] Roger Edgworth, Sermons, London, R. Caly, 1557, p. 309.

[333] Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage (“Nineteenth Century,” March 1898), p. 432.

[334] English Gilds (Early English Text-Society), pp. lxxx.-civ.

[335] Ibid., p. xiv.

[336] The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 306.

[337] English Gilds (Early English Text-Society), p. 3.

[338] Ibid., p. 6.

[339] Ibid., p. 8.

[340] Ibid., p. 48.

[341] Egerton MS., 142.

[342] The existence of which I know from Mr. Francis Joseph Baigent, who with his usual generosity allowed me to examine and take my notes from the copies which he has among his great collection of materials for the history of Hampshire.

[343] One example of this latter, or as I might call it, ordinary expense of the society, is worth recording. In 1411, and subsequent years, an annual payment of 13s. 4d. is entered on the accounts as made to one Thomas Deverosse, a tailor, and apparently a member of the fraternity. The history of this man’s poverty is curious. When Bishop William of Wykeham, desiring to build Winchester College, purchased certain lands for the purpose, amongst the rest was a field which a tailor of Winchester, this Thomas Deverosse, subsequently claimed; and to make good his contention, brought a suit of ejectment against the Bishop. The case was tried in the King’s Bench, and the tailor not only lost, but was cast in costs and so ruined. With some writers, William of Wykeham’s good name had been allowed to suffer most unjustly for his share in the misfortunes of the unlucky tailor; for the Bishop not only undertook to pay the costs of the suit himself, but agreed that the college should make the unfortunate claimant a yearly allowance of 8d. to assist him in his poverty. The Tailors’ Guild secured to him a pension of 13s. 4d.

[344] Here is the bill for the annual feast in the Guild of Tailors of Winchester in 1411. The association was under the patronage of St. John the Baptist, and they kept their feast on the Day of the beheading of the Saint, August 29. In this year, 1411, the 29th of August fell upon a Saturday, which in mediÆval times, as all know, was a day of abstinence from flesh-meat. It is to be noticed, consequently, that provision is made for a fish dinner: “6 bushels of wheat at 8½d. the bushel; for grinding of the same, 3d.; for baking the same, 6d.; ready-made bread purchased, 12d.; beer, 7s. 1d.; salt fish bought of Walter Oakfield, 6s. 8d.; mullet, bass, ray, and fresh conger bought of the same Walter, 6s. 8d.; fresh salmon of the same, 8s.; eels, 10½d.; fresh fish bought of John Wheller, ‘fisher,’ 2s.; ditto, of Adam Frost, 9s.; ditto, bought of a stranger, 2s. 8d.; beans purchased, 9d.; divers spices, i.e. saffron, cinnamon, sanders, 12½d.; salt, 2d.; mustard, 2½d.; vinegar, 1d.; tallow, 2d.; wood, 18d.; coals, 3½d.; paid to Philip the cook, 2s.; to four labourers, 2s. 6d.; to three minstrels, 3s. 4d.; for rushes to strew the hall, 4d.; three gallons and one pint of wine, 19d.; cheese, 8d.” Making in all a total of £3, 4s. 3½d. This, no doubt, represented a large sum in those days, but it is as well to remember that at this time the guild consisted of 170 men and women, and the cost of the feast was not one-sixth part of the annual income.

[345] Harl. MS. 4626, f. 26.

[346] Ibid., f. 29. This was confiscated to the Crown on the dissolution of the Guilds and Fraternities under Edward VI.

[347] Introduction to English Economic History (2nd ed.), i. pp. 100-101.

[348] Old Crown House, p. 36, cf. pp. 37-39.

[349] See the remarks in regard to France of M. Charles de Ribbe, La SociÉtÉ ProvenÇale À la fin du moyen age, 1898, p. 60. Speaking of the fifteenth-century wills, he says: “Nous en avons lu un grand nombre, et nous avons ÉtÉ frappÉ de la haute inspiration, parfois meme du talent, avec lesquels des notaires de village savaient traduire les Élans de foi et de piÉtÉ dont ils Étaient les interprÈtes chez leurs clients.… Cette foi et cette piÉtÉ; trouvÉ d’abord leur expression dans le vÉnÉrable signe de la sainte croix (lequel est plus d’une fois figurÉ graphiquement). Suit la recommandation de l’Âme À Dieu CrÉateur du ciel et de la terre, au Christ rÉdempteur, À la Vierge Marie,” &c. (p. 91).

[350] Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Society), vol. iv. p. 21.

[351] Ibid., p. 127.

[352] Ibid., p. 127.

[353] Ibid., p. 170.

[354] Ibid., p. 27.

[355] Ibid., p. 60.

[356] Ibid., p. 335.

[357] Ibid., p. 277.

[358] Ibid., p. 139, seqq.

[359] Ibid., p. 61 and note.

[360] Ibid., p. 69.

[361] Ibid., p. 89.

[362] Ibid., p. 132.

[363] Ibid., p. 149.

[364] Ibid., p. 208.

[365] Ibid., p. 215.

[366] Ibid., p. 230.

[367] Ibid., p. 119.

[368] Ibid., p. 160.

[369] B. Mus. Harl. MS. 670, f. 77 b.

[370] Yorkshire Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc.), ii., preface, p. xiv.

[371] The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 306.

[372] J. S. Burn, History of Henley on Thames, pp. 173-175.

[373] R. O. Chantry Certificate, No. 13 (account for year 37 H. VIII.), No. 17.

[374] Ibid., No. 30 and No. 95, M. 6.

[375] Ibid., No. 37, M. 12; also No. 95, M. 7; and No. 13 (38) Mins. Accts. 2, 3, Ed. VI., shows that the king received £11, 19s. 8d. for the property of this chapel, which was granted to Robert Swift and his brother.

[376] R. O. Chantry Certificate, No. 45 (m. i. d.).

[377] Ibid.

[378] Ibid.

[379] Ibid. (18).

[380] Ibid. (20).

[381] This was owing to the recent dissolution of the Abbey.

[382] In one case it is said: “Mem.: The decay of rent is caused by the fact that most came from lands in possession of the abbey; since the dissolution these have been sold, and the purchasers do not allow that they are liable to pay.” The hospital called St. Parvell’s, without the south gate, also had been dissolved by Henry VIII., and the property granted to Sir George Somerset (6th July, 37 H. VIII.). It had produced £16, 13s. 4d. a year, with £5, 10s. “paid out of the late abbey of Bury to the sustentation of the poor.” The whole charity, of course, by the dissolution of the abbey and the grant of the remaining property as above, had come to an end.

[383] Ibid. (No. 44).

[384] Yorkshire Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc.), p. 213.

[385] Ibid., p. 214.

[386] Ibid., p. 215.

[387] Ibid., p. 216.

[388] Ibid., p. 11.

[389] Ibid., p. 12.

[390] Ibid., p. 13.

[391] Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lxxxii., ii. 318. Quoted in J. Gough Nichol’s Pilgrimages, &c. Introduction, xcv.

[392] Lancelot Rydley. Exposition in the Epistell of Jude. London, Thomas Gybson, 1538, sig. B. v. In sermons and writings, pre-Reformation ecclesiastics strove to impress upon the minds of the people the true principles of devotion to shrines and relics of the saints. To take one example beyond what is given above. In The Art of Good Lyvyng and Good Deyng, printed in 1503, the writer says: “We should also honour the places that are holy, and the relics of holy bodies of saints and their images, not for themselves, but for that in seeing them we show honour to what it represents, the dread reverence, honour and love of God, after the intention of Holy Church, otherwise it were idolatry” (fol. 6).

[393] A Commentary in Englyshe upon the Ephesians, 1540, sig. A. ii.

[394] P. 190.

[395] Opera omnia (ed. Leclerc), tom. v., col. 26.

[396] Col. 37.

[397] A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualitie and the temporalitie. London, R. Redman (1532?), fol. 27.

[398] Dyaloge in Englyshe, 1531. Part 3, fol. 23.

[399] English Works, p. 476.

[400] Stephen Gardiner. A declaration of such true articles as George Joye hath gone about to confute as false. 1546, f. 2.

[401] Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (Ed. 1538), sig. B. 4.

[402] Jacobi Sadoletti, Opera Omnia, Verona (1737). Tom ii., p. 437.

[403] It is said to be “printed at Jericho in the land of Promes, by Thomas Treuth.”

[404] The English Testament.

[405] Sig. A. 3.

[406] Ibid., sig. A. 4.

[407] Ibid., sigs. A. 5 d., A. 6 d.

[408] Ibid., sig. B. i.

[409] Ibid., sig. B. ii.

[410] Ibid., sig. B. viii.

[411] Sig. D. vii.

[412] Ibid., sig. D. viii.

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